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CHAPTER VIII.
THE REFORMS OF THE BRAHMANS

A doctrine coming forward with so much self-confidence and force as Buddhism, touching such essential sides of the Indian national spirit, and meeting such distinct needs of the heart and of society, could not but react on the system which opposed it, which it fought against and strove to remove, i. e. on Brahmanism. We cannot suppose that the Brahmans looked supinely on at the advances of Buddhism. The accounts which we received from the Greeks about the various forms of worship dominant about the year 300 B.C. among the Indians (p. 424) show us that the Brahmanic heaven and the order of the world did not remain untouched; that there had crept in considerable variations from the ideas which the ancient sutras mention as current among the Brahmans at the time of the appearance of the Enlightened. We can confidently conclude that this change in the Brahmanic idea of God – important as we shall find it to be, and accomplished in part unconsciously and in part with a definite purpose – was brought about through Buddhism, by the inward value of the new doctrine, the struggle it entered into with Brahmanism, the necessity of opposing and checking its advances.

We have shown above how the subordination of the gods to Brahman and the great saints, the degradation of the ancient deities, must have aroused especially in the people the need of living divine powers. Thus forms hitherto little noticed in the series of the ancient deities became prominent, in which the people, conforming to the change in their instincts and the new demands of the heart, recognised the ruling and protecting powers of their life, and which they invoked especially as helpers and benefactors. These forms were Vishnu, the god of light, who even in the Veda is extolled for his friendly feeling to man, and Çiva, the mighty god of the storm-wind. In Vishnu the people found the spirit of the beneficent and uniform nature of the district of the Ganges; in Çiva, the lord of the storm-swept summits of the Himalayas, the ruler of mountains. Each was equally in their eyes the life-giving, sovereign power of nature. The system of the world-soul had left the gods a place little to be envied in the series of the emanations of Brahman, and had thrust back nature to a distance; the favour which Vishnu and Çiva found among the people showed the Brahmans that the worship of real and living deities was indispensable, that the life of nature could not be entirely excluded from the forms of the deities. To overcome the tide of popular feeling in the direction of Vishnu and Çiva, and the doctrine of Buddha at one and the same time, was a victory which the Brahmans could the less hope for, as the tendency towards a more personal supreme Being than Brahman was not unknown in their own schools, so far as these were not devoted to strict meditation and philosophy. Thus the Brahmans followed the movement excited within the circle of the ancient religion; they aimed at satisfying both the nation and themselves by the worship of more personal living gods. In one place Vishnu, in another Çiva, was adopted into the system of the Brahmans (p. 326, 330), which in this way underwent a very essential change and assumed an entirely novel point of view.

If the adoption of Vishnu into the Brahmanic system in the form given to him by the people on the Ganges, who reproduced in the epithets ascribed to the god their own quiet sensuous nature, was to be efficacious, he could not be allowed to play the unimportant part to which the Brahmans had condemned the ancient gods; they must make him the centre of heaven in the place of the feeble personal or impersonal Brahman; he must become the living lord of nature and the world. From the indications of the Brahmans quoted above, we may draw, though in wavering lines, a sketch of the gradations through which by a gradual elevation Vishnu obtained the precedence even over Brahman. Brahman finally became the quiescent, Vishnu the active, substance of the world. The latter contains the former, and is therefore the higher power. Vishnu personifies the world-soul; but he also comprises the whole life of nature; he takes the place of the sun-gods Surya, Savitar, Pushan, and even the place of Indra, who has to offer sacrifice to him, and purify himself before him,⁷¹⁸ until at length in the revisions of the Epos he is regarded no longer as the quiescent cause but as the active lord of nature, and of the whole life of the spirits, and is elevated to be the creator and governor of the universe. In him, the lord of all beings, so we are told in the Mahabharata, all beings are contained as his attributes, like precious stones on a string; on him rests the universe existent and non-existent. Hari (Vishnu) with a thousand heads, a thousand feet, a thousand eyes, gleams with a thousand faces; the god, pre-eminent above all, the smallest of the small, the widest of the wide, the greatest of the great, supreme among the supreme, is the soul of all; he, the all-knowing, all-observing, is the author of all; in him the world swims like birds in water.⁷¹⁹ Vishnu is without beginning and without end, the source of the existence of all beings. From the thousand-armed Vishnu, the head and the lord of the world, all creatures sprang in the beginning of time, and to him all return at the end of time. Hari is the eternal spirit, glittering as gold, as the sun in a cloudless sky. Brahman sprung from his body, and dwells in it with the rest of the gods; the lights of the sky are the hairs of his head. He, the lotus-eyed god, is extolled by the eternal Brahman; to him the gods pray.⁷²⁰

