Humanism in Hindu Poetry
"Mighty am I, Superior by name, upon the earth, conquering am I, all-conquering, completely conquering every region." This is the emphatic proclamation of Man to the Earth in a section of the earliest Hindu literature. Thus sang the poets of the Atharva Veda.1
1. The Here and the Now.
The all-round desire for conquest manifested itself with equal force in the avocations of daily life. "In the villages and in the wilderness, in the assembly halls that are upon the earth, in the gatherings and in the meetings" the people of Vedic India were eager to "hold forth." This wish to shine and flourish is the perpetual burden of the songs in Vedas.
The composers of Vedic poetry took part in the "election" of the king in the communal agora. The following is a bit of the political folk-songs associated with such functions: "Thee let the people choose unto kingship, thee these five divine directions.2
It was an age of government by discussion. Vedic poetry reflects the democratic harangues of the public speakers. An orator addressed the audience thus: "Be your design the same, your hearts the same, your mind the same that it may be well for you together."3
Vitalism, i.e., the philosophy of a life in the here and the now, is the clear message of the Vedas. The best method of misunderstanding the authors of the Vedic cycle is to approach them from the angle of theology and god-lore. The main body of this literature consists indeed of hymns, prayers and sermons. But it's essential motif is secular, the distinctive feature is its pre-eminently martial character.
The Vedas held the mirror up to the social life of the time. And what was it but the life of fighters and colonizers, of the Cuchulains and Volsungs and Theseuses? The Rishis who pioneered the settlements were not laying out cities and states in the "other world". Their vision was concentered in this earth. They knew that their mission was to enrich it with the Promethean fire.
2. Yearning after Fire.
The poetry of the Rig Veda would be meaningless unless we take it as a grand saga of the Quest of Fire. It was not without struggle that fire was annexed to civilization. The Vedic poets are aware of this struggle and have sung of its various stages until the final victory of man.
Fire hid itself "in secret like a thief with an animal which he had stolen."4 A vigorous search had to be instituted to take possession of it. "Having taken in his hand all manly powers, he has made the gods fear, when sitting down in his hiding place. There the thoughtful men find him."5 It was "looked and longed for in heaven" and "looked and longed for on earth."6
When once the Energy has been harnessed to human needs, what do the Vedic poets want it to do? The following is a typical ode to fire:
"Burn, O Agni, the nearer enemies, burn the curse of the distant evil-doer. Burn the unseen ones. May thy never-ageing, never-tiring flames spread out.
"Bestow mighty vigour on those who toil for thee, bright luck and welfare, O Agni, on the Vishwâhmitras."7
A prosperous territory and a happy home, success over the enemy and expansion of dominions—this is what the Hindus wanted in the Vedic age. Their literature portrays, therefore, the worldly interests of men and women. We read in it songs in praise of cattle, grain, and soma drink; it is pervaded by the spirit of carnivals, merrymakings, and Theocritean pastorals; it is the poetry of hearty send-offs to the soldiers going to the front, or of war chants in honour of triumphant generals "at home." We read in it, further, of the romantic love between the damsel Urvasi and Pururavas.8 Centuries later this would furnish the plot of Kalidasa's drama. The Vedic woman is made of the same flesh and blood as the modern woman. And we see her shifts to win and fix a man's love against a rival.9
3. Idealism.
Man does not live by bread alone. So we have the Upanishads singing of the soul and the Infinite. Here is a specimen:
"From the non-existent (i.e., transitory, unreal)
me to the ever-existent (i.e., permanent, truth, reality) lead;
From darkness (i.e., ignorance)
me to light (i.e., knowledge) lead;
From death me to immortality lead."
It does not require a specially Oriental mind to appreciate this desire for "more light" of the ancient Hindu poets.
Self-control, restraint of passions, contemplation, etc., constitute the theme of a portion of Hindu literature. The authors who followed the lectures of Shâkya the Buddha and other moralists were specialists in this branch. But the poetry of Dhammapada which contains the sayings of Buddha seeks mainly to rouse the élan vital, the creative will and intelligence of human beings. It harps on appamâda i.e., a life of vigilance, strenuousness, and activity. Buddhism is essentially dynamic. The Buddhist is a proselyte by nature; his cult is social service and alleviation of the sufferings of men and animals.
