The Religions of India eBook

Edward Washburn Hopkins
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 825 pages of information about The Religions of India.

The Religions of India eBook

Edward Washburn Hopkins
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 825 pages of information about The Religions of India.

But to the other side of India’s contact with the West we have as yet barely alluded.  India has given as she has received.  What influence has she had upon Western cults and beliefs?  The worship that substituted idols for ideal forms we have traced back to the end of the Vedic period.  It is not, however, a mark of early Brahmanism, nor is it a pronounced feature before the age of Buddhism.  But in Buddha’s time, or soon after, flourished the worship of images, and with it the respect for relics.  The latter feature of the new religion made necessary shrines to keep the holy objects, sacred museums, which soon became the formal st[=u]pas, above-ground and under-ground, and these made the first temples of India.[23] Fully developed, they became the great religious buildings affected by Buddhism, with their idol service, prostrations, repetitions of prayers, dim religious light (lamp-service), offerings of flowers, fruits, etc.  From this source may have been derived many of the details in the Roman Catholic worship, which appears to have taken from Buddhism the rosary, originally a mark of the Civaite.[24] By what is, to say the least, an extraordinary coincidence, each of these churches is conspicuous for its use of holy water, choirs, sacred pictures, tonsure, vestments, the bell in religious service, the orders of nuns, monks, and the vows of the monastic system.[25] The most curious loan made by the Roman and Greek churches is, however, the quasi-worship of Gotama Buddha himself (in so far as a Romanist worships his saints), for, under cover of the Barlaam and Josaphat story, Buddha has found a niche as a saint in the row of canonized Catholic worthies, and has his saint-day in the calendar of the Greek and Roman churches.[26] But it is not his mother who is the Virgin of Lamaism, which has made of Buddha the Supreme God.

Besides external phases of the religious cult, India has given to the West a certain class of literary works and certain philosophical ideas.  The former consists, of course, in the fable-literature, which spread from India to Eastern Europe (Babrius) and has preserved in many tales of to-day nothing more than Buddhistic Birth-stories or other Indic tales (the Pa[.n]catantra) and legends.[27] Of these we can make only passing mention here, to turn at once to the more important question of philosophical and religious borrowing.

It has been claimed, as we have incidentally stated, that the Logos doctrine was imported from India.  Were this so, it would, indeed, be a fact of great historical importance, but, interesting as would be such a loan, we cannot see that the suggestion is based on data of cogent character.  The history of the doctrine in India and Greece is simply this:  V[=a]c, Speech or Word, appears in the Rig Veda (in the hymn cited above, p. 143) as an active female divine power, showing grace to mortals.  In the Brahmanic period V[=a]c becomes more and more like the Greek Logos, and it may truthfuly be said that

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The Religions of India from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.