PART IV
THE ARYAN GROUP
CHAPTER XIV
THE ARYAN RELIGION
The science of language has placed it beyond dispute that the languages of the leading European peoples are genealogically related to each other, and that the languages of India and of Persia also belong to the same family of speech. The Indo-European languages, those, namely, of the higher race in India, and of the Persians, and those of the Greeks, Italians, Celts, Germans, Slavs, Letts, and Albanians, approach each other always more nearly as they are traced upwards. Sanscrit is not the source of these tongues but an older sister of the group; the mother language, which the facts prove to have at one time existed, was a highly-inflected speech, and is perhaps more nearly represented by Lettic than by Sanscrit; but it can now be known only by a study of the common features of its surviving children.
The fact that the peoples named above are related to each other in point of language led at once, when it was discovered, to the conclusion that they were also of the same race, and must have come originally from the same quarter of the world. Where, then, was the early home of the undivided Aryan1 race, from which the swarms first issued which were to conquer and rule the various lands? At first it was found in the East; the fact that Indian civilisation was much earlier in time than that of any other Aryan people, naturally suggested this. Professor Max Müller described in a very poetical way how the European as well as the Indian must find in the East the cradle of his race. From the high tableland of Asia, it was held, the superior races came who were to rule nearly the whole of Europe, while another migration descended towards Persia and the plains of India.
1 "Aryan" was the name of the conquering race of India. The title "Indo-European" tells us that the race now dwells in India and in Europe. "Indo-Germanic" describes the group by its Eastern, and what is supposed to be its principal Western, member.
The theory, however, which placed the home of the Aryans on the inhospitable steppes, the "high Pamere," of Asia, did not long command assent; and attempts were made to place that home elsewhere, in the valley of the Danube, on the south shores of the Baltic, or even in the Scandinavian peninsula. The conquest, it is argued, cannot have come from the East; it is much more probable that Aryan speech and custom originated in the West, where it has the larger number of representatives, and that it spread eastward. The more extreme step has also been taken of denying that the Aryans are related to each other at all in point of race. Unity of language, it is argued, is no proof of unity of race—a glance over the British Empire or even the British Islands is enough to show this. It is maintained, therefore, that the relationship of the Aryan peoples is not one of race but only of language and of culture; the word Aryan denotes no more than a certain type of speech, and of accompanying civilisation, which spread over all the peoples in question at a very early time. Aryan language and civilisation laid hold of a number of races not otherwise related to each other.
The view, however, still prevails that the various lands where Aryan speech and culture prevail were settled from one centre. When society was in the nomadic stage, it may naturally be presumed that a superior civilisation which had established itself in any one quarter of the world would be carried by wandering hordes in various directions, and that the bearers of the new civilisation would become the conquerors and masters of the countries to which their wanderings led them. And there is now some agreement on the part of leading authorities as to the quarter of the world from which the migrations of the Aryans proceeded. In the Southern Steppes of Russia, in the great plains north of the Black Sea, the Caspian, and the Sea of Aral, there dwelt, we are told, in times far before the dawn of history, hordes rather than tribes of men, who, though they had originally spoken the same language, were coming to differ from each other in speech and culture. These hordes were peoples in the process of formation. It was natural to them to wander, and as each wandered farther from the centre, it came to differ more markedly from the common type. Some of these went southwards and eastwards to Persia and India; others went westward, to conquer and possess the countries of Europe.2
2 Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples; Schrader and Jevons (Griffin, 1890). This is the English of Schrader's Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte. Compare Dr. E. Meyer's History of Antiquity, vol. i. book vi. Dr. Isaac Taylor's Origin of the Aryans gives a compendious account of the question, concluding against the unity of the Aryans in point of race.
The Aryan question lies at the threshold of the history of each of the Aryan peoples, and has to be met in the study of each of the religions. It must be confessed that the world now knows less on this point than it thought it did a generation ago. The difference between the Semitic and the Aryan spirit is real and substantial, as will appear from the study of the Aryan religions, but it is more important as well as more possible to know these well in their individual character than to have a correct theory of their historical relation to each other. The student ought, however, to be informed as to the course of a deeply interesting enquiry.
