The Mythologies of India
Veda Vyasa; Veda compiler. Wikimedia Commons
Ancient India
(Indus: 2500 - 1500 B.C.; Vedic: 1500 - 500 B.C.)
The Invisible Counterplayer
The Near Eastern neolithic continuum, stretching out from The Fertile Crescent in the border areas of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran over time developed from the Tigris to the Indus. However, in the early paleolithic, two interacting yet distinct Indian culture zones can be recognized from as early as about 500 000 B.C.:
A. The Soan Culture Zone of the Northwest, employing 1) “pebble tools” with early South African affinities, and 2) “choppers” with later East Asian affinities.
B. The Madras-Acheul Zone of Western, Central and Southeastern India (Mumbay to Madras) represented by “hand-axes” of Acheulean type.
During the middle Paleolithic (third interglacial and last glacial age, from 200 000 B.C. to perhaps 30 000 B.C., when Neanderthal Man, who now had entered the freezing regions of the north, was pursuing the woolly mammoth throughout Europe) the two basal Indian provinces above defined remained true to their respective – very slowly developing – lower-paleolithic traditions. There seemed to be no advance on Indian soil to the cultural level of the upper paleolithic, that is to say a “true blade” type of industry, such as appeared in Europe in the period of the painted Crô-Magnon caves (Lascaux and the others, about 30 000 – 10 000 B.C.).
Throughout the broad equatorial zones of man’s earliest origins and diffusion, where natural materials most available for use are perishable, nothing but the forms survive according to which materials are traditionally shaped. In the northern, temperate zones, stone, and then pottery and metals, play a proportionately much greater part in the material constitution of culture. So that, whereas the influence of a northern upon a southern neighbor may be represented by a visible, measurable intrusion, the impact of an equatorial upon a stone-, ceramic-, or metal-using temperate-zone tradition can be revealed only by symptomatic modifications of the artifacts of that northern tradition itself. The impact of this great group of equatorial zone cultures is therefore less visible physically, and Joseph Campbell terms them “The Invisible Counterplayers” in the history of the culture of mankind.
The Indus Civilization: about 2500 – 1500 B.C.
The sudden appearance in the Indus Valley, about 2500 B.C., of two large Bronze Age cities in full flower, culturally identical, yet four hundred miles apart and with little but villages between, stands out as an enigma. Harappa, in the Punjab, on the river Ravi, and Mohenjo-Daro, in the south, in Sind, on the Indus, are in ground plan alike and they cannot have been of independent growth – they were colonial emplacements. These two cities and their civilization break into view, remain without change for a millennium, fade, and disappear like illusions in the night.
The human skeletons found among the Indus ruins have been classified for the most part in two groups: 1) Those showing Proto-Australoid features, and 2) Those of Mediterranean affinity. The first have been compared with the Veddoid aboriginies of Ceylon, the natives of Australia, and numerous native tribes of India itself. The second group, the Mediterranean, includes a large number of groups of peoples stretching from Iberia to India. The characteristic type appears in late Natufian times in Palestine (about 7500 – 5500 B.C.) and may have been differentiated in the southern steppes of Northern Africa and in Asia, and spread westwards and eastwards. The predynastic Egyptians certainly belonged to this group, and the purest representatives at the present day are to be found in the Arabian Peninsula. The archaeological evidence indicates that this type is everywhere in Western Asia associated with the earliest agricultural settlements.
There is a broken statuette from Mohenjo-Daro, showing a priestlike figure draped in a shawl with trefoil design that has been drawn over the left shoulder, leaving the right bare – which is still the proper way to indicate reverence both in India and throughout the Buddhist world when approaching a shrine or holy person. Such a reverent baring of the right shoulder is typical also, however, of the early Sumerian statues of priestly personages, and the trefoil design likewise appears in Mesopotamian art, though not in the later Indian tradition. Nor is the manner of dealing with the hair in this statuette duplicated in later Indian art. This figure, of the Mediterranean group, reinforces the hypothesis that these two cities were colonies established by Mesopotamian rulers.
Among the ruins there is much to indicate that the phallic cults of the mother-goddess were a prominent feature of the civilization. There survives in India up to this day a double fold of mother–goddess worship, namely 1) of the Proto-Australoid stratum, and 2) of the neolithic, while the concept of the ultimate godhead rather as female than as male has nowhere else in the world been so elaborately developed. It is therefore not to be marveled that human sacrifice, which is everywhere characteristic of the worship of the Goddess, whether in the tropical or in the neolithic sphere, should have survived in force in India, both in the temples and in village groves, until suppressed by law in 1835.
Such rites of human sacrifice were endemic to the culture zone of The Invisible Counterplayer. The underlying myth is of a divine being, slain, cut up, and the parts buried, which thereupon turn into the food plants on which the community lives. The leading theme is the coming of death into the world, by way of a murder. The second point is that the food plants on which man lives derive from that death. Finally, the sexual organs, according to this mythology, appeared at the time of that coming of death; for reproduction without death would have been a calamity, as would death without reproduction. Death as the life of the living is the fundamental motivation supporting the rites around which the social structure of the early planting villages was composed, and it is the fundamental motive out of which the entire mythology, civilization and philosophy of India has grown. The first observation to be made with respect to Indian mythology, therefore, is that its deepest root is in the soil of the timeless equatorial world of the ritual death from which life proceeds.
A second theme, no less typical of timeless India, strikes the eye in the imagery of a series of about half a dozen Indus seals showing figures in yoga postures. In this one may perceive a prototype of Shiva, the god who in India is the consort of the goddess Kali. Shiva is the lord of yoga, of cremation grounds, of the beasts of the wilderness, who are quelled in their ferocity by his meditating presence, and of the lingam (phallus). The classic lingam and yoni symbols – which are the most numerous sacred objects by far in the whole range of contemporary Indian religion – are clearly anticipated in these seals from Late Stone and High Bronze Age. When the figures, on the one hand, of the meditating divine yogi, and, on the other, of the goddess mother of the plant world, are added to this, there can be no doubt of the antiquity in India of the great god and goddess known today as Shiva and his blood-consuming consort Kali, to whom sacrifices pour.
The Vedic Age: 1500 – 500 B.C.
The wheel appeared in Sumer around 3200 B.C., and the light two-wheeled chariot with wheels that revolved freely around their axles came about 2000 B.C. This technology, coupled with the introduction of iron weapons and the use of horses for riding, brought new empires into being. Examples are the Hittites in Anatolia (about 1650 B.C.), the Shang in China (about 1520 B.C., still using bronze), the Hyksos (who invaded Egypt in the period 1670 – 1570 B.C.), and the Indo-Aryans (who invaded India about 1500 – 1250 B.C.). All those who acquired the use of these weapons got a powerful thrust that carried all before it, and the older, basically peasant, land-rooted civilizations were unable to match these new conquerors. The sudden demise of the cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa is most likely due to invasions from Aryans from the north, by Indo-European or Indo-Germanic peoples.
