Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

Siddhartha Gautama was by all accounts a pessimist anyway, constitutionally inclined to look on the grimmer side of life. Nevertheless, the social and religious ideas in India were changing fundamentally at the time he was alive. Hinduism is a Muslim word for the traditional religion of India, and dates only from 1200 AD, when the Islamic invaders wished to distinguish the Indian faith from their own. (Hindu is in fact the Persian word for Indian – see Chapter 33) Traditional Hinduism has been described as more a way of living than a way of thought.¹⁰⁷ It has no founder, no prophet, no creed and no ecclesiastical structure. Instead, Hindus speak of ‘eternal teaching’ or ‘eternal law’. The first record of these beliefs come from excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, the twin capitals of the civilisation, about 400 miles apart, on the banks of the Indus river and dating to about 2300–1750 BC. A ritual purity appears to have been one of the central rites (as it is today), with prominent places for ceremonial ablutions.¹⁰⁸ In addition there were many figurines of the mother goddess, which either showed her pregnant, or emphasised her breasts. Each village had its own goddess, embodiments of the female principle, though there was also a male god, with horns and three faces, known as Trimurti, which later found expression in Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Fertility symbols were also found, in particular the lingam and the yoni, representing, again, the female and male sex organs. Besides purification, the holy men of Harappa and the Indus valley practised yoga and renunciation of the world.

The first change Hinduism went through occurred around 1700 BC, when India was invaded by the Aryan peoples. The Aryans arrived from Iran, as their name implies, but their exact origins have been one of the great mysteries of archaeology.⁶ The Aryan impact on India was profound. Even today, northern Indians are taller and paler than their Dravidian compatriots in the southern part of the subcontinent. The Aryan language developed in India into what is now called Sanskrit, related to Greek, Latin and the other Indo-European languages which were discussed in Chapter 2. Their religion may have had links with that of Homer’s Greece, insofar as there are parallels among the gods, which are mainly forces of nature. They practised sacrifice and performed their ceremonies around the fire, where they cast butter, grain and spice into the flames. They also are known to have used the drug, soma, which induced trances, by means of which the Vedas were ‘revealed’ to them. The fact that sacred fire was so important in their religion hints that they originally came from a northern (cold) region. Unlike the proto-Hindus, the Aryans did have a sacred text. This, written down about 800 BC, is known as the Rig Veda (‘Songs of Knowledge’; vid = ‘knowledge’ or ‘wisdom’). Many of these religious hymns may have been composed before the Aryans arrived in India, though by later times they were considered to be a revelation from Brahman, the ultimate source of all being.¹⁰⁹ More than a thousand hymns (20,000 verses) make up the Rig Veda, and they are addressed to scores of different deities. The most important gods, however, are Indra, conceived as a warrior who overcomes evil and brings everything into being; Agni, who personifies the sacred fire (Latin = ignis), which links heaven and earth by carrying the sacrifice upwards; and Varuna (the Greek god Uranus), a sky god but also the chief of the gods, and the guardian of cosmic order.

As it developed, the Veda posited a world soul. This is a mystical entity, quite unlike anything else: it is envisaged both as a sacrifice and as a form of body, which gives the world order. The creator brought the world into existence by sacrifice – even the gods, their very existence, depended on continued sacrifice. The mouth of the world soul is made up of the priests (called Brahmans, to reflect their relationship to the fundamental source, Brahman: before the Vedas were written down, it was the Brahmans’ responsibility to memorise and preserve them, father to son); the arms comprised the rulers, the thighs make up the commercial classes – landowners, farmers, bankers and merchants – and the feet are the artisans and peasants. To begin with, the four different classes were not hereditary but in time they became so, probably led by the Brahmans, whose task of memorising the Vedas was more easily achieved if fathers could begin teaching their sons early on. It was the Brahmans too who knew how to perform the elaborate sacrificial rites by means of which the whole world was kept in existence.¹¹⁰ The kings and nobles funded the sacrifices and the landowners bred the cattle that were killed. Thus three of the four classes had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.