What Has Religion Done For Mankind?

CHAPTER XIV

The Spread of Hinduism

THE first hints that the nation of Israel had any connections with India, the land of Hinduism, were the ivory, apes and peacocks which King Solomon imported in his fleet of Tarshish ships, in the eleventh century B.C. (1 Kings 10:22; 2 Chronicles 9:21) The Hebrew and Sanscrit words for peacock and ape bear a relationship to one another. For instance, the Hebrew word koph corresponds with the Sanscrit word kapi and means both the tailless ape and the tailed money. In India the monkey is worshiped as a god. But it was by becoming a province of the Persian empire that the land of Israel had more of a tie with the land of Hinduism, for the Persian empire was finally expanded to include one hundred and twenty-seven provinces and to extend from Ethiopia on the southwest over to India on the far east, and so was a land bridge between India and Israel. When in the fifth century B.C. in the reign of Xerxes the Great the decree was issued by his Prime Minister Haman for all Jews throughout the empire to be massacred on the 13th day of the 12th month (Adar) of that

year, it included any Jews who might be in the Indian province. Prompt courageous action by Queen Esther and her Jewish cousin Mordecai turned the tables on Haman and saved the day for the imperiled Jews. —Esther 1:1; 8:9.

² Since 1947 that part of India where the Hindu religion predominates is called Hindustan. The beginnings of Hinduism are thought to be shrouded in darkness, but the evidence is that it sprang from Babylon, Nimrod's royal capital. When Jehovah God defeated the intentions of the people in building the city and tower of Babel by confusing their language, they scattered, dropping the idea of Babylon as a world capital for holding all the people together in oneness of language as well as of political allegiance. Some of these moved eastward and settled on the sub-continental Indian peninsula. Though they carried a changed language with them, they still bore the traditions of the false religion which they had held in common at Babylon. They knew of the global deluge of Noah's day. They knew how he and his immediate family had survived in the ark and given a new start to the human race. Through Noah, who practiced the revealed religion of Jehovah God, they knew of the divine promise in Eden, that the seed of the woman was to suffer a heel wound from the Serpent who had tempted Eve, but the seed was to triumph at last over the Serpent and crush his head. Noah was still living in the days of the tower-building fiasco.

³ Nimrod was in rebellion against Noah who worshiped Jehovah as God. From all the religions that have been built around Nimrod, he was put to a violent death, whether at the instance of Noah is not known. Nimrod by his political and hunting exploits had made himself a god in the eyes of his subjects. When he died, his wife Semiramis had him deified, claiming he had not died but was transferred to immortal heavenly life among the stars. To him she applied the Edenic promise of the seed that was to have his heel bruised, and she was the woman who had produced this seed for mankind's delivery from the Serpent. So the settlers of India carried this tradition of false religion with them from Babylon, as well as other distortions of the truth concerning the true God, the deluge, man's fall into sin and mankind's future destiny.

⁴ To illustrate, take the Indian triad or trinity, called trimúrti, meaning "three forms". It is composed of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Siva the Destroyer. Together, the three compose the one god Brahm. Brahma is the supreme god of the Hindus, but actually he is little worshiped, and it is said that in all of India there are only two temples devoted to him. But in him the Hindus preserved some conception of the true Creator, his perfections, his graciousness, for the name was of Hebrew derivation. It is simply the Hebrew word Raham, meaning "the merciful or compassionate one", with the digamma (soft V-sound) in front. Because one's intestines tremble at times in compassion, it came also to mean

"the womb, or, bowels". So Brahma was viewed as the great "womb" from which all forms of life that are conceived in the womb came. The name corresponds to Er-Rahman, meaning "The all-merciful one", the name which the Turks apply to their god. As for Vishnu the Preserver, he is famed for having miraculously preserved one righteous family at the time that the world was flooded. His name is the Sanscrit form of the Chaldee Ish-nuh, with the digamma prefixed, and which means "the man Noah" or "the man of rest". How appropriate that one of Vishnu's ten avatars (or descents from heaven and incarnations) should be that of a fish which survives through water!

⁵ The eighth and most celebrated of the incarnations or avatars of Vishnu was that in the person of Krishna. His name has nothing to do with "Christ", which is a Greek word and means "Anointed". Krishna is the Sanscrit word meaning "black", and was the name given to Vishnu's incarnation either because the body he assumed was black or because Vishnu's distinguishing color was black, as that of Brahma was red and that of Siva was white. The infant Krishna, or black god, is represented in India at the breast of the goddess Devaki and is shown with woolly hair and marked Negro features. How well this matches Nimrod who was the son of Cush, whose name means "black"! In sculptures in one of the oldest of the Hindu pagodas Krishna is shown trampling upon the serpent's head and also in another pose as wrapped about by the serpent and being bitten at the heel by it. Krishna's body is black, but a

halo of glory is about his head. This would picture the woman's seed as coming through the Hamitic branch of Noah's family instead of through the Shemitic branch which Noah blessed. Krishnaism, it must be said, does not appear in the Vedas, the most ancient Hindu scriptures.