Dhyâna, Yoga, meditation, and silent "communion," are some of the topics of Hindu authors. They have preached sometimes a keen solicitude for the "higher self" and an indifference to the mundane affairs. Such non-secularism is the characteristic of a type of mentality all over the world. In the Old Testament this indifferentism is represented by Ezekiel. According to him there are aspects of life which are higher than the ordinary political interests. Emphasis on lonesome meditation and a life of seclusion from publicity is a prominent feature of the teachings of Zeno and his 'school. The "wise man" of Seneca10 does not differ from the Rishis, Budhas, Bhikshus, and Yogis of India. And the New Testament with its contempt of "the world and the flesh" is the gospel of non-political other-worldlyism.
The poets of India have always emphasized the conception of progress of the world through revolutions. The Hindu masses are thus ever expectant for a change in the status quo. Herein lies the bed-rock of their never-falling optimism. The greatest Bible of hope in India is the Gîtâ (c. sixth-second cent. B.C.), a section of the Great Epic, the Mahâbhârata. The declarations of Lord Krishna to the warrior Arjuna teach the peasant and the prince to prepare the way for a Messiah in every age.
4. Love and War.
Two. master-passions have made man here and there and everywhere—both in the East and the West. These are, first, love, and second, war, or first, war, and second, love. The literature of the Hindus from the age of the Maurya emperors (third and fourth centuries B.C.) to the age of the Gupta Napoleons (fourth and fifth centuries A.C.) is the literature of war and love.
Bhâsa, the dramatist of the second century A.C. (?) writes:
"How different, in operation, from other nooses, is the noose of a sweetheart's arms! Fastened about the neck, it imparts life; loosened, it produces death."11
The Purânas, embodying as they do older tradition, acquired their final form during the period from the second to the fifth century A.C. Their principal theme is the titanic conflict between the gods and the Asuras; the scene that appeals most powerfully to the folk-imagination is the cataclysmal Churning of the Ocean; and the most popular hero is Vishwâmitra, the embodiment of Satanic pride and energy, who would create other worlds and have a place in the sun.
Kalidas (fifth century A.C.), the Hindu Virgil, describes the fully developed personality of his countrymen thus:
"Lords of the lithosphere from sea to sea,
Commanding the skies by air chariots,
Who adopted the life of the silent sage when old,
And passed away at last through Yoga's aid."
Take a bit of natural sentiment from Kâdambarî, a Sanskrit novel in prose, of the seventh century:
"Next day the two Gandharva kings came with their queens, and the festivities were increased a thousandfold. Chitraratha, however, said: 'Why, when we have palaces of our own, do we feast in the forest? Moreover, though marriage resting only on mutual love is lawful amongst us, yet let us follow the custom of the world.' 'Nay,' replied Tarapida. 'Where a man hath known the greatest happiness there is his home, even if it be the forest. And where also have I known such joy as here?'"12
The following "thanks to the human heart by which we live" is from Karpura-manjari, a drama in Prakrit language (A.C. 900) by Râja-shekhara: "What need of the performance of song and dance? and what need of strong drink? what need of incense and aloes? and what need of saffron? On all the earth in daintiness naught can equal man's tender passion."
And again, "The consort of an emperor and the wife of a common man—in the matter of love there is not even a grain of distinction between them to be found, methinks, even if a certain difference in outward splendor is effected by rubies and decorations and garments and saffron."13
It is but this Hindu conception of love's omnipotence even though unadorned that finds expression in the following lines of Rossetti's House of Life:
"Some ladies love the jewels in Love's zone
* * *
And some that listen to his lute's soft tone;
* * *
Some prize his blindfold sight;
My lady only loves the heart of Love:
Therefore Love's heart, my lady, hath for thee
His bower of unimagined flower and tree."
