Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 39)

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Parts 1 to 38 were posted earlier. This is part 39. Your comments are welcome... Vivekananda Centre London

 

Earlier postings can be seen at http://www.vivekananda.btinternet.co.uk/veda.htm

 

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

part 39

 

 

3. Indian Buddhism's Extreme Desire to Be of the People Debased Buddha's Pure and Glorious Ideals

We must not have an impossible ideal. An ideal which is too high makes a nation weak and degraded. This happened after the Buddhist and Jain reforms. On the other hand, too much practicality is also wrong. If you have not even a little imagination, if you have no ideal to guide you, you are simply a brute. So we must not lower our idea, neither are we to lose sight of practicality. We must avoid the two extremes. (46)

Buddha's work had one great defect, and for that we Indians are suffering, even today. No blame attaches to the Lord. He was pure and glorious; but, unfortunately, such high ideals could not be well assimilated by the different uncivilized and uncultured races of mankind who flocked within the fold of the Aryans. These races, with varieties of superstition and hideous worship, rushed within the fold of the Aryan, and for a time appeared as if they had become civilized; but, before a century had passed, they brought out their snakes, their ghosts, and all the other things their ancestors used to worship, and thus the whole of India became one degraded mass of superstition. The earlier Buddhists, in their rage against the killing of animals, had denounced the sacrifices of the Vedas, which used to be held in every house. There would be a fire burning and that was all the paraphernalia of worship. These sacrifices were obliterated, and in their place came gorgeous temples, gorgeous ceremonies, and gorgeous priests - and all that you see in India in modern times. I smile when I read books written y dome modern people who ought to have known better, that the Buddha was the destroyer of brahminical idolatry. Little do they know that Buddhism created brahminism and idolatry in India. (47)

I have every respect for and veneration of Lord Buddha but, mark my words, the spread of Buddhism was less owing to the doctrines and the personality of the great preacher, than to the temples that were built, the idols that were erected, and the gorgeous ceremonials that were put before the nation. Thus Buddhism progressed. The little fireplaces in the houses in which people had poured their libations were not strong enough to hold their own against these gorgeous temples and ceremonies; but later on, the whole thing degenerated. It became a mass of corruption of which I cannot speak before this audience; but those who want to know about it may see a little of it in those big temples, full of sculptures, in Southern India; and that is all the inheritance we have from the Buddhists. (48)

The exclusiveness of the old form of Vedic religion debarred it from taking ready help from outside. At the same time, it kept it pure and free from many debasing elements which Buddhism, in it propagandist zeal was forced to assimilate.

This extreme adaptability in the long run made Indian Buddhism lose almost all its individuality, and extreme desire to be of the people made it unfit to cope with the intellectual forces of the mother religion in a few centuries. The Vedic party in the meanwhile got rd of a good deal of its most objectionable features, such as animal sacrifice, and took lessons from its rival daughter in the judicious use of images, temple processions, and other impressive performances, and stood ready to take within her fold the whole empire of Buddhism, already tottering to its fall.

And the crash came with the Scythian invasions and the total destruction of the empire of Pataliputra.

The invaders, already incensed at the invasion of their central Asiatic home by the preachers of Buddhism, found in the sun-worship of the brahmins a great sympathy with their own solar religion - and when the brahminist party was ready to adapt and spiritualize many of the customs of the newcomers, the invaders threw themselves heart and soul into the brahmanic cause. (49)

The aims of the Buddhist and Vedic religions were the same, but the means adopted by the Buddhists were not right. If the Buddhist means were correct, then why has [india] been hopelessly lost and ruined? It will not do to say that the efflux of time has naturally wrought this. Can time work, transgressing the laws of cause and effect? (50)

On the philosophic side, the disciples of the great Master [buddha] dashed themselves against the theoretical rocks of the Vedas and could not crush them; and on the other side they took away from the nation that eternal God to which everyone, man or woman, clings so fondly. And the result was that Buddhism had to die a natural death in India. At the present day there is not one who calls himself a Buddhist in India, the land of its birth. (51)

 

e) The Reconquest of India by Systematized Vedanta

1. The Dissipation of Both Priests and Kings in the Period after Buddha

It is probable that the [buddhist] reformers had for centuries the majority of the Indian people with them. The older forces, however, were never entirely pacified, and they underwent a good deal of modification during the centuries of Buddhist supremacy. (52)

With the deluge that swept the land at the advent of Buddhism the priestly power fell into decay and the royal power was in the ascendant. Buddhist priests are renouncers of the world, living in monasteries and as homeless ascetics, unconcerned with secular affairs. They have neither the will nor the endeavor to bring and keep the royal power under their control through the threat of curses or magic arrows. Even if there were any remnant of such a will, its fulfillment had become then an impossibility. For Buddhism had shaken the thrones of all the oblation-eating gods and brought them down forever from their heavenly positions. The state of being a Buddha was superior to the heavenly positions of many a Brahma or an Indra, who vie with each other in offering their worship at the feet of Buddha, the God-man! And to this Buddhahood, every man or woman has the privilege to attain; it is open to all even in this life. From the descent of the gods, as a natural consequence, the superiority of the priests who were supported by them was gone.