The civilisation of the Aryans was primitive enough. The following is from Dr. Taylor:—
The undivided Aryans were a pastoral people, who wandered with their herds as the Hebrew patriarchs wandered in Canaan. Dogs, cattle, and sheep had been domesticated, but not the pig, the horse, the goat, or the ass; and domestic poultry were unknown. The fibres of certain plants were plaited into mats, but wool was not woven, and the skins of beasts were scraped with stone knives, and sewed together into garments with sinews by the aid of needles of bone, wood, or stone.
Their food consisted of flesh and milk, which was not yet made into cheese or butter. Mead, prepared from the honey of wild bees, was the only intoxicating drink, both beer and wine being unknown. Salt was unknown to the Asiatic branch of the Aryans, but its use had spread rapidly among the European branches of the race. In winter they lived in pits dug in the earth and roofed over with poles covered with turf, or plastered with cow dung. In summer they lived in rude waggons or in huts made of the branches of trees. Of metals, native copper may have been beaten into ornaments, but tools and weapons were mostly of stone. Bows were made of the wood of the yew, ... trees were hollowed out for canoes by stone axes, aided by the use of fire.
According to Hehn, the old or sick were killed, wives were obtained by purchase or capture, infants were exposed or killed. After a time, with tillage, came the possession of property, and established custom grew slowly into law. Their religious ideas were based on magic and superstitious terrors, the powers of nature had as yet assumed no anthropomorphic forms, the great name of Dyaus, which afterwards came to mean God, signified only the bright sky. They counted on their fingers, but they had not attained to the idea of any number higher than one hundred.3
3 Origin of the Aryans, p. 188.
These sketches of the early Aryan certainly attest more vigour than refinement; and it takes some effort to realise that those who lived in this way had already made much progress, and that these early arts and institutions were full of promise. Savage as the early Aryan is, he is better than his neighbours, and has made a good start in the way of civilisation. His family arrangements, especially, are fitted to survive and to develop. The early domestic architecture of the Aryan countries, while it belongs to a much later period, yet gives good evidence that the patriarchal ideal of the family was part of the common inheritance. In every country they conquered the Aryans lived in large patriarchal households. The sons, with their wives and children, remained under their father's roof, the father being judge and priest of this domestic community. We can specify other features of the society connected with this type of household. As the family increases and becomes too large to dwell under one roof, another house is built, in which son or grandson, with his wife, founds a new family. Thus a group of families arises, all related to each other by blood, and in a position of equality, but looking to the original house as their centre. This type of society must have been carried to India by the Aryan invaders, who there set up patriarchal establishments in houses which are similar in arrangement to those of North Holland, of Iceland, or of early England. The men who lived in this way were not agriculturists, they were shepherds and huntsmen, and when they settled in a district they were wont to force the former dwellers in it to till the land for them as their inferiors.4
4 See two recent works by Mr. G. L. Gomme, The Village Community and Ethnology in Folklore; also Hearn's Aryan Household.
It is this type of civilisation which overspread the lands in early times, and by its coming created in most instances a new world. Some of the Aryan peoples made more rapid progress than others. They passed early into the age of metals, and appear before us at the dawn of history with fully-formed institutions, which bear the impress of patriarchal ideas. Others remained longer in the stone age, and only in historic times received the impulse which caused them to advance to the rank of nations. The arts and inventions which are found in many or in all of them are not necessarily a common inheritance from the undivided Aryan age. Many of them may have come into being in each of the lands independently, or one Aryan people may have borrowed them from another at a later time. Starting from the common stock of civilisation, the various races worked it out each in a way of its own, and often, as we shall see, with wonderful similarities.
Is it possible to give any description of the religion the Aryans had in common before they developed it in different ways in their various lands? We can no longer, following Mr. Max Müller, look to India to tell us what was the common Aryan religion. Indian religion, when we first become acquainted with it, has already grown into an elaborate priestly system, and is evidently at a much later stage of Aryan development than the rustic cults, with which we have a good deal of acquaintance, in various European lands. If, however, we cannot follow the great German scholar in this, we gladly use his words on another aspect of the subject, when he is showing the etymological identity of the chief god of the Aryan peoples.