Two prehistoric stages of development seem likely:
1. A stage of common origins, somewhere in the broad grazing lands, either between the Rhine and Don, or between the Rhine and Western Turkestan.
2. A stage of division between a Western group of tribes, centered possibly in the plains between Dnieper and Danube, from which there were presently derived the earliest Greek, Italic, Celtic, and Germanic diffusions; and an Eastern division, centered possibly north of the Caucasus, possibly around the Aral Sea, from which stemmed, in time, the Armenians and various Balto-Slavic tribes (Old Prussians, Latvians, and Lithuanians; Czechs, Poles, Russians, etc), as well as the early Persians and their close relatives, the Indo-Aryans, which latter, pressing through the passes of the Hindu Kush, broke into the broadly spreading, rich and waiting Indian plain.
The broad northern grasslands from which these tribes appeared had been a paleolithic hunting ground for some 200 000 years before the new arts of the nuclear Near East arrived, gradually and spottily, to make herdsmen out of hunters. The development described above is of course very rough and speculative.
These tribes were polygamous, patriarchal tent dwellers. Since the women of their conquests were added gladly to their baggage trains, the Aryans have evolved by a processus of constant mixing, blending and splitting. The gods of the various Aryan pantheons are, for the most part, disengaged from local associations. They are not specifically identified with this or that particular tree, pond, rock, or local scene, like so many divinities both of primitive and of advanced, settled cultures, but are the powers made manifest rather in such phenomena as the ranging nomads could experience or transport here, there, and everywhere. For example, of the 1028 hymns of the Indo-Aryan Rig Veda, no less than 250 were addressed to Indra, king of the gods, who was the wielder of the lightning bolt and giver of rain; 200 to Agni, the deity of fire, who in the fires of their hearths guarded the families and in the fires of their altars received the homage of their sacrifices; and 120 went to Soma, the liquor of the sacrifice poured into Agni’s mouth. Hymns addressed to the sun, the wind, the rain god, and gods of storm were numerous. The brilliant Father Heaven and the broadly spreading Mother Earth, together with their daughters, lovely Dawn and Night, also were celebrated. However, in majesty above all, though hardly a dozen hymns were addressed to him exclusively, was the deity Varuna.
The fundamental, structuring forms of their Vedic order show that they were derived, together with agriculture, animal husbandry, and the decimal system of mathematical reckoning, from the primary center of all higher civilization whatsoever, namely Sumer. Heaven, earth, and the air between are the realms of An, Ki, and Enlil. Soma, the sacrifice, is a counterpart of Tammuz and even carries the same associations; for this god, too, is identified with the waning and waxing moon , the bull tethered to the sacrificial post, the intoxicating drink fermented from the juice of the soma plant is the ambrosia of immortal life. Moreover, the principle of order (rta: “course, or way”) according to which Varuna governs all things is the Vedic counterpart, exactly, of Egyptian maat, Sumerian me. And, like maat and me, the term designates not only a physical, but also a moral, order.
It is to be remarked, however, that although an obviously massive influence from the primary culture matrices of the Near East is responsible for the architectural grandeur of the mythology of the Vedas, there is a totally different spirit and line of interest throughout these hymns from anything known to the prayers and myths either of Sumer or of Egypt. For like the Semites, the Aryans were a comparatively simple lot, and when they borrowed from the priestly orders of the great temple cities of the settled states, they applied the material to their own purpose, which was not the articulation of a complex social unit, since they governed no such state, but specifically, power: victory and booty, aggressive productivity and wealth. The mythological foundation of the Indus Civilization overthrown by the Aryans appears to have been a variant of the old High Bronze Age vegetal-lunar rhythmic order, wherein a priestly science of the calendar required of all submission without resistance to an ungainsayable destiny.
The gained speed of the newly harnessed horse, the new weapons, and the power therewith achieved to ride without defeat over cities, plains, everywhere at will, had given to the warrior folk a new sense of autonomy. So that even the lesson of the cosmic sacrifice now was read as a lesson not in submission but in gained strength. Soma, the lunar victim, was poured into the fire in the form of the juice of the plant soma as a drink fit for the gods; the same intoxicating brew was poured also into the warrior’s own gullet. As hunters, herders, and warriors, the Aryans knew too well the power of the autonomous deedsman to shape destiny to have allowed the dead and killing weight of a mathematical, priestly vision to grind them into pap with all the rest. The rhythmic order of Varuna, consequently, moved back. And to the foreground of their mystic cosmic scene there drove, in a battle chariot drawn by two snorting, tawny steeds with flowing manes of peacock-feather hue, the greatest Soma drinker of them all, the god of battle, battle courage, battle power and battle victory, hurler of the many-angled bolt, whose tawny beard was violently agitated when he had quaffed and was full of soma, like a lake: Indra, like the sun, whose long arms flung the bolt by which the cosmic dragon Vritra was undone.
In the buoyant life and will to earthly power of these hymns we find nothing of the spirit or of the mythological image of the later Hinduism, which is supposed to have been derived from the Vedas. There is, for example, no idea of reincarnation, no yearning for release from the vortex of rebirth, no yoga, no mythology of salvation, no vegetarianism, non-violence or caste. The meaning is simply that the mythology of later India is not in substance Vedic at all, but Dravidian; stemming in the main from the Bronze Age complex of the Indus. For, in the course of years the Aryans were assimilated, and the principle of order of the cosmic god Varuna – which had been derived, like the Indus forms themselves, from the mathematics of the Near East – assumed supremacy over the principle of the autonomous will of Indra. Varuna’s rta became dharma. Varuna’s creative maya became Vishnu’s creative maya. And the cycles of eternal return – ever turning – returned to grind on forever. The act of will and virtue of the greatest hero god of the Vedas became only something that should not have occurred. For that dragon, Vritra, as we now hear, had been a Brahmin. And since killing a Brahmin – according to later Indian thought – is the most heinous of all crimes, Indra’s killing of Vritra was a crime that he would only be able to expiate by the performance of an odious penance. A contrary, unheroic, theme has become paramount in this account – which is strongly stressed throughout the Mahabharata; namely of an alternation of power between a company of titans and a company of gods, in illustration of the principle of the cycle of dark and light. Alternation is of the essence.
