and it is utterly in the face of the earlier traditions which provide that if the woman, regretting life, recede from the pile she is defiled, but may be purified by observing the fast called Prájápátya.' This fast consists in abstaining for twelve days: the first three a spare meal must be taken once in each day; the next three, one in each night; the succeeding three days nothing must be eaten but what is given unsolicited; and the last three days are to be observed as a rigid fast.

All this, of course, is very cruel and very superstitious ; but still, taking this rite as a whole, there seem to be fewer superstitions connected with it than with the majority of other Hindu rites. The burning of a Hindu widow is as much enjoined in the Rig-Veda as in later traditions, for it expressly declares the loyal wife who burns herself shall not be deemed a suicide.' A woman who is pregnant or even one whose pregnancy is doubtful may not ascend her husband's funeral pile, for she owes a duty to her children as well as to her husband. If she be left at the time of his decease with a young infant she may not ascend her husband's funeral pile unless she have provided some one whom she can faithfully trust to nourish and take care of the infant.

The ceremonies connected with this duty are as follows:

Having first bathed, the widow, dressed in two clean. garments and holding some kusa grass, sips water from the palm of her hand. She looks towards the east and north, while the Brahmana utters the mystic word Om; she then declares: I, that I may enjoy with my husband the felicity of heaven and sanctify my paternal and maternal progenitors and the ancestry of my husband's father, that expiation may be made for my husband's offences, whether he has killed a Brahmana or broken the ties of gratitude, or murdered his friend, thus I ascend my husband's burning pile. I call on you, ye guardians of the eight regions of

the world: Sun and Moon, Air, Fire, Ether, Earth, and Water! Yama! Day, Night, and Twilight! And thou, Conscience, bear witness I follow my husband's corpse on the funeral pile.' She then walks three times round the pile, while the Brahmanas utter this benediction: 'Om! Let this faithful wife, pure and beautiful, commit herself to the fire with her husband's corpse.'

Then, being adorned with jewels, decked with mimium and other ornaments, having made adoration to the Devatas, she reflects as she walks round the pile, 'This life to me is nought; my lord and master to me was all.' She bestows jewels on the Brahmanas, comforts her relations; then calling the sun and elements to witness, she proceeds into the flames. There embracing the corpse, she abandons herself to the fire, exclaiming, 'Satya! Satya! Satya!'

We must bring this chapter to a close, almost fearing that we may have already wearied the reader with dwelling at such length on the trivialities and details of Brahmanic ritual; but in writing a history of Pantheism, as in writing any other history, it is as needful to represent it in its stage of obscurity and perversion as much as in its stage of glory and freshness. If Vedaism had not thus degenerated into Brahmanism not only would the religions of Buddha and Zoroaster most probably have not come into existence, but even the Vedanta, or Philosophy of the Hindus, would most probably never have been written. For the Vedanta philosophy, as we shall hereafter show, may be called a sort of philosophical apology and explanation of the Vedas, an attempt to save them from the fast-increasing encroachments and depredations of religious schisms and atheistic sects and philosophies, all of which schisms and philosophies were the natural consequents upon the revulsion and contempt caused by the degrading superstitions of Brahmanism.

It must not, of course, be thought that the whole of Brahmanism consisted of these fantastic details of ritual. There are many passages in the Institutes of Manu quite

worthy of the Rig-Veda itself, and displaying the doctrines of Pantheism and Emanation with singular purity; but, as we said at the beginning of this chapter, the sublimest thoughts are so often obscured and accompanied by the most ludicrous ceremonies, that one is apt to overlook the nugget through the thickness of its clay.

It will be only just, perhaps, or at all events not out of place, to conclude a chapter that has been principally devoted to displaying the worst phases of Brahmanism with a quotation from the Institutes of Manu quite worthy of the Rig-Veda itself; a quotation too that will fully show that even in the most degraded stage of their mental progress, the Hindus never wholly lost the pure pantheistic faith that was the basis of all their religions:-

This universe existed only in the first divine idea, yet unexpanded, as if involved in darkness, imperceptible, undefinable, undiscoverable by reason, and undiscovered by revelation, as if it were wholly immersed in sleep. Then the sole self-existing power, himself undiscerned, but making this world discernible, with five elements and other principles of nature, appeared with undiminished glory expanding his idea, or dispelling the gloom. He whom the mind alone can perceive, whose essence eludes the external organs, who has no visible parts, who exists from eternity, even He, the soul of all beings, whom no being can comprehend, shone forth in person. He, having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance, first with a thought created the waters. The waters are so called (nara) because they were the production of Nara, or the Spirit of God; and since they were his first ayaná, or place of motion, he thence is named Narayana, or Moving on the Waters. From that which is the first cause, not the object of sense existing everywhere in substance, not existing to our perception, without beginning or end, was produced the divine Male. He framed the heaven above, the earth beneath, and in the midst placed the subtle ether, the light

He

regions, and the permanent receptacle of waters. framed all creatures. He gave being to time and the divisions of time; to the stars also and planets he gave being. For the sake of distinguishing actions he made a total difference between right and wrong. He whose powers are incomprehensible, having created this universe, was again absorbed in the Spirit, changing the time of energy for the time of repose.' '

1

1 Quoted by Draper in 'The Intellectual Development of Europe,' vol. i. pp. 224, 225.

CHAPTER III.

DIGRESSION ON VARIOUS HINDU PHILOSOPHIES, WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE SCHISM OF BUDDHA.

THIE extreme mysticism and sacerdotalism of the Brahmanic priesthood gave rise to the two great religious schisms of Zoroaster and Buddha; upon the latter of which in the course of this chapter we shall somewhat fully touch. In addition to these two great religious systems there arose many philosophical schools, some of which were orthodox and chiefly confined to the exposition of the Vedas; but the majority were heretical.

In the present treatise, however, it is the consideration of the Vedanta philosophy which chiefly concerns us, on account of its Pantheistic doctrines. Yet, as it was written chiefly in refutation of the atheistical and heretical systems of philosophy, it may be as well before we proceed to the Vedanta to give a slight account of these several systems, devoting the most space to the schism of Buddha, partly on account of its own great intrinsic interest, and also because it was the system more particularly singled out for contest by the Vedantins.

The first school or system of which we shall treat is that of the Sankhya philosophy, which is divided into two sects; one of which was more or less atheistical in its tenets, and was founded by Kapila, an ancient Hindu sage, whose life and character have been so obscured by the marvels of mythology that it is wiser not to commit oneself to many details concerning him. The other sect of the Sankhya