BRAHMANISM. Early writers on the religions of India, who drew their information exclusively from Sanskrit and Brabmanical sources, amongst whom was Klaproth, inclined to favour the pre tensions of Brahmanism as more ancient than Buddhism ; but in later times the translations of the Pali records and other sacred volumes of Buddhism in Western India, Ceylon, Burma, and Nepal, have inclined the preponderance of opinion in favour of at least a contemporaneous development. A summary of the arguments in favour of the superior antiquity of Buddhism is to be found in the notes, etc., by Colonel Sykes, in the twelfth volume of the Asiatic Journal, and in the Essai sur l'Origine des Principaux Peuples Anciens, par F. L. M. Maupied, chap. viii. The Rev. Mr. Gogerly says the sacred Buddhist books in Ceylon expressly demonstrate that its doctrines had been preached by the twenty-four Buddhas who had lived in succession prior to Gautama or Sakya, in periods incredibly remote, but that they had entirely disappeared at the time of Gautama's birth, so that he re-discovered the whole, and revived an extinguished or nearly extinct school of philosophy. (Notes on Buddhism" by the Rev. D. J. Gogerly, appendix to Lee's translation of Ribeyro, p. 265, quoted in Tennent's Christianity of Ceylon, p. 197.) Bunsen says (iii. 516) the worship by the Aryan immigrants and the institu tion of castes seems to have commenced after they crossed the Sutlej river ; and the original seat of this worship extended from the Indus to the Ganges and to Bengal (Behar). He adds that Brahmans, after crossing the Sutlej, introduced Siva and other deities, and threw those of the Vedic period into the shade. According to Bunsen, also, it was about the year 3000 B.C. that the schism took place amongst the Aryans, when all India east of the Sutlej adopted Brahmanism, and the religious views, forms, and habits of Bactria were for ever abandoned. According to Menu, the world had passed through four yogas when Brahmanism was introduced.
Fa Hian, the Chinese priest of Buddha, who travelled through Tartary to India and Ceylon in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., mentions that in the whole of that vast route, including Afghanistan and Bokhara, he found a Buddhist people and dynasty, with traditions of its endurance for the preceding thousand years. As to Hindustan itself, he says, from the time of leaving the deserts of Jeysulmir and Bikanir and the river Jumna to the west, all the kings of the different kingdoms in India are firmly attached to the law of Buddha, and when they do honour to the ecclesiastics they take off their diadems. See also Maupied, Essai stir l'Origine des Principaux Peuples Anciens, chap. ix. p. 209.
According to Strabo (Dionysos, p. 117), Siva was worshipped in the mountains (Rudra, Soma, Siva) ; Herakles (Indra, Vishnu) in the plains. Brahmanism was found established in Hindustan by Megasthenes, ambassador of Seleucus at the court of Chandragupta, and at the time of the Periplus the very southernmost point of the Peninsula was, as now, a seat of worship of Siva's wife.
From the above it would appear that prior to the preaching of Sakya Sinha, there were in India numbers who entertained doctrines with some similarity to those which he taught ; but until Asoka (B.c. 257) adopted the Buddhist beliefs, the followers of the Vedic and Puranic doctrines, as expounded by the Brahmans, were by far the most numerous. The two . creeds were, however, co existent throughout India, and in the same towns, but Brahmanism fell into the shade for about a thousand years, from the time of Buddha, B.C. 623-5, till the reappearance of Brahmans at the court of Vikramaditya, A.D. 490-530, when the religion they recognised began to assume the form which it still presents in India, a confused mass of local superstitions and myths. About B.C. 700-1 Brahmans had became a recognised caste, who shared power with the Kshatriya ; the Vaisya, as merchants, had become a power ; and the Sudras had become a recognised division of the population. Between the times before Sakya's advent and the centuries after Brah mans began to rise in power, the old Vedic books and their doctrines had beeu pushed aside by other old writings, now known as the Puranas. The Brahmanism of the Vedas and that of the Puranas are of very different characters; the change having been greatly influenced by the rise and progress of Buddhism which intervened between the two forms.
The change from Buddhism to Brahmanism was brought about often with much violence and cruelty, by great efforts of the Brahmanical secta rians. The great champions of Brahmaniani were Kumarila Bhatta, who was a violent opposer of the Buddhists ; Saukara Acharya, the great Ved antic reformer, who flourished in the 8th or 9th century ; Ramanuja, who lived in the 12th, Madhavacharya in the 14th, and Valabhacharya in the 16th century A.D. The last three were Vaishntiva teachers. Ramanuja was the first to inculcate the Bhakti doctrine, and he was followed by several others, including Chaitanya in Bengal. Brahmanism is at present synonymous with Hinduism, and the Brahmanieal religionists are of three classes, the worshippers of Vishnu, of Siva, and of the Sakta or female energies of the gods. But it is in some places a nature-worship, in others an idolatry, in others a hero-worship, in others a physiology, in others a philosophy, per haps in all a spirit-worship.
Learned Hindus, however, have six schools of philosophy, called the six Darsana, viz. Nyaya, Vaiseshika, Sankhya, Yoga, Purva Mimansa and Uttara Mimansa. These have one starting-point, ex nihilonihil fit; and all have the same final object, the emancipation of the soul from future birth and existence, and absorption into the supreme soul of the universe. Besides these six are a later system, known as the Puranic and the Eclectic school.— Weber's Indian Literature; •lphinstone's India ; Bun'cn's Egypt ; Tod's Rajasthan ; Rebeyro's Ceylon; Townes Christianity, p. 199 ; Calcutta Review; Dowson's Classical Dictionary; Weber.