Mythic Power
The means by which the priestly caste in India gained the mastery over the nobles – gradually perhaps, but surely and securely – was the awe that they managed to inspire in all around them by the chanting, and apparent power of their Vedic charms. In the earliest period the gods were implored. But when it was reasoned that since the gods could be conjured to man’s will, the power of the conjuring rites must be greater than that of the gods, the deities were no longer implored but compelled to yield their boons to the warrior clans. With this, the magic of the Brahmins, the knowers of the potent spells, became recognized as the mightiest, and most dangerous in the world. The Vedic hymns, it is supposed, had not been humanly composed, but heard, as by revelation, by the great seers (rsis) of the mythic past. They were therefore a treasury of divine truth, and power, to be studied, analyzed, and contemplated. The works of theology devoted to their interpretation are the so-called “Works of the Brahmins” (Brahamanas), the earliest of which may be dated about 800 B.C.
The Brahmins were of four classes:
1. The Hotri, or “Invoker”, with the particular task of calling to the gods, summoning them. His handbook was the Rig Veda.
2. The Adhvaryu, or “Sacrificer”, whose task was to supervise the offerings. His handbook was the Yajur Veda.
3. The Udgatri, or “Chanter”, who intoned selections from another collection, the Sama Veda.
4. The Supervising Brahmin, who was often, but not necessarily, the chief house priest of the king.
Forest Philosophy
Brahmavarta, the classic Holy land of the Vedas, was in the northeast portion of the plain between the rivers Juman and Sutlej, roughly between Dehli and Lahore; while Brahmashideasha, “the Country of the Holy Seers”, where the hymns were collected and arranged, lay a little southeastward of this zone, in the upper portion of the Doab (the land between Jumna and Ganges) and in the regions around Mathura. The lion at that time prowled the vast deserts east of Sutlej, and the grain of the herders appears to have been wheat. The classic country of the Buddhists, on the other hand, lies far eastward of these early Aryan centers, down the Ganges, below Benares, in the neighborhood of Oudh and Bihar, reaching northward to Nepal and southward to the dangerous Chota Nagpur jungles (the land of the Bengal tiger and rice). We may let these two worlds stand as symbolic poles representing the interplay of the contrary mythologies of the newcomers and the older inhabitants of the land.
Not only Buddhists and Jains, but also a considerable galaxy of unaffiliated, world-negating forest sages, had their own classic Holy Land in this latter part of India. Benares was the city of the god Shiva, “The Lord of Yoga”. This may have been a mythogenetic zone of unfathomed past. The Brahmin mythology did not come there before the Aryan mastery of the Gangetic plain had reached the neighborhood of Benares – around 700 – 600 B.C.
The ideas of 1) atman (spiritual Self), 2) deep sleep, dream and the waking state, 3) yoga, and 4) a psychosomatic system symbolically related to 5) a cosmic system derived, apparently, from Bronze Age Mesopotamia, come to view in the first Upanishad. They are to remain as basic thoughts of the entire subsequent development of Oriental philosophy and religion. A doctrine that also is central to Oriental mythic thought is the doctrine of flame and smoke, or the parting of the two spiritual ways: on the one hand, the road of flame, which leads to the sun and therewith the gods, there to abide, but on the other hand, the road of smoke, to the moon, the fathers and reincarnation. An association of the moon with the cycle of death and birth, and of the solar door with release; disciplines of secular piety (sacrificial rites, almsgiving, etc) as the means to a favorable birth, as well as to a pleasant heavenly sojourn among the fathers, and on the other hand, disciplines of austerity practiced in the forest, as the means to release, are basic elements of Hinduism.
Between the Vedic and the Upanishadic views the difference is so great that the latter cannot have been developed out of the former. The way the patriarchal gods of the Aryans are integrated in a submissive way into the Upanishads, shows that – as time went by – the Aryan culture was integrated and absorbed by the original Dravidian culture in place before the Aryans came. In the Kena Upanishad, Brahman, the life-force of the universe that secretly dwells within all things, became the guru of the male gods of the Vedic pantheon. She is represented as their mystagogue, their initiator into the most profound and elementary secret of the universe, which is her own essence. The Vedic gods became viewed as manifestations of the all-inhabiting Brahman of the native faith.
The Immanent Transcendent Divinity
We have compared two components of the Indian mythic complex: that of the early Indus Valley, in which the bull was the foremost symbolic beast and the figures of both Shiva and the Great Goddess were anticipated; and the system of the Vedas, where the place of honour went to the lion – which eats up the bull, as the warrior drinks soma and the sun consumes the light of the moon. A third component is yoga, which in terms of the present subject may be defined as a technique for inducing mythic identification.
The appearance of figures in classic yoga posture on the Indus Valley seals suggests a connection of the system with the early Bronze Age mythology of the ritual regicide, where the king was identified with the dying and resurrected moon. The association of yogic thought in later centuries with the idea of the ever-returning cycle, as well as with Shiva and the Godddess, tends to enforce this indication. It seems sensible to assume that yoga must have been indigenous to India, and to treat it, consequently, as a third and separate force in this respect. Hypothetically, yoga might back in very ancient times be supposed to have been developed from local shamanistic techniques for inducing trance and possession.
The Great Reversal
Yoga is not intrinsically, necessarily, or even usually, associated with negation. In the popular mind to this day yoga is largely associated rather with the acquisition of powers (siddhi) than with the forcing of an exit from the world arena. These powers by which the concrete obstacles of the world are magically overcome are eight, as follows:
1)The power to become small or invisible, 2)The power to swell to immense size and so to reach even the most distant object – for example the moon with the tip of one’s finger, 3)The power to become light, and so, to walk on air, to walk on water, 4) The power to become as heavy as the world, 5)The power of obtaining everything at will, including knowledge of others’ thoughts and of the past and future, 6)The power of infinite enjoyment, 7)The power of mastering all things, including death, and 8)The power of bewitching, fascinating, and subduing by magical means.
However, in the light of the wisdom of those who are truly wise, all power, natural or supernatural, that adds to one’s enjoyment of the world is but straw added to the fire that one should be striving with all zeal to quench. The mind, perpetually engrossed in desire and expectation, cannot be attached to the supreme spirit.
The Road of Smoke
A movement which in ancient times was very important, was that of the Jains. Their most celebrated teacher, Mahavira, who died about 485 B.C. , was a contemporary and formidable rival of the Buddha. Whereas the Buddha’s doctrine was in every sense a Middle Way, that of the Mahavira was extreme. The Buddha preached a new doctrine, whereas Mahavira taught one that in his time was already old. The universe, as seen by the Jains of that time, was a mass of matter blown into shape by the force and vitality of an infinite number of deluded monads (jivas). These put on and off all the forms of the various orders that we know as life, seemingly born, seemingly passing away, yet actually merely transmigrating from one state to another in a piteous, helpless round. These numerous, greatly differing orders of appearance are classified by the Jains minutely in a system of graded categories which is of interest not only for Jainism but also for Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism – and even Dante.
