Dr. V.K. Maheshwari, Ph.D

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Mrs Sudha Rani Maheshwari, M.Sc (Zoology), B.Ed.

Former Principal. A.K.P.I.College, Roorkee, India

In discussing a subject, Socrates generally sets out from the popular and hastily formed opinions about the attributes of morality. A well-known example will make this clear. By skilful questioning Socrates gets a young man named Euthydemus to confess his ambition to become a great

politician and statesman. Socrates suggests to him that, in that case, he must, naturally, hope to be a just man himself. The young man thinks he is that already. “We go on with the story

as it is told by Xenophon.

” But, says Socrates, there must be certain acts which are the proper products of justice, as of other functions or skills. No doubt. Then of course you can tell us what those acts and products are? Of course I can, and the products of injustice as well. Very good; then suppose we write down in two opposite columns what acts are products of justice and what of injustice. I agree, says Euthydemus. Well now, what of falsehood? In which column shall we put it? Why, of course in the unjust column. And cheating? In the same column. And stealing? In it too. And enslaving? Yes. Not one of these can go to the just column? Why, that would be an unheard-of thing. Well but, says Socrates, suppose a general has to deal with some enemy of his country that has done it great wrong; if he conquer and enslave this enemy, is that wrong? Certainly not. If he carries off the enemy’s goods or cheats him in his strategy, what about these acts? Oh, of course they are quite right. But I thought you were talking about deceiving or ill-treating friends. Then in some cases we shall have to put these very same acts in both columns? I suppose so.

Well, now, suppose we confine ourselves to friends. Imagine a general with an army under him discouraged and disorganized. Suppose he tells them that reserves are coming up, and by cheating them into this belief, he saves them from their discouragement, and enables them to win a victory. What about this cheating of one’s friends? Why, I suppose we shall have to put this too on the just side. Or suppose a lad needs medicine, but refuses to take it, and his father cheats him into the belief that it is something nice, and getting him to take it, saves his life; what about that cheat? That will have to go to the just side too. Or suppose you find a friend in desperate frenzy, and steal his sword from him for fear he should kill himself; what do you say to that theft? That will have to go there too. But I thought you said there must be no cheating of friends? Well, I must take it

all back, if you please. Very good. But now there is another point I should like to ask you. Whether do you think the man more unjust who is a voluntary violator of justice, or he who is an involuntary violator of it? Upon my word, Socrates, I no longer have any confidence in my answers. For the whole thing has turned out to be exactly the contrary of what I previously imagined.”

Xenophon, Memorabilia, Book IV, ch. 2 (transl. by .Marshall, Greek

Philosophy).

In an attempt to consider all relevant issues associated with the all-pervasive impact of morality on human affairs, it is essential to view this subject from several different perspectives. The basic issue that divides all discussions of morality revolves around the question, is morality an evolutionary human concept? Is Morality a relative and subjective concept, or is morality imposed on humans as an absolute, universal and objective imperative

PERSPECTIVES OF MORALITY

A.  Philosophical perspective of morality

Disagreements between atheists and theists in the realm of morality occur across the three major divisions of moral philosophy: descriptive ethics, normative ethics, and metaethics. Each is important and must be approached in differently,  Atheists and theists may find broad agreement in the other categories, but there is far less agreement or common ground here. This mirrors the debate between atheists and theists over the proper grounding for beliefs generally and the conflict between faith and reason.

Descriptive Ethics:

Descriptive ethics involves describing how people behave and/or the moral standards they claim to follow. Descriptive ethics incorporates research from anthropology, psychology, sociology and history to understand beliefs about moral norms. Atheists who compare what religious theists say about moral behavior or the basis for morality against how they actually behave need to understand how to properly describe both their ethical beliefs and their actions. To defend their own moral philosophy, atheists need to know how to accurately explain the nature of their moral standards as well as the moral choices they make.

Normative Ethics:

Normative ethics involves creating or evaluating moral standards, so is an attempt to figure out what people should do or whether current moral behavior is reasonable. Traditionally, most moral philosophy has involved normative ethics — few philosophers haven’t tried their hand at explaining what they think people should do and why. Religious, theistic normative ethics often rely on the commands of an alleged god; for atheists, normative ethics can have a variety of sources. Debates between the two thus frequently revolve around what the best basis for morality is as much as what the proper moral behavior should be.

An important feature of morality is that it serves as a guide for people’s actions. Because of this, it is necessary to point out that moral judgments are made about those actions which involve choice. It is only when people have possible alternatives to their actions that we conclude those actions are either morally good or morally bad. This has important implications in debates between atheists and theists because if the existence of a god is incompatible with the existence of free will, then none of us have any real choice in what we do and, therefore, cannot be held morally accountable for our actions.

Essentially, it seems likely that morality can be placed into two major categories.  The major difference in these two types of morality is their origin.  From either an inductive origin or a deductive origin different modes of morality are formed.  Thus philosophically  the purpose of morality  appear to have  three answers :

1.             To lead people to behave in accordance with the wishes of a divine authority.

2.             To lead people to behave in a way that benefits society at large rather than their own narrow self interest.

3.             To lead people to control their desires and aversions in the belief that this will result in a more satisfying, rewarding and contented way of life.

B. THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE OF MORALITY

“Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

George Washington (1732-1799) First President of the USA.

Religion clearly plays an important part in many people’s moral decisions, and for those with a religious faith moral behavior is often seen as being necessary, both as an act of obedience to God’s wishes and as a requirement for spiritual development

Before developing insight into the religious perspective of morality, it will be illuminating to comprehend the basic moral concepts in different religions.

Buddhism: Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. (Udana-Varga 5:18)

The Buddhist view is that moral behavior flows naturally from mastering one’s ego and desires and cultivating loving kindness (metta) and compassion (karuna).

Judaism: What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man. That is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary. (Talmud, Shabbat 31a)

Hinduism: This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you. (Mahabharata 5:1517)

Ethics, which concerns itself with the study of conduct, is derived, in Hinduism, from certain spiritual concepts; it forms the steel-frame foundation of the spiritual life. Though right conduct is generally considered to belong to legalistic ethics, it has a spiritual value as well. . Hindu ethics prescribes the disciplines for a spiritual life, which are to be observed consciously or unconsciously as long as man lives.

Hindu ethics is mainly subjective or personal, its purpose being to eliminate such mental impurities as greed and egoism, for the ultimate attainment of the highest good.. Objective ethics, which deals with social welfare, has also been considered by Hindu thinkers. It is based upon the Hindu conception of Dharma, or duty, related to a man’s position in society and his stage in life. Objective ethics, according to the Hindu view, is a means to an end, its purpose being to help the members of society to rid themselves of self-centredness, cruelty, greed, and other vices, and thus to create an environment helpful to the pursuit of the highest good, which transcends society. Hinduism further speaks of certain universal ethical principles which apply to all human beings irrespective of their position in society or stage in life.

Among the social virtues are included ‘hospitality, courtesy, and duties to wife, children, and grandchildren.’ In one of the Upanishads, a king, in answer to a question by a Rishi regarding the state of affairs in his country, says: “In my kingdom there is no thief, no miser, no drunkard, no man without an altar in his home, no ignorant person, no adulterer, much less an adulteress.”

Confucianism: Surely it is the maxim of loving kindness: Do not unto others what you would not have them do to you. (Analects 15:23)

Zoroastrianism: That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not god for itself.

The principle of morality concerns only the man, and is formulated as follows:

1.  During the Gumezishn, when dualism and the dynamic upheaval is the order of the day, only the man is given the freedom to choose between the good and evil.

2. Moreover, the Wise Lord cannot succeed in his cosmic duel with the Angra Mainyu unless he is helped by the mortals (Mard).

3. If man is righteous through good deeds, words, and thoughts, then the Wise Lord will vanquish the Angra Mainyu.

4.  However, if man is wicked, then the Angra mainyu will succeed.

5.  There is, therefore, no predestination. The man is the master of his own destiny (Luther), and the only instrument to ensure the ultimate victory of good over evil. This will destroy, once and for all, the pandemonium and, therefore, everything evil; it will bring about the end of time; the dynamic world would become once more an everlasting static one.

6.  This glorious moment is called by the prophet ” Frashe-Kerei” (making wonderful).

Christianity: The Christian faith actually uses two complimentary rules: The ineffective Biblical Golden Rule which proclaims: “All things whatsoever ye would that man should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matt 7:12). However, most of the Ten Commandments are framed in negatives, as all moral codes must be in order to be effective.

Islam: No one is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. (Sunnah) This moral code is also a version of the positive Golden Rule. It is very ineffective and ambiguous. Muslims, being normal human beings, follow it very selectively. This code relies on the unrealistic assumption that your brother has precisely the same needs and wants as you do.

Religious persons try to find the answer to moral right or wrong, evil and goodness, in the bible or other religious texts. Where do these scriptures come from? In reviewing the origins of many different religions, it appears that scholars attribute religious texts to mysterious or mystical writers in the distant past. The element of time has shrouded all such scriptures in extreme mystery or factual haziness.

There is never any clear, objective, historical chain that might clarify and establish the authenticity of the authorship of religious texts. These writings have been copied innumerable times and have become less and less focused with each copying process. As a result, religious writings have become so ambiguous and nebulous that it is often necessary to substantially re-interpret or re-phrase their meaning.

The translation of these texts from archaic languages provides ample room for misconstructions or misinterpretations. Such translations and interpretations will vary with each translator and interpreter, depending on their personal beliefs, opinions, preconceived notions and their comprehension of the original language.

As the result of this multi-faceted, compounded obfuscation, there are many conflicting interpretations dealing with the concept of good and evil in the Bible, the Koran, the Torah or any of the multitudes of other scriptures.

All of these texts proclaim to be the only definitive arbiter of morality. Each religious authority implies that a person acts moral if he follows its prescriptions or its dogma. Christians have no moral problem eating pork; Muslims and Jews have strict moral prohibitions against eating pork.

How can we determine which of the many contradictory revelations described in different religious writings are correct so that we may all act in a moral manner? Since all of these scriptures contradict each other, how can we know which one is really the true one and which ones are false?

Is the Torah correct or is the New Testament more truthful? How can we reconcile the Bible with the Koran? Do all of the one billion Muslims follow an erroneous doctrine or does the Koran more truthfully reflect the nature of true morality than the Bible?

Religious person face the difficult task of selecting a suitable morality because their search is made more complicated by the large number of religious sects, cults, churches and denominations from which he can choose. He faces constant contradictions because each of these belief systems claims to be the only true and authoritative source of morality. These contradictory claims appear to be absurd because they can obviously not all be correct

One of the universal contradictions in the theological approach to morality involves a dilemma posed by all religions. What is the relationship of good and evil to a benevolent and omnipotent god?

Regardless of the ambivalent and unreliable nature of religious texts setting forth the moral teachings of a particular religion, the ultimate source for the moral code imbedded in a religion always rests in a god or gods. A god is the central, authoritative and controlling power that is the backbone of all religions. By definition, all religions must have an omnipotent god, a supreme being and creator of the universe. This god must be specific to a particular religion. Different religions cannot have the same god.

Thus, all religions derive their morality from the authority of the god they worship, usually through an intermediary in the nature of a messenger or affiliate, such as Jesus or Mohammed or Joseph Smith.

A system of morality that relies on the existence of gods or godlike beings is irrational because no god or godlike beings have ever manifested themselves in an objective manner to human beings. There is no evidence whatsoever that a god exists or has ever existed, anywhere, at any time. In fact, all objective evidence available to man precludes and contradicts the existence of a god or gods.

Thus, an attempt to seek morality as a derivative of non-existing gods is difficult to justify. In all religions, faith and fairytales replace and supersede factual evidence. The faith-based acceptance of a theological doctrine of morality reflects merely illusions or delusions: Faith is necessary only for the acceptance as true of a statement that objective evidence has already proven false. Faith is only necessary if religious dogma is in direct conflict with Objective Reality.

No matter which one of the many religious text we might adapt as the basis for our own morality, we are making such choice based on our individual preferences and convictions. We are choosing our own morality from a variety of religious moralities. Again, we choose our own morality. We are not considering if we should follow an absolute, universal, objective religious morality, but we are considering which one of many relative, subjective morality systems we should select from a smorgasbord of religious morality systems.

Thus, by making a personal choice from many contradictory religious morality systems, we end up with a personal, relative morality, rather than an absolute, objective, universal morality.

C.  THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE OF MORALITY

All living organisms, including bacteria, fish and human beings have developed from inanimate matter through the process of evolution. Evolution, and life itself, is due to the ability of a complex chemical compound to sense a threat to its continued existence and to react upon such impulse with an attempt to negate any incipient threat. We know this instinctive, automatic interaction with the environment as the survival instinct.

This instinct must be present in all living things and is the basic emotion from which all other emotions evolved. Over eons of time, man has enhanced the survival instinct imbedded in his genes, by developing complex emotions, such as love, hatred, hunger, despair, fear, joy and many other powerful feelings. The nerve centers dealing with these ancient emotions are physically located in the deepest layers of the human brain, particularly in our brain stem, our so-called reptilian brain.

Deeply imbedded instincts and emotions govern all animal behavior, including human behavior. However, during the past two million years of hominoid development, man has developed a new mental faculty that sets him aside from other animals. This ability superimposes rational, logical thought processes on our primitive emotions.

Our rational mind applies a thin veneer of logical thought processes over the raw emotions that govern our interaction with our environment. Emotions control the preponderance of basic human needs and behavior patterns. Emotions determine when we are hungry, when we feel sexually aroused, when we are afraid, when we feel a sense of well-being.

The evolution of our newly developed rational mind greatly facilitated interaction among human beings. Our instincts and our emotions still initiate the human sex drive but our rational mind imposes beneficial restrictions as to the circumstances under which the sex drive can be satisfied.

Unlike dogs, humans do not meet their emotional sex drive by copulating at street corners. Instead, humans go through a rational mating process that enhances the survival of the offspring that often results from sexual activity. Thus, rationality greatly enhances the survival and perpetuation of rational, intellectual beings.

Our rational mind has similarly enhanced many other human interactions, such as our ability to influence or to manipulate other human beings: We have learned how to cause other people to do what we would like them to do. All of human existence is a constant process of manipulating or influencing other persons with different degrees of subtlety. The degree of subtleness usually depends on the respective intelligence of the manipulator and the manipulated person.

The arena of morality is one of the primary spheres where human beings utilize their rational mind to manipulate other human beings. We may refer to another person as evil in order to prod him to mend his ways and to modify his behavior to our liking. We may also refer to another person as evil if we wish to prevent other persons from emulating him or associating with him.

We frequently obfuscate the term morality by the clever use of words. Morality becomes somewhat more transparent if we replace the emotion-laden word morality with the emotionally neutral synonym

D. A BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE OF MORALITY

Some evolutionary psychologists have argued that human morality originated from evolutionary processes. An innate tendency to develop a sense of right and wrong helps an individual to survive and reproduce in a species with complex social interactions. Selected behaviors, seen in abstraction as moral codes, are seen to be common to all human cultures, and reflect, in their development, similarities to natural selection and these aspects of morality can be seen in as the basis of some religious doctrine. From this, some also argue that there may be a simple Darwinian explanation for the existence of religion: that, regardless of the truth of religious beliefs, religion tends to encourage behavior beneficial to the species, as a code of morality tends to encourage communality, and communality tends to assist survival.

Morality is the product of the evolutionary development of man and society. Morality is always relative and never absolute. Within the framework of our society, we chose our own, personal code of moral conduct

Our self-proclaimed moral authorities do not consider animals capable of or subject to morality. The Law of Evolution clearly establishes that man is only another animal, although man has evolved a more highly developed brain structure than other animals.

Why do we talk about morality when we talk about Homo sapiens but why do we not refer to morality when we talk about other species of animals? If we consider it immoral for human beings to torture other animals, why do we not condemn a cat for playing with a mouse before eating it or discarding it?

Why do we morally approve of the fact that man kills and eats other animals, but we condemn the mistreatment of animals as immoral or unlawful? If there were a choice, it is obvious that an animal would rather subsist in a cage than be killed and eaten. As human beings, would we not prefer to be enslaved or mistreated than to be killed? Slaves do not commit suicide, even under the most horrible conditions. Therefore, slavery or torture is universally preferable to death.

Clearly, our various preordained teachings about morality make a nebulous moral distinction between the animal called man and other animals. We are saying, morality only applies to selected animals instead of having morality apply to all forms of life.

If there are extraterrestrial life forms or beings, are they subject to human morality or can they make the same distinction that we make between man and other animals. Would an extraterrestrial thus be morally justified in eating us or in killing humans for sport? An affirmative answer seems to be the logical consequence of our view of morality as we apply it to humans and other animals.

These situations demonstrate that, from a biological perspective, morality is a relative, synthetic concept, solely for the convenience of man, rather than a universal and absolute dictum.

E. A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE OF MORALITY

Morality does not apply to individual human beings when they are alone. A shipwrecked survivor on an island need not concern himself with morality because it does not apply to him in his isolation. This illustration emphasizes the fact that gods or extraterrestrials did not imbed the concept of morality in individual human beings but that morality is applicable to an individual only when he interacts with other persons.

Morality is a societal phenomenon and, since man creates societies, all morality is a concept created by man. It follows, that morality is relative to our environment and does not apply to all persons at all times. Morality can only be relative and subjective; instead of objective, universal and absolute.

A wide variety of morality-systems exists among men, depending on where they live. Eskimos, Europeans, Atheists, Americans, Devil Worshippers, Iranians, Chinese. Brazilians, Indians. All of these societies have voluntarily adopted unique and different morality systems, and all of these systems contradict each other in many aspects.

The specific conduct that one group may consider immoral or forbidden, may be tolerated, praised or even venerated in another societal group.

Morality is nothing but a code of conduct arrived at by mutually consenting persons who consider such code of conduct, such morality, to be in their own best self-interest.

All successful societies have based their specific code of conduct, their morality, on the innate human drive to always act in what each individual considers to be in his own best self-interest.

F. THE LEGAL PERSPECTIVE OF MORALITY

Ronald D Dworkin once said that “Moral principles is the foundation of law”

Not all codes of conduct are moral. There are etiquettes, regulations, laws and religious observances, all of which seek to order our lives, but breaches of which might not be thought morally wrong. Wearing pyjamas to a business meeting might be a breach of etiquette, accidentally overstaying on a parking meter may be unlawful, but neither of these acts would normally be thought to be immoral

It is important to differentiate between morality and related terms such as ethics and legality. We may apply the term ethics synonymously with morality but this word may also refer to laws or to quasi-laws, such as the ethics of a particular profession. Some varieties of ethics may convey merely an informative context, such as the lack of ethics of a politician. Other designations of ethics have the force of laws. The ethics of the legal profession, if flaunted, can result in disbarment.

The term ethics can be ambiguous and it is best to avoid it in the context of moral issues. We should also avoid any potential confusion of morality with actual laws, either common laws or codified laws.

Morality and laws are definitely not synonymous: A specific act may be moral, valued and lawful in one country, while the identical act may be punishable by death in another country. This disparity in moral values is evident in many conflicts arising from divergent religions. Salman Rushdie discovered this truth when he published the “Satanic Verses”.

A society of persons, in the sociological context, is the conglomeration of individual human beings who have come together for their mutual protection, welfare or communality of interests. All such individuals search for individual happiness in their own way, as is the nature of all individuals.

One person may wish to pursue a tranquil lifestyle; another person may be intent on accumulating wealth. In order to function smoothly, society must apply common denominators, common values that large numbers of people share, in order to achieve order, safety and predictability for all of its members. The emotional and physical well being of a society and its members depends on a common code of conduct, a common morality among all of its members.

It is not necessary for all members of a society to subscribe to the identical morality. However, it is important for all individuals to be aware of any differences in conduct that may exist among various groups. This consensus enables individuals to cope with, not only other individual members of their own society, but also with groups of non-conforming persons beyond their own society.

In the interest of the internal cohesion of a society, it is imperative that all individuals and groups within the society adhere to fundamental rules of moral conduct, which we will call the Three Natural Laws of Morality. We call these laws natural, not because they are immutable Laws of Nature, but to indicate that these laws have evolved from the innate nature of man.

The most fundamental law of the Three Natural Laws of Morality is the dictum: All persons within a society must refrain from killing or injure other members of the society, except in self-defense. This law is so simple and self-explanatory that all societies throughout human history have adopted it and vigorously enforce it.  These laws are concerned with the right of all members of society to be free from enslavement and to hold property.

Since there is an infinite number of potential human activities and desires, we cannot establish a Code of Conduct, a morality system, by making a list of human activities that society permits or tolerates. Conversely, a list of human-caused events that no person likes to experience is very short.

Therefore, an effective moral code must define only those activities that are not permissible, that society prohibits under threat of punishment. Furthermore, it is imperative that any societal system of morality stipulates unequivocally that any act, which is not expressly prohibited, is permitted: Anything that is not prohibited is permitted. This statement is a crucial ingredient of any effectual legal system.

The human survival instinct is the primary and most powerful human emotion. The promulgation of prohibited acts must take cognizance of those events that no person wants to be subject to, such as to be killed. These basic prohibitions are the backbone of the laws of any society and may be verbal or they may be embodied in a formal, written code of laws. Disregard of these basic moral laws will invoke drastic punishment and anyone breaking these laws must take into account the potential consequence of breaking them.

The fundamental prohibitions, without which no society can function, cover those events that no human being wants to happen to him:

v  It is prohibited to kill or injure another human being, except in self-defence

v  It is prohibited to enslave another human being by physically restraining him

v  It is prohibited to use the property of another person without his express consent

v  Pre-emptive Strikes are never permitted: They destroy the fabric of society.

v  Property: Things subject to the legal and physical control of a person

v  All activities that are not expressly prohibited are permitted.

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

Ayn Rand

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Mrs Sudha Rani Maheshwari, M.Sc (Zoology), B.Ed.

Former Principal. A.K.P.I.College, Roorkee, India

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.

Khalil Gibran

If we define religion as the worship of supernatural forces, we must observe at the outset that some peoples have apparently no religion at all. Such cases are exceptional, and the old belief that religion is universal is substantially correct. To the philosopher this is one of the outstanding facts of history and psychology; he is not content to know that all religions contain much nonsense, but rather he is fascinated by the problem of the antiquity and persistence of belief.

The Sources of Religion

Fear and Wonder-

Fear, as Lucretius said, was the first mother of the gods. Fear, above all, of death. Primitive life was beset with a thousand dangers, and seldom ended with natural decay; long before old age could come, violence or some strange disease carried off the great majority of men. Hence early man did not believe that death was ever natural; he attributed it to the operation of supernatural agencies.

Fear of death, wonder at the causes of chance events or unintelligible happenings, hope for divine aid and gratitude for good fortune, cooperated to generate religious belief. Wonder and mystery adhered particularly to dreams, and the mysterious influence of heavenly bodies upon the earth and man.