When Vishnu unveils himself to Arjuna at his prayer, and shows himself in his real form, in which no man had yet seen him, he is seen reaching up to the sky without beginning, middle, or end, with many heads, eyes, and arms, uniting in himself thousands of faces; all gods, animals, and serpents are to be seen in him; Brahman shows himself in the lotus-cup of the navel of Vishnu.⁷²¹

Thus did the Brahmans place Vishnu on the throne of Brahman; Brahman, impersonal and personal, passed into him. These pictures are attempts to represent the creative power, the supreme God, the world-soul, the cause which sustains and comprises all, as a sensuous union of all divine shapes, of all the forms of the world into one frame. The worship offered to this supreme deity consisted in definite prayers, which had to be spoken at morning, midday, and evening; in offerings of flowers, and fruits, and libations of water.⁷²²

What attracted the people to the doctrine of Buddha was obviously, to no inconsiderable extent, the fact that the highest wisdom and goodness were personified in Buddha; that there was again mercy and grace, on earth, if not in heaven; that the king's son had become a mendicant in order to alleviate the sorrows of the world. The Brahmans, therefore, had to prove that love and pity existed in their heaven; it was of importance for them to show the people that the gods, whom the adherents of the old religion worshipped, had compassion for men, and knew how to help them, that even among them the divine wisdom and perfection had assumed a human shape out of love to mankind. If the Brahmans had so long taught that man could make himself into god by meditation, penance, and sanctity, why should not the gods have made themselves into men? The new god of the land of the Ganges was a gentle and helpful deity; his government of the world and beneficent acts were not only shown in the life of nature, and in the light which he sent daily, or the purifying water which he sent yearly in the rainy season, and the inundation of the Ganges, but also in the fortunes of men. The Brahmans obtained historical points of connection for the new god, and re-established a personal and living relation, which had been entirely lost in the Brahmanic system, between man and the gods, by representing Vishnu as gracious even in past days, as descending from heaven from time to time, and walking on earth for the help of men. From motives of this kind or because the conception of the beneficent acts of Vishnu came into the foreground, because they wished to see and believed that they saw his influence operating everywhere, there came the result that the achievements of the heroes which in the Epos are the centres of the action, Krishna and Rama, were transferred to the god Vishnu, and these heroic figures were supposed to be appearances of the god, so that by degrees a number of incarnations (avatara) are ascribed to Vishnu, in which he visited earth and did great deeds for men. According to this new system it was Vishnu who assisted the Brahmans to their supremacy, and therefore consecrated it, who taking the bodily form of Paraçurama annihilated the proud races of the Kshatriyas (p. 152). Thus the Brahmans transformed the god of beneficent nature, when they adopted him into their system, into the founder of the Brahmanic order of the world, a pattern of Brahmanic sanctity and virtue, and thus they sought to close the path against any counter-movement. In this way Vishnu appeared in the light of a perpetual benefactor, constantly assuming the human form anew, whenever mischief, evil, and sin had got the upper hand, in order to remove them, and then to reascend into heaven. "Whenever justice falls asleep and injustice arises, I create myself," are the words of Vishnu in the Bhagavad-gita; "for the liberation of the good and the annihilation of the evil I was born in each age of the world."⁷²³