In his Lectures on the Science of Language, vol. ii. p. 468, he tells us that "Zeus, the most sacred name in Greek mythology, is the same word as Dyaus in Sanscrit, Jovis or Ju in Jupiter in Latin, Tiw in Anglo-Saxon, preserved in Tiwsdæg, Tuesday, the day of the Eddic god Tyr; Zio in old High-German.
"This word was framed," he says, "once and once only; it was not borrowed by the Greeks from the Hindus, nor by the Romans and Germans from the Greeks. It must have existed before the ancestors of those primeval races became separate in language and religion; before they left their common pastures to migrate to the right hand and to the left.... Here, then, in this venerable word, we may look for some of the earliest religious thoughts of our race."5
5 See also Mr. Müller's Hibbert Lectures, and his Biographies of Words.
In this instance etymology admittedly points out one of the principal features of the common Aryan religions. But if we hope that etymology will reveal to us many further instances of the same kind, and introduce us to the whole Pantheon of the Aryans, we shall be disappointed. There are one or two more cases of etymological agreement between the gods of India and those of Europe,6 but the agreement is in some of these cases no more than etymological. The Tiw or Tyr of the Teutonic mythology does not correspond in office or character with Zeus or Jupiter, though the names are etymologically akin. The agreement does not extend to all the religions in question, nor does it extend in any two religions to all their gods; most of the gods of Europe have no parallels in India. The evidence of etymology, therefore, tells us but little of that early religion of which we are in search. But if we consider the views and habits of the barbarous shepherd-huntsman, who is now seen to be the typical figure of common Aryanism, we need not seek long before we find something that was common to all the Aryan faiths. The patriarchal household has a religion which belongs to itself, and which is the working bond of union of its members. The hearth is its altar, because the forefathers of the house lie buried under it, or for another reason. These forefathers certainly are its gods. This hearth-cult has for its priest the father of the family; he in his turn will be gathered to his fathers if he has a legitimate son to do the last rites for him. No one but members of the family can partake in the domestic worship, all unconnected with the family by blood must be kept at a distance from these rites. This is not a religion in which the individual counts anything for his own sake, any more than totemistic religion is; in both it is the community alone that serves the deity, in the one case, those acknowledging the same totem, in the second, those united by blood in the same family. In totemism the individual sacrifices himself to the tribe; here he is nothing apart from his family. Aryan piety is family religion pure and simple. It fosters sentiments which have been the strength of Aryan society in all lands. It makes family life a sacred thing, lends to all domestic ties the highest sanction, and causes the mere mention of "hearth and home" to be the strongest incentive to valour and self-denial. Even in the wild-beast ferocity with which early men defend their homes against the intrusion of strangers, the germs of lofty domestic and patriotic virtues may be seen. Thus ancestor-worship, which is a part of the very beginnings of human religion, is a more effective force among the Aryans than anywhere else. In Egypt and China that worship is a highly artificial thing, and has lost much of its original force. In Egypt it is the fortunes of the dead that are most thought of; in China the cult has been smoothed down and deprived, according to the character of the people, of its intenser motives. Among the Aryans it combines actively with strong family feeling, causing them to cling with an extreme tenacity to their own gods and their own worship.7
6 The principal are the following:—
1. Dyaus, god of the sky, see above.
2. Sans. Ushas, goddess of dawn; Gr. [Greek: hêôs]; Lat. aurora; Lith. auszra; A.-S. eostra.
3. Sans. Agni, fire, god of fire; Lat. ignis; Lith. ugnis; O.-S. ogni.
4. Sans. Surya, sun; Lat. sol; Gr. [Greek: helios], also [Greek: Seirios]; Cymr. seul.
5. Sans. Mâs, moon; Gr. [Greek: mênê]; Lat. mena; Lith. menu.
Mars=Maruts, Manu=Minos=Mannus, Varuna=Ouranos, and other equations formerly brought forward, are not now relied on by etymologists.
7 The comparative absence of ancestor-worship among the Greeks leads Dr. Schrader to doubt whether their religion is Aryan. The Semites and the Greeks occupy the same position in this respect (see above and below).