Accordingly, the reins of that mighty sacrificial horse - the royal power - were no longer held in the firm grasp of the Vedic priest; and, now being free, it could roam anywhere by its unbridled will. The center of power in that period was neither with the priests chanting the Sama hymns and performing the yajnas according to the Yajur Veda; nor is the power vested in the hands of the kshatriya kings separated from each other and ruling over small, independent states. The center of power in that age was in emperors whose unobstructed sway extended over vast areas bounded by the ocean, covering the whole of India, from one end to the other. The leaders of that age were no longer Vishvamitra or Vashishtha [Vedic rishis], but emperors like Chandragupta, Dharmashoka, and others. There never were emperors who ascended the throne of India and led her to the pinnacle of glory such those lords of the earth who ruled over her in paramount sway during the Buddhist period. The end of this period is characterized by the appearance of Rajput power on the scene, and the re of modern Hinduism. With the re of Rajput power on the decline of Buddhism, the scepter of Indian empire, dislodged from its paramount power, was again broken into a thousand pieces and wielded by small, powerless hands. At this time the brahminical (priestly) power again succeeded in raising its head, not as an adversary as before, but this time as an auxiliary to the royal supremacy.

During this revolution, that perpetual struggle for supremacy between the priestly and the royal classes, which began from the Vedic times and continued through the ages till it reached its climax at the time of the Jain and Buddhist revolutions, had ceased for ever. Now these two powers were friendly to each other; but neither was there any more that glorious kshatra (warlike) valor of the kings, nor that spiritual brilliance which characterized the brahmins; each had lost its former intrinsic strength. As might be expected, this new union of the two forces was soon engaged in the satisfaction of mutual self-interest, and became dissipated by spending its vitality on extirpating their common opponents, especially the Buddhists of the time, and on similar other deeds. Being steeped in the vices consequent on such a union, e.g. sucking of the blood of the masses, taking revenge on the enemy, spoliation of others' property, etc., they in vain tried to imitate the rajusuya and other Vedic sacrifices of the ancient kings, and only made a ridiculous farce of them. The result was they were bound hand and foot by the formidable train of sycophantic attendance and its obsequious flatterers; and, being entangled in an interminable net of rites and ceremonies with flourishes of mantras and the like they soon became a cheap and ready prey to the Islamic invaders from the West....

Brahmanya power, since the appearance of the Rajput power (which held sway over India under the Mihira dynasty and others), made its last effort to recover its lost greatness; and in its effort to establish that supremacy, it sold itself at the feet of the fierce hordes of barbarians [scythians] newly come from Central Asia; and to win their pleasure, introduced into the land their hateful manners and customs. Moreover, the brahmanya power, solely devoting itself to the easy means to dupe the ignorant barbarians, brought into vogue mysterious rites and ceremonies backed by its new mantras, and the like; and, in doing so, itself lost its former wisdom, its former vigor and vitality, and its own chaste habits of long acquirement. Thus it turned the whole of Aryavarta into a deep and vast whirlpool of the most vicious, the most horrible, the most abominable, barbarous customs; and, as the inevitable consequence of countenancing these detestable customs and superstitions, it soon lost all its own internal strength and stamina and became the weakest of the weak. (53)

 

2. Kumarila Bhatta in the North Led the Reaction of Vedic Ritualism against the Immoral Rites of Degraded Buddhism

Under the sway of kings who took up Buddhism and preached broadcast the doctrine of ahimsa (non-violence) the performances of the Vedic yaga-yajnas became a thing of the past, and no one could kill any animal in sacrifice for fear of the king. But subsequently among the Buddhists themselves - who were converts from Hinduism - the best parts of these yaga-yajnas were taken up and practiced in secret. From these sprang up the Tantras. (54)

