Chapter 3

[5]So the French expressiondes couleurs, and our English "the colours."

[6]Hegel uses the 'technical termInhaltin this passage to signify either (a) the quality of significance, or (b) the object which is symbolized by virtue of some selected quality. The use of it in both senses makes the passage somewhat difficult to follow.

[7]Inhalthere evidently is the abstract quality.

[8]Necessarily because such ambiguity is implied in the idea (seinem Begriff nach).

[9]This, I think, is the sense. The language literally is, "Which a form under several possible significations, as symbol of any of which (deren) it can be employed often through connecting links (Zusammenhänge) more remote, may be taken to symbolize."

[10]The German words areBegreifenandSchliessen, which in their original sense are "to grasp with the hand" (prehendo) and "to shut" or "lock up." The English words in a still fainter form carry the same significance through the Latin language. The symbolism of language at this stage is obviously only apparent to the student of language.

[11]That is, more abstract.

[12]Or in English: /# Forth on the ocean is shipped Youth with his thousand sails: Silent in bark barely saved steals into harbour old age. #/

[13]Substantielle, that is, an artistic consciousness which is aware of its own essential nature—Spirit, and the object of pure intelligence—the Ideal.

[14]Perhaps we should rather say a Theosophy.

[15]The Alexandrine School, of which Plotinus and Philo are leading names.

[16]Ein allgemeiner Gedanke.The reference throughout this paragraph to the universality of the ideas of reflection as contrasted with the sensuous image is rather a reference to the abstract conceptions of the analytical mind, that is, which are usually understood as universals in the sense of generic conceptions, than any fuller grasp of concrete reality such as possesses a truly ideal significance. So in its application to the metaphor I imagine what is meant is that we have here the process of dry analysis which merely destroys its significance as metaphor, that is, its synthetic unity for our aesthetic sense.

[17]Ist aufgehoben, here not in the sense of being cancelled, but raised to the expression of concrete unity.

[18]Als blosse Personification, that is, an individualization which impersonates the subjective identity without possessing its concrete substance, a personified shadow like the sphinx. Such appears to be the sense.

[19]Because the content for which such shapes (Gestaltung) are given is itself incoherent, and therefore incompatible with adequate expression.

[20]Sichhervorarbeiten.Our word "elaborate" is here insufficient. Hegel means the mode in which the Idea of art works itself free from entirely potential obscurity into a living force, a realenergeia.We cannot say "emerges into daylight," however, because the highest grasp of symbolic art is still only a twilight. It is like the growth of the plant-germ, still underground, or partially so.

[21]Pracktischen.Not matter-of-fact relation, but rather a relation that asserts itself exclusively in action.

[22]Als Grund, that is, as a fundamental unity of the real.

[23]Die erste näher gestaltende Dollmetcherin, lit., the first interpreter which supplies forms more nearly cognate with itself.

[24]It is valid (geltend) because it introduces there its own spiritual nature.

[25]The previous statement of Hegel must not be overlooked, however, and it may be considerably amplified, that there is much in romantic art which is related to symbolism and the sublime. Take the case of the celebrated sculpture of Michael Angelo typifying Night, Day, Dawn, and Twilight, or such modern pictures as those of Watts's "The Minotaur" and "The Spirit of Christianity."

[26]Or rather "between those aspects of its import and form which are reciprocally homogeneous and those which are not."

[27]This process of symbolic art.

[28]Hauptstufen.The word signifies either the phase or grade of a process of development, or to take the metaphor used by Hegel above (Stadien) may perhaps be better translated by "stage," as though indicating the successive stages of a journey.

[29]I thinkVölkernrather thanZeitenmust be here understood, and the sense appears to be that the confusion indicated refers to a mingling of forms appropriate to a nation in one historical period with those that are more cognate with a people at any earlier or it may be later period. But unquestionably this attempt to identify a type as between different nations with historical periods that will harmonize with Hegel's own classification is a difficult matter as we may see by the fact that Egypt, the oldest example of all, represents the third stage. On the other hand, if the confusion referred to is applied to the particular development of any one people, the examples given by Hegel do not bear on the difficulty they illustrate.

[30]Or rather "the import of the Absolute."

[31]Substantiality, called belowdie Substanz; the word signifies the real essence of the Absolute.

[32]The principal clause of this sentence has no end as printed. The auxiliary must be omitted either beforein diesem Diensteoreine positive.I prefer the first alternative.

[33]The relative here agrees, I think, withdie Dienstbarkeitrather thandie Kreaturordie Poesie.Hegel says "compatible with itself and its significance," we should rather say "its sense of its own insignificance."

[34]Hegel's words aresondern in einem subjectiven Dritten,welches in beiden Seiten nach seiner subjectiven Anschauung, etc. This "subjective third" is, as explained below, the way in which the relation between the image and the absolute significance ceases to be regarded as identical.

[35]This sentence as it stands is ungrammatical; there is a change in the construction as it proceeds.