In the Epos, as has been observed, Vishnu took the form of a dwarf in order to rescue the world from the Asura, Bali. According to the Vishnu-Purana, he had, even before the creation of the world, taken the form of a boar in order to raise the earth out of the waters. In the Matsya-Purana, beside three heavenly incarnations as Dharma, a dwarf, and a man-lion, he underwent seven earthly incarnations in consequence of a curse, as is strangely asserted, which an Asura had pronounced upon him, when Vishnu had slain the Asura's mother in order to aid Indra against him.⁷²⁴ The Bhagavata-Purana ascribes twenty incarnations to Vishnu; as creator, a boar, tortoise, fish, man-lion; as a sacrifice, a dwarf; as Paraçurama, Rama, Balarama, Krishna, etc. – twice more would he appear on the earth – and then it is added: "But the incarnations of Vishnu are innumerable as the streams which flow down from an inexhaustible lake; all saints and gods are parts of him."⁷²⁵

In order to transform the heroes of the Ramayana into incarnations of Vishnu, vigorous interpolations were required in the body of the poem. According to the old poem, king Daçaratha offered a horse-sacrifice in order to procure posterity (p. 278). When this sacrifice has been accurately described in all its parts, and we have been informed that the gods appeared and received each his portion, a second sacrifice is inserted because Daçaratha wished to have a famous son born to him.⁷²⁶ While Rishyaçringa is advising the king to make this new sacrifice and beginning it, the gods complain to Brahman that the Rakshasa Ravana of Lanka has subjugated them and made them his slaves; he oppressed the gods, the Brahmans, and the cows. Ravana's son, Indrashit, had conquered Indra himself, a victory which Brahman explains to be the consequence of the seduction of a rishi's wife by Indra.⁷²⁷ Brahman then announces to the helpless deities that Ravana had besought him that he might be invulnerable to Gandharvas, Yakshas, gods, Danavas, and Rakshasas, and had obtained his request; as he despised men he had not asked to be invulnerable to men, and this favour had not been granted to him. When the gods with Indra at their head heard this they were delighted. At that moment came the famous Vishnu, with the shell, the discus, the sun's disk, and the club in his hand, in a yellow robe, on the Garuda (his bird), like the sun sitting on the clouds, with a bracelet of fine gold, invoked by the head of the gods. The gods fell down before him and said: "Thou art he who removest the sorrows of the distressed worlds. We entreat thee, be our refuge, O unconquerable one." Then they besought him to take upon himself the son-ship of Daçaratha. When changed into a man, he might slay Ravana, the powerful enemy of the worlds, whom the gods could not overcome. He alone in the hosts of heaven can slay the wicked one. Then Vishnu, the "lord of the gods, the greatest of the immortals, entreated of all worlds," soothes the gods, and promises them to slay Ravana, and reign on earth for eleven thousand years.⁷²⁸ Meanwhile Rishyaçringa at Ayodhya is ready with the sacrifice, and out of the fire there appears a being of a brightness incomparable, clear as a burning flame, strong as a tiger, and his shoulders were as the shoulders of a lion; his garment was red, and his teeth like the stars in heaven; in both hands he held a golden cup, and spake to king Daçaratha: "Receive this draught, Maharaja, which the gods have prepared; it is the fruit of the sacrifice, let thy fair wives enjoy it; then wilt thou receive the sons for whom thou hast offered the sacrifice."⁷²⁹ Then Kauçalya bore Rama, the lord of the world, entreated of all worlds, and gained glory by this son of unlimited power, even as Aditi did by the birth of the chief of the gods, who brandishes the club; and Kaikeyi bore Bharata, who was the fourth part of Vishnu, and Sumitra bore Lakshmana and Çatrughna, each of whom was the eighth part of Vishnu. This division of Vishnu according to the valour of the sons, and the more or less prominent parts which they play in the poem, is entirely forgotten in the course of it; even Rama himself is entirely uninfluenced by this new introduction; when fighting with magic weapons and arts he feels as a virtuous man and an obedient son.⁷³⁰ Towards the end of the poem Brahman and the gods come in order to tell Rama who he is; the original creator of the universe and the worlds, the head of the divine host, whose eyes are the sun and the moon, whose ears are the Açvins. Brahman himself then declares to him: "Thou, O Being of primal force, thou art the famous lord armed with the discus, thou art the boar with one horn, the conqueror of present and future enemies, the true and imperishable Brahman in the middle and at the end. Thou art the supreme order of the world, the bearer of the bow, the supreme spirit, the unconquered, the brandisher of the sword. Thou art wisdom, patience, self-control. Thou art the source of birth, the cause of decay. Thou art Mahendra, the greater Indra; thou performest the functions of Indra. Thou hast formed the Vedas; they are thy thoughts, thou first-born, thou self-dependent lord. Thou art in all creatures, in the Brahmans and the cows; thou sustainest creatures and the earth with its hills; thou art at the end of the earth, in the waters, a mighty serpent which supports the three worlds. The whole world is thy body, Agni is thy anger, Soma thy joy, and I (Brahman) am thy heart."⁷³¹ Rama is here identified with Vishnu, and the latter is at the same time set forth as including Brahman and all nature, as the world-soul and a personal god.

