is beloved from
death was that he had gone to the uncanny spot where such rites were
performed to make an offering of human flesh to demons.

In Buddhism religion and the moral law are identified, but not in
Hinduism. Brahmanical literature contains beautiful moral sayings,
especially about unselfishness and self-restraint, but the greatest
popular gods such as Vishnu and Siva are not identified with the moral
law. They are super-moral and the God of philosophy, who _is_ all
things, is also above good and evil. The aim of the philosophic saint is
not so much to choose the good and eschew evil as to draw nearer to God
by rising above both.

Indian literature as a whole has a strong ethical and didactic flavour,
yet the great philosophic and religious systems concern themselves
little with ethics. They discuss the nature of the external world and
other metaphysical questions which seem to us hardly religious: they
clearly feel a peculiar interest in defining the relation of the soul to
God, but they rarely ask why should I be good or what is the sanction of
morality. They are concerned less with sin than with ignorance: virtue
is indispensable, but without knowledge it is useless.

17. _The Hindu and Buddhist Scriptures_

The history and criticism of Hindu and Buddhist scriptures naturally
occupy some space in this work, but two general remarks may be made
here. First, the oldest scriptures are almost without exception
compilations, that is collections of utterances handed down by tradition
and arranged by later generations in some form which gives them apparent
unity. Thus the Rig Veda is obviously an anthology of hymns and some
three thousand years later the Granth or sacred book of the Sikhs was
compiled on the same principle. It consists of poems by Nanak, Kabir and
many other writers but is treated with extraordinary respect as a
continuous and consistent revelation. The Brahmanas and Upanishads are
not such obvious compilations yet on careful inspection the older[63]
ones will be found to be nothing else. Thus the Brihad Aranyaka
Upanishad, though possessing considerable coherency, is not only a
collection of such philosophic views as commended themselves to the
doctors of the Taittiriya school, but is formed by the union of three
such collections. Each of the first two collections ends with a list of
the teachers who handed it down and the third is openly called a
supplement. One long passage, the dialogue be