⁶ As to Siva, the third member of the triune Brahm, he is pictured not only as the Destroyer but also as the Reproducer or Re-creator, because what is destroyed must be re-created, death being thought to be a passing of a person to a new form of life. Hence Siva is worshiped under the form of the linga, the phallic emblem of the male reproductive organ. This contradiction of qualities in Siva is based on the Hindu idea that there is no annihilation, but there is merely a transformation, a passing from one condition into another because of the supposed immortality of the human soul. So Siva is styled the Bright or Happy One, just as when people in Christendom say that "death is a friend", in fiat contradiction to Paul at 1 Corinthians 15:26, where he calls death the "last enemy". Siva's name does not occur in the Vedas, but he is fully described in the sacred Puranas. The Hindus are thus seen to have had the trinity doctrine many centuries before Christendom adopted it. A triangle is a symbol of it to them. Christendom borrowed the doctrine from the same Babylonish sources as did the Hindus.

⁷ The Vedas are the four Books of Knowledge of the Hindus and form their "Scriptures". The essential teaching of the Vedas is the soul's one-

ness with what they conceive to be the deity or godhead. Hindu philosophy is that this tangible universe of which we are a part is a creation that is to dissolve and return to what is called its "seed state". Time, space and the forces of cause and effect do not belong to eternity. However, there are great world cycles (yuga) and in these cycles names and forms repeat themselves. The final goal of the soul is liberation, and its liberation lies in going beyond or out of reach of this world-cycle process. Souls are without beginning and without end and so can attain this liberation. As the Katha Upanishad says: "The soul is not born, nor does it die. It has not come from anywhere nor has it produced anything. It is unborn, eternal, everlasting, ancient; it is not slain though the body is slain. If the slayer thinks of slaying the soul, and if the slain person thinks that the soul is dead, both have missed the truth. The soul slays not nor is slain. The soul, smaller than the small and greater than the great, is hidden in the hearts of all living creatures." How very much this resembles the definition of the human soul given by Christendom's clergy!

⁸ What, then, produced the finite, material forms of creation? The Upanishad says it was ignorance or maya. This power resided in the deity, Brahman, the Ultimate Reality, and it projected the material universe and all the material forms it displays. This great, formless, sexless, changeless spirit pervades all these forms. It appears as finite forms subject to the various experiences of existence. As the real soul is immortal, it goes through countless incarnations, passing from one material

substance or body at death and passing into another. With each birth or transition the soul adds a little more to its self-merit. Finally it goes beyond the power of this illusory law of cause and effect and thereby attains immortality and freedom in the real sense. When it does this, it combines or merges with the great spirit, the deity, the Ultimate Reality. Every soul is therefore potentially divine. The free soul cannot be deluded by the mere appearance of things. But after the death of the body, the soul, which has been freed from ignorance, desire and attachment to material things, becomes swallowed up in the Supreme Spirit and thus attains complete liberation. So reincarnation is a process leading toward perfection of soul.

⁹ The Hindu swamis point out that "Hinduism is noted for its catholic and universal outlook", and that "the Bhagavad Gita declares that all religions are strung on the Lord like pearls on a necklace. In whatever way people offer their worship to the Lord, He accepts it. All religions lead to the same Truth. Ramakrishna repeatedly said that the different religions are only different paths leading to the same spiritual experience of peace and blessedness. . . . The Hindu attitude toward other religions is that of respect and not of mere tolerance, much less of rivalry". However, we must observe that this was not demonstrated in the sanguinary race and religious riots that followed the establishment of Hindustan and Pakistan in 1947. Believing in reincarnation, they claim that "a Hindu accepts Christ, too, as an incarnation".

¹⁰ But how strange and inconsistent this, since Jesus Christ taught doctrines which are utterly contradictory to such Hindu philosophy! If there is "Absolute Reality", then there must be absolute truth, and this allows no room for contradictions such as exist between the hundreds of religions. Jesus Christ assured us through his apostles that "it is impossible for God to lie" and that "he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself". "With him there is not a variation of the turning of the shadow." —Hebrews 6:18; Titus 1:2; 2 Timothy 2:11-13 and James 1:17, NW.

¹¹ Jesus Christ did not say his heavenly Father was an all-pervasive, dormant or sleepy spirit, but described him as the most active person in all the universe. Said he: "My Father has kept working until now, and I keep working." (John 5:17, NW) Also his Father does not absorb souls into himself. All souls or living creatures that he judges worthy of eternal life he maintains in a soul-existence separate from himself, but in harmony with himself and dependent upon him. Those whom he judges undeserving of life in the new world he destroys. Hence Jesus said to his followers: "Do not become fearful of those who kill the body but can not kill the soul; but rather be in fear of him that can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna [the place of annihilation]." He did not agree that all religions were just different paths leading to the same truth and same spiritual experience of peace and blessedness. He warned his followers: "Go in through the narrow

gate; because broad and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are the ones going in through it; whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are the ones finding it." (Matthew 10:28; 7:13,14, NW) All this multitude of religions has worked, not for peace, harmony, unity, mutual happiness, but for division and disorder and war; and "God is a God, not of disorder, but of peace".  —1 Corinthians 14:33, NW.