The form of Krishna goes through the same change in the Mahabharata, though the position, acts and counsels which the old poem ascribed to this hero of the tribe of the Yadavas were often, as we saw, neither honourable nor praiseworthy. Besides his relation to the sons of Pandu, the Mahabharata ascribed to him a long series of earlier achievements. While yet among the herdmen, he had slain Haya among the forests on the Yamuna, and overcome the mischievous bull which slew the oxen. Then he slew Pralambha, Naraka, Jambha, and Pitha, the great Asura, and conquered Kansa, king of Mathura, in battle. Supported by his brother Balarama, he overcame Kansa's brother, the bold prince of the Çurasenas. Jarasandha also, the king of Magadha and of the Chedis, was defeated by Krishna, and the victory over Panchajana who lived in Patala brought him into the possession of his divine shell. This assisted Krishna in his suit for the daughter of the king of the Gandharas, for no prince was his equal in weapons; he yoked the conquered princes to his bridal car.⁷³² In the ancient form of the poem, Krishna was the son of the cowherd Nanda, and his wife Yaçoda. It is already an alteration of his original position when he is described as a son of Vasudeva and Devaki, who was changed with the child of the herdman's wife. In the Chandogya-Upanishad Krishna is still no more than the son of Devaki.⁷³³ Afterwards, the prayers of the gods to Vishnu that he would allow himself to be born upon earth, were inserted into the Mahabharata. Vishnu plucks out two hairs from himself, one white, the other black; these two hairs pass into two women of the tribe of Yadavas, the two wives of Vasudeva, Devaki and Rohini. From the white hair Rohini brought forth Balarama, and from the black Devaki brought forth Krishna.⁷³⁴ Hence Krishna is merely one part of Vishnu, and Balarama another; but of this no further notice is taken; wherever Krishna is treated as a god in the poem, he is the whole god. In the other parts of the poem he is no more than a mortal; in the earliest revision he fights his fight with the arms and the blessing of the gods, of which he would have no need if he were himself the supreme god; in the last revision he is the supreme god. Then it is imparted to him that in the beginning of days Brahman, who is the whole world, sprang from the lotus of his navel; that the lords of the gods proceeded from his body and carry out his commands.⁷³⁵ Brahman says to the gods: "Ye must worship this Vasudeva, whose son I, Brahman, the lord of the worlds, am. Never, ye great gods, can the mighty bearer of the shell, the discus, and the club be regarded as merely a mortal." This being is the supreme mystery, the supreme existence, the supreme Brahman, the supreme power, the supreme joy, the supreme truth. It is the Imperishable, the Indivisible, the Eternal. Vasudeva (Krishna) of unlimited power cannot therefore be despised by the gods, nor by Indra, nor by the Asuras, as merely a man. "He who says that he is only a man, his understanding is perverted; he who despises Krishna will be called the lowest of mankind. He who despises Vasudeva is full of darkness; as also is the man who knows not the glorious god whose self is the world. The man who despises this great being, who bears crowns and jewels, and liberates his worshippers from fear, is plunged into deep darkness."⁷³⁶ Assertions and statements of this kind show clearly that at the time of their insertion into the Mahabharata the deification of Krishna was by no means universally recognised.⁷³⁷