According to this classification, the incarnations trough which we all have passed many times and are still passing, are as follows:
I.Earth Incarnations: 1)Numerous varieties of dust particle, 2) Sand, pebbles, boulders, and rock, 3) The various metals, 4) The various precious stones, 5) Clays, sulphur, and the various salts.
II.Water Incarnations: 1) Seas, lakes, rivers, and rain of various sorts, 2) Dew and other exudations, 3) Hoarfrost, 4) Snow, hail, and ice, 5) Clouds and fog.
III.Plant Incarnations: 1) Plants propagating by gemnation (lichens, mosses, onions, and other bulbous roots, aloes, saffron, bananas, etc), 2) Individual plants, produced from seed (trees, shrubs and lianas, grasses, grains and aquatic plants).
IV.Fire Incarnations: 1) Flames, 2) Embers, 3) Lightning flashes, 4) Thunderbolts, 5) Meteors and bolides.
V.Wind Incarnations: 1) Breezes, 2) Gales, squalls, storms, and tempests, 3) Whirlwinds, 4) Freezing blasts, 5) The inhalations and exhalations of living beings.
VI.Organisms (all of which have the power to make sounds): 1) Beings with two senses, touch and taste (worms, leeches, conches, cowries, barnacles, clams and other shellfish), 2) Beings with three senses, touch, taste and smell (fleas, lice, meal worms, roaches, earwigs, crawling bugs, ants, spiders, etc.), 3) Beings with four senses, touch, taste, smell and sight (butterflies, bees, wasps, flies, mosquitoes, scorpions, crickets, and other highly developed insects), 4) Beings with five senses, subdivided into animals and mankind. Animals: a) Aquatic, b) Terrestrial, c) Aerial. Mankind: a) People of decent lineage (Aryan), who in turn are of course of many kinds, b) Barbarians (mlecchas), who are the residue of mankind.
Deities, in the Jain view, are themselves merely monads caught in the vortex of rebirth, happy for a time, but destined to pass to other forms. They are of four chief categories, finely subdivided in categories:
I.Gods supporting the earthly order: 1) Fiends of the upper hells (asuras), 2) Divine serpents, 3) Lightning deities, 4) Golden-feathered sun-birds, 5) Fire deities, 6) Wind deities, 7) Thunder gods, 8) Water gods, 9) Gods of the continents, 10) Gods of the quarters.
II.Wilderness or Jungle Spirits: 1) Kinnaras (birdlike musicians having human heads), 2) Kimpurushas (of human form, with the heads of horses), 3) Mahoragas (great serpents), 4) Gandharvas (celestial, manlike musicians), 5) Yakshas (powerful earth demons, usually benign), 6) Rakshasas (malignant and very dangerous cannibal demons), 7) Bhutas (cemetery vampires), 8) Pishachas (malignant, mighty imps).
III.Heavenly bodies: 1) Suns ( numbering 132 in the world inhabited by man) 2) Moons (likewise 132), 3) Constellations (28 for each sun and moon), 4) Planets (88 for each sun and moon), 5) Stars.
IV.Dwellers in the Mansions of the Storied Heavens: They are of two orders, subdivided in ascending series:
1) Those within the Temporal Sphere: a) Masters of the True Law, b) The Lordly Powers, c) The Ever-Youthful, d) The great Kings, e) Dwellers in the Causal World, f) Lords of the Mystical Sound Va, g) The Greatly Brilliant, h) Those of a Thousand Rays, i) The Pacific, j) The Revered, k) Those Delighting in the Abyss, l) The Imperishable; and
2) Those beyond the Temporal Sphere: a) Those Residing in the Cosmic Neck (Delightful to See; Of Noble Achievement; Delighting the Mind; Universally Benign; Illustrious; Well disposed; Auspicious; Giving Joy; Giving bliss), b) Those Residing in the Head (The Victorious; The Carriers of Banners; The Conquerors; The Invincibles; The Fully Realized)
Each of the forty-nine sub-orders of divine being is organized like an Indian kingdom, in ten grades: 1) Kings, 2) Princes, 3) Thirty-three high functionaries, 4) Court Nobles, 5) Bodyguards, 6) Palace Guards, 7) Soldiers, 8) Citizens, 9) slaves, 10) Criminal classes.
So, Jainism is a religion without God. Above earth, as well as beneath, there is imagined only a manifold of monads. No god in the usual Occidental sense of these terms or in the early Vedic sense. It is a mythology designed to break the will to live and to blot out the universe. Its function is psychological in guidance of the sentiments away from their natural earthly concerns. It has so dilated the cosmic spectacle that the actualities at hand are simply unworthy of the notice of the wise.
The Road of Flame
“As a large pond,” we read in a Jain text, “when its influx of water has been blocked, dries up gradually through consumption of the water and evaporation, so the karmic matter of a monk, which has been acquired through millions of births, is annihilated by austerities – provided there is no further influx.” The first task of the Jain teacher, therefore, is to block in his student the karmic influx. This can be achieved only through a gradual reduction of the sphere of life participation. The second task, when the student has finally closed and locked every door, is to have him burn out through asceticism the karmic matter already present. The normal Sanskrit term for this discipline is tapas, a word meaning “heat”. The Jain yogi, through his fierce interior heat, is supposed, literally, to burn out karmic matter and thus to cleanse and lighten his precious monad, so that, rising through the planes of the cosmic body, it may ultimately ascend beyond, to “peace in isolation” (kaivalyam), beneath the Umbrella Slight Tilted. Here the individual life-monad, perfectly clear, at last, of all coloring matter whatsoever, will shine forever in its own translucent, crystalline, pure being.
In his ascent, the student must assume progressively twelve vows:
I.The Five Basic Vows of the Jain Layman: 1) Non-violence, 2) Truthfulness, 3) Non-theft, 4) Chastity, 5) Non-acquisition of possessions.
II.Three vows to increase the force of the Basic Five: 6) To limit one’s moving about, 7) To limit the number of things used, 8) Not to wish evil to anyone or to use one’s influence for evil, to endanger life by carelessness, or to keep unnecessary knives and weapons.
III.Four vows to initiate positive religious practice: 9) To meditate at least 48 minutes a day, 10) To limit further, for a day, occasionally, the limits already imposed, 11) To engage, four days a month, in a monklike fast and meditation, 12) To support monasteries and monks with donations.
In addition, the ideal layman’s life toward which one should be striving through all of this, is to include the following eleven orders of virtue:
1)Virtues of belief, 2) Virtues of dedication, 3) Virtues of meditation, 4) Virtues of monastic effort, 5) The virtue of non-injury to plants, 6) The virtue of non-injury to minute insects, 7) The virtue of perfect chastity, 8) The virtue of renounced action, 9) The virtue of renounced possession, 10) The virtue of renounced participation, 11) The virtue of retreat.