I think that the Tantrika form of worship originated from the time that Buddhism began to decline and, through the oppression of the Buddhists, people began to perform their Vedic sacrifices in secret. They had no more the opportunity to conduct them for two months at a stretch, so they made clay images, worshipped them, and consigned them to the water - finishing everything in one night, without leaving the least trace! Man longs for a concrete symbol, otherwise his heart is not satisfied. So in every home that one-night sacrifice began to take place. By then, the tendencies of men had become sensual.... so the spiritual teachers of that time saw that those who could not perform any religious rite owing to their evil propensities also needed some way of coming round by degrees to the path of virtue. For them these queer Tantrika rites came to be invented. (55)

Barring some of the abominable things in the Tantra, such as the vamachara, etc., the Tantras are not so bad as people are inclined to think There are many high and sublimes Vedantic thoughts in them. In fact, the Brahmana portions of the Vedas were modified a little and incorporated into the body of the Tantras. All the forms of worship and the ceremonials of the present day, comprising the Karma Kanda , are observed in accordance with the Tantras. (56)

The Tantrika rites among the Tibetans... arose in India itself during the decline of Buddhism. It is my belief that the Tantras in vogue amongst us were the creation of the Buddhists themselves. Those Tantrika rites are even more dreadful than our doctrine of vamachara; for in them adultery got free rein; and it was only when the Buddhists became demoralized through immorality that they were driven away by Kumarila Bhatta. (57)

Whether for good or for evil, the Karma Kanda has fallen into disuse in India, though there are some brahmins in the Deccan who still perform yajnas now and then with the sacrifice of goats; and we also find here and there traces of the Vedic kriya kanda in the mantras used in connection with our marriage and sraddha [funeral] ceremonies, etc. But there is no chance of its being reestablished on its original footing. Kumarila Bhatta once tried to do so, but he was not successful in his attempt. (58)

[That] Northern reaction of ritualism was followed by the fitful glory of the Malava empire. With the destruction of that in a short time, northern India went to sleep, as it were, for a long period, to be rudely awakened [some centuries later] but the thundering onrush of Muslim cavalry across the passes of Afghanistan. (59)

 

3. The Renewal of Vedanta and Priestly Power from the South of India

In spite of its wonderful moral strength, Buddhism was extremely iconoclastic; and much of its force being spent in merely negative attempts, it had to die out in the land of its birth, and what remained of it became full of superstitions and ceremonials a hundred times more crude than those it was intended to suppress. Although it partially succeeded in putting down animal sacrifices of the Vedas, it filled the land with temples, images, symbols and bones of saints.

Above all, in the medley of Aryans, Mongols and aborigines which it created, it unconsciously led the way to some of the hideous vamacharas [left-handed Tantra]. This was especially the reason why this travesty of the teaching of the great Master, Buddha, had to be driven out of India by Sri Shankaracharya and his band of sannyasins.

Thus, even the current of life set in motion by the greatest soul that ever wore a human form, the Bhagavan Buddha himself, became a miasmatic pool, and India had to wait for centuries until Shankara arose, followed in quick succession by Ramanuja and Madhva.

By this time an entirely new chapter had opened in the history of India. The ancient kshatriyas and brahmins had disappeared. The land between the Himalayas and the Vindhyas, the home of the Aryas, the land which gave birth to Krishna and Buddha, the cradle of the great rajarshis and brahmarshis, [had] become silent. (60)

The empire of Magadha was gone. Most of northern India was under the rule of petty chiefs always at war with one another. Buddhism was almost extinct, except in some eastern and Himalayan provinces and in the extreme south; and the nation, after centuries of struggle against the power of hereditary priesthood, awoke to find itself in the clutches of a double priesthood of hereditary Brahmins and exclusive monks of the new regime, with all the power of the Buddhist organization and without their sympathy for the people. (61)

From the very father end of the Indian peninsula, from races alien in speech and form, from families claiming descent from the ancient brahmins, came the reaction against corrupted Buddhism.

What had become of the brahmins and kshatriyas of Aryavarta? They had entirely disappeared, except here and there a few mongrel clans claiming to be brahmins and kshatriyas; and, in spite of their inflated, self-laudatory assertions... they had to sit in sackcloth and ashes in all humility, to learn at the feet of the Southerners. The result was the bringing back of the Vedas to India - a revival of Vedanta such as India had never before seen; even the householders began to study the Aranyakas [Forest books of the Vedas]. (62)

A renascent India, bought by the valor and blood of the heroic Rajputs, defined by the merciless intellect of a brahmin from the same historical thought-center of Mithila (Kumarila Bhatta), led by a new philosophical impulse organized by Shankara and his band of sannyasins, and beautified by the arts and literature of the courts of Malava - arose on the ruins of the old. (63)