¹² Hindu belief and practice are therefore seen to be saturated with animism, that is to say, the belief that all natural objects and the universe itself possess a soul; that all objects have a natural life or vitality and are endowed with a soul. To the Hindu mind it is hard to get the idea of a personal God with an individual existence. But the Hindu will have to admit that, say, the house in which he lives was built by some human creature with an individual body of a definite form. The house did not put itself together because it was pervaded by some everywhere-existing soul. It took the intelligence and ability of some individual person to put it up. If that is the case with such a small simple thing as a house, then how much more so would it be the case with the immense visible universe which shows such superhuman power and intelligence? Clinging to his idea that the great spirit pervades everything, the Hindu will insist that the deity is made up of all things of the universe. The house in which you live is therefore deserving of as much honor as you, or even more honor than you, because it is a

part of the godhead or deity. But, we ask, how can that be, when man is the builder of the house? How could the thing he makes be greater or more worshipful than himself? The apostle Paul stated the rule: "He who constructs it has more honor than the house. Of course, every house is constructed by someone, but he that constructed all things is God." —Hebrews 3:3, 4,NW.

¹³ Under the influence of animism the Hindu will retort: "But the house is not inanimate, for it can think and has life. Only the trouble is that our senses are so dull, we cannot pick up the waves of its vitality and thought. This is why the Hindu has worshipful respect for the house or other object." But this contradicts proved science in this electronic age when men can visualize even the construction of the atom, and can measure microwaves. A house as a whole, or the parts making it up, does not possess any of the five senses which we humans have. It does not have any brain and hence cannot be or do what the credulous Hindu believes. Why, if the deity or godhead is the sum of all things and all things make up god, then why worship and pray to anything at all? If each individual thing is only a part of god, how can it answer for the whole god? If all corrupting, corroding things are part of god, it follows that god is in that same condition, corrupt, diseased, ill and feeling pain, because all the human family who are part of god are in such a condition. Claiming that all this is mere ignorance (maya) does not remove it, no more than the Christian Scientist by similar reasoning removes evil. We humans

are superior to cows, monkeys, and other animals and also objects like wood and stone images, and so if man is obligated to worship them because they are a part of the godhead, why do they not in turn worship man for the same reason? Even in a human family, is it the father that must worship his daughter, or is it the daughter that must show deep respect for the father who transmitted life to her? So the Hindu reasoning is lopsided. It is unreasonable. It is not based upon fact.

¹⁴ To be practical now: What has Hinduism done for that vast portion of mankind among whom it predominates? Hindu society is divided up into four castes: (1) the Brahmins, the custodians of learning and spiritual tradition; (2) the Kshatriyas, the kings and military protectors; (3) the Vaisyas, the agriculturalists, cattle-raisers and tradesmen; and (4) the Sudras, the servants and manual laborers. There are 3,000 divisions of these main castes, and then 10,000 further subdivisions. Being of any caste is hereditary. Karma, or causality, determines one's birth into this or that caste; that is, what one did in the previous life determines what one is in one's present incarnation. For many ages the Brahmins, to exalt and fasten themselves as a priestly, half-divine class to whom the other castes should bow down, have taught that the other castes came from the arms and body and feet of Brahma but that they alone came from the mouth of Brahma the Creator.

¹⁵ From this we see that a hierarchical, political and economic system has been bound to the Hindu

people from which they cannot get loose, because it is claimed to be religious. Rebellion and refusal to submit to the rules and restrictions of it causes persons to become outcastes, which puts them in a position shunned by all caste members, as "untouchables". Till recently there were forty million of such in India. In December, 1948, the Hindustan Constituent Assembly adopted an article in the new Indian Constitution which outlaws "untouchability" and permits the outcastes to leave their ghettos, use village wells, bathe in the rivers and enjoy other privileges as citizens. By the new draft Constitution there must be no discrimination because of religion, race, caste or sect.

¹⁶ There are thought to be 330,000,000 gods and goddesses, and these are worshiped in some 10,000 temples, in many cases with images and rites which shock the decency of moral, self-respecting people. While to Brahmins the ultimate goal nirvana means the soul's merging into the universal spirit Brahm, to the lower castes nirvana means a life of abandonment and joy in another world. Hinduism has been carried to many countries and has gained converts, so that today about 12 out of every 100 persons are Hindus. But now, with all other religions of Babylonish origin, Hinduism has reached the crisis and is destined to pass away with this world. The expecting of a new incarnation or materialization of their god Vishnu the Preserver as a man called Kalkin will prove to be a forlorn hope and will leave Hindus disillusioned as this world goes into destruction with Siva unable to re-create it.