The Near Eastern neolithic continuum, stretching out from The Fertile Crescent in the border areas of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran over time developed from the Tigris to the Indus. However, in the early paleolithic, two interacting yet distinct Indian culture zones can be recognized from as early as about 500 000 B.C.:
A. The Soan Culture Zone of the Northwest, employing 1) “pebble tools” with early South African affinities, and 2) “choppers” with later East Asian affinities.
B. The Madras-Acheul Zone of Western, Central and Southeastern India (Mumbay to Madras) represented by “hand-axes” of Acheulean type.
During the middle Paleolithic (third interglacial and last glacial age, from 200 000 B.C. to perhaps 30 000 B.C., when Neanderthal Man, who now had entered the freezing regions of the north, was pursuing the woolly mammoth throughout Europe) the two basal Indian provinces above defined remained true to their respective – very slowly developing – lower-paleolithic traditions. There seemed to be no advance on Indian soil to the cultural level of the upper paleolithic, that is to say a “true blade” type of industry, such as appeared in Europe in the period of the painted Crô-Magnon caves (Lascaux and the others, about 30 000 – 10 000 B.C.).
Throughout the broad equatorial zones of man’s earliest origins and diffusion, where natural materials most available for use are perishable, nothing but the forms survive according to which materials are traditionally shaped. In the northern, temperate zones, stone, and then pottery and metals, play a proportionately much greater part in the material constitution of culture. So that, whereas the influence of a northern upon a southern neighbor may be represented by a visible, measurable intrusion, the impact of an equatorial upon a stone-, ceramic-, or metal-using temperate-zone tradition can be revealed only by symptomatic modifications of the artifacts of that northern tradition itself. The impact of this great group of equatorial zone cultures is therefore less visible physically, and Joseph Campbell terms them “The Invisible Counterplayers” in the history of the culture of mankind.
The Indus Civilization: about 2500 – 1500 B.C.
The sudden appearance in the Indus Valley, about 2500 B.C., of two large Bronze Age cities in full flower, culturally identical, yet four hundred miles apart and with little but villages between, stands out as an enigma. Harappa, in the Punjab, on the river Ravi, and Mohenjo-Daro, in the south, in Sind, on the Indus, are in ground plan alike and they cannot have been of independent growth – they were colonial emplacements. These two cities and their civilization break into view, remain without change for a millennium, fade, and disappear like illusions in the night.
The human skeletons found among the Indus ruins have been classified for the most part in two groups: 1) Those showing Proto-Australoid features, and 2) Those of Mediterranean affinity. The first have been compared with the Veddoid aboriginies of Ceylon, the natives of Australia, and numerous native tribes of India itself. The second group, the Mediterranean, includes a large number of groups of peoples stretching from Iberia to India. The characteristic type appears in late Natufian times in Palestine (about 7500 – 5500 B.C.) and may have been differentiated in the southern steppes of Northern Africa and in Asia, and spread westwards and eastwards. The predynastic Egyptians certainly belonged to this group, and the purest representatives at the present day are to be found in the Arabian Peninsula. The archaeological evidence indicates that this type is everywhere in Western Asia associated with the earliest agricultural settlements.
There is a broken statuette from Mohenjo-Daro, showing a priestlike figure draped in a shawl with trefoil design that has been drawn over the left shoulder, leaving the right bare – which is still the proper way to indicate reverence both in India and throughout the Buddhist world when approaching a shrine or holy person. Such a reverent baring of the right shoulder is typical also, however, of the early Sumerian statues of priestly personages, and the trefoil design likewise appears in Mesopotamian art, though not in the later Indian tradition. Nor is the manner of dealing with the hair in this statuette duplicated in later Indian art. This figure, of the Mediterranean group, reinforces the hypothesis that these two cities were colonies established by Mesopotamian rulers.
Among the ruins there is much to indicate that the phallic cults of the mother-goddess were a prominent feature of the civilization. There survives in India up to this day a double fold of mother–goddess worship, namely 1) of the Proto-Australoid stratum, and 2) of the neolithic, while the concept of the ultimate godhead rather as female than as male has nowhere else in the world been so elaborately developed. It is therefore not to be marveled that human sacrifice, which is everywhere characteristic of the worship of the Goddess, whether in the tropical or in the neolithic sphere, should have survived in force in India, both in the temples and in village groves, until suppressed by law in 1835.
Such rites of human sacrifice were endemic to the culture zone of The Invisible Counterplayer. The underlying myth is of a divine being, slain, cut up, and the parts buried, which thereupon turn into the food plants on which the community lives. The leading theme is the coming of death into the world, by way of a murder. The second point is that the food plants on which man lives derive from that death. Finally, the sexual organs, according to this mythology, appeared at the time of that coming of death; for reproduction without death would have been a calamity, as would death without reproduction. Death as the life of the living is the fundamental motivation supporting the rites around which the social structure of the early planting villages was composed, and it is the fundamental motive out of which the entire mythology, civilization and philosophy of India has grown. The first observation to be made with respect to Indian mythology, therefore, is that its deepest root is in the soil of the timeless equatorial world of the ritual death from which life proceeds.
A second theme, no less typical of timeless India, strikes the eye in the imagery of a series of about half a dozen Indus seals showing figures in yoga postures. In this one may perceive a prototype of Shiva, the god who in India is the consort of the goddess Kali. Shiva is the lord of yoga, of cremation grounds, of the beasts of the wilderness, who are quelled in their ferocity by his meditating presence, and of the lingam (phallus). The classic lingam and yoni symbols – which are the most numerous sacred objects by far in the whole range of contemporary Indian religion – are clearly anticipated in these seals from Late Stone and High Bronze Age. When the figures, on the one hand, of the meditating divine yogi, and, on the other, of the goddess mother of the plant world, are added to this, there can be no doubt of the antiquity in India of the great god and goddess known today as Shiva and his blood-consuming consort Kali, to whom sacrifices pour.
The Vedic Age: 1500 – 500 B.C.
The wheel appeared in Sumer around 3200 B.C., and the light two-wheeled chariot with wheels that revolved freely around their axles came about 2000 B.C. This technology, coupled with the introduction of iron weapons and the use of horses for riding, brought new empires into being. Examples are the Hittites in Anatolia (about 1650 B.C.), the Shang in China (about 1520 B.C., still using bronze), the Hyksos (who invaded Egypt in the period 1670 – 1570 B.C.), and the Indo-Aryans (who invaded India about 1500 – 1250 B.C.). All those who acquired the use of these weapons got a powerful thrust that carried all before it, and the older, basically peasant, land-rooted civilizations were unable to match these new conquerors. The sudden demise of the cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa is most likely due to invasions from Aryans from the north, by Indo-European or Indo-Germanic peoples.