While a tendency at work within the circle of the Brahmans put Vishnu in the place of Brahman, another impulse was not less eagerly occupied in elevating the old storm-god Rudra-Çiva to be the highest deity. In the poem of the Veda the storm-god wears the plaited hair. He is called Kapardin, i. e. the bearer of the locks, an idea no doubt borrowed from the collected clouds driven by the storm. As the old priestly families plaited their hair in different ways (p. 29), and all penitents wore their hair in knots, the storm-god also became a penitent with the Brahman, and as the divine power resided pre-eminently in penance, and Çiva was so strong and mighty a god, he became the greatest of all penitents. The old conception of Rudra assisted to retain for this mighty deity an angry and destructive aspect; but as rain and fructification also came from the storm Çiva was placed in relation to procreation. If Vishnu is celebrated in the passages quoted from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the same honour is allotted in other parts of the same poems to Çiva, who is now called Mahadeva, i. e. the great god. He also is the source, the unborn cause of the world, the framer of the all, the beginning of all beings, the shaper of the gods, the uncreated, imperishable lord, the origin of the past, the present, and the future. He is the highest spirit, the home of the lights, the sky, the wind, the creator of the ocean, the substance of the earth, Brahman itself. But he is also the supreme anger, the creator of the world and its destroyer.⁷³⁸ He, the all-penetrating god, is the creator and lord of Brahman, Vishnu, and Indra; they serve him, who extends beyond matter and spirit, who at once is and is not. When by his power he set matter and spirit in motion, Çiva, the god of the gods, the creator (Prajapati),⁷³⁹ created Brahman from his right side and Vishnu from his left. His attributes could not be set forth in a hundred years. He is Indra, he is Agni, he is the Açvins, he is Surya, he is Varuna. Nothing is above him, and nothing can withstand his divinity; the heart of the gods is terrified in the battle when they hear his awful voice; none can endure the sight of the angry bearer of the bow. He has two bodies, and these assume marvellous shapes. One of the bodies is full of sorrow, the other is gracious. If angry and passionate, he is an eater of flesh, blood, and marrow, and then he is called Rudra. When he is angry, all worlds are confounded at the sound of his bow-string, gods and Asuras are defeated and helpless, the waters are in tumult, and the earth quakes, the mountains sink, the light of the sun is quenched, heaven is torn asunder and veiled in thick darkness.⁷⁴⁰ There were three cities of the mighty Asuras which Indra could not overcome. At the entreaty of the gods that he would liberate the world Çiva made Vishnu his arrow, Agni the barbs, Yama the feathers, all the Vedas his bow, and the Gayatris (p. 172) his bow-string; Brahman was the leader of his chariot, and he burnt the three cities and the Asuras with the arrow of triple barbs, of the colour of the sun, and glowing like fire, which consumes the world.⁷⁴¹ Çiva is the soul of all worlds; he dwells in the heart of all creatures, he knows all desires, he is visible and invisible; serpents are his girdle and the skins of serpents his robe; he carries the discus, the club, sword, and axe. He assumes the form of Brahman and Vishnu, of all gods, spirits, and demons, of all kinds of men. He laughs, and weeps, and hops, and dances, and sings, and speaks softly, and then again with the voice of a drunkard. Naked, with excited glances, he plays with the maidens.⁷⁴²