5. Bhartrihari's Synthesis.
It should be observed, en passant, that Bhartrihari (c 800), a poet, who like all other Indian authors is apt to be misunderstood, was quite comprehensive in his treatment of the rasas (emotions). In his synthetic imagination there was a place not only for a century of verses on renunciation, but also for another two centuries, one of which was given over to love and the second to morals. Besides, even in the treatment of sex in the Shringâra-shataka (stanzas 51-52, 99-100), the poet did not forget the duality or polarism of human personality. He was conscious as much of the spiritual in man as of the sexual. His "whole duty of man" was oriented not only to the sensuous elements in life but also to the moral or social obligations as well as to the supersensual.14
The same all-round view of the aesthetic psyche is accordingly mirrored forth in Indian treatises on poetics. In Dashur-rupa, a treatise of the sixth century on ten forms of drama, it is expressly stated that the themes of art are almost unnumbered, because rasa or sentiment can be conveyed among mankind by almost any and every treatment (IV. 90). It is implied that dramatists do not have to observe any taboo in the treatment of manners and emotions.15
6. Mother-Cult.
A mediaeval invocation for strength to the Deity as Female Principle is given below. Mother-cult is in Hindu poetry a euphemism for energism.
"May Thy sword glittering in Thy hands,
Besmear'd with the blood and fat of Asuras (Titans) as with mire,
Be for us welfare:
Oh, Chandikâ! to thee we bow.
Oh, Mother, who hast shown Thyself in many forms,
Who else than Thee is able to achieve
That destruction of the great Asuras,
Enemies of righteousness,
Which Thou hast wrought today?
* * * * * *
Queen of the universe art Thou and its guardian;
In the form of the universe art Thou its maintainer;
By the Lords of the universe art Thou worshipped,
They its supporters have great devotion to Thee.
Oh, Devi! be gracious;
Ever protect us from the fear of enemies,
As Thou hast just now saved us by the slaughter of the Asuras.
Make cease at once the sins of the whole world
And the great dangers which come of all portents."16
Pragmatically considered, the daily thoughts, wishes, and prayers of the Christian nations, who quite recently were measuring their strength with one another on the battlefields of Europe did not differ from the daily wishes of the Hindu Tantrists even in peace time. Verily, life is a grand war in Indian estimation. And yet this conception of the "Armageddon" of life is not a Hindu patent. "Thus we half-men struggle," says Browning. And the Siegfrieds of the Nibelungenlied e.g., of Hebbel's plays and Wagner's operas, are Browningite in their obstinately aggressive individuality. Whitman also sings:
"Know'st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards,
And that is the theme of war, the fortune of battles,
The making of perfect soldiers?"
7. Vishvanâtha, the Critic.
Nor in mediaeval Hindu works of literary criticism, e.g., in Vishvanâtha's Sâhitya Darpana (Mirror of Literature) will the reader of Clark's European Theories of the Drama find something characteristically Oriental. The definitions of poetry, for instance, discussed by the Indian rhetorician will appear to be but chips from the same block quite assimilable to those with which the West was familiar from Plato to Sidney. The doctrine that in poetry pain is transmuted into pleasure, as for instance in the "tragedy" of Râtmayâna, indicates at least that in the analysis of rasas the Hindu psychologists were not following a scientific willow-the-wisp.17
Altogether, in these motifs and ideals of the Hindus what else do we see except the "phrases" in a continuous "thematic" development, to use an expression from modern music, of the yearning after fire, energy, life? And is this fire-hunger, energy-hunger, life-hunger exclusively Hindu? This is "human, all-too human."
Notes
- XII, I, 54, Bloomfield's version.↩
- Atharva III, 4, Whitney's version.↩
- Atharva VI, 64, Whitney.↩
- Rig Veda, I, 65, Oldenberg's version.↩
- Rig I, 67.↩
- Rig I, 98.↩
- Rig III, 18, 2, 4.↩
- Rig X.↩
- A. V. VII, 38, 113.↩
- De Otio III, IV, Ad Serenum VIII, etc.↩
- Hall's trans.↩
- Ridding's version.↩
- Lanman's version.↩
- Kennedy: Bhartrihari's Shatakas, Boston, 1913.↩
- Haas: Dasharupa, New York, 1912.↩
- Avalon's version.↩
- Mitra: Sâhitya Darpana, pp. 43-44.↩