Dreams and the Soul Animism-

Primitive man marvelled at the phantoms that he saw in sleep, and was struck with terror when he beheld, in his dreams, the figures of those whom he knew to be dead. He buried his dead in the earth to prevent their return; he buried victuals and goods with the corpse lest it should come back to curse him.

Such experiences convinced early man that every living thing had a soul, or secret life, within it, which could be separated from the body in illness, sleep or death. “Let no one wake a man brusquely,” said one of the Upanishads of ancient India, “for it is a matter difficult of cure if the soul find not its way back to him.”"  Not man alone but all things had souls; the external world was not insensitive or dead, it was intensely alive;  if this were not so, thought primitive philosophy, nature would be full of inexplicable occurrences, like the motion of the sun, or the death- dealing lightning, or the whispering of the trees. The personal way of conceiving objects and events preceded the impersonal or abstract; religion preceded philosophy.

The Objects of Religion

Since all things have souls, or contain hidden gods, the objects of religious worship are numberless. They fall into six classes:

1)      Celestial

2)      Terrestrial

3)      Sexual

4)      Animal,

5)      Human,

6)      Divine.

To the primitive mind mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, stars, sun, moon and sky are sacra mentally holy things, because they are the outward and visible signs of inward and invisible souls. Of course we shall never know which of our universe of objects was worshiped first.

One of the first was probably the moon. In west folk-lore speaks of the “man in the moon,” so primitive legend conceived the moon as a bold male who caused women to menstruate by seducing them. He was a favourite god with women, who worshiped him as their protecting deity. The pale orb was also the measure of time; it was believed to control the weather, and to make both rain and snow; even the frogs prayed to it for rain.

We do not know when the sun replaced the moon as the lord of the sky in primitive religion. Perhaps it was when vegetation replaced hunting, and the transit of the sun determined the seasons of sowing and reaping, and its heat was recognized as the main cause of the bounty of the soil.

Then the earth became a goddess fertilized by the hot rays, and men worshiped the great orb as the father of all things living.  From this simple beginning sun-worship passed down into the pagan faiths of antiquity, and many a later god was only a personification of the sun The Middle Ages kept a relic of sun-worship in the halo pictured around the heads of saints, and in our own day the Emperor of Japan is regarded by most of his people as an incarnation of the sun- god. There is hardly any superstition so old but it can be found flourishing somewhere today.

Like the sun and the moon, every star contained or was a god, and moved at the command of its indwelling spirit.  These spirits became guiding angels, star-pilots. The sky itself was a great god, worshiped devotedly as giver and withholder of rain. (as Lord Varun in India ) Among many primitive peoples the word for god meant sky. Among the Mongols the supreme god was Tengri the sky; in China it was Tz the sky; in Vedic India it was Dyaus pitarthe “father sky”; among the Greeks it was Zeus the sky, the “cloud-compeller”; among the Persians it was Ahura the “azure sky”;  and among ourselves men still ask “Heaven” to protect them. The central point in most primitive mythology is the fertile mating of earth and sky.

For the earth, too, was a god, and every main aspect of it was presided over by some deity. Indians believe that some trees had souls quite as much as men, and it was plain murder to cut them down; the North American Indians sometimes attributed their defeat and decay to the fact that the whites had levelled the trees whose spirits had protected the Red Men. In the Molucca Islands blossoming trees were treated as pregnant; no noise, fire, or other disturbance was permitted to mar their peace; else, like a frightened woman, they might drop their fruit before time. In Amboyna no loud sounds were  allowed near the rice in bloom lest it should abort into straw.  The ancient Gauls worshiped the trees of certain sacred forests; and the Druid priests of England reverenced as holy that mistletoe of the oak which still suggests a pleasant ritual. The veneration of trees, springs, rivers and mountains is the oldest traceable religion of Asia.

Many mountains were holy places, homes of thundering gods. Earthquakes were the shoulder- shrugging of irked or irate deities: the Fijians ascribed such agitations to the earth-god’s turning over in his sleep; and the Samoans, when the soil trembled, gnawed the ground and prayed to the god Mafuie to stop, lest he should shake the planet to pieces. Almost everywhere the earth was the Great Mother; our language, which is often the precipitate of primitive or unconscious beliefs, suggests to this day a kinship between matter (materia) and mother (mater), whose fertility constituted the bounty of the fields; their birth and marriage, their death and triumphant resurrection were conceived as the symbols or causes of the sprouting, the decay, and the vernal renewal of all vegetation. The deities reveal by their gender the primitive association of agriculture with woman. When agriculture became the dominant mode of human life, the vegetation goddesses reigned supreme. Most early gods were of the gentler sex; they were superseded by male deities presumably as a heavenly reflex of the victorious patriarchal family .”

Just as the profound poetry of the primitive mind sees a secret divinity in the growth of a tree, so it sees a supernatural agency in the conception or birth of a child. The “savage” does not know anything about the ovum or the sperm; he sees only the external structures involved, and deifies them; they, too, have spirits in them, and must be worshiped, for are not these mysteriously creative powers the most marvelous of all? In them, even more than in the soil, the miracle of fertility and growth appears; there- fore they must be the most direct embodiments of the divine potency.

Nearly all ancient peoples worshiped sex in some form and ritual, and not the lowest people but the highest expressed their worship most completely; we shall find such worship in Egypt and India, Babylonia and Assyria, Greece and Rome. The sexual character and functions of primitive deities were held in high regard, not through any obscenity of mind, but through a passion for fertility in women and in the earth. Certain animals, like the bull and the snake, were worshiped as apparently possessing or symbolizing in a high degree the divine power of reproduction.

The snake in the story of Eden is doubtless a phallic symbol, representing sex as the origin of evil, suggesting sexual awakening as the beginning of the knowledge of good and evil, and perhaps insinuating a certain proverbial connection between mental innocence and bliss.

There is hardly an animal in nature, from the Egyptian scarab to the Hindu elephant, that has not somewhere been worshiped as a god,(like Ganesha and Hanuman in India) The  Ojibwa Indians gave the name of totein to their special sacred animal, to the clan that worshiped it, and to any member of the clan; and this confused word has stumbled into anthropology as totemism, denoting vaguely any worship of a particular object usually an animal or a plant as especially sacred to a group. Varieties of totemism have been found scattered over apparently unconnected regions of the earth, from the Indian tribes of North America to the natives of Africa, the Dravidians of India, and the tribes of Australia. The totem as a religious object helped to unify the tribe, whose members thought themselves bound up with it or descended from it; the Iroquois, in semi-Darwinian fashion, believed that they were sprung from the primeval mating of women with bears, wolves and deer. The totem as object or as symbol became a useful sign of relationship and distinction for primitive peoples, and lapsed, in the course of secularization, into a mascot or emblem, like the lion or eagle of nations, the elk or moose of our fraternal orders, and those dumb animals that are used to represent the elephantine immobility and mulish obstreperousness of our political parties. The dove, the fish and the lamb, in the symbolism of nascent Christianity, were relics of totemic adoration; even the lowly pig was once a totem of prehistoric Jews.  In most cases the totem animal was tabu i.e., forbidden, not to be touched; under certain circumstances it might be eaten, but only as a religious act, amounting to the ritual eating of the god.(  Freud, with characteristic imaginativeness, believes that the totem was a transfigured symbol of the father, revered and hated for his omnipotence, and rebelliously murdered and eaten by his sons.  Durkheim thought that the totem was a symbol of the clan, revered and hated (hence held “sacred” and “unclean”) by the individual for its omnipotence and irksome dictatorship; and that the religious attitude was originally the feeling of the individual toward the authoritarian group.) The Gallas of Abyssinia ate in solemn ceremony the fish that they worshiped, and said, “We feel the spirit moving within us as we eat.” The good missionaries who preached the Gospel to the Gallas were shocked to find among these simple folk a ritual so strangely similar to the central ceremony of the Mass.

Probably fear was the origin of totemism, as of so many cults; men prayed to animals because the animals were powerful, and had to be appeased. As hunting cleared the woods of the beasts, and gave way to the comparative security of agricultural life, the worship of animals declined, though it never quite disappeared; and the ferocity of the first human gods was probably carried over from the animal deities whom they replaced. The transition is visible in those famous stories of metamorphoses, or changes of form, that are found in the Ovids of all languages, and tell how gods had been, or had become, animals. Later the animal qualities adhered to them obstinately, as the odor of the stable might loyally attend some rural Casanova; even in the complex mind of Homer glaucopis  Athene had the eyes of an owl, and Here boopis had the eyes of a cow.

Egyptian and Babylonian gods or ogres with the face of a human being  ” and the body of a beast reveal the same transition and make the same confession that many human gods were once animal deities.

Most human gods, however, seem to have been, in the beginning, merely idealized dead men. The appearance of the dead in dreams was enough to establish the worship of the dead, for worship, if not the child, is at least the brother, of fear. Men who had been powerful during life, and therefore had been feared, were especially likely to be worshiped after their death.  Among several primitive peoples the word for god actually meant “a dead man”; even today the English word spirit and the German word Geist mean both ghost and soul. The Greeks invoked their dead precisely as the Christians were to invoke the saints.  So strong was the belief- first generated in dreams in the continued life of the dead, that primitive men sometimes sent messages to them in the most literal way; in one tribe the chief, to convey such a letter, recited it verbally to a slave, and then cut off his head for special delivery; if the chief forgot something he sent another decapitated slave as a postscript.

Gradually the cult of the ghost became the worship of ancestors. All the dead were feared, and had to be propitiated, lest they should curse and blight the lives of the living. This ancestor-worship was so well adapted to promote social authority and continuity, conservatism and order, that it soon spread to every region of the earth. It flourished in Egypt, Greece and Rome and India, and survives vigorously in China and Japan today; many people worship ancestors but no god.  ( Relics of ancestor-worship may be found among ourselves in our care and visitation of graves, and our masses and prayers for the dead.)

The institution held the family powerfully together despite the hostility of successive generations, and provided an invisible structure for many early societies. And just as compulsion grew into conscience, so fear graduated into love; the ritual of ancestor- worship, probably generated by terror, later aroused the sentiment of awe, and finally developed piety and devotion. It is the tendency of gods to begin as ogres and to end as loving fathers; the idol passes into an ideal as the growing security, peacefulness and moral sense of the worshipers pacify and transform the features of their once ferocious deities. The slow progress of civilization is reflected in the tardy amiability of the gods.

The idea of a human god was a late step in a long development; it was slowly differentiated, through many stages, out of the conception of an ocean or multitude of spirits and ghosts surrounding and inhabiting everything. From the fear and worship of vague and formless spirits men seem to have passed to adoration of celestial, vegetative and sexual powers, then to reverence for animals, and worship of ancestors. The notion of God as Father was probably derived from ancestor-worship; it meant originally that men had been physically begotten by the gods.  In primitive theology there is no sharp or generic distinction between gods and men; to the early Greeks, for example, their gods were ancestors, and their ancestors were gods. A further development came when, out of the medley of ancestors, certain men and women who had been especially distinguished were singled out for clearer deification; so the greater kings became gods, sometimes even before their death. But with this development we reach the historic civilizations.

REFERANCES

A.LLEN, GRANT: Evolution of the Idea of God. New York, 1897.

BRIFFAULT, ROBERT: The Mothers. 3V. New York, 1927.

CARPENTER, EDWARD: Pagan and Christian Creeds. New York, 1920.

DE MORGAN, JACQUES: Prehistoric Man. New York, 1925.

DURCKHEIM, EMILE: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. New

FRAZER, R. W.: Literary History of India. London, 1920.

FREUD, S.: Totem and Taboo. Leipzig, 1913.

JUNG, C. G.: Psychology of the Unconscious. New York, 1916

REINACH, S.: Orpheus: A History of Religions. New York, 1909 and 1930.

SMITH, W. ROBERTSON: The Religion of the Semites. New York, 1889.

SPENCER, HERBERT: Principles of Sociology. 3V. New York, 1910.

WILL DURANT: Our Oriental Heritage, Simon and Schuster, New York,1954

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Mrs Sudha Rani Maheshwari, M.Sc (Zoology), B.Ed.

Former Principal. A.K.P.I.College, Roorkee, India

In the days when historians supposed that history had begun with Greece, Europe gladly believed that India had been a hotbed of barbarism until the “Aryan” cousins of the European peoples had migrated from the shores of the Caspian to bring the arts and sciences to a savage and benighted peninsula. Recent researches have marred this comforting picture as future researches will change the perspective of these pages. In India, as elsewhere, the beginnings of civilization are buried in the earth, and not all the spades of archaeology will ever quite exhume them. Remains of an Old Stone Age fill many cases in the museums of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay; and Neolithic objects have been found in nearly every state.  These, however, were cultures, not yet a civilization.

In 1924 the world of scholarship was again aroused by news from India: Sir John Marshall announced that his Indian aides, R. D. Banerji in particular, had discovered at Mohenjo-daro, on the western bank of the lower Indus, remains of what seemed to be an older civilization than any yet known to historians. There, and at Harappa, a few hundred miles to the north, four or five superimposed cities were excavated, with hundreds of solidly-built brick houses and shops, ranged along wide streets as well as narrow lanes, and rising in many cases to several stories. Let Sir John estimate the age of these remains:

These discoveries establish the existence in Sind (the northernmost province of the Bombay Presidency) and the Punjab, during the fourth and third millennium B.C., of a highly developed city life; and the presence, in many of the houses, of wells and bathrooms as well as an elaborate drainage-system, betoken a social condition of the citizens at least equal to that found in Sumer, and superior to that prevailing in contemporary Babylonia and Egypt. . . . Even at Ur the houses are by no means equal in point of construction to those of Mohenjo-Daro.

The ruins of the huge city of Mohenjo-Daro – built entirely of unbaked brick in the 3rd millennium B.C. – lie in the Indus valley. The acropolis, set on high embankments, the ramparts, and the lower town, which is laid out according to strict rules, provide evidence of an early system of town planning.

Mohenjo-Daro is the most ancient and best-preserved urban ruin on the Indian subcontinent, dating back to the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, and exercised a considerable influence on the subsequent development of urbanization on the Indian peninsula.

The archaeological site is located on the right bank of the Indus River, 400 km from Karachi, in Pakistan’s Sind Province. It flourished for about 800 years during the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. Centre of the Indus Civilization, one of the largest in the Old World, this 5,000-year-old city is the earliest manifestation of urbanization in South Asia. Its urban planning surpasses that of many other sites of the oriental civilizations that were to follow.

Of massive proportions, Mohenjo-Daro comprises two sectors: a stupa mound that rises in the western sector and, to the east, the lower city ruins spread out along the banks of the Indus. The acropolis, set on high embankments, the ramparts, and the lower town, which is laid out according to strict rules, provide evidence of an early system of town planning.

The stupa mound, built on a massive platform of mud brick, is composed of the ruins of several major structures – Great Bath, Great Granary, College Square and Pillared Hall – as well as a number of private homes. The extensive lower city is a complex of private and public houses, wells, shops and commercial buildings. These buildings are laid out along streets intersecting each other at right angles, in a highly orderly form of city planning that also incorporated important systems of sanitation and drainage.

Of this vast urban ruin of Mohenjo-Daro, only about one-third has been reveal by excavation since 1922. The foundations of the site are threatened by saline action due to a rise of the water table of the Indus River. This was the subject of a UNESCO international campaign in the 1970s, which partially mitigated the attack on the prehistoric mud-brick buildings.

Among the finds at these sites were household utensils and toilet out- fits; pottery painted and plain, hand-turned and turned on the wheel; terracotta’s, dice and chess-men; coins older than any previously known; over a thousand seals, most of them engraved, and inscribed in an un- known pictographic script; faience work of excellent quality; stone carving superior to that of the Sumerians;  copper weapons and implements, and a copper model of a two-wheeled cart (one of our oldest examples of a wheeled vehicle) ; gold and silver bangles, ear-ornaments, necklaces, and other jewellery “so well finished and so highly polished,” says Marshall, “that they might have come out of a Bond Street jeweller’s of today rather than from a prehistoric house of 5,000 years ago.”

Strange to say, the lowest strata of these remains showed a more developed art than the upper layers as if even the most ancient deposits were from a civilization already hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years old. Some of the implements were of stone, some of copper, some of bronze, suggesting that this Indus culture had arisen in a Chalcolithic Age i.e., in a transition from stone to bronze as the material of tools.” The indications are that Mohenjo-Daro was at its height when Cheops built the first great pyramid; that it had commercial, religious and artistic connections with Sumeria and Babylonia;  and that it survived over three thousand years, until the third century before Christ,  These connections are suggested by similar seals found at Mohenjo-Daro and in Sumeria (especially at Kish), and by the appearance of the Naga, or hooded serpent, among the early Mesopotamian seals. u In 1932 Dr. Henri Frankfort unearthed, in the ruins of a Babylonian-Elamite village at the modern Tell-Asmar (near Baghdad), pottery seals and beads which in his judgment (Sir John Marshall concurring) were imported from Mohenjo-Daro ca. 2000 B.C.”

Macdone.U believes that this amazing civilization was derived from Sumeria;” Hall believes that the Sumerians derived their culture from India;” Woolley derives both the Sumerians and the early Hindus from some common parent stock and culture in or near Baluchistan.  Investigators have been struck by the fact that similar seals found both in Babylonia and in India belong to the earliest (“pre-Sumerian”) phase of the Mesopotamian culture, but to the latest phase of the Indus civilization  which suggests the priority of India. Guide inclines to this conclusion: “By the end of the fourth millennium B.C. the material culture of Abydos, Ur, or Mohenjo-Daro would stand comparison with that of Periclean Athens or of any medieval town. . . . Judging by the domestic architecture, the seal-cutting, and the grace of the pottery, the Indus civilization was ahead of the Babylonian at the beginning of the third millennium (ca. 3000 B.C.). But that was a late phase of the Indian culture; it may have enjoyed no less lead in earlier times. Were then the innovations and discoveries that characterize proto-Sumcrian civilization not native developments on Babylonian soil, but the results of Indian inspiration? If so, had the Sumerians themselves come from the Indus, or at least from regions in its immediate sphere of influence?”  These fascinating questions cannot yet be answered; but they serve to remind us that a history of civilization, because of our human ignorance, begins at what was probably a late point in the actual development of culture.

We cannot tell yet whether, as Marshall believes, Mohenjo-Daro represents the oldest of all civilizations known. But the exhuming of prehistoric India has just begun; only in our time has archaeology turned from Egypt across Mesopotamia to India. When the soil of India has been turned up like that of Egypt we shall probably find there a civilization older than that which flowered out of the mud of the Nile.  Excavations near Chitaldrug, in Mysore, revealed six levels of buried cultures, rising from Stone Age implements and geometrically adorned pottery apparently as old as 4000 B.C., to remains as late as 1200 A.D.”

 

 

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Darsanas or metaphysical worldviews form the basis of the diverse schools of Indian spiritual philosophy. The worldviews(Darsanas), and the traditions based on these (sampradayas) together constitute the system of Indian spirituality and religion.

The word darsana literally means vision.Since Indian philosophy is based on “seeing” or “experiencing”, it is called Darshan in which people see or experience “final truth” through this branch of knowledge.

In the context of spiritual philosophy darsana means a world vision, a view or window to the true nature of the world. Traditionally darsana is defined as one that envisions the true nature of of the world (samsara), the cause of binding (mula karana) and the path to liberation of self (nishreyasa). The purpose of darsana is to show the path to liberation, and the source of binding. The knowledge of self (jiva), phenomenal world (jagat) and absolute nature of the world (brahman) and the consciousness that relates these, is the basis for knowing the nature of binding and liberation.

Most darsanas have some  common elements. Many of the darsanas have developed along with spiritual philosophy, elaborate methods and practices that help the individual’s liberation. The methods are based on the theory of consciousness They all lay emphasis on dharmic life, devotion, turning mind inwards and meditation on the ultimate reality.

There are two kinds of causes, nimitta (acting/nominal) and upadana (substantive). For instance when a pot is made, the potter is nimitta and clay is the upadana karana.All systems of Indian philosophy are ranged by the Hindus in two categories: Astika systems, which affirm, and Nastika systems. Indian philosophy, include both orthodox (astika) systems, namely, the Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Purva-Mimamsa (orMimamsa), and Vedanta schools of philosophy. Nastika systems, which were chiefly those of the Charvakas, the Buddhists, and the Jains. But, strange to say, these systems were called Nastika, heterodox and nihilist, not because they questioned or denied the existence of God ,but because they questioned, denied or ignored the authority of the Vedas.

Of the “orthodox” systems or darshanas these six became so prominent that in time every Hindu thinker who acknowledged the authority of the Brahmans attached himself to one or another of these schools. All six make certain assumptions which are the bases of Hindu thought: that the Vedas are inspired; that reasoning is less reliable as a guide to reality and truth than the direct perception and feeling of an individual properly prepared for spiritual receptiveness and subtlety by ascetic practices and years of obedient tutelage; that the purpose of knowledge and philosophy is not control of the world so much as release from it; and that the goal of thought is to find freedom from the suffering of frustrated desire by achieving freedom from desire itself. These

are the philosophies to which men come when they tire of ambition, struggle, wealth, “progress,” and “success.”

Each of these systems differs in one way or the other in terms of its concepts, phenomena, laws and dogmas. Each system has it’s own founder as well. It is important to know that the founders of these systems of philosophy are sages of the highest order that have devoted their lives for the study and propagation of philosophy..

Each darsana explains the origin of the world, its creation and transformation.

There are three different approaches that these darsanas follow:

1- Arambha vada- holds that the universe is created.

2- Parinama vada- holds that the universe is not created or destroyed but it only transforms. Particularly, it is transformation of the manifesting form of the immutable absolute.

3- Vivarta vada- holds that the Universe as it appears is but because of the limitation of observer and it appears so, because of Maya.

THE CHARAVAKAS

Another pre-Buddhistic system of philosophy, the Charvaka, or the Lokayata, is one of the earliest materialistic schools of philosophy.The name Charvaka is traced back to one Charvaka, supposed to have been one of the great teachers of the school. The other name, Lokayata, means “the view held by the common people,” “the system which has its base in the common, profane world,” “the art of sophistry,” and also “the philosophy that denies that there is any world other than this one.” Brihaspati probably was the founder of this school.

The Charvakas apparently sought to establish their materialism on an epistemological basis. In their epistemology, they viewed sense perception alone as a means of valid knowledge. The validity of inferential knowledge was challenged on the ground that all inference requires a universal major premise (“All that possesses smoke possesses fire”) whereas there is no means of arriving at a certainty about such a proposition. No amount of finite observations could possibly yield the required universal premise. The supposed “invariable connection” may be vitiated by some unknown “condition,” and there is no means of knowing that such a vitiating factor does not exist. Since inference is not a means of valid knowledge, all such supersensible objects as “afterlife,” “destiny,” or “soul” do not exist. To say that such entities exist though there is no means of knowing them is regarded as absurd, for no unverifiable assertion of existence is meaningful.