Thus does the Epos describe the forms of Vishnu and Çiva. The Brahmans had allowed the pure world-soul to drop out, in order to return again to living deities; nature, which was nothing but deception as opposed to Brahman, they had again assumed in the being of the new gods; the two new supreme deities absorbed Brahman, each into himself; each was also Brahman; each had given forth from himself all living and lifeless beings, the whole of nature; each governs and rules the life of nature, and is the cause of growth and decay. These were attempts made in combination with the national faith to personify once more the Pantheism of the Brahmanic system, without excluding the life of nature, to represent the divine power to the religious consciousness in an active, direct, living, impressive, helpful way. This process and change of the Brahmanic system took place about the same time that the Buddhists began to pay divine honour to the founder of their doctrine, and exalt him to the highest deity, or perhaps a little earlier. As compared with Buddhism the new conception of the Brahmanic idea of god had the disadvantage that there were two supreme deities which contended side by side with Brahman for the first place. The worshippers of the one and the other equally inserted into the Epos their great deity and his praises. The exaltation of Vishnu and of Çiva, the repression of the idea of Brahman, cannot have begun later than the beginning of the fourth century B.C., since, as the Greeks have already told us, it was towards the end of the fourth century, about the year 300 B.C., that Çiva and Vishnu were worshipped by the Indians as their chief deities, the first by the inhabitants of the mountains, the second by the dwellers in the plains. At the same time it is clear, from the accounts of the Greeks, that the incarnations of Vishnu, assumed in order to benefit the world, in Paraçurama, Rama, and Krishna had already obtained recognition at the time mentioned, and received expression in the Epos and the worship. In any other case it would have been impossible for the Greeks to have regarded Vishnu as their own Heracles. From certain quotations in Panini, who lived about the middle or the last third of the fourth century,⁷⁴³ it follows that Krishna and Vishnu were identified about this time, and Vishnu was described by the name Vasudeva, the family name of Krishna.⁷⁴⁴

Buddhism appears to have had a two-fold influence on the ethical demands of the Brahmans; on the one hand, it challenged and therefore intensified them; on the other, it softened and diminished their force. According to the book of the law the Dvija satisfied the highest requirements of religion, when, after founding his house and seeing the children of his children, he renounced the world, retired into the forest, and there, occupied only with divine things, with salvation for the future, sought his return to Brahman by penances and meditation. It was the duty of the king when he became old and weak and was no longer in a position to protect his subjects and inflict punishment, as he ought, to seek death in battle, or if no war was being waged at the time, to put an end to his life by starvation. In a few cases the book allows suicide as a punishment for grievous offences. In the Epos we find an advance in this direction. Traits are introduced into it which represent voluntary death as the greatest act of merit, as the summit and perfection of asceticism. While yet in full vigour and equal to their duties, Yudhishthira and his brothers abandon their throne and kingdom, in order to seek and find death on a pilgrimage to the holy mountain, and by such penances and such an end to be rid of the earthly grossness still clinging to them. When Rama, even after his father Daçaratha is dead, refuses to ascend the throne, because he must keep the promise made to his dead father that he would live fourteen years in exile, the younger brother Bharata, conscientiously respecting the right of the elder, will not assume the government; for these fourteen years he lives in the garment of a penitent with a penitent's knot of hair, and five days after Rama's return from banishment, he "goes into the fire." The anchorite Çarabhanga, who by severe penances has obtained the highest reward, erects a pyre for himself, kindles it with his own hands, and burns himself in the presence of Rama in order to pass into the heaven of Brahman, for which in other revisions of the poem is substituted the heaven of Vishnu. The Greeks have already told us that the sages among the Indians regarded disease and weakness as disgraceful; if one of them fell ill he burned himself on a pyre (p. 422). The companions of Alexander of Macedon tell us that Calanus, one of the Brahmans of Takshaçila, whom Alexander had induced to join him (p. 398), fell sick in Persia and became weak. Alexander in vain attempted to move him from his resolution to burn himself. Too feeble to walk, Calanus was carried to the pyre, crowned after the Indian manner, and singing hymns in the Indian language. When the funeral pyre was kindled, he lay down without shrinking in the midst of the flames.⁷⁴⁵

