admitted. He referred to Colebrook’s general description containing few quotations, used a translation of a few passages by the Orientalist F. W. Ellis, F. A. Rosen’s translation of the first book of the Rigveda, and Ram Mohan Roy’s translation of the Upanishads. Relying on Colebrooke’s belief that the Vedic religion was monotheistic and after considering the probable worship of heroes as propounded in the Euhemerist thesis, Wilson claimed: Still, however, it is true, that the prevailing character of the ritual of the Vedas is the worship of the personified elements; of Agni, or fire; Indra, the firmament; Váyu, the air; Varuńa, the water; of Aditya, the sun; Soma, the moon; and other elementary and planetary personages. It is also true that the worship of the Vedas is, for the most part, domestic worship, consisting of prayers and oblations offered—in their own houses, not in temples—by individuals for individual good, and addressed to unreal presences, not to visible types. In a word, the religion of the Vedas was not idolatry.221
For Wilson, the second—mythological—stage of religious development consisted of worship of heroes. It is epitomized in the ancient Indian epics Mahabharata and Ramayana. The third stage is represented by the Puranas, which, in Wilson’s thought, illustrate a rise of pantheism or identification of divinity with nature.222 The third stage brought about the development of Indian sects mainly devoted to the worship of Vishnu and Shiva. This stage of Indian religion is characterized by a rise in the number of sects, which Wilson demonstrated by adducing examples of many sects described in the texts of the Sarvadarshana-samgraha and the Shankara-digvijaya.223 All those sects are said to have emerged fairly recently. Let us remember how Wilson created the three-stage scheme of degeneration of Indian religion, which M. Monier-Williams later revised into the wellknown pattern of Vedism, Brahmanism, and Hinduism. Wilson’s work is worth further consideration. His scheme of development, or rather degeneration, of Indian traditions, included the idea of ascetic groups’ protest against Brahmin orthodoxy. Despite him admitting that “we have little or no knowledge of these systems”224 or “heretical schools,” he mentioned several names of these alleged reform groups.
221 222 223 224
Fitzedward Hall, Works of the Late Horace Hayman Wilson, 6:iii. Hall, Works of the Late Horace Hayman Wilson, 6:iv–xiv. Hall, Works of the Late Horace Hayman Wilson, 6:11–29. Hall, Works of the Late Horace Hayman Wilson, 6:5.
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Apart from more familiar Jainism and Buddhism, Wilson referred to “atheist” movements such as the Charvakas, Lokayatas, and Varhaspatyas. If these movements had wished only to advocate plurality of opinions, the Brahmins would not have found much fault with them: The founder of the Atheistical school, however, Vṛihaspati, attacks both the Vedas and the Brahmans, and asserts that the whole of the Hindu system is a contrivance of the Priesthood, to secure a means of livelihood for themselves, whilst the Bauddhas and Jainas, equally disregarding the Vedas and the Brahmans, the practice and opinions of the Hindus, invented a set of gods for themselves, and deposed the ancient pantheon: these aggressions provoked resentment: the writings of these sects are alluded to with every epithet of anger and contempt, and they are all anathematised as heretical and atheistical.225
Later research made Wilson change his speculations about a Brahmin counterattack that supposedly expelled Buddhists from India, assuming that it was more a process of assimilation. However, the Christian motif of a doctrinal schism that Wilson deduced from a few lines of the Sarvadarshana-samgraha collection remains. Western Indology has clung to the idea of the ascetic groups’ fight against the supremacy of power-loving priests ever since. The British Orientalist used these ideas as the basis for developing a critique of Indian texts and their dating. In his understanding, the Puranas were “pious frauds for temporary purposes.” He maintained that it is easy to distinguish “authentic and primitive material” from “sectarian interpolations.”226 Orientalist hermeneutics thus obtained a principle that has been applied to this day—the older a text is, the more authentic evidence of the original religion it provides. Variations and changes typical for Indian storytelling art are usually viewed negatively form this point of degeneration hypothesis. Wilson’s work was continued by Monier Monier-Williams (1819– 1899) and Friedrich Max Müller (1823–1900), who happened to be competing candidates for the Boden Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford. Monier-Williams was appointed to the Chair and later founded and presided over the university’s Indian Institute that focussed on training officials of
225 Hall, Works of the Late Horace Hayman Wilson, 6:6. 226 Hall, Works of the Late Horace Hayman Wilson, 6:xi.
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the British colonial administration. He received many honours, including knighthood. His Sanskrit-English dictionary is still in use. Friedrich Max Müller studied Sanskrit and other Asian languages under Franz Bopp’s and Friedrich Schelling’s supervision. He became Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford and is still remembered for his translation of Rigveda and for initiating and editing the monumental series of the Sacred Books of the East. He is also considered to be one of the founders of comparative religious studies. Monier-Williams took up the ideas of his teacher H. H. Wilson, but his main arguments exhibit traces of much older Enlightenment speculations relating to the origin of religion, applied to the Aryans as the authors of the Vedas: To trace the origin of religion among such a people requires no curious metaphysical hypotheses. It only requires asking what would be the natural working of their devotional instincts, unguided by direct revelation. Their material welfare depended on the influences of sky, air, light and sun . . .; and to these they naturally turned with awe and veneration.227
According to this British Orientalist, Indian religion underwent gradual changes after Aryans had settled in India; the worship of nature supposedly developed into theism, polytheism, anthropomorphism, and pantheism.228 We see the growth of speculations about the origin of religion, characteristic of the second half of the 19th century, strongly present here. Nevertheless, Monier-Williams’ portrayal of India’s oldest religion is of special significance for our discussion: It was a belief which, according to the character and inclination of the worshipper, was now monotheism, now tritheism, now polytheism, now pantheism. But it was not yet idolatry.229
Monier-Williams’ insistence on the absence of idolatry in the oldest religion of India reveals a real question, somewhat clouded by his confusing description of multifarious manifestations of religion in different worshippers. He pondered the same question that had been asked by travellers and missionaries for a long time before him and later by his 227 Monier Monier-Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India (London: John Murray, 1883), 1:4. 228 Monier-Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India, 1:11. 229 Monier-Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India, 1:11.
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