The authority of the scriptures also is denied. First, knowledge based on verbal testimony is inferential and therefore vitiated by all the defects of inference. The Charvakas regard the scriptures as characterized by the three faults: falsity, self-contradiction, and tautology.

On the basis of such a theory of knowledge, the Charvakas defended a complete reductive materialism according to which the four elements of earth, water, fire, and air are the only original components of being and all other forms are products of their composition. Consciousness thus is viewed as a product of the material structure of the body and characterizes the body itself—rather than a soul—and perishes with the body. In their ethics, the Charvakas upheld a hedonistic theory according to which enjoyment of the maximum amount of sensual pleasure here in this life and avoidance of pain that is likely to accompany such enjoyment are the only two goals that human beings ought to pursue.

THE JAIN

Jainism, founded about the 6th century bce by Vardhamana Mahavira, the 24th in a succession of religious leaders known either as Tirthankaras (Saviours) or as Jinas (Conquerors), rejects the idea of God as the creator of the world but teaches the perfectibility of humanity, to be accomplished through the strictly moral and ascetic life.

Jains believe in the philosophy of karma, reincarnation of worldly soul, hell and heaven as a punishment or reward for one’s deeds, and liberation (Nirvän or Moksha) of the self from life’s misery of birth and death in a way similar to the Hindu and Buddhist beliefs .The Jain philosophy believes that the universe and all its entities such as soul and matter are eternal (there is no beginning or end), no one has created them and no one can destroy them.

Jains do not believe that there is a supernatural power who does favor to us if we please him. Jains rely a great deal on self-efforts and self-initiative, for both – their worldly requirements and their salvation.

Jains believe that from eternity, the soul is bounded by karma and is ignorant of its true nature.  It is due to karma soul migrates from one life cycle to another and continues to attract new karma, and the ignorant soul continues to bind with new karma.

To overcome the sufferings, Jainism addresses the path of liberation in a rational way.   It states that the proper Knowledge of reality, when combined with right Faith and right Conduct leads the worldly soul to liberation (Moksha or Nirvän).

With regards to truth, the Jain philosophy firmly states that the whole truth cannot be observed from a single viewpoint.  To understand the true nature of reality, it is essential to acknowledge the multiple perspectives of each entity, situation or idea. This concept is called Anekäntväd.

The concept of universal interdependence underpins the Jain theory of knowledge, known as Anekäntaväd or the doctrine of many aspects. In this ever-changing universe an infinite number of viewpoints exist. These viewpoints depend on the time, place, circumstances, and nature of individuals. Anekäntaväd means acceptance of all viewpoints, which are positive in nature. This is known as non-absolutism.

As a consequence of their metaphysical liberalism, the Jain logicians developed a unique theory of seven-valued logic, according to which the three primary truth values are “true,” “false,” and “indefinite” and the other four values are “true and false,” “true and indefinite,” “false and indefinite,” and “true, false, and indefinite.” Every statement is regarded as having these seven values, considered from different standpoints.

This leads to the doctrine of Syädväd or relativity, which states that expression of truth is relative to different viewpoints (Nayas).  What is true from one point of view is open to question from another.  Absolute truth cannot be grasped from any particular viewpoint.  Absolute truth is the total sum of individual (partial) truths from many different viewpoints, even if they seem to contradict each other.

The ultimate goal of Jainism is for the soul to achieve liberation through understanding and realization. This is accomplished through the supreme ideals in the Jain religion of nonviolence, equal kindness, reverence for all forms of life, nonpossessiveness, and through the philosophy of non-absolutism (Anekäntväd).

Jainism is a religion of purely human origin. In ancient times Jainism was known by many names such as the Saman tradition, the religion of Nirgantha, or the religion of Jin.  Jin is one, who has conquered the inner enemies of worldly passions such as desire, hatred, anger, ego, deceit and greed by personal effort.  By definition, a Jin is a human being, like one of us and not a supernatural immortal nor an incarnation of an almighty God.  Jins are popularly viewed as Gods in Jainism. There are an infinite number of Jins existed in the past. The Jins that have established the religious order and revived the Jain philosophy at various times in the history of mankind are known as Tirthankars. The ascetic sage, Rishabhadev was the first Tirthankar and Mahavir was the last Tirthankar of the spiritual lineage of the twenty-four Tirthankars in the current era.

In essence, Jainism addresses the true nature of reality.  Mahavir explained that all souls are equal in their potential for perfect knowledge, perfect vision, perfect conduct, unlimited energy and unobstructed bliss.

One can detach from karma and attain liberation by following the path of Right Faith (Samyak-darshan), Right Knowledge (Samyak-jnän), and Right Conduct (Samyak-chäritra)

Jainism states that the universe is without a beginning or an end, and is everlasting and eternal. Six fundamental entities (known as Dravya) constitute the universe.  Although all six entities are eternal, they continuously undergo countless changes (known as Paryäy). In these transformations nothing is lost or destroyed. Lord Mahavir explained these phenomena in his Three Pronouncements known as Tripadi and proclaimed that Existence or Reality (also known as Sat) is a combination of appearance (Utpäda), disappearance (Vyaya), and persistence (Dhrauvya).

The Six Universal Substances or Entities (Dravyas) are as follows:

Jiva- The soul is the only living substance, which is consciousness and possesses knowledge. Similar to energy, the soul is invisible.  An infinite number of souls exist in the universe.  In its pure form each soul possesses infinite knowledge, infinite vision, perfect conduct, unobstructed bliss, and unlimited energy.

Pudgal- Matter is a nonliving substance, and possesses the characteristics such as touch, taste, smell, and color. Karma is considered matter in Jainism.  Extremely minute particles constitute karma.

Akash-The medium of motion helps the soul and matter to migrate from one place to another in the universe. The space is divided into two parts.   Lokäkäsh, and Alokäkäsh.

Kal-Time measures the changes in soul and matter.  The wheel of time incessantly rolls on in a circular fashion.

The doctrine of karma occupies a significant position in Jain philosophy. It provides a rational explanation to the apparently inexplicable phenomena of birth and death, happiness and misery, inequalities in mental and physical attainments, and the existence of different species of living beings. It explains that the principle governing the successions of life is karma.

The seven or nine tattvas or fundamentals are the single most important subject of Jain philosophy. They deal with the theory of karma, which provides the basis for the path of liberation. The Seven or Nine Tattvas (Fundamentals) are , Jiva Ajiva, Äsrava, Bandha Punya, Päpa, Samvara Nirjarä,and Moksha.

In Jainism, Ahimsä supersedes all concepts, ideologies, rules, customs and practices, traditional or modern, eastern or western, political or economical, self-centered or social. Ahimsä (non-violence), Anekäntväd (multiplicity of views) and Aparigraha (non-possessiveness) are the cardinal principles of Jainism.Aparigraha plays significant role in stopping the physical form of violence. And the proper application of Anekäntväd stops the violence of thoughts and speech. Anekäntväd is also called the intelligent expression of the Ahimsä. Non-violence in the center is guarded by truthfulness, non-stealing, celibacy and non-possessiveness.

BUDDHISM

Buddhism is a religion based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, He came to be called “the Buddha,” which means “awakened one,” after he experienced a profound realization of the nature of life, death and existence. He taught that awakening comes through one’s own direct experience, not through beliefs and dogmas.

Instead of teaching doctrines to be memorized and believed, the Buddha taught how we can realize truth for ourselves. The focus of Buddhism is on practice rather than belief. The major outline of Buddhist practice is the Eightfold Path.

The Buddha discouraged his followers from indulging in intellectual disputation for its own sake, which is fruitless, and distracting from true awakening. Nevertheless, the delivered sayings of the Buddha contain a philosophical component, in its teachings on the working of the mind, and its criticisms of the philosophies of his contemporaries.

According to the scriptures, during his lifetime the Buddha remained silent when asked several metaphysical questions. These regarded issues such as whether the universe is eternal or non-eternal (or whether it is finite or infinite), the unity or separation of the body and the self, the complete inexistence of a person after Nirvana and death, and others.

In spite of its emphasis on free inquiry, Buddhism is not whatever you want it to be. It might best be understood as a discipline, and an exacting discipline at that.For example, the foundation of Buddhism is the Four Noble Truths. The Truths are:

1. The truth of suffering (dukkha)

2. The truth of the cause of suffering (samudaya)

3. The truth of the end of suffering (nirhodha)

4. The truth of the path that frees us from suffering (magga)

About 2,000 years ago Buddhism divided into two major schools, called Theravada and Mahayana. For centuries, Theravada has been the dominant form of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma (Myanmar) and Laos. Mahayana is dominant in China, Japan, Taiwan, Tibet, Nepal, Mongolia, Korea and Vietnam. In recent years, Mahayana also has gained many followers in India. Mahayana is further divided into many sub-schools, such asPure Land and Zen.

The two schools differ primarily in their understanding of a doctrine called “anatman” or “anatta.” According to this doctrine, there is no “self” in the sense of a permanent, integral, autonomous being within an individual existence. Anatman is a difficult teaching to understand, but understanding it is essential to making sense of Buddhism.

Very basically, Theravada considers anatman to mean that an individual’s ego or personality is a delusion. Once freed of this delusion, the individual may enjoy the bliss of Nirvana. Mahayana pushes anatman further. In Mahayana, all phenomena are void of intrinsic identity and take identity only in relation to other phenomena. There is neither reality not not-reality; only relativity. The Mahayana teaching is called shunyata, “emptiness.”

THE NYAYA

The first of the “Brahmanical” systems in the logical order of Indian thought  is a body of logical theory extending over two millenniums. Nyaya means an argument, a way of leading the mind to a conclusion. One of the six DARSHANS (orthodox systems) of Indian philosophy, important for its analysis of logic and epistemology and for its detailed model of the reasoning method of inference. Like other darshans, Nyaya is both a philosophy and a religion; its ultimate concern is to bring an end to human suffering, which results from ignorance of reality. It recognizes four valid means of knowledge: perception, inference, comparison, and testimony. It is called Nyaya because it is constituted of five “laws” – Pratijna, Hetu, Udaharana, Upanaya, Nigamana. Nyaya includes formal logic and modes of scientific debate. It explains the logical constructs like antecedent and laws of implying. It expounds various modes of scientific debate and methods for debate, like tarka, vitanda, chala, jalpa and so on.

The Nyaaya system of Hindu philosophy was formulated by sage Gautam around 450 BC. Gautam was the third great person produced by the same region of India, Bihaar, within a span of 200 years. The other two were Mahaaveer Vardhmaan (c 617-545 BC), and Gautam Buddha (c 624-544 BC). Nyaaya is greatly concerned with logic and elaborates on the principle of inference based on syllogism, of course logic is only one of the many subjects it deals with. Nyaaya preaches that a statement should only be accepted if it passes the test of reason. So according to it, error and ignorance are the causes of pain and suffering. The road to wisdom is to develop the process of logical thinking. It does not seem to deny God and accepts God as the Supreme Soul.

Its most famous text is the Nyaya Sutra. It has 5 chapters, 10 ahnikas and 528 sutras. It accepts 4 pramanas and 16 padarthas.According to Nyaya, midhya jnana (nescience) causes sansara and tatva jnana (gnosis) brings liberation. Destroying misery (dukha) forever is Moksha. Jiva is different from Isvara. Isvara is a nominal (nimitta karana) cause for creation, the substantial cause of creation is paramaanus (upadana karana). Jivas are multiple because of multiple bodies (sareera). But Iswara is one. Iswara created the Veda.

Like all Hindu thinkers, Gautama announces, as the purpose of his work, the achievement of Nirvana, or release from the tyranny of desire, here to be reached by clear and consistent thinking; but we suspect that his simple intent was to offer a guide to the perplexed wrestlers in India’s philosophical debates. He formulates for them the principles of argument, exposes the tricks of controversy, and lists the common fallacies of thought. Like another Aristotle, he seeks the structure of reasoning in the syllogism, and finds the crux of argument in the middle term;( The Nyaya syllogism, however, has five propositions: theorem, reason, major premiss, minor premiss and conclusion.

He looks upon knowledge and thought as pragmatic tools and organs of human need and will, to be tested by their ability to lead to successful ac- tion. He is a realist, and will have nothing to do with the sublime idea that the world ceases to exist when no one takes the precaution to perceive it.

THE VAISHESHIKA

As Gautama is the Aristotle of India, so Kanada is its Democritus. The founder of Vaisheshik philosophy is known to us by the name of his theory “Kanaad” (atom eater, or atom theorist), because he was the first person in the world (460-370 BC) to propound the atomic theory of matter. According to this theory, God has created different substances from several basic atoms of matter. This philosophy is very close to the Nyaaya philosophy.

The date at which the Vaisheshika system was formulated has not been fixed with excessive accuracy: we are told that it was not before 300 B.C., and not after 800 A.D. Its name came from vishesha, meaning particularity: the world, in Kanada’s theory, is full of a number of things, but they are all, in some form, mere combinations of atoms; the forms change, but the atoms remain indestructible. Thoroughly Democritean, Kanada announces that nothing exists but “atoms and the void,” and that the atoms move not according to the will of an intelligent deity, but through an impersonal force or law Adrishta, “the invisible.”

Kanada  Vaiseshika darsana has 10 chapters, 20 ahnikas, 370 sutras. It accepts 2 pramanas (criteriafor verifiability) and 7 padarthas. Vaiseshika is one of the earliest darsanas hypothesised. According to it, atma-manas contact causes the nine Gunas – buddhi, sukha, dukha, iccha, dvesha, prayatna, dharma, adharma, sanskara. This is the samsara for atman. Realising this and separating mind from atman so that the Gunas get dissolved and do not arise again, is Moksha. This is possible through satkarma, sravana, manana and so on. According to Vaiseshika darsana, Guna-nasha forever is moksha.

THE SAMKHYA

Samkhya, also Sankhya, Sāṃkhya, or Sāṅkhya (Sanskrit: सांख्य, : sāṃkhya – ‘enumeration’) is one of the six schools of classical Indian philosophy. Sage Kapila is traditionally considered as the founder of the Samkhya school, although no historical verification is possible. It is regarded as one of the oldest philosophical systems in India.This is the most significant system of philosophy that India has produced.”  Professor Garbe, who devoted a large part of his life to the study of the Sankhya, consoled himself with the thought that “in Kapila’s doctrine, for the first time in the history of the world, the complete independence and freedom of the human mind, its full confidence in its own powers, were exhibited.”

Its earliest extant literature, the Sankhya-karika of the commentator Ishvara Krishna,dates back only to the fifth century A.D., and the Sankbya-sutras once attributed to Kapila are not older than our fifteenth century; but the origins of the system apparently antedate Buddhism itself.  The Buddhist texts and the Mahabharata  repeatedly refer to it, and Winternitz finds its influence in Pythagoras.

Kapila is  once a realist and a scholastic. He begins almost medically by laying it down, in his first aphorism, that “the complete cessation of pain … is the complete goal of man.” He rejects as inadequate the at- tempt to elude suffering by physical means; he refutes, with much logical prestidigitation, the views of all and sundry on the matter, and then proceeds to construct, in one unintelligibly abbreviated sutra after another, his own metaphysical system. It derives its name from his enumeration of the twenty-five Realities (Tattivas, “Thatnesses”) which, in Kapila’s judgment, make up the world.

According to the Sankhya school, all knowledge is possible through three pramanas (means of valid knowledge) -

1. Pratyaksha or Drishtam – direct sense perception,
2. Anumana – logical inference and
3. Sabda or Aptavacana – verbal testimony.

Sankhya cites two kinds of perceptions:

Indeterminate perceptions are merely impressions without understanding or knowledge. They reveal no knowledge of the form or the name of the object. There is only external awareness about an object.

Determinate perceptions are the mature state of perceptions which have been processed and differentiated appropriately. Once the sensations have been processed, categorized, and interpreted properly, they become determinate perceptions.

Broadly, the Samkhya system classifies all objects as falling into one of the two categories: Purusha and Prakriti. The Samkhya recognizes only two ultimate entities, Prakriti and Purusha. While the Prakriti is a single entity, the Samkhya admits a plurality of the Purushas. Unintelligent, unmanifest, uncaused, ever-active, imperceptible and eternal Prakriti is alone the final source of the world of objects which is implicitly and potentially contained in its bosom. The Purusha is considered as the intelligent principle, a passive enjoyer (bhokta) and the Prakriti is the enjoyed (bhogya). Samkhya believes that the Purusha cannot be regarded as the source of inanimate world, because an intelligent principle cannot transform itself into the unintelligent world. It is a pluralistic spiritualism, atheistic realism and uncompromising dualism.

The Sankhya system is based on Satkaryavada. According to Satkaryavada, the effect pre-exists in the cause. Cause and effect are seen as different temporal aspects of the same thing – the effect lies latent in the cause which in turn seeds the next effect.

The Sankhya system is  an exponent of an evolutionary theory of matter beginning with primordial matter. In evolution, Prakriti is transformed and differentiated into multiplicity of objects. Evolution is followed by dissolution. In dissolution the physical existence, all the worldly objects mingle back into Prakriti, which now remains as the undifferentiated, primordial substance. This is how the cycles of evolution and dissolution follow each other.

Sankhya theorizes that Prakriti is the source of the world of becoming. It is pure potentiality that evolves itself successively into twenty four tattvas or principles. The evolution itself is possible because Prakriti is always in a state of tension among its constituent strands -

* Sattva - a template of balance or equilibrium;
* Rajas - a template of expansion or activity;
* Tamas - a template of inertia or resistance to action.

All macrocosmic and microcosmic creation uses these templates. The twenty four principles that evolve are -

* Prakriti - The most subtle potentiality that is behind whatever is created in the physical universe, also called “primordial Matter”. It is also a state of equilibrium amongst the Three Gunas.
* Mahat - first product of evolution from Prakriti, pure potentiality. Mahat is also considered to be the principle responsible for the rise of buddhi or intelligence in living beings.
* Ahamkara or ego-sense – second product of evolution. It is responsible for the self-sense in living beings. It is also one’s identification with the outer world and its content.
* “Panch Tanmatras” are a simultaneous product from Mahat Tattva, along with the Ahamkara. They are the subtle form of Panch Mahabhutas which result from grossification or Panchikaran of the Tanmatras. Each of these Tanmatras are made of all three Gunas.
* Manas or “Antahkaran” evolves from the total sum of the sattva aspect of Panch Tanmatras or the “Ahamkara”
* Panch jnana indriyas or five sense organs – also evolves from the sattva aspect of Ahamkara.
* Pancha karma indriya or five organs of action – The organs of action are hands, legs, vocal apparatus, urino-genital organ and anus. They evolve from the rajas aspect of Ahamkara.
* Pancha mahabhuta or five great substances – ether, air, fire, water and earth. They evolve from the “tamas” aspect of the “Ahamkara”. This is the revealed aspect of the physical universe.

The evolution obeys causality relationships, with primal Nature itself being the material cause of all physical creation. The cause and effect theory of Sankhya is called Satkaarya-vaada (theory of existent causes), and holds that nothing can really be created from or destroyed into nothingness – all evolution is simply the transformation of primal Nature from one form to another.

The evolution of matter occurs when the relative strengths of the attributes change. The evolution ceases when the spirit realizes that it is distinct from primal Nature and thus cannot evolve. This destroys the purpose of evolution, thus stopping Prakrti from evolving for Purusha.

THE YOGA

The Yoga system of philosophy was founded by Patanjali. He authored the Yoga Sutras or the aphorisms of Yoga. What is Yoga? Literally, a yoke: not so much a yoking or union of the soul with the Supreme Being,  as the yoke of ascetic discipline and abstinence which the aspirant puts upon himself in order to cleanse his spirit of all material limitations, and achieve supernatural intelligence and powers.

The Yoga system of philosophy accepts three fundamental realities, namely, Ishwara, Purusha and Prakriti or the primordial matter. Patanjali says that scriptures are the sources of the existence of Ishwara. Ishwara is omniscient and is free from the qualities inherent in Prakriti. Patanjali defines Yoga as ‘Chittavriitinirodha’. Yoga is the restraint of the mental operations. Patanjali names some obstacles to the path of Yoga. They are called ‘Antarayas’ and they include Vyadhi (illness), styana (apathy), Samsaya (doubt), Pramada (inadvertence), Alasya (laziness), Avirati (incontinence), Bhrantidarshana (wrong understanding), Alabdha Bhumikatva (non-attainment of mental plane) and Anavasthitatva (instability). In addition to the obstacles mentioned above, Patanjali accepts five more obstacles called Dukha (pain), Daurmanasya (frustration, Angamejayatva (fickle limbs), Svasa (spasmodic breathing in) and Prasvasa (spasmodic breathing out). Patanjali speaks about Jatyantara Parinama or the phenomenon of the evolution of one species or genus into another species or genus.

Matter is the root of ignorance and suffering; therefore Yoga seeks to free the soul from all sense phenomena and all bodily attachment; it is an attempt to attain supreme enlightenment and salvation in one life by atoning in one existence for all the sins of the soul’s past incarnations.

Such enlightenment cannot be won at a stroke; the aspirant must move towards it step by step, and no stage of the process can be understood by anyone who has not passed through the stages before it; one comes to Yoga only by long and patient study and self-discipline. The stages of Yoga are eight:

I. Yama, or the death of desire; here the soul accepts the restraints of ahmsa and Brahmacharia, abandons all self-seeking, emancipates itself from all material interests and pursuits, and wishes well to all things.

II. Niyama, a faithful observance of certain preliminary rules for Yoga: cleanliness, content, purification, study, and piety.

III. Asana, posture; the aim here is to still all movement as well as all sensation; the best asana for this purpose is to place the right foot upon the left thigh and the left foot upon the right thigh, to cross the hands and grasp the two great toes, to bend the chin upon the chest, and direct the eyes to the tip of the nose.

IV. Pranayama, or regulation of the breath: by these exercises one may forget everything but breathing, and in this way clear his mind for the passive emptiness that must precede absorption; at the same time one may learn to live on a minimum of air, and may let himself, with impunity, be buried in the earth for many days.

V. Pratyahara, abstraction; now the mind controls all the senses, and with- draws itself from all sense objects.

VI. Dharana, or concentration the identification or filling of the mind and the senses with one idea or object to the exclusion of everything else. The fixation of any one object long enough will free the soul of all sensation, all specific thought, and all selfish desire; then the mind, abstracted fromthings, will be left free to feel the immaterial essence of reality .

VII. Dhyana, or meditation: this is an almost hypnotic condition, resulting from Dharana; it may be produced, says Patanjali, by the persistent repetition of the sacred syllable Om.