According to the statement of Megasthenes the Indian sages put an end to their lives not by fire only but also by throwing themselves from a precipice or into water.⁷⁴⁶ By this kind of sacrifice can only be meant suicide or pilgrimage to the sacred places in the Himalayas, near the pools, to which a peculiar power of purification was ascribed. Pilgrimages to the sacred waters are mentioned even in Manu's laws. Bathing in the Ganges, in the lakes of the Himalayas, which lay near the holy mountain, in the confluence of the Yamuna and Ganges, was supposed to have the power of washing away many sins, and thus relieving men from the torturing penances imposed by the Brahmans. "If," we are told in the book of the law, "thou art not at variance with Vivasvati's son Yama, who dwells in thy heart (i. e. with thy conscience), go not to the Ganges nor the Kurus." In the lands formerly governed by the Kurus, lay the places of sacrifice of the ancient kings; there, at this or that place, the great rishis of the ancient time were said to have sacrificed; on the lakes Ravanahrada and Manasa, in the high Himalayas, under Kailasa, the old sutras of the Buddhists showed us the settlements of penitent Brahmans. We cannot doubt that the pilgrimage of the Buddhists to the places where Buddha lived, preached, and died, increased the pilgrimages of the Brahmans, and that, to match the blessing which the Buddhists attached to their journeys, they estimated and commended more highly than before the expiating and redeeming power of their holy shrines. In the Mahabharata a considerable number of shrines of pilgrimage are mentioned together with their legends; the visitation of these seems to be quite common; the especial effects of the various places are stated;⁷⁴⁷ in fact, the pilgrimages to the sacred pools and places of purification must have been so common and so zealously undertaken among the Brahmans that about the middle of the third century B.C. the Buddhists denote their Brahmanic opponents by the names Tirthyas and Tirthikas, i. e. men who live at the pools of purification or hold them in especial estimation.⁷⁴⁸ Not merely to bathe in the waters at the sacred places, which take away sins, but to end life there, could not but have a most efficacious and meritorious influence on the future of the soul in the next world, and the regenerations. Hence sinners would seek death in the sacred waters as the best and most perfect expiation; and even those who did not think themselves under the burden of special offences could find in a voluntary death in the sacred flood the highest expiation for the impurity entailed upon them, according to the Brahmanic system, by their life in the body. Thus even then, as now, many died by a voluntary death at these places. The strict consequences of the Brahmanic system pointed to suicide. Did not the ethical aim of the Brahmans consist in the elevation of the Ego by meditation, in the annihilation of the body by asceticism? It was a step farther to end and escape the torments of long penances at a single bound. The more prominence the Buddhists gave to the fact that their doctrine ensured liberation from regenerations, the keener must be the attention paid by the Brahmans to this object. According to their view of the world, and the basis of their system – that the body was the adulteration of Brahman in men, the hindrance in the way of his return to Brahman – the end of the bodily life, which they had constantly sought to subdue, at a consecrated place, by a holy act in the midst of purification in the sacred bath, could not but bring salvation; the man who offered his body and himself for sacrifice was at once purified for his return into the world-soul. If the Buddhists avoided regenerations by taming desire, and annihilating the soul, the Brahmans could now prevent them by the sacrifice of the body at a holy place. That all Brahmans were not of this opinion we may conclude from the assertion of Megasthenes that death by suicide was not a dogma of the Indian sages; those who put themselves to death were looked on as rash and perverse. There was, therefore, an opposite view. Nor was it the Buddhists only, who, in accordance with the whole conception of their faith, represented this opposition; even among the Brahmanic castes, as we shall see, there was a variety of opinions.