Two prehistoric stages of development seem likely:
1. A stage of common origins, somewhere in the broad grazing lands, either between the Rhine and Don, or between the Rhine and Western Turkestan.
2. A stage of division between a Western group of tribes, centered possibly in the plains between Dnieper and Danube, from which there were presently derived the earliest Greek, Italic, Celtic, and Germanic diffusions; and an Eastern division, centered possibly north of the Caucasus, possibly around the Aral Sea, from which stemmed, in time, the Armenians and various Balto-Slavic tribes (Old Prussians, Latvians, and Lithuanians; Czechs, Poles, Russians, etc), as well as the early Persians and their close relatives, the Indo-Aryans, which latter, pressing through the passes of the Hindu Kush, broke into the broadly spreading, rich and waiting Indian plain.
The broad northern grasslands from which these tribes appeared had been a paleolithic hunting ground for some 200 000 years before the new arts of the nuclear Near East arrived, gradually and spottily, to make herdsmen out of hunters. The development described above is of course very rough and speculative.
These tribes were polygamous, patriarchal tent dwellers. Since the women of their conquests were added gladly to their baggage trains, the Aryans have evolved by a processus of constant mixing, blending and splitting. The gods of the various Aryan pantheons are, for the most part, disengaged from local associations. They are not specifically identified with this or that particular tree, pond, rock, or local scene, like so many divinities both of primitive and of advanced, settled cultures, but are the powers made manifest rather in such phenomena as the ranging nomads could experience or transport here, there, and everywhere. For example, of the 1028 hymns of the Indo-Aryan Rig Veda, no less than 250 were addressed to Indra, king of the gods, who was the wielder of the lightning bolt and giver of rain; 200 to Agni, the deity of fire, who in the fires of their hearths guarded the families and in the fires of their altars received the homage of their sacrifices; and 120 went to Soma, the liquor of the sacrifice poured into Agni’s mouth. Hymns addressed to the sun, the wind, the rain god, and gods of storm were numerous. The brilliant Father Heaven and the broadly spreading Mother Earth, together with their daughters, lovely Dawn and Night, also were celebrated. However, in majesty above all, though hardly a dozen hymns were addressed to him exclusively, was the deity Varuna.
The fundamental, structuring forms of their Vedic order show that they were derived, together with agriculture, animal husbandry, and the decimal system of mathematical reckoning, from the primary center of all higher civilization whatsoever, namely Sumer. Heaven, earth, and the air between are the realms of An, Ki, and Enlil. Soma, the sacrifice, is a counterpart of Tammuz and even carries the same associations; for this god, too, is identified with the waning and waxing moon , the bull tethered to the sacrificial post, the intoxicating drink fermented from the juice of the soma plant is the ambrosia of immortal life. Moreover, the principle of order (rta: “course, or way”) according to which Varuna governs all things is the Vedic counterpart, exactly, of Egyptian maat, Sumerian me. And, like maat and me, the term designates not only a physical, but also a moral, order.
It is to be remarked, however, that although an obviously massive influence from the primary culture matrices of the Near East is responsible for the architectural grandeur of the mythology of the Vedas, there is a totally different spirit and line of interest throughout these hymns from anything known to the prayers and myths either of Sumer or of Egypt. For like the Semites, the Aryans were a comparatively simple lot, and when they borrowed from the priestly orders of the great temple cities of the settled states, they applied the material to their own purpose, which was not the articulation of a complex social unit, since they governed no such state, but specifically, power: victory and booty, aggressive productivity and wealth. The mythological foundation of the Indus Civilization overthrown by the Aryans appears to have been a variant of the old High Bronze Age vegetal-lunar rhythmic order, wherein a priestly science of the calendar required of all submission without resistance to an ungainsayable destiny.
The gained speed of the newly harnessed horse, the new weapons, and the power therewith achieved to ride without defeat over cities, plains, everywhere at will, had given to the warrior folk a new sense of autonomy. So that even the lesson of the cosmic sacrifice now was read as a lesson not in submission but in gained strength. Soma, the lunar victim, was poured into the fire in the form of the juice of the plant soma as a drink fit for the gods; the same intoxicating brew was poured also into the warrior’s own gullet. As hunters, herders, and warriors, the Aryans knew too well the power of the autonomous deedsman to shape destiny to have allowed the dead and killing weight of a mathematical, priestly vision to grind them into pap with all the rest. The rhythmic order of Varuna, consequently, moved back. And to the foreground of their mystic cosmic scene there drove, in a battle chariot drawn by two snorting, tawny steeds with flowing manes of peacock-feather hue, the greatest Soma drinker of them all, the god of battle, battle courage, battle power and battle victory, hurler of the many-angled bolt, whose tawny beard was violently agitated when he had quaffed and was full of soma, like a lake: Indra, like the sun, whose long arms flung the bolt by which the cosmic dragon Vritra was undone.
In the buoyant life and will to earthly power of these hymns we find nothing of the spirit or of the mythological image of the later Hinduism, which is supposed to have been derived from the Vedas. There is, for example, no idea of reincarnation, no yearning for release from the vortex of rebirth, no yoga, no mythology of salvation, no vegetarianism, non-violence or caste. The meaning is simply that the mythology of later India is not in substance Vedic at all, but Dravidian; stemming in the main from the Bronze Age complex of the Indus. For, in the course of years the Aryans were assimilated, and the principle of order of the cosmic god Varuna – which had been derived, like the Indus forms themselves, from the mathematics of the Near East – assumed supremacy over the principle of the autonomous will of Indra. Varuna’s rta became dharma. Varuna’s creative maya became Vishnu’s creative maya. And the cycles of eternal return – ever turning – returned to grind on forever. The act of will and virtue of the greatest hero god of the Vedas became only something that should not have occurred. For that dragon, Vritra, as we now hear, had been a Brahmin. And since killing a Brahmin – according to later Indian thought – is the most heinous of all crimes, Indra’s killing of Vritra was a crime that he would only be able to expiate by the performance of an odious penance. A contrary, unheroic, theme has become paramount in this account – which is strongly stressed throughout the Mahabharata; namely of an alternation of power between a company of titans and a company of gods, in illustration of the principle of the cycle of dark and light. Alternation is of the essence.