VIII. Samadhi, or trance contemplation; even the last thought now disappears from the mind; empty, the mind loses consciousness of itself as a separate being;  it is merged with totality, and achieves a blissful and god- like comprehension of all things in One.

Nevertheless it is not God, or union with God, that the yogi seeks; in the Yoga philosophy God (Ishvara) is not the creator or preserver of the universe, or the rewarder and punisher of men, but merely one of several objects on which the soul may meditate as a means of achieving concentration and enlightenment. The aim, frankly, is that dissociation of the mind from the body, that removal of all material obstruction from the spirit, which brings with it, in Yoga theory, supernatural understanding and capacity.

Eliot compares, for the illumination of this stage, a passage from Schopenhauer, obviously inspired by his study of Hindu philosophy: “When some sudden cause or inward disposition lifts us out of the endless stream of willing, the attention is no longer directed to the motives of willing, but comprehends things free from their relation to the will, and thus observes them without subjectivity, purely objectively, gives itself entirely up to them so far as they are ideas, but not in so far as they are motives. Then all at once the peace that we were always seeking, but which always fled from us on the former path of die desires, comes to us of its own accord, and it is well with us.” which remains when all sense attachments have been exercised away. To the extent to which the soul can free itself from its physical environment and prison it becomes Brahman, and exercises Brahman’s intelligence and power. Here the magical basis of religion reappears, and almost threatens the essence of religion itself the worship of powers superior to man.

In the days of the Upanishads, Yoga was pure mysticism an attempt to realize the identity of the soul with God. In Hindu legend it is said that in ancient days seven Wise Men, or Rishis, acquired, by penance and medi- tation, complete knowledge of all things. In the later history of India

Yoga became corrupted with magic, and thought more of the power of miracles than of the peace of understanding. The Yogi trusts that by Yoga he will be able to anesthetize and control any part of his body by concentrating upon it;  he will be able at will to make himself invisible, or to prevent his body from being moved, or to pass in a moment from any part of the earth, or to live as long as he desires, or to know the past and the future, and the most distant stars.

THE PURVA-MIMANSA

Sanskrit mīmāṁsā, literally, reflection, investigation, from manyate he thinks. It is  an orthodox Hindu philosophy concerned with the interpretation of Vedic texts and literature and comprising one part dealing with the earlier writings concerned with right practice and another part dealing with the later writings concerned with right thought —called also Purva Mimamsa,

To step from Yoga to the Purva-Mimansa is to pass from the most renowned to the least known and least important of the six systems of Brahmanical philosophy. Meemaansaa philosophy is attributed to sage Jaimini (c 350 BC). It proclaims that the Soul does not die with the body, but passes from the body of the dead to the body of the one to be born. The purpose of the migration of the Soul is to reap the rewards and punishments of the deeds of the previous lives to which it was attached. An Individual Soul can attain liberation from rebirth by means of knowledge and performance of duties. Knowledge alone will not help attain liberation. It is necessary not only to perform worldly duties, but also to perform religious rituals prescribed by Ved. Meemaansaa is also basically atheistic.

Its author, Jaimini, protested against the disposition of Kapila and Kanada to ignore, while acknowledging, the authority of the Vedas. The human mind, said Jaimini, is too frail an instrument to solve the problems of metaphysics and theology; reason is a wanton who will serve any desire; it gives us not “science” and “truth,” but merely our own rationalized sensuality and pride. The road to wisdom and peace lies not through the vain labyrinths of logic, but in the modest acceptance of tradition and the humble performance of the rituals prescribed in the Scriptures.

THE VEDANTA

Sanskrit Vedānta, literally, end of the Veda, from Veda +anta end; akin to Old English ende end

First Known Use: 1788. One of the six orthodox systems (darshans) of Indian philosophy and the one that forms the basis of most modern schools of Hinduism. Its three fundamental texts are theUpanishads, the Bhagavadgita, and the Brahma Sutras, which are very brief interpretations of the doctrine of the Upanishads. Several schools of Vedanta have developed, differentiated by their conception of the relationship between the self (atman) and the absolute (Brahman). They share beliefs in samsara and the authority of the Vedas as well as the conviction that Brahman is both the material and instrumental cause of the world and that the atman is the agent of its own acts and therefore the recipient of the consequences of action

Vedant philosophy was first expounded by Baadaraayan in c 650 BC. In his book Vedaant Sootra, also called “Brahm Sootra”. Baadaraayan claims that he has not put anything new – all was only the summary of Upanishadik teachings – but the claim does not seem to be totally justified. Complicating the matters further, there have been three Aachaarya, famously known for three systems of metaphysics, are known consecutively as A-Dwait, Vishisht A-Dwait and Dwait, explaining the relationship between man and God.

According to Samkara, the so-called means of knowledge do not give us real knowledge. They only remove ignorance, since they are based on the distinction between subject and object. Real knowledge is beyond these and other distinctions. Knowledge requires no means nor any proof, since it is self-illumined and self-proved.

But just as the disappearance of the illusion of snake leads to the real knowledge of the rope, similarly the very removal of ignorance means knowledge. As a matter of fact, there is no sharp line dividing the removal of ignorance and the beginning of knowledge. Knowledge is the disappearance of ignorance since, while knowledge is always existent, it is ignorance that keeps it covered and un-noticed.

Advaita philosophy denies the reality of the truth of name and form as presented by the sense organs, and so it cannot rely upon the knowledge acquired through-senses nor can it make any use of it in support of its contentions, however helpful such knowledge may be in every-day life. Thus according to Samkara, all means of knowledge and all knowledge acquired through them, are unreal from the transcendental standpoint. But one cannot deny their importance in the practical world from the practical standpoint.

In Vedanta, ‘prama’ means the valid knowledge which is uncontradicted. Prama does not include knowledge through memory. It is that knowledge only which has never been attained before. question of the antecedent and subsequent.

According to Vedanta, there are three pramanas,

1. Perception: The identity of the subject and object consciousness by chitta concomitance adopting the form of external object and the object become identi­cal, because in fact both are the same consciousness. The subject and the object remain separate due to the covering of ignorance. But by the direct contact of the antahkarana with the object through the senses, it takes the form of the object and shines in that particular form illumined by the self due to the removal of the covering of ignorance.

2. Tark or inference: Inference is the knowledge which results from the past impressions based upon the awareness of concomitance between two terms. The awareness of concomitance leaves the impressions on the chitta and when these impressions are awakened by perceiving that object again, the result is inference. For example, after being aware of the relation of concomitance between fire and smoke, one can infer about the existence of fire by the awakening of the impression of the awareness of the Vyapti relation. Hence Vedanta admits only concomitance in presence., Samkara admits only three premises of an inference. These are as follows:

(1) Pratijna:Everything different from Brahman is unreal.

(2) Hetu:Because all things are different from Brahman.

(3) Udaharana:So all things are unreal as seeing of silver in nacre.

(4) Sruti or Scripture:In Advaita, Agama or Veda has been admitted as an independent testimony and source of knowledge. The Vedas are impersonal and eternal. According to Advaita philosophy, the Vedas begin with the beginning of the creation and disappear with its disappearance. Advaita philosophy does not admit any need to prove the absoluteness of the Vedas. The Vedas are self-proved. Memory is true only when it is based upon scriptures.

Conclusion

The influence of Indian thought upon other cultures has been greatest in the days of their weakening or decay. While Greece was winning victories she paid little attention to Pythagoras or Parmenides; when Greece was declining, Plato and the Orphic priests took up the doctrine of reincarnation, while Zeno the Oriental preached an almost Hindu fatalism and resignation; and when Greece was dying, the Neo-Platonists and the Gnostics drank deep at Indian wells.

The impoverishment of Europe by the fall of Rome, and the Moslem conquest of the routes between Europe and India, seem to have obstructed, for a millennium, the direct interchange of Oriental and Occidental ideas. But hardly had the British established themselves in India before editions and translations of the Upanishads began to stir Western thought. Fichte conceived an idealism strangely like Shankara’s; Schopenhauer almost incorporated Buddhism, the Upani- shads and the Vedanta into his philosophy; and Schelling, in his old age, thought the Upanishads the maturest wisdom of mankind. Nietzsche had dwelt too long with Bismarck and the Greeks to care for India, but in the end he valued above all other ideas his haunting notion of eternal recurrence a variant ofreincarnation.

In our time Europe borrows more and more from the philosophy of the East, while the East borrows more and more from the science of the West. Another world war might leave Europe open again to an influx of Oriental philosophies and faiths. The mounting insurrection of the Orient against the Occident, the loss of those Asiatic markets that have sustained the industry and prosperity of the West, the weakening of Europe by poverty, faction and revolution, might make that divided continent ripe for a new religion of celestial hope and earthly despair.

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Mrs Sudha Rani Maheshwari, M.Sc (Zoology), B.Ed.

Former Principal. A.K.P.I.College, Roorkee, India

Civilizations are the generations of the racial soul. As family-rearing, and then writing, bound the generations together, handing down the lore of the dying to the young, so print and commerce and a thousand ways of communication may bind the civilizations together, and preserve for future cultures all that is of value for them in our own. Let us, before we die, gather up our heritage, and offer it to our children.

In one important sense the “savage,” too, is civilized, for he carefully transmits to his children the heritage of the tribe that complex of economic, political, mental and moral habits and institutions which it has developed in its efforts to maintain and enjoy itself on the earth. It is impossible to be scientific here; for in calling other human beings “savage” or “barbarous” we may be expressing no objective fact, but only our fierce fondness for ourselves, and our timid shyness in the presence of alien ways.

Doubtless we underestimate these simple peoples, who have so much to teach us in hospitality and morals; if we list the bases and constituents of civilization we shall find that the naked nations invented or arrived at all but one of them, and left nothing for us to add except embellishments and writing. Perhaps they, too, were once civilized, and desisted from it as a nuisance. We must make sparing use of such terms as “savage” and “barbarous” in referring to our “contemporaneous ancestry.” Preferably we shall call “primitive” all tribes that make little or no provision for un-productive days, and little or no use of writing. In contrast, the civilized may be defined as literate providers.

Primitive improvidence

The moment man begins to take thought of the morrow he passes out of the Garden of Eden into the vale of anxiety; the pale cast of worry settles down upon him, greed is sharpened, property begins, and the good cheer of the “thoughtless” native disappears. The American Negro is making this transition today. “Of what are you thinking?” Peary asked one of his Eskimo guides. “I do not have to think,” was the answer; “I have plenty of meat.” Not to think unless we have to there is much to be said for this as the summation of wisdom.

“Three meals a day are a highly advanced institution. Savages gorge themselves or fast.”  The wilder tribes among the American Indians considered it weak-kneed and unseemly to preserve food for the next day.” The natives of Australia are incapable of any labour whose reward is not immediate; every Hottentot is a gentleman of leisure; and with the Bush- men of Africa it is always “either a feast or a famine.”  There is a mute wisdom in this improvidence, as in many “savage” ways.

Nevertheless, there were difficulties in this carelessness, and those organisms that outgrew it came to possess a serious advantage in the struggle for survival. The dog that buried .the bone which even a canine appetite could not manage, the squirrel that gathered nuts for a later feast, the bees that filled the comb with honey, the ants that laid up stores for a rainy day these were among the first creators of civilization. It was they, or other subtle creatures like them, who taught our ancestors the art of providing for tomorrow out of the surplus of today, or of preparing for winter in summer’s time of plenty.

Beginnings of provision- Hunting and fishing

Hunting is now to most of us a game, whose relish seems based upon some mystic remembrance, in the blood, of ancient days when to hunter as well as hunted it was a matter of life and death. With what skill those ancestors ferreted out, from land and sea, the food that was the basis of their simple societies! They grubbed edible things from the earth with bare hands; they imitated or used the claws and tusks of the animals, and fashioned tools out of ivory, bone or stone; they made nets and traps and snares of rushes or fibre, and devised innumerable artifices for fishing and hunting their prey. The Polynesians had nets a thousand ells long, which could be handled only by a hundred men; in such ways economic provision grew hand in hand with political organization, and the united quest for food helped to generate the state. The Tlingit fisherman put upon his head a cap like the head of a seal, and hiding his body among the rocks, made a noise like a seal; seals came toward him, and he speared them with the clear conscience of primitive war. Many tribes threw narcotics into the streams to stupefy the fish into cooperation with the fishermen; the Tahitians, for example, put into the water an intoxicating mixture prepared from the butco nut or the hora plant; the fish, drunk with it, floated leisurely on the surface, and were caught at the anglers’ will. Australian natives, swimming under water while breathing through a reed, pulled ducks beneath the surface by the legs, and gently held them there till they were pacified. The Tarahumaras caught birds by stringing kernels on tough fibres half buried under the ground; the birds ate the kernels, and the Tarahumaras ate the birds.”

Hunting was not merely a quest for food, it was a war for security and mastery, a war beside which all the wars of recorded history are but a little noise. In the jungle man still fights for his life, for though there is hardly an animal that will attack him unless it is desperate for food or cornered in the chase, yet there is not always food for all, and sometimes only the fighter, or the breeder of fighters, is allowed to eat. We see in our museums the relics of that war of the species in the knives, clubs, spears, arrows, lassos, bolas, lures, traps, boomerangs and slings with which primitive men won possession of the land, and prepared to transmit to an ungrateful posterity the gift of security from every beast except man. Even today, after all these wars of elimination, how many different populations move over the earth! Sometimes, during a walk in the woods, one is awed by the variety of languages spoken there, by the myriad species of insects, reptiles, carnivores and birds; one feels that man is an interloper on this crowded scene, that he is the object of universal dread and endless hostility.

Hunting and fishing were not stages in economic development, they were modes of activity destined to survive into the highest forms of civilized society. Once the centre of life, they are still its hidden foundations; behind our literature and philosophy, our ritual and art. We do our hunting by proxy, not having the stomach for honest killing in the fields; but our memories of the chase linger in our joyful pursuit of anything weak or fugitive, and in the games of our children even in the word game. In the last analysis civilization is based upon the food supply. The cathedral and the capitol, the museum and the concert chamber, the library and the university are the facade; in the rear are the shambles.

Herding- The domestication of animals

To live by hunting was not original; if man had confined himself to that he would have been just another carnivore. He began to be human when out of the uncertain hunt he developed the greater security and continuity of the pastoral life. For this involved advantages of high importance: the domestication of animals, the breeding of cattle, and the use of milk. We do not know when or how domestication began perhaps when the helpless young of slain beasts were spared and brought to the camp as playthings for the children.’ The animal continued to be eaten, but not so soon; it acted as a beast of burden, but it was accepted almost democratically into the society of man; it became his comrade, and formed with him a community of labour and residence. The miracle of reproduction was brought under control, and two captives were multiplied into a herd. Animal milk released women from prolonged nursing, lowered infantile mortality, and provided a new and dependable food. Population increased, life became more stable and orderly, and the mastery of that timid parvenu, man, became more secure on the earth.

Agriculture

Meanwhile woman was making the greatest economic discovery of all the bounty of the soil. While man hunted she grubbed about the tent or hut for whatever edible things lay ready to her hand on the ground. In Australia it was understood that during the absence of her mate on the chase the wife would dig for roots, pluck fruit and nuts from the trees, and collect honey, mushrooms, seeds and natural grains. Even today, in certain tribes of Australia, the grains that grow spontaneously out of the earth are harvested without any attempt to separate and sow the seed; the Indians of the Sacramento River Valley never advanced beyond this stage.”

We shall never discover when men first noted the function of the seed, and turned collecting into sowing; such beginnings are the mysteries of history, about which we may believe and guess, but cannot know. It is possible that when men began to collect implanted grains, seeds fell along the way between field and camp, and suggested at last the great secret of growth. The Juangs threw the seeds together into the ground, leaving them to find their own way up. The natives of Borneo put the seed into holes which they dug with a pointed stick as they walked the fields. 9 The simplest known culture of the earth is with this stick or “digger.” In Madagascar fifty years ago the traveller could still see women armed with pointed sticks, standing in a row like soldiers, and then, at a signal, digging their sticks into the ground, turning over the soil, throwing in the seed, stamping the earth flat, and passing on to another furrow.

The second stage in complexity was culture with the hoe: the digging stick was tipped with bone, and fitted with a crosspiece to receive the pressure of the foot. When the Conquistadores arrived in Mexico they found that the Aztecs knew no other tool of tillage than the hoe. With the domestication of animals and the forging of metals a heavier implement could be used; the hoe was enlarged into a plough, and the deeper turning of the soil revealed a fertility in the earth that changed the whole career of man. Wild plants were domesticated, new varieties were developed, old varieties were improved.

Finally nature taught man the art of provision, the virtue of prudence, the concept of time. Watching woodpeckers storing acorns in the trees, and the bees storing honey in hives, man conceived perhaps after millenniums of improvident savagery the notion of laying up food for the future.

He found ways of preserving meat by smoking it, salting it, freezing it; better still, he built granaries secure from rain and damp, vermin and thieves, and gathered food into them for the leaner months of the year.

Slowly it became apparent that agriculture could provide a better and steadier food supply than hunting. With that realization man took one of the three steps that led from the beast to civilization speech, agriculture, and writing.

Food Cooking

It is not to be supposed that man passed suddenly from hunting to tillage. Many tribes, like the American Indians, remained permanently becalmed in the transition the men given to the chase, the women tilling the soil. Not only was the change presumably gradual, but it was never complete. Man merely added a new way of securing food to an old way; and for the most part, throughout his history, he has preferred the old food to the new. We picture early man experimenting with a thousand products of the earth to find, at much cost to his inward comfort, which of them could be eaten safely; mingling these more and more with the fruits and nuts, the flesh and fish he was accustomed to, but always yearning for the booty of the chase. Primitive peoples are ravenously fond of meat, even when they live mainly on cereals, vegetables and milk.” If they come upon the carcass of a recently dead animal the result is likely to be a wild debauch. Very often no time is wasted on cooking; the prey is eaten raw, as fast as good teeth can tear and devour it; soon nothing is left but the bones. Whole tribes have been known to feast for a week on a whale thrown up on the shore.” Though the Fuegians can cook, they prefer their meat raw; when they catch a fish they kill it by biting it behind the gills, and then consume it from head to tail without further ritual.”

The uncertainty of the food supply made these nature peoples almost literally omnivorous: shellfish, sea urchins, frogs, toads, snails, mice, rats, spiders, earthworms, scorpions, moths, centipedes, locusts, caterpillars, lizards, snakes, boas, dogs, horses, roots, lice, insects, larvae, the eggs of rep- tiles and birds there is not one of these but was somewhere a delicacy, to primitive men. u Some tribes are expert hunters of ants; others dry insects in the sun and then store them for a feast; others pick the lice out of one another’s hair, and eat them with relish; if a great number of lice can be gathered to make a petite marmite ,they are devoured with shouts of joy, as enemies of the human race.  The menu of the lower hunting tribes hardly differs from that of the higher apes.  ”

The discovery of fire limited this indiscriminate voracity, and cooperated with agriculture to free man from the chase. Cooking broke down the cellulose and starch of a thousand plants indigestible in their raw state, and man turned more and more to cereals and vegetables as his chief reliance. At the same time cooking, by softening tough foods, reduced the need of chewing, and began that decay of the teeth which is one of the insignia of civilization.

Cannibalism

To all the varied articles of diet that we have enumerated, man added the greatest delicacy of all his fellowman. Cannibalism was at one time practically universal; it has been found in nearly all primitive tribes, and among such later peoples as the Irish, the Iberians, the Picts, and the eleventh-century Danes.” Among many tribes human flesh was a staple of trade, and funerals were unknown. In the Upper Congo living men, women and children were bought and sold frankly as articles of food;  on the island of New Britain human meat was sold in shops as butcher’s meat is sold among ourselves; and in some of the Solomon Islands human victims, preferably women, were fattened for a feast like pigs.  The Fuegians ranked women above dogs because, they said, “dogs taste of otter.” In Tahiti an old Polynesian chief explained his diet to Pierre Loti: ‘The white man, when well roasted, tastes like a ripe banana.” The Fijians, however, complained that the flesh of the whites was too salty and tough, and that a European sailor was hardly fit to eat; a Polynesian tasted better.”

As far as  the origin of this practice, there is no surety that the custom arose, as formerly supposed, out of a shortage of other food; if it did, the taste once formed survived the shortage, and became a passionate predilection. Everywhere among nature peoples blood is regarded as a delicacy never with horror; even primitive vegetarians take to it with gusto. Human blood is constantly drunk by tribes otherwise kindly and generous; sometimes as medicine, sometimes as a rite or covenant, often in the belief that it will add to the drinker the vital force of the victim.” No shame was felt in preferring human flesh; primitive man seems to have recognized no distinction in morals between eating men and eating other animals. In Melanesia the chief who could treat his friends to a dish of roast man soared in social esteem. “When I have slain an enemy,” explained a Brazilian philosopher-chief, “it is surely better to eat him than to let him waste. . . . The worst is not to be eaten, but to die; if I am killed it is all the same whether my tribal enemy eats me or not. But I could not think of any game that would taste better than he would. . . . You whites are really too dainty.”"

Doubtless the custom had certain social advantages. It anticipated Dean Swift’s plan for the utilization of superfluous children, and it gave the old an opportunity to die usefully. There is a point of view from which funerals seem an unnecessary extravagance. To Montaigne it appeared more barbarous to torture a man to death under the cover of piety, as was the mode of his time, than to roast and eat him after he was dead. We must respect one another’s delusions.

Someday, perhaps, these chattering quadrupeds, these ingratiating centipedes, these insinuating bacilli, will devour man and all his works, and free the planet from this marauding biped, these mysterious and unnatural weapons, these careless feet!-

Will Durant

REFERANCES:

BRIFFAULT, ROBERT: The Mothers. 3V. New York, 1927.

HAYES, E. C.: Introduction to the Study of Sociology. New York, 1918.

LIPPERT, JULIUS: Evolution of Culture. New York, 1931.

MASON, O. T.: Origins of Invention. New York, 1899.

MULLER-LYER,F.: History of Social Development. New York, 1921.

RATZEL, F.: History of Mankind. 2v. London, 1896.

RENARD, G.: Life and Work in Prehistoric Times. New York, 1929.

SPENCER, HERBERT: Principles of Sociology. 3V. New York, 1910.

SUMNER, W. G. and KELLER, A. G.: Science of Society. 3V. New Haven, 1928.

SUTHERLAND, G. A., ed.: A System of Diet and Dietetics. New York, 1925.

THOMAS, W.I. : Source Book for Social Origins. Boston, 1909.

WESTERMARCK, E.: Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas. 2V. Lon-

don, 1917-24.