But those of whom we are speaking worshipped other gods besides those of the household. The second great characteristic of Aryan religion is its adoration of gods who are neither local nor tribal, but universal. Dyaus, the sky, the heaven-god, can be worshipped anywhere; so can the earth, so can the heavenly twins, who were objects of early Aryan religion, so can the sun and moon. Not that the Aryans always remembered that these beings were not local or tribal. The god of heaven could be the god of a particular place too, having a special name there; or he could be appropriated by a tribe who gave him a title as their own particular patron. Each family could have its own heaven-god as well as its own hearth-god. Nor are we to think that when they worshipped beings who could be found in every place, the Aryans overlooked the sacred places, and the sacred objects worshipped formerly. They had themselves risen out of savagery, and still held many of the ideas of savages. Though they had a few great gods they could still believe in a large number of smaller ones. The tree, the stream, still had its spirit for them, the cave or the dark fissure its bad demon. And many a piece of magic did they practise, such as the rain-charm which would cause even the highest god to send what was needed. The world was well peopled with gods, and to keep on good terms with them all was, no doubt, a matter that required much attention and skill.
Other features which have been stated to be characteristic of Aryan religion are its non-priestly character, and the fact that its gods are generally arranged in a monarchical pantheon. But neither of these constitutes a specific difference of the kind we are in search of. All primitive religions are non-priestly; a religion becomes priestly at a certain stage of its growth, when it is organised separately from the state. The monarchical pantheon, too, such as that of Homer and of the Eddas, is an indication, not of the genius of a religion, but of its having reached the systematising stage, and of the political ideas according to which the system is drawn up. The Aryan religions, it is true, arrange their gods when the time comes to do so, after the pattern of an Aryan patriarchal establishment, the father at the head, his sons and daughters near him, the servants in attendance, the unorganised host of spirits, nymphs and elves, outside. But to know the original character of the religion it is less important to ask how the pantheon is arranged, than what gods are worshipped, and how they are related to man. And the point which stands out clearly is that while Semitic religion is purely tribal and local, there is an element in Aryan religion which naturally transcends these limits. On Semitic ground the body with whom the god transacts is the tribe, the link is that of blood which connects all the members of the tribe with their divine head or ancestor. In Aryan religion also blood counts for much. The family altar is the seat of worship, and he who has been cast out of his own family cannot worship anywhere. The family gods are most thought of, no doubt, and exercise immense power in the ways we have mentioned. But the worship of which blood is the tie is not to the Aryan, as to the Semite, the whole of religion. There are beings aloft as well as beings on the earth and under the earth, and the worship of these beings is wider than the family. The family may address Heaven by a special private name, or at a particular spot, but Heaven itself was above all these titles and places. The spirits of the household made, as all the Semitic gods do, for separation, but the gods above made for union, and as any community grew, the upper gods, who were worshipped by all its members alike, became more lofty and more important. Thus we may agree with Mr. Gomme when he speaks (Ethnology of Folklore, p. 68) of the emancipation of the Aryans from the principle of local worship, and says that the rise of the conception of gods who could and did accompany the tribes wheresoever they travelled, was "the greatest triumph of the Aryan race."
Farther than this it may be dangerous to go in a field so full of uncertainty. In all Aryan worships there are sacrifices of various kinds and degrees of importance. The horse sacrifice appears in several of the nations as one of distinction, but human sacrifice was most important of all, though in each of the Aryan lands commutations are made for it at a very early stage. The strife of Aryan with non-Aryan religions gave rise to many superstitions; after the conquest the gods of the latter often became the bad gods or demons of the former, the ministers of the defeated cult were regarded as sorcerers or witches, the dethroned gods made many an attempt to come back to their seats, and to revive disused practices. But a religion based, as we have seen the Aryan to be, in the family affections is destined to rise as civilisation advances. It will be found that the Aryan draws a less absolute distinction than the Semite between the human and the divine. To the Semite God is, broadly speaking, a master, or Lord, whose word is a command, in regard to whom man is a subject, a slave. To the Aryan the relation is a freer one. His god is more human, and art and imagination can do more in his service.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED
E. Siecke, Die religion d. Indogermanen, 1897.
C. F. Keary, Outlines of Primitive Belief among the Indo-European Races, 1882.
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