Mythic Power
The means by which the priestly caste in India gained the mastery over the nobles – gradually perhaps, but surely and securely – was the awe that they managed to inspire in all around them by the chanting, and apparent power of their Vedic charms. In the earliest period the gods were implored. But when it was reasoned that since the gods could be conjured to man’s will, the power of the conjuring rites must be greater than that of the gods, the deities were no longer implored but compelled to yield their boons to the warrior clans. With this, the magic of the Brahmins, the knowers of the potent spells, became recognized as the mightiest, and most dangerous in the world. The Vedic hymns, it is supposed, had not been humanly composed, but heard, as by revelation, by the great seers (rsis) of the mythic past. They were therefore a treasury of divine truth, and power, to be studied, analyzed, and contemplated. The works of theology devoted to their interpretation are the so-called “Works of the Brahmins” (Brahamanas), the earliest of which may be dated about 800 B.C.
The Brahmins were of four classes:
1. The Hotri, or “Invoker”, with the particular task of calling to the gods, summoning them. His handbook was the Rig Veda.
2. The Adhvaryu, or “Sacrificer”, whose task was to supervise the offerings. His handbook was the Yajur Veda.
3. The Udgatri, or “Chanter”, who intoned selections from another collection, the Sama Veda.
4. The Supervising Brahmin, who was often, but not necessarily, the chief house priest of the king.
Forest Philosophy
Brahmavarta, the classic Holy land of the Vedas, was in the northeast portion of the plain between the rivers Juman and Sutlej, roughly between Dehli and Lahore; while Brahmashideasha, “the Country of the Holy Seers”, where the hymns were collected and arranged, lay a little southeastward of this zone, in the upper portion of the Doab (the land between Jumna and Ganges) and in the regions around Mathura. The lion at that time prowled the vast deserts east of Sutlej, and the grain of the herders appears to have been wheat. The classic country of the Buddhists, on the other hand, lies far eastward of these early Aryan centers, down the Ganges, below Benares, in the neighborhood of Oudh and Bihar, reaching northward to Nepal and southward to the dangerous Chota Nagpur jungles (the land of the Bengal tiger and rice). We may let these two worlds stand as symbolic poles representing the interplay of the contrary mythologies of the newcomers and the older inhabitants of the land.
Not only Buddhists and Jains, but also a considerable galaxy of unaffiliated, world-negating forest sages, had their own classic Holy Land in this latter part of India. Benares was the city of the god Shiva, “The Lord of Yoga”. This may have been a mythogenetic zone of unfathomed past. The Brahmin mythology did not come there before the Aryan mastery of the Gangetic plain had reached the neighborhood of Benares – around 700 – 600 B.C.
The ideas of 1) atman (spiritual Self), 2) deep sleep, dream and the waking state, 3) yoga, and 4) a psychosomatic system symbolically related to 5) a cosmic system derived, apparently, from Bronze Age Mesopotamia, come to view in the first Upanishad. They are to remain as basic thoughts of the entire subsequent development of Oriental philosophy and religion. A doctrine that also is central to Oriental mythic thought is the doctrine of flame and smoke, or the parting of the two spiritual ways: on the one hand, the road of flame, which leads to the sun and therewith the gods, there to abide, but on the other hand, the road of smoke, to the moon, the fathers and reincarnation. An association of the moon with the cycle of death and birth, and of the solar door with release; disciplines of secular piety (sacrificial rites, almsgiving, etc) as the means to a favorable birth, as well as to a pleasant heavenly sojourn among the fathers, and on the other hand, disciplines of austerity practiced in the forest, as the means to release, are basic elements of Hinduism.
Between the Vedic and the Upanishadic views the difference is so great that the latter cannot have been developed out of the former. The way the patriarchal gods of the Aryans are integrated in a submissive way into the Upanishads, shows that – as time went by – the Aryan culture was integrated and absorbed by the original Dravidian culture in place before the Aryans came. In the Kena Upanishad, Brahman, the life-force of the universe that secretly dwells within all things, became the guru of the male gods of the Vedic pantheon. She is represented as their mystagogue, their initiator into the most profound and elementary secret of the universe, which is her own essence. The Vedic gods became viewed as manifestations of the all-inhabiting Brahman of the native faith.
The Immanent Transcendent Divinity
We have compared two components of the Indian mythic complex: that of the early Indus Valley, in which the bull was the foremost symbolic beast and the figures of both Shiva and the Great Goddess were anticipated; and the system of the Vedas, where the place of honour went to the lion – which eats up the bull, as the warrior drinks soma and the sun consumes the light of the moon. A third component is yoga, which in terms of the present subject may be defined as a technique for inducing mythic identification.
The appearance of figures in classic yoga posture on the Indus Valley seals suggests a connection of the system with the early Bronze Age mythology of the ritual regicide, where the king was identified with the dying and resurrected moon. The association of yogic thought in later centuries with the idea of the ever-returning cycle, as well as with Shiva and the Godddess, tends to enforce this indication. It seems sensible to assume that yoga must have been indigenous to India, and to treat it, consequently, as a third and separate force in this respect. Hypothetically, yoga might back in very ancient times be supposed to have been developed from local shamanistic techniques for inducing trance and possession.
The Great Reversal
Yoga is not intrinsically, necessarily, or even usually, associated with negation. In the popular mind to this day yoga is largely associated rather with the acquisition of powers (siddhi) than with the forcing of an exit from the world arena. These powers by which the concrete obstacles of the world are magically overcome are eight, as follows:
1)The power to become small or invisible, 2)The power to swell to immense size and so to reach even the most distant object – for example the moon with the tip of one’s finger, 3)The power to become light, and so, to walk on air, to walk on water, 4) The power to become as heavy as the world, 5)The power of obtaining everything at will, including knowledge of others’ thoughts and of the past and future, 6)The power of infinite enjoyment, 7)The power of mastering all things, including death, and 8)The power of bewitching, fascinating, and subduing by magical means.
However, in the light of the wisdom of those who are truly wise, all power, natural or supernatural, that adds to one’s enjoyment of the world is but straw added to the fire that one should be striving with all zeal to quench. The mind, perpetually engrossed in desire and expectation, cannot be attached to the supreme spirit.
The Road of Smoke
A movement which in ancient times was very important, was that of the Jains. Their most celebrated teacher, Mahavira, who died about 485 B.C. , was a contemporary and formidable rival of the Buddha. Whereas the Buddha’s doctrine was in every sense a Middle Way, that of the Mahavira was extreme. The Buddha preached a new doctrine, whereas Mahavira taught one that in his time was already old. The universe, as seen by the Jains of that time, was a mass of matter blown into shape by the force and vitality of an infinite number of deluded monads (jivas). These put on and off all the forms of the various orders that we know as life, seemingly born, seemingly passing away, yet actually merely transmigrating from one state to another in a piteous, helpless round. These numerous, greatly differing orders of appearance are classified by the Jains minutely in a system of graded categories which is of interest not only for Jainism but also for Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism – and even Dante.