WILL DURANT. : Our Oriental Heritage. Simon and Schuster. New York, 1954

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Plato was born 427 B.C., the son of noble parents. According to report, he first studied music, poetry, painting, and philosophy with other masters and became a pupil of Socrates in 407, remaining with him until the latter’s death (399)  when he accompanied the sorrowing Socratics to Megara. He is said to have travelled in Egypt and Asia Minor, to have visited Italy and the Pythagoreans (388), and to have lived for a time at the court of Dionysius I, the tyrant of Syracuse, who became his enemy and sold him into slavery as a prisoner of war; but all of these stories have been denied. He founded a school in the groves of Academus, the Academy, where he taught mathematics and the different branches of philosophy, by means of connected lectures and the dialogue, a method that has been compared to our modern seminars. The story goes that he interrupted his work, on two occasions (367 and 361), by further visits to Syracuse, presumably in the hope of assisting in the realization of his ideal State, and that he was disappointed in this hope. His death occurred in 347 B.C. Plato was a poet and mystic, as well as a philosopher and dialectician combining, in a rare degree, great powers of logical analysis and abstract thought with wonderful poetic imagination and deep mystical feeling. His character was noble ; he was an aristocrat by birth and by temperament, an uncompromising idealist, hostile to everything base and vulgar.

Although Plato did not explicitly divide philosophy into logic, metaphysics (physics), and ethics (practical philosophy, including politics), he makes use of such a division in his works.

Socrates had pointed out that in order to live a rational and good life we needs must have knowledge of the good, and that it is possible to attain such knowledge. He did not present a theory of the method of reaching it, but he practised the art of evolving truth in the form of the dialogue. This method Plato employs with wonderful artistic effect in his writings.

Epistemology

Many have interpreted Plato as stating—even having been the first to write—that knowledge is justified true belief, an influential view that informed future developments in epistemology. Plato argues that knowledge is distinguished from mere true belief by the knower having an “account” of the object of her or his true belief. Plato himself also identified problems with the justified true belief definition in the Theaetetus, concluding that justification (or an “account”) would require knowledge of differentness, meaning that the definition of knowledge is circular .

Later in the Meno, Socrates uses a geometrical example to expound Plato’s view that knowledge in this latter sense is acquired by recollection. Socrates elicits a fact concerning a geometrical construction from a slave boy, who could not have otherwise known the fact (due to the slave boy’s lack of education). The knowledge must be present, Socrates concludes, in an eternal, non-experiential form.

In several of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates floats the idea that knowledge is a matter of recollection, and not of learning, observation, or study. He maintains this view somewhat at his own expense, because in many dialogues, Socrates complains of his forgetfulness. Socrates is often found arguing that knowledge is not empirical, and that it comes from divine insight. In many middle period dialogues, such as the Phaedo, Republic and Phaedrus

Plato is not content, however, with telling how true concepts and judgments may be obtained ; his chief object is to obtain them, to know reality in all its phases, physical, mental, and moral, to comprehend it in its unity and completeness. Indeed, it is plain to him that the knowledge-problem itself cannot be solved without an understanding of the nature of the world. To this end he develops a universal system, in the spirit of the teachings of the great thinker who became his ideal.

We shall, therefore, follow this order, in a general way, in our exposition of his thought, and begin with logic, or dialectics. Plato clearly understood the great importance of the problem of knowledge in the philosophy of his day. A thinker’s conception of the nature and origin of knowledge largely Dialectics ,  determined his attitude toward the engrossing questions of the age. If our propositions are derived from sense-perception and opinion, Plato argued, then the Sophists are quite right in their contention that there can be no genuine knowledge. Sense-perception does not reveal the true reality of things, but gives us mere appearance. Opinion may be true or false; as mere opinion it has no value whatever ; it is not knowledge, but rests on persuasion or feeling ; it does not know whether it is true or false, it cannot justify itself. Genuine knowledge is knowledge based on reasons, knowledge that knows itself as knowledge, knowledge that can authenticate itself. The great majority of men think without knowing why they think as they do, without having any grounds for their views. Ordinary virtue is no better off: it, too, rests on sense-perception and opinion; it is not conscious of its principles. Men do not know why they act as they do; they act instinctively, according to custom or habit, like ants, bees, and wasps; they act selfishly, for pleasure and profit, hence the masses are a great unconscious Sophist. The Sophist is wrong because he confuses appearance and reality, the pleasant and the good.

We must advance from sense-perception and opinion to genuine knowledge. This we cannot do unless we have a desire, or love of truth, the Eros, which is aroused by the contemplation of beautiful ideas: we pass from the contemplation of beauty to the contemplation of truth. The love of truth impels us to dialectics; it impels us to rise beyond sense-perception to the idea, to conceptual knowledge, from the particular to the universal. The dialectical method consists, first, in the compre- hension of scattered particulars in one idea, and second, in the division of the idea into species, that is, in the processes of generalization and classification. In this way alone can there be clear and consistent thinking; we pass from concept to concept, upward and downward, generalizing and particularizing, combining and dividing, synthesizing and analyzing, carving out concepts as a sculptor carves a beautiful figure out of a block of marble. Judgment expresses the relation of concepts to one another, articulates concept with concept, while the syllogism links judgment with judgment, in the process of reasoning. Dialectics is this art of thinking in concepts; concepts, and not sensations or images, constitute the essential object of thought. We cannot, for example, call a man just or unjust unless we have a notion, or concept, of justice, unless we know what justice is; when we know that, we can judge why a man is just or unjust.

But, Plato warns us, the notion or idea does not have its origin in experience; we do not derive it from particular cases by induction. These are merely the means of clearing up, or bringing to consciousness, or making explicit, the notion which already exists obscurely, or implicitly, in the soul. When the notion has been evolved, other notions may be deduced from it; we develop its implications or meanings, and so reach new and absolutely certain knowledge. Man is, therefore, indeed, the measure of all things, of all truth, because there lie imbedded in his soul certain universal principles, notions, concepts, or ideas, which form the starting-point of all his knowledge.

Experience, then, is not the source of our notions; there is nothing in experience, in the world of sense, exactly corresponding to them, to the notions of truth, beauty, goodness, for example; no particular object is absolutely beautiful or good. We approach the sense-world with ideals or standards of the true, the beautiful, and the good. In addition to these notions, Plato came to regard mathematical concepts and certain logical notions, or categories, such as being and non-being, identity and difference, unity and plurality, as inborn, or a priori.

Conceptual knowledge, then, is the only genuine knowledge: that was the teaching of Socrates. Knowledge is the correspondence of thought and reality, or being: it must have an object. Hence, if the idea or notion is to have any value as knowledge, something real must correspond to it, there must, for instance, be pure, absolute beauty as such, realities must exist corresponding to our universal ideas. In other words, such ideas cannot be mere passing thoughts in men’s heads; the truths of mathematics, the ideals of beauty, truth, and goodness, must be real, must have independent existence. If the objects of our ideas were not real, our knowledge would not be knowledge; hence they must be real.

The same result is reached in another way. Truth is the knowledge of reality, of being as such, of that which is. The world perceived by our senses is not the true world; it is a changing, fleeting world, one thing to-day, something else tomorrow (Heraclitus) ; it is mere appearance, illusion. True being is something permanent, unchangeable, eternal . Hence, in order to have genuine knowledge, we must know the permanent and unchangeable essence of things. Thought alone, conceptual thought, can grasp eternal and changeless being ; it knows that which is, that which persists, that which remains one and the same in all change and diversity, the essential forms of things.

Plato found it necessary, in short, to appeal to metaphysics, to his world-view, for the proof of the validity of knowledge. Sense-knowledge, the kind the Sophist believed in, presents to us the passing, changing, particular, and accidental; hence it cannot be genuine knowledge: it does not tell the truth or get at the heart of reality. Conceptual knowledge reveals the universal, changeless, and essential element in things and is, therefore, true knowledge. Philosophy has for its aim knowledge of the universal, unchangeable, and eternal.

Dialogues

Thirty-six dialogues and thirteen letters have traditionally been ascribed to Plato, though modern scholarship doubts the authenticity of at least some of these. No one knows the exact order Plato’s dialogues were written in, nor the extent to which some might have been later revised and rewritten.

Scholars have sought to augment this fairly scant evidence by employing different methods of ordering the remaining dialogues. One such method is that of stylometry, by which various aspects of Plato’s diction in each dialogue are measured against their uses and frequencies in other dialogues. Another, even more popular, way to sort and group the dialogues is what is called “content analysis,” which works by finding and enumerating apparent commonalities or differences in the philosophical style and content of the various dialogues. Neither of these general approaches has commanded unanimous assent among scholars.

The philosophical positions can be found directly endorsed or at least suggested in the early or “Socratic” dialogues include  several moral or ethical views. It includes, rejection of retaliation, or the return of harm for harm or evil for evil .The claim that doing injustice harms one’s soul, the thing that is most precious to one, and, hence, that it is better to suffer injustice than to do it.

Some form of what is called “eudaimonism,” that is, that goodness is to be understood in terms of conduciveness to human happiness, well-being, or flourishing, which may also be understood as “living well,” or “doing well” The view that only virtue is good just by itself; anything else that is good is good only insofar as it serves or is used for or by virtue.The view that there is some kind of unity among the virtues: In some sense, all of the virtues are the same .

Dialectic

This method was introduced probably either late in the middle period or in the transition to the late period, but was increasingly important in the late period. In the early period dialogues, as we have said, the mode of philosophizing was refutative question-and-answer (called the “Socratic method”). Although the middle period dialogues continue to show Socrates asking questions, the questioning in these dialogues becomes much more overtly leading and didactic. In this method, the philosopher collects all of the instances of some generic category that seem to have common characteristics, and then divides them into specific kinds until they cannot be further subdivided.

The role of dialectic in Plato’s thought is contested but there are two main interpretations; a type of reasoning and a method of intuition.  Simon Blackburn adopts the first, saying that Plato’s dialectic is “the process of eliciting the truth by means of questions aimed at opening out what is already implicitly known, or at exposing the contradictions and muddles of an opponent’s position.” Karl Popper, claims that dialectic is the art of intuition for “visualising the divine originals, the Forms or Ideas, of unveiling the Great Mystery behind the common man’s everyday world of appearances.”

The Theory of Forms (Doctrine of Ideas)

The Theory of Forms (or Theory of Ideas) typically refers to the belief that the material world as it seems to us is not the real world, but only an “image” or “copy” of the real world. In some of Plato’s dialogues, this is expressed by Socrates, who spoke of forms in formulating a solution to the problem of universals. The forms, ,are archetypes or abstract representations of the many types of things, and properties we feel and see around us, that can only be perceived by reason .In other words, Socrates was able to recognize two worlds: the apparent world, which constantly changes, and an unchanging and unseen world of forms, which may be the cause of what is apparent.

There are, then, two principles; we should say, mind and matter, of which mind is the true reality, the thing of most worth, that to which everything owes its form and essence, the principle of law and order in the universe; while the other element, matter, is secondary, a dull, irrational, recalcitrant force, the unwilling slave of mind, which somehow, but imperfectly, takes on the impress of mind. Form is the active cause, matter is the cooperative cause. It is both friend and foe, an auxiliary and an obstruction, the ground of physical and moral evil, of change and imperfection.

According to Plato the ideas or forms  are not mere thoughts in the minds of men or even in the mind of God  ; he conceives them as existing in and for themselves, they have the character of substantiality, they are substances ,real or substantial forms: the original, eternal transcendent archetypes of things, existing prior to things and apart from them ,independent of them, uninfluenced by the changes to which they are subject. The particular objects which we perceive are imperfect copies or reflections of these eternal patterns; particulars may come and particulars may go, but the idea or form goes on forever. Men may come and men may go, but the man-type, the human race, goes on forever. There are many objects or copies, but there is always only one idea of a class of things. There are numberless such independent forms, or ideas, nothing being too lowly or insignificant to have its idea: ideas of things, relations, qualities, actions ; ideas of tables and beds and chairs, of colour and tone ; of health, rest, and motion; of smallness, greatness, likeness; of beauty, truth, and goodness.

These ideas or archetypes, though numberless, are not disordered, like chaos; they constitute a well-ordered world, or rational cosmos .The ideal order forms an interrelated, connected organic unity, the ideas being arranged in logical order, and subsumed under the highest idea, the idea of the Good, which is the source of all the rest. This idea is supreme; beyond it there is no other. The truly real and the truly good are identical; the idea of the Good is the logos, the cosmic purpose. Unity, therefore, includes plurality; in the intelligible or ideal world there is no unity without plurality, and no plurality without unity.. The universe is conceived by Plato as a logical system of ideas: it forms an organic spiritual unity, governed by a universal purpose, the idea of the Good, and is, therefore, a rational moral whole. Its meaning cannot be grasped by the senses, which perceive only its imperfect and fleeting reflections and never rise to a vision of the perfect and abiding whole. It is the business of philosophy to understand its inner order and connection, to conceive its essence by logical thought.

The principle, of the Platonic ” matter,” forms the basis of the phenomenal world; as such it is the raw material upon which the forms are somehow impressed. It is perishable and unreal, imperfect, non-being whatever reality, form, or beauty the perceived world has, it owes to ideas. Some interpreters of Plato conceive this Platonic ‘ ‘ matter ‘ ‘ as space ; others as a formless, space-filling mass. Plato needs something besides the idea to account for our world of sense, or nature, which is not a mere illusion of the senses, but an order of lower rank than the changeless ideal realm. This substratum, untouched by the ideal principle, must be conceived as devoid of all qualities, formless, indefinable, and imperceptible. Nature owes its existence to the influence of the ideal world on non-being or matter: as a ray of light, passed through a prism, is broken into many rays, so the idea is broken into many objects by matter. The form- less something is non-being, not in the sense of being non-existent, but in the sense of having a lower order of existence: the term non-being expresses a judgment of value. The sensible world partakes of a measure of reality or being, in so far as it takes on form. Plato does not define more precisely the nature of the relation between the two realms ; but it is plain that the ideas are somehow responsible for all the reality things possess: they owe their being to the presence of ideas, to the participation of the latter in them. At the same time, non-being, the sub- stratum, is responsible for the diversity and imperfection of the many different objects bearing the same name.

Since the world of ideas is identical with the Good, the non-ideal must be evil. If we

had to label this part of the system, we should call it dualism. It is idealistic, or spiritualistic, in so far as it makes mind the paramount principle of things and matter a secondary principle. In any case, it is thoroughly anti-materialistic and anti- mechanistic.

In the Timaeus, Plato locates the parts of the soul within the human body: Reason is located in the head, spirit in the top third of the torso, and the appetite in the middle third of the torso, down to the navel.

Plato advocates a belief in the immortality of the soul, In the early transitional dialogue, the Meno, Plato has Socrates introduce the Orphic and Pythagorean idea that souls are immortal and existed before our births. All knowledge, he explains, is actually recollected from this prior existence. In perhaps the most famous passage in this dialogue, Socrates elicits recollection about geometry from one of Meno’s slaves .Socrates’ apparent interest in, and fairly sophisticated knowledge of, mathematics appears wholly new in this dialogue.

The theory of knowledge has shown us that there are three kinds of knowledge, sense-perception, opinion, and genuine knowledge or Science. This division influences Plato’s psychology. In sensation  and opinion the soul is dependent on the body; in so far as it beholds the pure world of ideas, it is pure reason. The bodily part is, therefore, an impediment to knowledge, from which the soul must free itself in order to behold truth in its purity. The copies of the pure ideas, as they exist in the phenomenal world, merely incite the rational soul to think; sensation provokes ideas, it does not produce them. Hence, the soul must somehow possess ideas prior to its contact with the world of experience. Plato teaches that the soul has viewed such ideas before, but has forgotten them ; the imperfect copies of ideas in the world of sense bring back its past, remind it, as it were, of what it has seen before: all knowledge is reminiscence and all learning a reawakening. Hence, the soul must have existed before its union with a body.

In the early dialogues, Plato’s Socrates is an intellectualist—that is, he claims that people always act in the way they believe is best for them .Hence, all wrongdoing reflects some cognitive error. But in the middle period, Plato conceives of the soul as having three parts:

1.            a rational part (the part that loves truth, which should rule over the other parts of the soul through the use of reason),

2.            a spirited part (which loves honour and victory), and

3.            an appetitive part (which desires food, drink, and sex),

Justice will be that condition of the soul in which each of these three parts “does its own work,” and does not interfere in the workings of the other parts . When these three inward principles are in tune, each doing its proper work, the man is just. The just and honorable course is that which a man pursues in this frame of mind ; he has the ethical attitude when he is wise and brave and temperate, when he has harmonized his soul. Such a man would not repudiate a deposit, commit sacrilege or theft, be false to friends, be a traitor to his country, or commit similar misdeeds.

It seems clear from the way Plato describes what can go wrong in a soul, however, that in this new picture of moral psychology, the appetitive part of the soul can simply overrule reason’s judgments. One may suffer, in this account of psychology, from what is called akrasia or “moral weakness”—in which one finds oneself doing something that one actually believes is not the right thing to do .

The human soul, then, is, in part, pure reason , and this rational part is its characteristic phase. It enters a body, and there is added to it a mortal and irrational part, which fits it for existence in the sense-world.The union with the body is a hindrance to the intellectual aspirations of the soul, to knowledge ; the presence of impulses and desires is a hindrance to the ethical supremacy of reason, which reason itself must seek to overcome, as Plato shows in his ethics. A soul that has contemplated the pure eternal ideas must, in part at least, be like these ideas, pure and eternal; for only like can know like. The doctrine of reminiscence proves the pre-existence and continued existence of the soul. Other proofs of immortality are: the simplicity of the soul: whatever is simple cannot be decomposed ; and its life or spontaneity : such a principle of activity cannot be destroyed; life cannot become death .

The pure rational soul, which was created by the Demiurge, once inhabited a star. But it became possessed with a desire for the world of sense and was in closed in a material body as in a prison. In case it succeeds in overcoming the lower side of its nature, it will return to its star, otherwise it will sink lower and lower, passing through the bodies of different animals (transmigration of souls). If the soul had resisted desire in its celestial life, it would have continued to occupy itself, in a transcendent existence, with the contemplation of ideas. As it is, it is condemned to pass through a stage of purification.

An important phase of Plato’s psychology is the doctrine of the “Eros. Just as sense-perception arouses in the soul the remembrance of pure ideas, or Truth, so the perception of sensuous beauty, which arouses sense-love, also arouses in the soul the memory of ideal Beauty contemplated in its former existence. This recollection arouses yearning for the higher life, the world of pure ideas. Sensuous love and the yearning for the beautiful and the good are one and the same impulse ; in yearning for eternal values, the soul yearns for immortality. The sensuous impulse seeks the continued existence of the species; the higher forms of the impulse are the craving for fame, the impulse to create science, art, and human institutions. These impulses are another evidence of the immortality of the soul, for what the soul desires must be attainable.

The universe is, at bottom, a rational universe: a spiritual system. Objects of sense, the material phenomena around us, are mere fleeting shadows of eternal and never-changing ideas; they cannot endure and have no worth. Only that which endures is real and has value: reason alone has absolute worth and is the highest good. Hence, the rational part of man is the true part, and his ideal must be to cultivate reason, the immortal side of his soul. The body and the senses are not the true part; indeed, the body is the prison-house of the soul, a fetter, deliverance from which is the final goal of the spirit. ” There- fore we ought to fly away from earth as quickly as we can, and to fly away is to become like God.” The release of the soul from the body and the contemplation of the beautiful world of ideas, that is the ultimate end of life.

In the meanwhile the soul, with its reason, its spirited part, and its appetites, is inclosed in its dungeon and has its problems to solve. The rational part is wise and has to exercise fore- thought on behalf of the entire soul : hence, its essential function is to command. The Individual is wise in whom reason rules over the other inipulses of the soul, knowing what is advantageous for the wjiole inner economy and for each member of it.

The ideal, therefore, is a well-ordered soul, one in which the higher functions rule the lower, one which exercises the virtues of wisdom ,courage . self-control ,and justice . A life of reason, which means a life of virtue, is the highest good. Happiness attends such a life ; the just man is after all the happy man. Pleasure, however, is not an end in itself, it is not the highest factor in the life of the soul, but the lowest.

The God/ Demiurge

Plato attempts to explain the origin of nature in his Timaus, a work that reminds one of the early Pre-Socratic philosophies. Like a human artist or workman, the Demiurge or Creator fashions the world after the pattern of the ideal world; guided by the idea of the Good, he forms as perfect a universe as it is possible for him to form, hampered, as he is, by the principle of matter.

The Demiurge is not really a creator, but an architect ; the two principles, mind and matter, are already in existence: a being is needed who will bring them together. In order to realize his purpose, he endows the world, which is composed of the four material elements, earth, air, fire, water, with soul and life. This world-soul he compounds of the indivisible and divisible, of identity and change, of mind and matter (the four elements), in order that it may know the ideal and perceive the corporeal. It has its own original motion, which is the cause of all motion; in moving itself it also moves bodies; it is diffused throughout the world and is the cause of the beauty, order, and harmony in the world: this is the image of God, a visible God. The world-soul is the intermediary between the world of ideas and the world of phenomena. It is the cause of all law, mathematical relations, harmony, order, uniformity, life, mind, and knowledge: it moves according to fixed laws of its nature, causing the distribution of matter in the heavenly spheres, as well as their motion. Besides the world-soul, the Creator created souls or gods for the planets (which he arranged according to the Pythagorean system of harmony) and rational human souls, leaving it to the lower gods to create animals and the irrational part of the human soul. Everything has been made for man, plants to nourish him, and animal-bodies to serve as habitations for fallen souls.

We have, therefore, in Plato’s cosmology many gods, to none of whom he definitely ascribes personality, perhaps because he took this for granted, conceiving them in analogy with the human soul: the Idea of the Good, the total world of ideas, the Demiurge, the world-soul, the planetary souls, and the gods of the popular religion.

This cosmology is a teleological world-view in mythical garb, an attempt to explain reality as a purposeful, well-ordered cosmos, the work of an intelligence, guided by reason and an ethical purpose. Purposes or final causes are the real causes of the world, the physical causes are merely cooperating causes : whatever is good and rational and purposeful in the universe is due to reason ; whatever is evil, irrational, and purposeless is due to mechanical causes.

In these dialogues, we also find Socrates represented as holding certain religious beliefs, such as:

The gods are completely wise and good .Ever since his childhood Socrates has experienced a certain “divine something” which consists in a “voice” ,or “sign” that opposes him when he is about to do something wrong

Various forms of divination can allow human beings to come to recognize the will of the gods .Poets and rhapsodies are able to write and do the wonderful things they write and do, not from knowledge or expertise, but from some kind of divine inspiration. The same can be said of diviners and seers, although they do seem to have some kind of expertise—perhaps only some technique by which to put them in a state of appropriate receptivity to the divine

No one really knows what happens after death, but it is reasonable to think that death is not an evil; there may be an afterlife, in which the souls of the good are rewarded, and the souls of the wicked are punished

The question of greatest moment to Socrates was the question of the good. He did not offer a complete philosophy of life in systematic form, but laid the foundations for such a structure. Plato takes up the problem and seeks to solve it in the light of his comprehensive world-view. As we said before, the question of the meaning and worth of life and human institutions he regards as involved in the larger question of the nature and meaning of the world and of man. His ethics, like his theory of knowledge, is based on his meta- physics.

