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260
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(SEPTEMBER, 1903.
which is given the Sankhya name of Prakriti, Pradhana, or the Indiscrete (avyakta). From Him issne all souls, which henceforth exist for ever as distinct individuals. He has created Brahma, Siva, and the countless subordinate deities to carry out his orders in creating and ruling the world, and to promulgate the true religion. He generally leaves the burden of ruling the earth upon their shoulders, but, as occasion demands, from time to time in His infinite grace (prasdda),34 He Himself becomes incarnate to relieve the world from sin, or His followers from trouble. The greatest and most perfect incarnations are those of Rama-chandra and Kșishņa, but there are twenty-four (not the usual ten ) in all 35, India, again, owes the preservation of the idea of a God of Grace, -of the Fatherhood of God, to the Bhagavatas.
There is the usual theory of mons (kalpa ), each divided into four ages (yuga). At the end of a lealpa, the universe is absorbed into primeval matter and thence into the Bhagavat, awaiting emission again in the creation at the commencement of another kalpa.
Tarning to the relationship of the individual soul to God, it is most probable so that from the earliest times the soul was not looked upon as eternally self-existent from the past. Each soul was considered to be an eternal part (ansa) of the Supreme, emitted by Him and given a separate existence. On the other hand, once so emitted, & soul exists for ever and ever as an independent entity. It may be taken as certain 37 that the doctrine of the importality of the soul was an essential part of the original Bhagavata Religion.
. We may also say with certainty that from the earliest stages of their Religion the Bhagavatas have shared the universal Indian belief in the transmigration of souls, and in the inevitable sequence of cause and effect. Everything that a man does is at once an effect of things that have gone before, and a cause of things to come. These causes and effects cling to the particular soul that produces them, and determine its fate after death. As a man soweth, so sball he reap, and the harvest is the weary round of perpetual transmigration. All the religions systems of India have been based on the principle that it is possible to break the chain of cause and effect, and so to "release" the soul from the necessity of robirth. They differ in the means proposed for effecting this, and in their accounts of what becomes of the soul when so released. The Mimimâ method of release consists in the due performance of ceremonial works. That of the Vedanta is recognition of the identity of the soul with the Pantheos. And that of the Samkhya is recognition of the dual nature of soul and matter.
M Thin doctrine of prardila or grace has formed an essential part of the Bhagavata Religion, so far back as Kterature takes us. It is true that the same dogtrine appears in the Upanishada bat only in the latest onea (Katha I. i. 20 : Sudt, III, 20, VI, 91; Mund, III, 1, 3: See Hopkins, Great Epic, 188). It is henge reasonable to 888me that in these case it has been borrowed from the Bhagavata. Indeed it is difficult to see how much doctrine could form part of the pantheistio Brahmrism.
86 The following in the usual list of these incarnations. (1) The Fish, (2) The Boer, (3) The Tortoise. (4) The Man-lion, (5) The Dwarf, (6) Parabu-rama, (7) Rima-chandra, (8) Krishna, (9) The Buddha, (10). The Kalki, (11) Tho Vyhan, (12) Prithu, (13) Hari, (14) The Swan, (hala), (15) Manvantara, (16) The Sacrifice, vajtla (. Taittirfya Banhita, I. vil, 4), (17) Rishabha, (18) Hayagriva, (19) Dhruva, ( 20 ) Dhanvantari. 21) Nara and Narayana, (22) Dattatreya, ( 23 ) Kapila, (24) Sanaka and his brothron. Note that No. 13, Hari, is not the Supremo Himself, but an incarnation. * Garbe, Bhag. Gl., pp. 41, 48.
17 Garbe, ib., P. 53