According to this classification, the incarnations trough which we all have passed many times and are still passing, are as follows:
I.Earth Incarnations: 1)Numerous varieties of dust particle, 2) Sand, pebbles, boulders, and rock, 3) The various metals, 4) The various precious stones, 5) Clays, sulphur, and the various salts.
II.Water Incarnations: 1) Seas, lakes, rivers, and rain of various sorts, 2) Dew and other exudations, 3) Hoarfrost, 4) Snow, hail, and ice, 5) Clouds and fog.
III.Plant Incarnations: 1) Plants propagating by gemnation (lichens, mosses, onions, and other bulbous roots, aloes, saffron, bananas, etc), 2) Individual plants, produced from seed (trees, shrubs and lianas, grasses, grains and aquatic plants).
IV.Fire Incarnations: 1) Flames, 2) Embers, 3) Lightning flashes, 4) Thunderbolts, 5) Meteors and bolides.
V.Wind Incarnations: 1) Breezes, 2) Gales, squalls, storms, and tempests, 3) Whirlwinds, 4) Freezing blasts, 5) The inhalations and exhalations of living beings.
VI.Organisms (all of which have the power to make sounds): 1) Beings with two senses, touch and taste (worms, leeches, conches, cowries, barnacles, clams and other shellfish), 2) Beings with three senses, touch, taste and smell (fleas, lice, meal worms, roaches, earwigs, crawling bugs, ants, spiders, etc.), 3) Beings with four senses, touch, taste, smell and sight (butterflies, bees, wasps, flies, mosquitoes, scorpions, crickets, and other highly developed insects), 4) Beings with five senses, subdivided into animals and mankind. Animals: a) Aquatic, b) Terrestrial, c) Aerial. Mankind: a) People of decent lineage (Aryan), who in turn are of course of many kinds, b) Barbarians (mlecchas), who are the residue of mankind.
Deities, in the Jain view, are themselves merely monads caught in the vortex of rebirth, happy for a time, but destined to pass to other forms. They are of four chief categories, finely subdivided in categories:
I.Gods supporting the earthly order: 1) Fiends of the upper hells (asuras), 2) Divine serpents, 3) Lightning deities, 4) Golden-feathered sun-birds, 5) Fire deities, 6) Wind deities, 7) Thunder gods, 8) Water gods, 9) Gods of the continents, 10) Gods of the quarters.
II.Wilderness or Jungle Spirits: 1) Kinnaras (birdlike musicians having human heads), 2) Kimpurushas (of human form, with the heads of horses), 3) Mahoragas (great serpents), 4) Gandharvas (celestial, manlike musicians), 5) Yakshas (powerful earth demons, usually benign), 6) Rakshasas (malignant and very dangerous cannibal demons), 7) Bhutas (cemetery vampires), 8) Pishachas (malignant, mighty imps).
III.Heavenly bodies: 1) Suns ( numbering 132 in the world inhabited by man) 2) Moons (likewise 132), 3) Constellations (28 for each sun and moon), 4) Planets (88 for each sun and moon), 5) Stars.
IV.Dwellers in the Mansions of the Storied Heavens: They are of two orders, subdivided in ascending series:
1) Those within the Temporal Sphere: a) Masters of the True Law, b) The Lordly Powers, c) The Ever-Youthful, d) The great Kings, e) Dwellers in the Causal World, f) Lords of the Mystical Sound Va, g) The Greatly Brilliant, h) Those of a Thousand Rays, i) The Pacific, j) The Revered, k) Those Delighting in the Abyss, l) The Imperishable; and
2) Those beyond the Temporal Sphere: a) Those Residing in the Cosmic Neck (Delightful to See; Of Noble Achievement; Delighting the Mind; Universally Benign; Illustrious; Well disposed; Auspicious; Giving Joy; Giving bliss), b) Those Residing in the Head (The Victorious; The Carriers of Banners; The Conquerors; The Invincibles; The Fully Realized)
Each of the forty-nine sub-orders of divine being is organized like an Indian kingdom, in ten grades: 1) Kings, 2) Princes, 3) Thirty-three high functionaries, 4) Court Nobles, 5) Bodyguards, 6) Palace Guards, 7) Soldiers, 8) Citizens, 9) slaves, 10) Criminal classes.
So, Jainism is a religion without God. Above earth, as well as beneath, there is imagined only a manifold of monads. No god in the usual Occidental sense of these terms or in the early Vedic sense. It is a mythology designed to break the will to live and to blot out the universe. Its function is psychological in guidance of the sentiments away from their natural earthly concerns. It has so dilated the cosmic spectacle that the actualities at hand are simply unworthy of the notice of the wise.
The Road of Flame
“As a large pond,” we read in a Jain text, “when its influx of water has been blocked, dries up gradually through consumption of the water and evaporation, so the karmic matter of a monk, which has been acquired through millions of births, is annihilated by austerities – provided there is no further influx.” The first task of the Jain teacher, therefore, is to block in his student the karmic influx. This can be achieved only through a gradual reduction of the sphere of life participation. The second task, when the student has finally closed and locked every door, is to have him burn out through asceticism the karmic matter already present. The normal Sanskrit term for this discipline is tapas, a word meaning “heat”. The Jain yogi, through his fierce interior heat, is supposed, literally, to burn out karmic matter and thus to cleanse and lighten his precious monad, so that, rising through the planes of the cosmic body, it may ultimately ascend beyond, to “peace in isolation” (kaivalyam), beneath the Umbrella Slight Tilted. Here the individual life-monad, perfectly clear, at last, of all coloring matter whatsoever, will shine forever in its own translucent, crystalline, pure being.
In his ascent, the student must assume progressively twelve vows:
I.The Five Basic Vows of the Jain Layman: 1) Non-violence, 2) Truthfulness, 3) Non-theft, 4) Chastity, 5) Non-acquisition of possessions.
II.Three vows to increase the force of the Basic Five: 6) To limit one’s moving about, 7) To limit the number of things used, 8) Not to wish evil to anyone or to use one’s influence for evil, to endanger life by carelessness, or to keep unnecessary knives and weapons.
III.Four vows to initiate positive religious practice: 9) To meditate at least 48 minutes a day, 10) To limit further, for a day, occasionally, the limits already imposed, 11) To engage, four days a month, in a monklike fast and meditation, 12) To support monasteries and monks with donations.
In addition, the ideal layman’s life toward which one should be striving through all of this, is to include the following eleven orders of virtue:
1)Virtues of belief, 2) Virtues of dedication, 3) Virtues of meditation, 4) Virtues of monastic effort, 5) The virtue of non-injury to plants, 6) The virtue of non-injury to minute insects, 7) The virtue of perfect chastity, 8) The virtue of renounced action, 9) The virtue of renounced possession, 10) The virtue of renounced participation, 11) The virtue of retreat.