Theory of the State

Plato’s Republic is an ideal of a perfect state, the dream of a kingdom of God on earth. It is frequently spoken of as Utopian.

Plato’s theory of the State, which is given in the Republic, is based on his ethics. Since virtue is the highest good, and’ the individual cannot attain the good in isolation, Politics but only in society, the mission of the State is to realize virtue and happiness ; the purpose of its constitution and its laws is to bring about conditions which will enable as many men as possible to become good; that is, to secure the general welfare. Social life is a means to the perfection of individuals, not an end in itself. It is true, the individual must subordinate his private interests to the public welfare, but that is only because his own true good is bound up with the social weal. If all men were rational and virtuous, there would be no need of laws and a State: a completely virtuous man is governed by reason, and not by external law. Few, however, are perfect; and laws are necessary to the realization of our true good. The State owes its origin to necessity.

Plato’s philosophical views had many societal implications, especially on the idea of an ideal state or government. Plato, through the words of Socrates, asserts that societies have a tripartite class structure corresponding to the appetite/spirit/reason structure of the individual soul. The appetite/spirit/reason are analogous to the castes of society.[49]

•             Productive (Workers) — the labourers, carpenters, plumbers, masons, merchants, farmers, ranchers, etc. These correspond to the “appetite” part of the soul.

•             Protective (Warriors or Guardians) — those who are adventurous, strong and brave; in the armed forces. These correspond to the “spirit” part of the soul.

•             Governing (Rulers or Philosopher Kings) — those who are intelligent, rational, self-controlled, in love with wisdom, well suited to make decisions for the community. These correspond to the “reason” part of the soul and are very few.

The allegory of the cave (often said by scholars to represent Plato’s own epistemology and metaphysics) is intimately connected to his political ideology (often said to also be Plato’s own), that only people who have climbed out of the cave and cast their eyes on a vision of goodness are fit to rule. Socrates claims that the enlightened men of society must be forced from their divine contemplations and be compelled to run the city according to their lofty insights. Thus is born the idea of the “philosopher-king”, the wise person who accepts the power thrust upon him by the people who are wise enough to choose a good master. This is the main thesis of Socrates in the Republic, that the most wisdom the masses can muster is the wise choice of a ruler.

Plato describes these “philosopher kings” as “those who love the sight of truth” (Republic 475c) and supports the idea with the analogy of a captain and his ship or a doctor and his medicine. According to him, sailing and health are not things that everyone is qualified to practice by nature. A large part of the Republic then addresses how the educational system should be set up to produce these philosopher kings.

The State should be organized like the universe at large and the individual virtuous soul; that is, reason should rule in it. There are as many classes in society as there are functions of the soul, and the relations of these classes to each other should correspond to those obtaining in a healthy soul. Those who have received philosophical training represent reason and ought to be the ruling class; the warrior class represent the spirited element or will : their task is defense ; the agriculturists, and merchants represent the lower appetites, and have as function the production of material goods. Justice is reality in a State in which each class, the industrial, military, guardian, does its own work and sticks to its own business. State is temperate and brave and wise in consequence of certain affections and conditions of these same classes.

The ideal society forms a complete unity, one large family; hence, Plato opposes private property and monogamous marriage, and recommends, for the two upper castes (who are to be supported by the workers), communism and the common possession of wives and children. Among his other recommendations are supervision of marriages and births (eugenics), exposure of weak children, compulsory state education, education of women for war and government, censorship of works of art and literature.

The State is an educational institution, the instrument of civilization, and as such it must have its foundation in the highest kind of knowledge attainable, that is, philosophy. ” Unless it happen either that philosophers acquire the kingly power in states, or that those who are now called kings and potentates be imbued with a sufficient measure of genuine philosophy, that is to say, unless political power and philosophy be united in the same person . . . there will be no deliverance for cities nor  for the human race.” The State shall undertake the education of the children (of the higher classes), following a definite plan of instruction, which shall be the same for the first twenty years of life and apply to both sexes, and shall include: bodily exercises (in infancy) ; the narration of myths with a view to ethical culture; gymnastics, which develops not only the body but the will; reading and writing; poetry and music, which arouse the sense of beauty, harmony, and proportion and encourage philosophical thought; mathematics, which tends to draw the mind from the sensuous to the real; and military exercises. A selection of the choice characters shall be made from the ranks of the young men at twenty, and these shall study the different subjects of their childhood in their interrelations and learn to survey them as a whole. Those who, at the age of thirty, show the greatest ability in these fields, in military affairs, and other branches of discipline will study dialectics for five years, after which they will be put to the test in holding military commands and secondary civic offices. At the age of fifty those who have shown themselves worthy will devote them- selves to the study of philosophy until their turn comes to administer the higher offices for their country’s sake.

In his later work, the Laws, Plato greatly modifies his political theory. A good State should have, besides reason or insight, freedom and friendship. All citizens should be free and have a share in the government ; they are to be landowners, while all trade and commerce should be given over to serfs and foreigners. The family is restored to its natural position. Knowledge is not everything : there are other motives of virtuous conduct, e.g., pleasure and friendship, pain and hate. Virtue, however, remains the ideal, and the education of the moral will the goal.

Wherein it concerns states and rulers, Plato has made interesting arguments. For instance he asks which is better—a bad democracy or a country reigned by a tyrant. He argues that it is better to be ruled by a bad tyrant, than be a bad democracy (since here all the people are now responsible for such actions, rather than one individual committing many bad deeds.) This is emphasised within the Republic as Plato describes the event of mutiny on board a ship. Plato suggests the ships crew to be in line with the democratic rule of many and the captain, although inhibited through ailments, the tyrant. Plato’s description of this event is parallel to that of democracy within the state and the inherent problems that arise.

According to Plato, a state made up of different kinds of souls will, overall, decline from an aristocracy (rule by the best) to a timocracy (rule by the honorable), then to an oligarchy (rule by the few), then to a democracy(rule by the people), and finally to tyranny (rule by one person, rule by a tyrant). Aristocracy is the form of government (politeia) advocated in Plato’s Republic. This regime is ruled by a philosopher king, and thus is grounded on wisdom and reason. The aristocratic state, and the man whose nature corresponds to it, are the objects of Plato’s analyses throughout much of the Republic, as opposed to the other four types of states/men, who are discussed later in his work.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

Plato

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

In 1854, French philosopher Auguste Comte, in his System of Positive Polity: or System of Sociology, gave the following so called “hierarchy of the sciences”, according to which they all are, at bottom, dependent on astronomy.

The second pillar of positive philosophy, the law of the classification of the sciences, has withstood the test of time much better than the law of the three stages. Of the various classifications that have been proposed, it is still the most popular today. This classification, too, structures the Course, which examines each of the six fundamental sciences—mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology—in turn. It provides a way to do justice to the diversity of the sciences without thereby losing sight of their unity. This classification also makes Comte the founder of the philosophy of science in the modern sense. Comte’s classification is meant not to restore a chimerical unity, but to avoid the fragmentation of knowledge.

Existence of “Classification of Sciences” – Prior to Comte:

The law of classification of the sciences also has a historical aspect . From Plato to Kant, reflection on science had always occupied a central place in philosophy, but the sciences had to be sufficiently developed for their diversity to manifest itself it gives us the order in which the sciences develop. For example, astronomy requires mathematics, and chemistry requires physics. Each science thus rests upon the one that precedes it. As Comte puts it, the higher depends on the lower.

The idea of the “classification of sciences” did not originate with Comte. It did exist prior to Comte. From times immemorial thinkers have been trying to classify knowledge on some basis. The early Greek thinkers undertook to classify all knowledge under three headings: (1) physics, (2) ethics, and (3) politics. Later on, Bacon made the classification on the basis of the faculties of man namely, (i) memory, (ii) imagination, and (iii) reason. The science based upon memory is history, the science based upon imagination is poetry, and the knowledge based upon reason is physics, chemistry, etc. Comtean classification of sciences has its own specialties among which the following may be noted.

Comte’s theory of the hierarchy of the sciences

Comte’s second best-known theory, that of the hierarchy of the sciences, is intimately connected with the Law of Three Stages. Just as mankind progresses only through determinant stages, each successive stage building on the accomplishments of its predecessors, so scientific knowledge passes through similar stages of development. But different sciences progressat different rates. “Any kind of knowledge reaches the positive stage early in proportion to its generality, simplicity, and independence of other departments.” Hence astronomy, the most general and simple of all natural sciences, develops first. In time, it is followed by physics,chemistry, biology, and finally, sociology. Each science in this series depends for its emergence on the prior developments of its predecessors in a hierarchy marked by the law of increasing complexity and decreasing generality.

The social sciences, the most complex and the most dependent for their emergence on the development of all the others, are the “highest” in the hierarchy. “Social science offers the attributes of a completion of the positive method. All the others . . . are preparatory to it. Here alone can the general sense of natural law be decisively developed, by eliminating forever arbitrary wills and chimerical entities, in the most difficult case of all.

Although sociology has special methodological characteristics that distinguish it from its predecessors in the hierarchy, it is also dependent upon them. It is especially dependent on biology, the science that stands nearest to it in the hierarchy. What distinguishes biology from all the other natural sciences is its holistic character. Unlike physics and chemistry, which proceed by isolating elements, biology proceeds from the study of organic wholes. And it is this emphasis on organic or organismic unity that sociology has in common with biology. “There can be no scientific study of society either in its conditions or its movements, if it is separated into portions, and its divisions in its conditions or its movements, if it is separated into portions, and its divisions are studied apart.” The only proper approach in sociology consists in”viewing each element in the light of the whole system. . . . In the inorganic sciences, the elements are much better known to us than the whole which they constitute: so that in that case we must proceed from the simple to the compound. But the reverse method is necessary in the study of Man and Society; Man and Society as a whole being better known to us, and more accessible subjects of study, than the parts which constitute them.”

The conception of the hierarchy of the sciences from this point of view implies, at the outset, the admission, that the systematic study of man is logically and scientifically subordinate to that of Humanity, the latter alone unveiling to us the real laws of the intelligence and activity. Paramount as the theory of our emotionalnature, studied in itself, must ultimately be, without this preliminary step it would have no consistence. Morals thus objectively made dependent on Sociology, the next step is easy and similar; objectively Sociology becomes dependent on Biology, as our cerebral existence evidently rests on our purely bodily life. These two steps carry us on to the conception of Chemistry as the normal basis of Biology, since we allow that vitality depends on the general laws of the combination of matter. Chemistry again in its turn is objectively subordinate to Physics, by virtue of the influence which the universal properties of matter must always exercise on the specific qualities of the different substances. Similarly Physics become subordinate to Astronomy when we recognise the fact that the existence of our terrestrial environment is carried on in perpetual subjection to the conditions of our planet as one of the heavenly bodies. Lastly, Astronomy is subordinated to Mathematics by virtue of the evident dependence of the geometrical and mechanical phenomena of the heavens on the universal laws of number, extension, and motion.” Astronomy and biology are, by their nature, the two principal branches of natural philosophy. They, the complement of each other, include the general system of our fundamental conceptions in their rational harmony.

Comte maintained that the growth of several established sciences showed that not only human thought in general had passed through the three stages, but also that particular subjects had developed in the same way. Therefore, it was possible to arrange the sciences systematically with:

1. The order of their historical emergence and development,

2. The order of their dependence upon each other.

3. Their decreasing degree of generality and the increasing degree of complexity of their subject matter.

Comte‟s arrangement of sciences on this basis was : Mathematics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Sociology.

Mathematics was the first science as it was the most general of all sciences, while he regarded sociology as the most complex of all sciences.

Comte’s Advocacy of Sociology

Sociology was the new science of society with a distinctive subject matter. The subject matter of sociology was the social system‟. A society was a system of interconnected parts. Individuals could be understood only within the context of societies of which they were members, „Sociology‟, wrote Comte “consists in the investigation of the action and reaction of the different parts of the social system. Sociology, was then, the scientific study of the nature and the different forms of societies, of social system.

Comte’s Positive Philosophy can be viewed as a long and elaborate advocacy for a science of society. Comte was laying a philosophical foundation and justification for all science and then using this foundation as a means for supporting sociology as a true science. His advocacy took two related forms:

(1) to view sociology as the inevitable product of the law of the three stages and

(2) to view sociology as the “queen science,” standing at the top of a hierarchy of sciences.

These two interrelated forms of advocacy helped legitimate sociology in the intellectual world and should, therefore, be examined briefly. Comte saw all idea systems as passing through the theological and metaphysical stages and then moving into the final, positivistic, stage.

In Comte’s view, then, astronomy was the first science to reach the positivistic stage, then came physics, next came chemistry, and after these three had reached the positivistic (scientific) stage, thought about organic phenomena could become more positivistic. The first organic science to move from the metaphysical to the positivistic stage was biology, or physiology. Once biology became a positivistic doctrine, sociology could move away from the metaphysical speculations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries toward a positivistic mode of thought.

Sociology has been the last to emerge, Comte argued, because it is the most complex and because it has had to wait for the other basic sciences to reach the positivistic stage. For the time, this argument represented a brilliant advocacy for a separate science of society, while it justified the lack of scientific rigor in social thought when compared with the other sciences. Moreover, though dependent on, and derivative of, evolutionary advances in the other sciences, sociology will study phenomena that distinguish it from the lower inorganic phenomena as well as from the higher organic science of biology. Although it is an organic science, sociology will be independent and study phenomena that “exhibit, in even a higher degree, the complexity, specialization, and personality which distinguish the higher phenomena of the individual life.”

The hierarchy, in descending order, is sociology, biology, chemistry, physics, and astronomy. Comte added mathematics at the bottom because all sciences are ultimately built from mathematical reasoning. as the other highly respected sciences, and it placed sociology in a highly favorable spot (at the top of a hierarchy) in relation to the other “positive sciences.” If sociology could be viewed as the culmination of a long evolutionary process and as the culmination of the positive sciences, its legitimacy could not be questioned.

Sociology has a double status. It is not just one science among the others, as though there is the science of society just as there is a science of living beings. Rather, sociology is the science that comes after all the others; and as the final science, it must assume the task of coordinating the development of the whole of knowledge. With sociology, positivity takes possession of the last domain that had heretofore escaped it and had been considered forever inaccessible to it. Many people thought that social phenomena are so complex that there can be no science of them. On the contrary, according to Comte, this distinction, introduced by the Greeks, is abolished by the existence of sociology, and the unity that was lost with the birth of metaphysics restored .

It goes without saying that Comte’s idea of sociology was very different from the current one. To ensure the positivity of their discipline, sociologists have been quick to renounce its coordinating function, also known as encyclopedic or architectonic function, which characterizes philosophy. As a consequence, no one can become a sociologist without having had a solid encyclopedic education, one that has no place for economics or social mathematics, but, on the contrary, emphasizes biology, the first science that deals with organized beings.

Special Features of Comtean Classification of Sciences

The main aim of the classification of knowledge by Comte was to prepare the background and the basis for the study of “sociology”, a new science founded by him.On the basis of this principle he also determined the methodology of sociology. It also helped him in establishing the relation between sociology and other sciences. It tried to establish the fact that by discovering some general principles, it is possible to establish relationship among various sciences.

Linkage with the “Law of Three Stages”:

Comtean classification of sciences, as it is already stated, is linked with his famous contribution to the social thought namely, the law of three stages. The logic of the link is that – as with individuals and societies, so with the sciences themselves – they all pass through the same stages.

Classification Based on the Principle of Increasing Dependence:

Comte chose “the order of increasing dependence” as his principle of classifying knowledge. Comte “arranged the sciences so that each category may be grounded on the principal laws of the preceding category, serve as a basis for the next ensuing category. The order, hence, is one of increasing complexity and decreasing generality.

This principle could be stated in simple words in this way: The facts pertaining to different sciences differ in complexity. Some facts are simple while others are complex. The complex facts being dependent on simple facts are, general and are present everywhere.

The sciences based upon complex sciences are, in turn, dependent upon simple sciences. Thus, each science is, in some measure, dependent upon some other science and by itself forms a basis of some other science. On this basis Comte presented a serial order of sciences.

Comte was of the opinion that the more complex sciences in the course of their development will ultimately attain the positive stage. He thus stated: “Any kind of knowledge reaches the positive stage early in proportion to its generality, simplicity and independence of other departments.” “Hence astronomy, the most general and simple of all natural sciences, develops first. In time, it is followed by physics, chemistry, biology, and finally sociology.

Each science in this series depends for its emergence on the prior developments of its predecessors in a hierarchy marked by the law of increasing complexity and decreasing generality.

Classification of Sciences Begins With Mathematics:

Comte considers mathematics the basic tool of the mind. “With mathematics as its chief tool, the mind of man can go anywhere in its thinking. Mathematics is the most powerful instrument which the mind may use in the investigation of natural laws: “Education that is based on any other method is faulty, inexact, and unreliable. It is only through mathematics that we can understand sciences.”

According to Comte, mathematics occupies the first place in the hierarchy of the sciences. Mathematics, in the Comtean scheme, is not a constituent member of the group of sciences. It is the basis of them all. It is the oldest and most perfect of all the sciences. He says that mathematics is “the science.” It is the science that measures precisely the relations between objects and ideas.

The Design of the Classification of Sciences:

In the Comtean design of the hierarchy of sciences mathematics occupies the lowest rung and the topmost, rung is occupied by sociology. The hierarchy of this classification is as follows: (1) Mathematics, (2) Astronomy, (3) Physics, (4) Chemistry, (5) Biology, and (6) Sociology or Social Physics. This classification makes it clear that the simplest and the least dependent science are at the bottom and the most complex and dependent of the sciences is at the top of the hierarchy.

Basis of Hierarchy of the Sciences Hierarchy of Sciences:

According to this view of the sciences, first proposed by Comte, the sciences can be arranged in ascending order of complexity, with sciences higher in the hierarchy dependent, but not only dependent, on those below. Thus, sociology makes assumptions about the physical and biological world, but at the same time also involves an “emergent” level of analysis different from and not reducible to those below.

Classification of Sciences as Inorganic and Organic:

Comte stated that the classification of knowledge could be done in another manner by making use of mathematics as the tool. Thus all natural phenomena could be categorised into two grand divisions: inorganic and organic.

Comparatively speaking, inorganic sciences [for example, astronomy, physics, chemistry] are simpler and clearer. Organic sciences such as biology are more complex. “It involves the study of all life and the general laws pertaining to the individual units of life.

Sociology at the Top of the Hierarchy:

In the Comtean scheme, social sciences are at the apex of the hierarchy for they enjoy “all the resources of the anterior sciences.” Social sciences are the most complex and the most dependent for their emergence on the development of all the other sciences. Social sciences offer “the attributes of a completion of the positive method: All others are preparatory to it.

Hence, they occupy the highest place in the hierarchy.” Social physics or sociology according to Comte is the last and the greatest of the sciences. Although sociology has special methodological characteristics that distinguish it from its predecessors in the hierarchy, it is dependent on them too.

The Emphasis on Holistic Approach:

The holistic approach is the natural direction of the progress of sciences. All sciences progress towards the positive method. Sociology is the crowning glory of all sciences. The holistic approach starts with biology and culminates with sociology. Biological approach is virtually the holistic approach and it proceeds from the study of the organic wholes.

According to Comte, inorganic sciences proceed from simple to compound and the organic sciences move the reverse way from compound to simple. Hence, the inorganic sciences pursue what is known as individualistic approach whereas organic sciences [including sociology] stress upon the importance of the “holistic approach.”

Emphasis on the Organic Unity:

Comte stressed on the organic unity of society. Comte has thus stated: “In the organic sciences, the elements are much better known to us than the whole which they constitute; so that in that case we must proceed from the simple to the compound. But the reverse method is necessary in the study of man and society….. Just as biology cannot explain an organ or a function apart from the organism as a whole, sociology cannot explain social phenomena without reference to the total social context.

Critical Evaluation

Comte successfully established through his classification of sciences that sociology is also a positive science. Comte found an appropriate place for sociology and gave that discipline its name He also stressed that sociology must be a theoretical discipline. “The conversion of sociology into a positive science completed the system of positive philosophy thus marking the onset of the positive stage of development of the human mind and human society. It meant, in Comte’s view, the real “positive revolution, the victory of science over the scholasticism of past epochs.

Comte’s “idea of organic unity or the primacy of the system over element, has important theoretical implications. Comte has repeatedly asserted that one element of social entity could be understood only in terms of the entity as a whole. Comte’s assertion of the principle of increasing dependence in the classification of sciences has today culminated in what is being called “interdisciplinary approach.” This approach is quite popular at the academic level.

In this regard Bogardus writes: “Comte urged that no science could be effectually studied without competent knowledge concerning the sciences of which it depends. It is necessary not only to have a general knowledge of all the sciences but to study each of them in order this is Comte’s dictum to the student of sociology. Comte insisted that one general science could not develop beyond a given point until the preceding has passed a given stage.

 

 

 

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Mrs Sudha Rani Maheshwari, M.Sc (Zoology), B.Ed.

Former Principal. A.K.P.I.College, Roorkee, India

“Somebody once asked how one could fit together various traditions that represented the Buddha’s teaching. One can think of Buddha’s Dharma as a wonderful seed planted in the earth, out of which has blossomed a tree with deep roots, great branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits.

Sometimes a person might point to the roots and say that it is just here that we can find the real Dharma, while someone else might say, “Oh no it is in the flowers,” and still another will say that it is to be found in the fruit. But, of course, these different parts cannot really be separated; the roots sustain the tree in their way, and the fruit depends on the roots and leaves and branches as well.” Lama Govinda

IN no other country is religion so powerful, or so important, as in India. If the Hindus have permitted alien governments to be set over them again and again it is partly because they did not care much who ruled or exploited them natives or foreigners; the crucial matter was religion, not politics; the soul, not the body; endless later lives rather than this passing one. When Ashoka became a saint, and Akbar almost adopted Hinduism, the power of religion was revealed over even the strongest men. In our century it is a saint, rather than a statesman, who for the first time in history has unified all India.

Two hundred years after Ashoka’s death Buddhism reached the peak of its curve in India. The period of Buddhist growth from Ashoka to Harsha was in many ways the climax of Indian religion, education and art.

It is important to understand that Buddhism was never wiped off from India on a single day and in any single event. Like the causal web of adisease, it was a multi-factorial causation. The process of decline and subsequent disappearance was gradual and lasted for many centuries.

“Initiated in India by the Sakyamuni Buddha, Buddhism has now become a world religion and at present, the Buddhist population is the third largest religious community in the world. Buddhism lasted over a thousand years in India, the land of its origin. But the supreme irony of the history of Indian Buddhism still remains with the unexplained question regarding what led to the disappearance of Buddhism from India. Many scholars of Indian history and religion are devoted to unravelling this puzzle. Due to the lack of historical and archeological evidence, the debate continues for centuries and there is no absolute consensus on this matter till date.

What is not disputed is the gradual decline of Buddhism in India, as the testimony of the Chinese traveler, traveling in India in the early years of the 7^th century, witnessed something quite different.    In Prayag, , Hsuan Tsang encountered mainly heretics, or non-Buddhists, but that is not surprising given the importance of Prayag as a pilgrimage site for Brahmins.  But, even in Sravasti, the capital city of the Lichhavis, 200 AD, established their capital in Pasupathinath, and in a long and glorious period of reign extending through the early part of the ninth century endowed a large number of both Hindu and Buddhist monuments and monasteries, Hsuan Tsang witnessed a much greater number of “Hindus” than Buddhists.  Kusinagar, where the Buddha had gone into mahaparinirvana, was in a rather dilapidated state and Hsuan Tsang found few Buddhists.  In Varanasi, to be sure, Hsuan Tsang found some 3000 Bhikkus or Buddhist monks, but they were outshadowed by more than 10,000 non-Buddhists.    There is scarcely any question that Hsuan Tsang arrived in India at a time when Buddhism was entering into a state of precipitous decline.   But even as Buddhism went into decline, it is remarkable that the great seat of Buddhist learning, Nalanda, continued to flourish, retaining its importance until the Muslim invasions of the second millennium.

Split into sects.

But the Buddhism that prevailed was not that of Buddha; we might better describe it as that of his rebellious disciple Subhadda, who, on hearing of the Master’s death, said to the monks: “Enough, sirs! Weep not, neither lament! We are well rid of the great Samana. We used to be annoyed by being told, ‘This beseems you, this beseems you not.’ But now we shall be able to do whatever we like; and what we do not like, that we shall not have to do!”  The first thing they did with their freedom was to split into sects. Within two centuries of Buddha’s death eighteen varieties of Buddhistic. doctrine had divided the Master’s heritage. The Buddhists of south India and Ceylon held fast for a time to the simpler and purer creed of the Founder, which came to be called Hinayana, or the “Lesser Vehicle”: The term Hinayana (smaller Vehicle) appeared only much later, around the first century CE, when teachings of a different nature appeared which were called Mahayana (greater Vehicle). Hinayana encompasses eighteen schools. The most important for our purposes are Sarvastivada and Theravada. Theravada is the one extant today in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Sarvastivada was widespread in Northern India when the Tibetans started to travel there and Buddhism began to be transplanted to Tibet.  They worshiped Buddha as a great teacher, but not as a god, and their Scriptures were the Pali texts of the more ancient faith. But throughout northern India, Tibet, Mongolia, China and Japan the Buddhism that prevailed was the Mahayana, or the “Greater Vehicle,” defined and propo gated by Kanishka’s Council; The Mahayana appears to have developed between the 1st Century BC to the 1st Century CE. About the 2nd Century CE Mahayana became clearly defined. Master Nagarjuna developed the Mahayana philosophy of Sunyata (emptiness) and proved that everything is ‘Void’ (not only the self) in a small text called Madhyamika-karika. After the 1st Century CE., the Mahayanists took a definite stand and only then the terms of Mahayana and Hinayana were introduced.  These (politically) inspired theologians announced the divinity of Buddha, surrounded him with angels and saints, adopted the Yoga asceticism of Patanjali, and issued in Sanskrit a new set of Holy Writ which, though it lent itself readily to metaphysical and scholastic refinements, proclaimed and certified a more popular religion than the austere pessimism of Shakya-muni.

Around the 6th. century AD, within the Mahayana tradition the tantrayana or tantric texts emerged. Prior to engaging in tantric practices, a proper understanding of the Hinayana and Mahayana philosophy is considered essential. Only then should one obtain initiation or permission from a qualified tantric master to do a specific tantric practice.

Tantric practices are psychologically very profound techniques to quickly achieve Buddhahood. This is considered important, not for oneself, but because as a Buddha one has the best achievable qualities to help others.

Sapped the manhood of India

The growth of Buddhism and monasticism in the first year of our era sapped the manhood of India, and conspired with political division to leave India open to easy conquest. When the Arabs came, pledged to spread a simple and stoic monotheism, they looked with scorn upon the lazy, venal, miracle-mongering Buddhist monks; they smashed the monasteries, killed thousands of monks, and made monasticism un- popular with the cautious. The survivors were re-absorbed into the Hinduism that had begotten them; the ancient orthodoxy received the penitent heresy, and “Brahmanism killed Buddhism by a fraternal embrace.”  Brahmanism had always been tolerant; in all the history of the rise and fall of Buddhism and a hundred other sects we find much disputation, but no instance of persecution. On the contrary Brahmanism eased the return of the prodigal by proclaiming Buddha a god (as an avatar of Vishnu), ending animal sacrifice, and accepting into orthodox practice the Buddhist doctrine of the sanctity of all animal life. Quietly and peacefully, after half a thousand years of gradual decay, Buddhism disappeared from India.

Religious ritual  replaced with sermons and morality

Mahayana became to Hinayana or primitive Buddhism what Catholicism was to Stoicism and primitive Christianity. Buddha, like Luther, had made the mistake of supposing that the drama of religious ritual could be replaced with sermons and morality; and the victory of a Buddhism rich in myths, miracles, ceremonies and intermediating saints corresponds to the ancient and current triumph of a colourful and dramatic Catholicism over the austere simplicity of early Christianity and modern Protestantism. That same popular preference for polytheism, miracles and myths which destroyed Buddha’s Buddhism finally destroyed, in India, the Buddhism of the Greater Vehicle itself. For to speak with the hindsight wisdom of the historian if Buddhism was to take over so much of Hinduism, so many of its legends, its rites and its gods, soon very little would remain to distinguish the two religions; and the one with the deeper roots, the more popular appeal, and the richer economic resources and political support would gradually absorb the other. Rapidly superstition, which seems to be the very lifeblood of our race, poured over from the older faith to the younger one, until even the phallic enthusiasms of the Shakti sects found place in the ritual of Buddhism. Slowly the patient and tenacious Brahmans recaptured influence and imperial patronage; and the success of the youthful philosopher Shankara in restoring the authority of the Vedas as the basis of Hindu thought put an end to the intellectual leadership of the Buddhists in India.

Softness with Brahmanical deities

The Mahayana was Buddhism softened with Brahmanical deities, practices and myths, and adapted to the needs of the Kushan Tatars and the Mongols of Tibet, over whom Kanishka had extended his rule. A heaven was conceived in which there were many Buddhas, of whom Amida Buddha, the Redeemer, came to be the best beloved by the people; this heaven and a corresponding hell were to be the reward or punishment of good or evil done on earth, and would thereby liberate some of the King’s militia for other services. The greatest of the saints, in this new theology, were the Bodhisattivas, or future Buddhas, who voluntarily refrained from achieving the Nirvana (here freedom from rebirth) that was within their merit and power, in order to be reborn into life after life, and to help others on earth to find the Way. As in Mediterranean Christianity, these saints became so popular that they almost crowded out the head of the pantheon in worship and art. The veneration of relics, the use of holy water, candles, incense, the rosary, clerical vestments, a liturgical dead language, monks and nuns, monastic tonsure and celibacy, confession, fast days, the canonization of saints, purgatory and masses for the dead flourished in Buddhism as in medieval Christianity, and seem to have appeared in Buddhism first,( “The Buddhists,” says Fergusson, “kept five centuries in advance of the Roman Church in the invention and use of all the ceremonies and forms common to both religions.” 3 Edmunds has shown in detail the astonishing parallelism between the Buddhist and the Christian gospels.

Royal patronage shifted from Buddhist to Hindu religious institutions

The secular and political histories adopt rather different arguments. It has been argued that royal patronage shifted from Buddhist to Hindu religious institutions.   Under the Kushanas, indeed even under the Guptas (325-497 AD), both Buddhists and adherents of Brahmanism received royal patronage, but as Brahmanism veered off, so to speak, into Vaishnavism and Saivism, and regional kingdoms developed into the major sites of power, Buddhism began to suffer a decline.  The itinerant Buddhist monk, if one may put it this way, gave way to forms of life less more conducive to settled agriculture.

Shashanka, the Shaivite Brahmin king of Bengal was a ferocious oppressor of the Buddhists. The single original source for all subsequent narratives about Shashanka’s ruinous conduct towards Buddhists wasdocumented by Ven. Hsuan Tsang during his visit to India in early part of the seventh century A.D.

It is said that Shashanka had destroyed the Bodhitree of Bodh Gaya and ordered the destruction of all Buddhist images and monasteries in his kingdom. This biased and sectarian policy of Shashanka had broken the backbone of Buddhism in India.He had marched on to Bodh Gaya and destroyed the Bodhi tree under whichthe Buddha had attained enlightenment. He forcibly removed the  Buddha’s image from the Bodhi Vihara near the tree and installed one of Shiva in its place.

After the rule of Shashanka, the Pala kingdom was established in Bengal. Though the Palas of Bengal had been hospitable to Vaishnavismand Saivism, but nonetheless they were major supporters of Buddhism.However, when Bengal came under the rule of the Senas (1097-1223),Saivism was promulgated and Buddhism was neglected.

Another hostile Shaivite king was Mihirakula who had completely destroyed over 1500 Buddhist shrines. His hostile action was followed by the Shaivite, Toramana who had destroyed the Ghositarama Buddhist monastery at Kausambi.

Sectarian and Internal Conflicts

Buddhist clergy paid insufficient attention to its laity.  Buddhist mendicants kept their distance from non-mendicants, and as scholars of Buddhism have noted, no manual for the conduct of the laity was produced until the 11^th century.  Non-mendicants may not have felt particularly invested in their religion, and as the venues where the mendicants and non-mendicants intersected gradually disappeared, the laity might have felt distanced from the faith.  The contrast, in this respect, with Jainism is marked.

Wealth in Buddhist Monasteries

Some scholars have also emphasized the narrative of decay and corruption within a faith where the monks had come to embrace a rather easy-going and even indolent lifestyle, quite mindless of the Buddha’s insistence on aparigraha, or non-possession.  The Buddhist monasteries are sometimes described as repositories of great wealth, which was accumulated through generous donations from the royal families and rich devotees in the community.

There were also disputes over money matters and leadership which led to great divide among many groups of Buddhist monks. The unity and harmony of many major monasteries were affected by these disputes. As the monks had ignored the instruction of the Buddha and became greedy for power and wealth, the monasteries got entrapped in controversies .

Neglect by the monks of life and its values.

The main cause was the neglect by the monks of this life and its values. While the Buddhist monks realized that everyone was not fit or could not become a monk or nun, they paid attention only to the life of a monk and not to the life of a householder. The final blow came from without, and was in a sense invited by Buddhism itself. The prestige of the Sangha, or Buddhist Order, had, after Ashoka, drawn the best blood of Magadha into a celibate and pacific clergy; even in Buddha’s time some patriots had complained that “the monk Gautama causes fathers to beget no sons, and families to become extinct.”  Now, both these aspects need examination, study, guidance and control. It is not enough to tell a householder that this existing life is only a stepping-stone to the life of a monk. Why and how is it so and what relation it bears to realities has to be explained. Instead Buddhist philosophers began to teach that this life was nothing but a value of tears and misery.

Another reason was the admission of women into monasteries and the more or less indiscriminate conversion of men, women into monks and nuns. While true renunciation and celibacy were appreciated, people wanted to see them well practiced.

Lack of good rapport with the community by the Buddhist Monks

The majority of the Buddhist monks and clergy had often concentrated mainly on own salvation and rarely visited the community to reduce the suffering of the general population. Here, the Buddhist monks and clergy had missed out a very important message by the Buddha. When the Buddha had advised his disciples to visit the community every day and not to stay in a same place for more than three days, it was with a vision that had a far more impact in the society than mere begging for food. He wanted his disciples to meet as many common people as possible during their community visit and help them to overcome the sufferings.

The main idea behind sending the emissaries door to door was to build up a community network and develop a good rapport with the community so that majority of the population could reap the benefit from the teachings of the Buddha. He knew that once the community had accepted his disciples, they would develop faith in his teachings and would follow his advice to end suffering.

The Buddhist monks in India, during the sixth century had deviated from this noble target and stopped visiting the community. As the community visit was rare by the monks, the general Buddhists felt neglected and isolated from the Buddhist monastery. This sense of insecurity made them suffer discrimination from the higher class of the Brahmin society and they gradually lost faith in Buddhism. The Buddhist monks did not visit the houses of the lower caste and the untouchables and as a result, they too did not get the opportunity to adopt Buddhism and gain status in the society. The shellfish nature of the Buddhist monks during that time had generated a sense of hatred and insecurity in the general population.

The Tendency of Hinduism to Absorb its Rival Faiths

The tendency of Hinduism to absorb rival faiths was evident from the fact that many elements from other faiths had also gone into the making of Hinduism. While some scholars focus on outright persecution ,others speak of a long process during which Buddhist practices became absorbed into Hinduism. Though the doctrine of ‘ahimsa’ or non-violence had originated with the Buddha and had certainly found its greatest exposition in the Buddha’s teachings, but by the second half of the 1stmillennium A.D. it had become an integral part of the Hindu teachings. However, it is still not certain whether the Buddha was absorbed into the Hindu pantheon as a gesture of compromise or as an attempt of divide in order to reduce the overwhelming might of Buddhism or whether Hinduism was eager to embrace as its own, certain values that Buddhism stood for against the short-comings of Brahmanism.

The simplicity of the Buddha’s message in emphasizing its stress one quality and crusade against the bloody and costly sacrifices and ritualism of Brahmanism had attracted the oppressed casts in large numbers. The Brahminical revivalists understood the need to appropriate some of these finer aspects of Buddhism and discarded some of the worst of their own practices so as to be able to win over the masses back to the Brahminical fold. Imitating the Buddhists in this regard, the Brahmins, who were once voracious meat-eaters, had turned into vegetarians.

The Final Blow from Islam Invasion

The invasion of the Muslims and the ruthless destruction of Buddhist monasteries extinguished the lamp of Buddhism in North India. The wanton destruction of the great monastery of Uddandapura (Bihar) and the wholesale massacre of its monks might make us visualize how the great monasteries of Nalanda, Vikramasila and others met with a tragic end. Dr. B.R. Ambedkarwas firmly convinced about the view that Islam dealt Buddhism a deathblow. He had described the process of disappearance of Buddhism inIndia as “Brahmanism beaten and battered by the Muslim invaders could look to the rulers for support and sustenance and get it.

But Buddhism beaten and battered by the Muslim invaders had no such hope. It was uncared for orphan and it withered in the cold blast of the native rulers and was consumed in the fire lit up by the conquerors.”Dr. B.R. Ambedkar was certain that the Muslim invasion was the greatest disaster that befell the religion of Buddha in India and he had described appropriately described this event as “the sword of Islam fell heavily upon the priestly class. It perished or it fled outside India. Nobody remained alive to keep the flame of Buddhism burning.”

However, the “sword of Islam” thesis of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar remained controversial and many reputable historians were inclined to dismiss itoutright. This was due to the fact that Islam was a late entrant into India, and Buddhism was showing unmistakable signs of its decline longbefore Islam became established in the Gangetic plains, central India,and the northern end of present-day Andhra and Karnataka.

Though majority of the scholars generally accept this important factor, still they do not believe that this was the truly crucial reason for the disappearance of Buddhism from India. Muslim invasions primarily wrecked only Northern India. But Buddhism was a significant religious force in Southern India too. Mahayana Buddhism mainly developed in the Southern regions. So whatever happened to Buddhism in the northern regions, it still could not explain how the religion disappeared from Southern India as well.

Modern Hinduism as a Restatement of Buddhism

The finer aspects of Buddhism were later incorporated into the Vedas, Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads by Adi Shankaryacharya during the revival of Hinduism in 8^th century A.D. As a result of this, we do not find any major difference between the teachings of Buddhism and Hinduism in modern era. One should understand that Hinduism was a later development after Buddhism. There is enough historical evidence that Buddhism paved the way for refining the teachings of Hinduism which came into existence after the disappearance of Buddhism from India. We must always remember that the finer aspects of Buddhism had been later incorporated into Hinduism under the supervision of AdiShankaracharya during the 8^th century A.D.

So, by observing the strikingly similar teachings in both these religions, it would be wiser to conclude that modern Hinduism is a restatement of ancient Buddhism. The reverse of this statement is never true on historical perspectives, as an earlier religion cannot predict or copy the teachings of a future religion.

After examining all the contributing factors associated with the disappearance of Buddhism from India, we must understand that it was not a single major factor that could be isolated and held absolutely responsible for this horrendous outcome. Sequence of multiple factors had often acted synergistically over a long period of time in order to force Buddhism disappear from India, the place of its origin.

In accordance to the teachings of the Buddha, the disappearance of Buddhism in India had actually followed the Buddha’s universal Doctrine of Dependent Origination. Here, one factor had led to the other and caused this ultimate outcome. So, we should now concentrate on how to revive Buddhism in a global perspective. Since, Buddhism preaches loving kindness and compassion as well as it can adopt to meet different traditional, moral and cultural needs of the community, it can play a lead role in promoting peace and harmony in the contemporary world.

“ Thus, in spite of preaching mercy to animals, in spite of the sublime ethical religion, in spite of the discussions about the existence or non-existence of a permanent soul, the whole building of Buddhism tumbled down piece-meal and the ruin was simply hideous. The most hideous ceremonies, the most obscene books that human hands ever wrote or the human brain ever conceived, have all been the creation of the degraded Buddhism. The Tartars and the Baluchis and all the hideous races of mankind that came to India, became Buddhists and assimilated with us, brought their national customs and the whole of our national life became a huge page of the most horrible, bestial customs. Sankara came and showed that the real essence of Buddhism and that of Vedanta are not very different but that the disciples did not understand the master and have degraded themselves, denied the existence of soul and one God and have become atheists. That was what Sankara showed and all the Buddhists began to come back to their old religion”.

Swami Vivekananda

 

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Mrs Sudha Rani Maheshwari, M.Sc (Zoology), B.Ed.

Former Principal. A.K.P.I.College, Roorkee, India

“Amidst the tens of thousands of names of monarchs that crowd the columns of history, their majesties and graciousness  and serenities and royal highnesses and the like, the name of Asoka shines, and shines, almost alone, a star.”

H.G. Wells The Outline of History

Ashoka

Ashoka Maurya, commonly known as Ashoka and also as Ashoka the Great, was an Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty who ruled  the Indian subcontinent from ca. 269 BCE to 232 BCE.

Born: 304 BC, Pataliputra

Died: 232 BC, Pataliputra

Parents: Shubhadrangi, Bindusara

Spouse: Maharani Devi (m. 286 BC), Rani Padmavati (m. 266 BC),Tishyaraksha, Karuvaki

Children: Mahinda, Sangamitta, Kunala, Tivala, Charumati, Jaluka

Chandragupta’s successor, Bindusara, was apparently a man of some intellectual inclination. He is said to have asked Antiochos, King of Syria, to make him a present of a Greek philosopher; for a real Greek philosopher, wrote Bindusara, he would pay a high price.  The proposal could not be complied with, since Antiochos found no philosophers for sale; but chance atoned by giving Bindusara a philosopher for his son.

Ashoka Maurya (304–232 BCE), commonly known as Ashoka and also as Ashoka the Great, was an Indian emperor who ruled almost all of the Indian subcontinent from ca. 269 BCE to 232 BCE.  His empire stretched from eastern Iran in the West, through the Hindu Kush mountains towards Assam in the East and covered the entire Indian subcontinent except present dayTamil Nadu and parts of Kerala. The empire had Taxila, Ujjain and Pataliputra as its capital. Ashoka is referred to as Samraat Chakravartin Ashoka – the “Emperor of Emperors Ashoka.” His name “aśoka” means “painless, without sorrow” in Sanskrit (the a privativum and śoka “pain, distress”). In his edicts, he is referred to as Devānāmpriya (PaliDevānaṃpiya or “The Beloved of the Gods”), and Priyadarśin (Pali Piyadasī or “He who regards everyone with affection”). His fondness for his name’s connection to the Saraca asoca tree, or the “Asoka tree” is also referenced in the Ashokavadana.

Ashoka had several elder siblings, all of whom were his half-brothers from other wives of Bindusara. His fighting qualities were apparent from an early age and he was given royal military training. He was known as a fearsome hunter, and according to a legend, killed a lion with just a wooden rod.Bindusara’s death in 273 BCE led to a war over succession. According to Divyavandana, Bindusara wanted his son Sushim to succeed him but Ashoka was supported by his father’s ministers, who found Sushim to be arrogant and disrespectful towards them. Ashoka later got rid of the legitimate heir to the throne by tricking him into entering a pit filled with live coals.The Dipavansa andMahavansa refer to Ashoka’s killing 99 of his brothers, sparing only one, named Vitashoka or Tissa, although there is no clear proof about this incident The coronation happened in 269 BCE, four years after his succession to the throne.

Ashoka Vardhana found himself ruler of a vaster empire than any Indian monarch before him: Afghanis- tan, Baluchistan, and all of modern India but the extreme south Tamilakam, or Tamil Land. For a time he governed in the spirit of his grandfather Chandragupta, cruelly but well. Yuan Chwang, a Chinese traveler who spent many years in India in the seventh century A.D., tells us that the prison maintained by Ashoka north of the capital was still remembered in Hindu tradition as “Ashoka’s Hell.” There, said his informants, all the tortures of any orthodox Inferno had been used in the punishment of criminals; to which the King added an edict that no one who entered that dungeon should ever come out of it alive. But one day a Buddhist saint, imprisoned there without cause, and flung into a cauldron of hot water, refused to boil. The jailer sent word to Ashoka, who came,saw, and marveled. When the King turned to leave, the jailer reminded him that according to his own edict he must not leave the prison alive. The King admitted the force of the remark, and ordered the jailer to be thrown into the cauldron.

On returning to his palace Ashoka, we are told, underwent a profound conversion. He gave instructions that the prison should be demolished, and that the penal code should be made more lenient. At the same time he learned that his troops had won a great victory over the rebellious Kalinga tribe, had slaughtered thousands of the rebels, and had taken many prisoners. Ashoka was moved to remorse at the thought of all this “violence, slaughter, and separation” of captives “from those whom they love.” He ordered the prisoners freed, restored their lands to the Kalingas, and sent them a message of apology which had no precedents and has had few imitations. Then he joined the Buddhist Order, wore for a time the garb of a monk, gave up hunting and the eating of meat, and entered upon the Eightfold Noble Way.

It is at present impossible to say how much of this is myth, and how much is history; nor can we discern, at this distance, the motives of the King. Perhaps he saw the growth of Buddhism, and thought that its code of generosity and peace might provide a convenient regimen for his people, saving countless policemen. In the eleventh year of his reign he began to issue the most remarkable edicts in the history of government and commanded that they should be carved upon rocks and pillars in simple phrase and local dialects, so that any literate Hindu might be able to understand them. The Rock Edicts have been found in almost every part of India; of the pillars ten remain in place, and the position of twenty others has been determined. In these edicts we find the Emperor accepting the Buddhist faith completely, and applying it resolutely throughout the last sphere of human affairs in which we should have expected to find it statesmanship.

Though these edicts are Buddhist they will not seem to us entirely religious. They assume a future life, and thereby suggest how soon the scepticism of Buddha had been replaced by the faith of his followers. But they express no belief in, make no mention of, a personal God.” Neither is there any word in them about Buddha. The edicts are not interested in theology: the Sarnath Edict asks for harmony within the Church, and prescribes penalties for those who weaken it with schism;”but other edicts repeatedly enjoin religious tolerance. One must give alms to Brahmans as well as to Buddhist priests; one must not speak ill of other men’s faiths. The King announces that all his subjects are his beloved children, and that he will not discriminate against any of them because of their diverse creeds. Rock Edict XII speaks with almost contemporary pertinence:

His Sacred and Gracious Majesty the King does reverence to men of all sects, whether ascetics or householders, by gifts and various forms of reverence.  His Sacred Majesty, however, cares not so much for gifts or external reverence, as that there should be a growth of the essence of the matter in all sects. The growth of the essence of the matter assumes various forms, but the root of it is restraint of speech; to wit, a man must not do reverence to his own sect, or disparage that of another, without reason. Depreciation should be for specific reasons only, because the sects of other people all deserve reverence for some reason or another.

By thus acting a man exalts his own sect, and at the same time does service to the sects of other people. By acting contrariwise a man hurts his own sect, and does disservice to the sects of other people. . . . Concord is meritorious.

“The essence of the matter” is explained more clearly in the Second Pillar Edict. “The Law of Piety is excellent. But wherein consists the Law of Piety? In these things: to wit, little impiety, many good deeds, compassion, liberality, truthfulness, purity.” To set an example Ashoka ordered his officials everywhere to regard the people as his children, to treat them without impatience or harshness, never to torture them, and never to imprison them without good cause; and he commanded the officials to read these instructions periodically to the people.

In order to gain wide publicity for his teachings and his work, Ashoka made them known by means of oral announcements and by engravings on rocks and pillars at suitable sites. These inscriptions—therock edicts and pillar edicts (e.g., the lion capital of the pillar found at Sarnath, which has become India’s national emblem), mostly dated in various years of his reign—contain statements regarding his thoughts and actions and provide information on his life and acts. His utterances rang of frankness and sincerity.

Ashoka repeatedly declared that he understood dharma to be the energetic practice of the sociomoral virtues of honesty, truthfulness, compassion, mercifulness, benevolence, nonviolence, considerate behaviour toward all, “little sin and many good deeds,” nonextravagance, nonacquisitiveness, and noninjury to animals. He spoke of no particular mode of religious creed or worship, nor of any philosophical doctrines. He spoke of Buddhism only to his coreligionists and not to others.

Toward all religious sects he adopted a policy of respect and guaranteed them full freedom to live according to their own principles, but he also urged them to exert themselves for the “increase of their inner worthiness.” Moreover, he exhorted them to respect the creeds of others, praise the good points of others, and refrain from vehement adverse criticism of the viewpoints of others.

Ashoka went out on periodic tours preaching the dharma to the rural people and relieving their sufferings. He ordered his high officials to do the same, in addition to attending to their normal duties; he exhorted administrative officers to be constantly aware of the joys and sorrows of the common folk and to be prompt and impartial in dispensing justice. A special class of high officers, designated “dharma ministers,” was appointed to foster dharma work by the public, relieve sufferings wherever found, and look to the special needs of women, of people inhabiting outlying regions, of neighbouring peoples, and of various religious communities. It was ordered that matters concerning public welfare were to be reported to him at all times. The only glory he sought, he said, was for having led his people along the path of dharma. No doubts are left in the minds of readers of his inscriptions regarding his earnest zeal for serving his subjects. More success was attained in his work, he said, by reasoning with people than by issuing commands.

Did these moral edicts have any result in improving the conduct of the people? Perhaps they had something to do with spreading the idea of ahinsa, and encouraging abstinence from meat and alcoholic drinks among the upper classes of India.  Ashoka himself had all the confidence of a reformer in the efficacy of his petrified sermons: in Rock Edict IV he announces that marvelous results have already appeared; and his summary gives us a clearer conception of his doctrine:

Now, by reason of the practice of piety by His Sacred and Graci- ous Majesty the King, the reverberation of the war-drums has be- come the reverberation of the Law. … As for many years before has not happened, now, by reason of the inculcation of the Law of Piety by His Sacred and Gracious Majesty the King, (there is) increased abstention from the sacrificial slaughter of living creatures, ‘ abstention from the killing of animate beings, seemly behavior to relatives, seemly behavior to Brahmans, hearkening to father and mother, hearkening to elders. Thus, as in many other ways, the practice of the Law (of Piety) has increased, and His Sacred and Gracious Majesty the King will make such practice of the Law increase further.

The sons, grandsons and great-grandsons of His Sacred and Gracious Majesty the King will cause this practice of the Law to increase until the eon of universal destruction.

The good King exaggerated the piety of men and the loyalty of sons. He himself labored arduously for the new religion; he made himself head of the Buddhist Church, lavished gifts upon it, built 84,000 monasteries for it,” and in its name established throughout his kingdom hospitals for men and animals.  He sent Buddhist missionaries to all parts of India and Ceylon, even to Syria, Egypt and Greece,  where, perhaps, they helped to prepare for the ethics of Christ;  and shortly after his death missionaries left India to preach the gospel of Buddha in Tibet, China, Mongolia and Japan. In addition to this activity in religion, Ashoka gave himself zealously to the secular administration of his empire; his days of labor were long,and he kept himself available to his aides for public business at all hours.

His outstanding fault was egotism; it is difficult to be at once modest and a reformer. His self-respect shines out in every edict, and makes him more completely the brother of Marcus Aurelius. He failed to perceive that the Brahmans hated him and only bided their time to destroy him, as the priests of Thebes had destroyed Ikhnaton a thousand years before. Not only the Brahmans, who had been given to slaughtering animals for themselves and their gods, but many thousands of hunters and fishermen resented the edicts that set such severe limitations upon the taking of animal life; even the peasants growled at the command that “chaff must not be set on fire along with the living things in it.” Half the empire waited hopefully for Ashoka’s death.

Yuan Chwang tells us that according to Buddhist tradition Ashoka in his last years was deposed by his grandson, who acted with the aid of court officials. Gradually all power was taken from the old King, and his gifts to the Buddhist Church came to an end. Ashoka’s own allowance of goods, even of food, was cut down, until one day his whole portion was half an wnalaka fruit. The King gazed upon it sadly, and then sent it to his Buddhist brethren, as all that he had to give.  Ashoka ruled for an estimated forty years. Legend states that during his cremation, his body burned for seven days and nights. . Ashoka had many wives and children, but many of their names are lost to time. His supreme consort and first wife was Vidisha Mahadevi Shakyakumari Asandhimitra. Mahindra and Sanghamitra were twins born by her, in the city of Ujjain. He had entrusted to them the job of making Buddhism more popular across the known and the unknown world. Mahindra and Sanghamitra went into Sri Lanka and converted the King, the Queen and their people to Buddhism.

But in truth we know nothing of his later years, not even the year of his death. Within a generation after his passing, his empire, like Ikhnaton’s, crumbled to pieces. As it became evident that the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Magadha was maintained rather by the inertia of tradition than by the organization of force, state after state renounced its adherence to the King of Kings at Pataliputra. Descendants of Ashoka continued to rule Magadha till the seventh century after Christ; but the Maurya Dynasty that Chandragupta had founded came to an end when King Brihadrathawas assassinated. States are built not on the ideals but on the nature of men.

In the political sense Ashoka had failed; in another sense he had accomplished one of the greatest tasks in history. Within two hundred years after his death Buddhism had spread throughout India, and was entering upon the bloodless conquest of Asia. If to this day, from Kandy in Ceylon to Kamakura in Japan, the placid face of Gautama bids men be gentle to one another and love peace, it is partly because a dreamer, perhaps a saint, once held the throne of India.

 

REFERANCES

1. DAVIDS, T. W. RHYS: Buddhist India. New York, 1903.
2. DAVIDS, T. W. RHYS: Dialogues of the Buddha; being vols. ii-iv of Sacred Books of the Buddhists. Oxford, 1923.
3. HAVELL, E. B.: Ideals of Indian Art. New York, 1920.
4. HAVELL, E. B.: History of Aryan Rule in India. Harrap, London, n.d.
5. MELAMED, S. M.: Spinoza and Buddha. Chicago, 1933.
6. MUTHU, D. G: The Antiquity of Hindu Medicine and Civilization. London, 1930.
7. SMITH,V. A.: Asoka. Oxford, 1920.
8. SMITH, V. A.: Oxford History of India. Oxford, 1923.
9. WATTLRS, T.: On Yuan Chuang’s Travels in India. 2V. London, 1904
10. WILL DURANT: Our Oriental Heritage. Simon and Schuster. New York 1954

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Mrs Sudha Rani Maheshwari, M.Sc (Zoology), B.Ed.

Former Principal. A.K.P.I.College, Roorkee, India

If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.

Elon Musk
Magic is an attempt to understand, experience and influence the world using rituals, symbols, actions, gestures and language The belief in and the practice of magic has been present since the earliest human cultures and continues to have an important religious and medicinal role in many cultures today.

The performance of magic almost always involves the use of language. Whether spoken out loud or unspoken, words are frequently used to access or guide magical power. Magical speech is a ritual act and is of equal or even greater importance to the performance of magic than non-verbal acts. Not all speech is considered magical. Only certain words and phrases or words spoken in a specific context are considered to have magical power Magical language, are categories of speech, is distinct from scientific language because it is emotive and it converts words into symbols for emotions.

Magic is a strictly ritualistic action that implements forces and objects outside the realm of the gods and the supernatural. These objects and events are said to be intrinsically efficacious, so that the supernatural is unnecessary. To some, including the Greeks, magic was considered a “proto-science.”

Having conceived a world of spirits, whose nature and intent were unknown to him, primitive man sought to propitiate them and to enlist them in his aid. Hence to animism, which is the essence of primitive religion, was added magic, which is the soul of primitive ritual. The Polynesians recognized a very ocean of magic power, which they called mana; the magician, they thought, merely tapped this infinite supply of miraculous capacity. The methods by which the spirits, and later the gods, were suborned to human purposes were for the most part “sympathetic magic” a desired action was suggested to the deities by a partial or imitative performance of the action by men. To make rain fall some primitive magicians poured water out upon the ground, preferably from a tree. The Kaffirs, threatened by drought, asked a missionary to go into the fields with an opened umbrella.”  In Sumatra a barren woman made an image of a child and held it in her lap, hoping thereby to become pregnant. In the Babar Archipelago the would-be mother fashioned a doll out of red cotton, pre- tended to suckle it, and repeated a magic formula; then she sent word through the village that she was pregnant, and her friends came to congratulate her; only a very obstinate reality could refuse to emulate this imagination.

Among the Dyaks of Borneo the magician, to ease the pains of a woman about to deliver, would go through the contortions of childbirth himself, as a magic suggestion to the foetus to come forth; sometimes the magician slowly rolled a stone down his belly and dropped it to the ground, in the hope that the backward child would imitate it. In the Middle Ages a spell was cast upon an enemy by sticking pins into a waxen image of hirti; m the Peruvian Indians burned people in effigy, and called it burning the soul.”  Even the modern mob is not above such primitive magic.

These methods of suggestion by example were applied especially to the fertilization of the soil. Zulu medicine-men fried the genitals of a man who had died in full vigor, ground the mixture into a powder, and strewed it over the fields.”  Some peoples chose a King and Queen of the May, or a Whitsun bridegroom and bride, and married them publicly, so that the soil might take heed and flower forth. In certain localities the rite included the public consummation of the marriage, so that Nature, though she might be nothing but a dull clod, would have no excuse for misunderstanding her duty. In Java the peasants and their wives, to ensure the fertility of the rice-fields, mated in the midst of them.  For primitive men did not conceive the growth of the soil in terms of nitrogen; they thought of it apparently without knowing of sex in plants in the same terms as those whereby they interpreted the fruitfulness of woman; our very terms recall their poetic faith.

Festivals of promiscuity, coming in nearly all cases at the season of sowing, served partly as a moratorium on morals (recalling the comparative freedom of sex relations in earlier days), partly as a means of fertilizing the wives of sterile men, and partly as a ceremony of suggestion to the earth in spring to abandon her wintry reserve, accept the proffered seed, and prepare to deliver herself of a generous litter of food. Such festivals appear among a great number of nature peoples, but particularly among the Cameroons of the Congo, the Kaffirs, the Hottentots and the Bantus.

“Their harvest festivals,” says the Reverend H. Rowley of the Bantus, are akin in character to the feasts of Bacchus. … It is impossible to witness them without being ashamed. . . . Not only is full sexual license permitted to the neophytes, and indeed in most cases enjoined, but any visitor attending the festival is encouraged to indulge in licentiousness. Prostitution is freely indulged in, and adultery is not viewed with any sense of heinousness, on account of the surroundings. No man attending the festival is allowed to have intercourse with his wife. Similar festivals appear in the historic civilizations: in the Bacchic celebrations of Greece, the Saturnalia of Rome, the Fete des Fous in medieval France, May Day in England, and the Carnival or Mardi Gras of con- temporary ways.

Here and there, as among the Pawnees and the Indians of Guayaquil, vegetation rites took on a less attractive form. A man or, in later and milder days, an animal was sacrificed to the earth at sowing time, so that it might be fertilized by his blood. When the harvest came it was interpreted as the resurrection of the dead man; the victim was given, before and after his death, the honors of a god; and from this origin arose, in a thousand forms, the almost universal myth of a god dying for his people, and then returning triumphantly to life.”  Poetry embroidered magic, and transformed it into theology. Solar myths mingled harmoniously with vegetation rites, and the legend of a god dying and reborn came to apply not only to the winter death and spring revival of the earth but to the autumnal and vernal equinoxes, and the waning and waxing of the day. For the coming of night was merely a part of this tragic drama; daily the sun-god was born and died; every sunset was a crucifixion, and every sunrise was a resurrection.

Human sacrifice, of which we have here but one of many varieties, seems to have been honored at some time or another by almost every people. On the island of Carolina in the Gulf of Mexico a great hollow metal statue of an old Mexican deity has been found, within which still lay the remains of human beings apparently burned to death as an offering to the god.  Every one knows of the Moloch to whom the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, and occasionally other Semites, offered human victims. In our own time the custom has been practised in Rhodesia.  Probably it was bound up with cannibalism; men thought that the gods had tastes like their own. As religious beliefs change more slowly than other creeds, and rites change more slowly than beliefs, this divine cannibalism survived after human cannibalism disappeared.  Slowly, however, evolving morals changed even religious rites; the gods imitated the increasing gentleness of their worshipers, and resigned themselves to accepting animal instead of human meat; a hind took the place of Iphigenia, and a ram was substituted for Abraham’s son. In time the gods did not receive even the animal; the priests liked savoury food, ate all the edible parts of the sacrificial victim themselves, and offered upon the altar only the entrails and the bones.

In ancient Egypt, magic consisted of four components; the primeval potency that empowered the creator-god was identified with Heka, who was accompanied by magical rituals known as Seshaw held within sacred texts called Rw. In addition Pekhret, medicinal prescriptions, were given to patients to bring relief. This magic was used in temple rituals as well as informal situations by priests. These rituals, along with medical practices, formed an integrated therapy for both physical and spiritual health. Magic was also used for protection against the angry deities, jealous ghosts, foreign demons and sorcerers who were thought to cause illness, accidents, poverty and infertility.^[74] Temple priests used wands during magical rituals.

Since early man believed that he acquired the powers of whatever organism he consumed, he came naturally to the conception of eating the god. In many cases he ate the flesh and drank the blood of the human god whom he had deified and fattened for the sacrifice. When, through increased continuity in the food-supply, he became more humane, he substituted images for the victim, and was content to eat these. In ancient Mexico an image of the god was made of grain, seeds and vegetables, was kneaded with the blood of boys sacrificed for the purpose, and was then consumed as a religious ceremony of eating the god. Similar ceremonies have been found in many primitive tribes. Usually the participant was required to fast before eating the sacred image; and the priest turned the image into the god by the power of magic formulas.

Every person, no matter how primitive, uses both magic and science.. Feelings of reverence and awe rely on observation of nature and a dependence on its regularity. This observation and reasoning about nature is a type of science. Magic and science both have definite aims to help “human instincts, needs and pursuits.”^] Both magic and science develop procedures that must be followed to accomplish specific goals. Magic and science are both based on knowledge; magic is knowledge of the self and of emotion, while science is knowledge of nature.

Magic begins in superstition, and ends in science. A wilderness of weird beliefs came out of animism, and resulted in many strange formulas and rites. The Kukis encouraged themselves in war by the notion that all the enemies they slew would attend them as slaves in the after life. On the other hand a Bantu, when he had slain his foe, shaved his own head and anointed himself with goat-dung, to prevent the spirit of the dead man from returning to pester him. Almost all primitive peoples believed in the efficacy of curses, and the dcstructiveness of the “evil eye.”  Australian natives were sure that the curse of a potent magician could kill at a hundred miles. The belief in witchcraft began early in human history, and has never quite disappeared. Fetishism the worship of idols or other objects as having magic power is still more ancient and indestructible. Since many amulets are limited to a special power, some peoples are heavily laden with a variety of them, so that they may be ready for any emergency.  Relics are a later and contemporary example of fetishes possessing magic powers; half the population of Europe wear some pendant or amulet which gives them supernatural protection or aid. At every step the history of civilization teaches us how slight and superficial a structure civilization is, and how precariously it is poised upon the apex of a never-extinct volcano of poor and oppressed barbarism, superstition and ignorance. Modernity is a cap superimposed upon the Middle Ages, which always remain.

Adherents to magic believe that it may work by one or more principles.A mystical force or energy that is natural, but cannot be detected by science at present, and which may not be detectable at all. Common terms referring to such magical energy include mana, numen, chi or kundalini. These are sometimes regarded as fluctuations of an underlying primary substance (akasha, aether) that is present in all things and interconnects and binds all. Intervention of spirits, similar to hypothetical natural forces, but with their own consciousness and intelligence.

To believers who think that they need to convince their subconscious mind to make the changes that they desire, all spirits and energies are projections and symbols that make sense to the subconscious. A variant of this belief is that the subconscious is capable of contacting spirits, who in turn can work magic.

Based on the fundamental concepts of monism and Non-duality, this philosophy holds that Magic is little more than the application of one’s own inherent unity with the universe. Hinging upon the personal realization, or “illumination”, that the self is limitless, one may live in unison with nature, seeking and preserving balance in all things

The philosopher accepts gracefully this human need of supernatural aid and comfort, and consoles himself by observing that just as animism generates poetry, so magic begets drama and science. Frazer has shown, with the exaggeration natural to a brilliant innovator, that the glories of science have their roots in the absurdities of magic. For since magic often failed, it became of advantage to the magician to discover natural operations by which he might help supernatural forces to produce the desired event. Slowly the natural means came to predominate, even though the magician, to preserve his standing with the people, concealed these natural means as well as he could, and gave the credit to supernatural magic- much as our own people often credit natural cures to magical prescriptions and pills. In this way magic gave birth to the physician, the chemist, the metallurgist, and the astronomer.

Magic almost always involves the use of language. Whether spoken out loud or unspoken, words are frequently used to access or guide magical power. Magical speech is a ritual act and is of equal or even greater importance to the performance of magic than non-verbal acts. Not all speech is considered magical. Only certain words and phrases or words spoken in a specific context are considered to have magical power Magical language, are categories of speech, is distinct from scientific language because it is emotive and it converts words into symbols for emotions. More immediately, however, magic made the priest. For Hindus the Atharva Veda is a veda that deals with mantras that can be used for both good and bad. The word mantrik in India literally means “magician” since the mantrik usually knows mantras, spells, and curses which can be used for or against all forms of magic. Tantra is likewise employed for ritual magic by the tantrik.

Many ascetics after long periods of penance and meditation are alleged to attain a state where they may utilize supernatural powers. However, many say that they choose not to use them and instead focus on transcending beyond physical power into the realm of spirituality. Many siddhars are said to have performed miracles that would ordinarily be impossible to perform.

Gradually, as religious rites became more numerous and complex, they outgrew the knowledge and competence of the ordinary man, and generated a special class which gave most of its time to the functions and ceremonies of religion. The priest as magician had access, through trance, inspiration or esoteric prayer, to the will of the spirits or gods, and could change that will for human purposes. Since such knowledge and skill seemed to primitive men the most valuable of all, and supernatural forces were conceived to affect man’s fate at every turn, the power of the clergy became as great as that of the state; and from the latest societies to modern times the priest has vied and alternated with the warrior in dominating and disciplining men. Let Egypt, Judea and medieval Europe suffice as instances.

The priest did not create religion, he merely used it, as a statesman uses the impulses and customs of mankind; religion arises not out of sacerdotal invention or chicanery, but out of the persistent wonder, fear, insecurity, hopefulness and loneliness of men. The priest did harm by tolerating superstition and monopolizing certain forms of knowledge; but he limited and often discouraged superstition, he gave the people the rudiments of education, he acted as a repository and vehicle for the growing cultural heritage of the race, he consoled the weak in their inevitable exploitation by the strong, and he became the agent through which religion nourished art and propped up with supernatural aid the precarious structure of human morality. If he had not existed the people would have invented him.

 

REFERANCES:

 

BRIFFAULT, ROBERT: The Mothers. 3V. New York, 1927.

FISCHER, OTTO: Die Kunst Indiens, Chinas und Japans. Berlin, 1928.

FRAZER, R. W.: Literary History of India. London, 1920.

FRAZER, SIR J. G.: The Golden Bough. One-volume ed. New York, 1930.

GRAZER, SIR J. G.: Adonis, Attis, Osiris. London, 1907.

RATZEL, F.: History of Mankind. 2v. London, 1896

REINACH, S.: Orpheus: A History of Religions. New York, 1909 and 1930.

SUMNER, W. G.: Folkways. Boston, 1906.

 WESTERMARCK, E.: History of Human Marriage. 2V. London, 1921.

WESTERMARCK, E.: Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas. 2V. London.

WILL DURANT: Our Oriental Heritage. Simon and Schuster. New York 1954