[36]The prosaic universality is the prose of its form separated from content. It is prosaic because it is unrelated to the vitality of the notion.

Now that we pass to the consideration of the several distinctions of symbolical art in more detail, we have to make a beginning with the identical beginning of art as it proceeds out of the notion of art itself. This commencement, as we have seen, is the symbolical form of art in its still immediate form wherein the appearance, as purely image or likeness, is neither brought to consciousness nor presupposed—unconscious symbolism, that is to say. Before, however, we shall be in a position to consider this form in its genuine symbolical character, it will be necessary to review several presuppositions which the notion of symbolism itself determines in order that we may utilize them for the basis upon which the symbol may unfold itself for scientific apprehension.

The point from which we make a start may be defined more closely as follows:

The fundamental root of the symbol is, regarding it from one aspect, the immediate union of the universal and thereby spiritual significance with the form which may at the same time be described as adequate and inadequate, an inadequacy, however, which is as yet unperceived. This association, however, must, on the other hand, receive a form from theimaginationandart, and must notmerelybe conceived as a Divine reality exclusively immediate to sense. By this means the symbolical originates in the first instance with theseverationof a universal import from the immediatepresence of Nature, in whose existence the Absolute is contemplated as actually present. These two aspects supply us with the preliminary stages for the genuine forms of symbolic art.

Thefirstpresupposition consequently—we may call it thecoming into being of the symbolical—is not that union which is the product of art, but rather just that immediate unity of the Absolute and True and its existence, which is discovered in the visible world apart from art's mediation.

In this identity of the Divine immediately envisualized, a Divine, which is brought home to consciousness as the union of its determinate existence in Nature and humanity, Nature is neither taken simply for that which it is in isolation by itself, nor is the Absolute severed from it and posited in an independent self-subsistence. Consequently it is wholly beside the point to speak of a distinction here between the Inward and the External, the significance and the form, and this for the reason that the Inward is not as yet released in its independence as significance from its immediate reality in the object of sense. When we apply here the expression import[37], such merely emphasizes ourownreflection upon it, which is due to the necessity for ourselves personally to regard the form, which contains that which is spiritual and inward under the mode of sense-perception, generally as something external to us, through which we are desirous of penetrating into the Inward, that is, its animating life and significance, in order that we may understand it. For this reason we are under the necessity from the very first, when dealing with such general impressions of sense-perception, of making an essential demarcation between those cases in which the peoples, who in the first instance experienced them, themselves were clearly conscious of this Inward itself as such, that is, as a spiritual significance, and those in which the use of such expressions is only applicable to ourselves, who now and only now recognize an import of this kind in the content of that external expression of sense-envisagement.

In this primary unity such as the latter cases involve, there is no such distinction between soul and body, notion and reality, as is implied in the former. That which we describe as corporeal and sensuous, natural and human, isnot merely an expression for a significance which proceeds at the same time to a point of distinction from it[38]; but the phenomenon is itself conceived as the immediate reality and presence of the Absolute, which does not in addition possess some other mode of self-subsistent existence, but is confined exclusively to the immediate presence of an object of sense, which is God or the Divine. In the service of the Lama, for example, this particular, actual human being is immediately known and adored as God, just as in other natural religions the sun, mountains, rivers, the moon, particular animals, such as the bull, ape, and so on, are looked upon as immediately Divine existences and worshipped as sacred. We may observe a similar directness, if under a mode of profounder application, even now in many aspects of the Christian consciousness. According to Catholic doctrine, for example, the consecrated bread is the real body, and the wine the real blood of God, and Christ is immediately present therein; nay, even according to the Lutheran faith, both bread and wine are converted into such real body and blood by virtue of the faith of the recipient. In this mystical union it is not merely a symbolism which is expressed, a point of view which comes into prominence as the result of it for the first time in later doctrines of the reformed Church, where we find as a result the spiritual significance is expressly severed from the sensuous object, and the external medium is then accepted as merely pointing to an import which is distinct from itself. In the same way the power of this Divine is held to operate in the miracle-working images of the Virgin as a Divine force that is immediately present within them, and not merely under symbolical guise through the significant import of such pictures.

We find, however, the most thorough and universal exemplification of this absolute and immediate unity of sense-perception in the life and religion of the ancient Zend-people, whose conceptions and institutions are preserved for us in the Zend-Avesta.

1. In other words the religion of Zoroaster beholds Lightin the form of its natural existence, the sun, stars, and fire in the luminous activity and flames which proceed from them, actually as the Absolute, without separating this Divine independently from that Light either as its expression and image or the sensuous medium thereof. The Divine, the significance, is not thus severed from its determinate existence in the form of lights, however displayed. For even when light is accepted here in the sense of Goodness and Justice, and through such significance is extended to all that is rich in blessing, support, and life, it is still not taken as the mere image of such things, but Light is itself the Good. And the same view applies to the opposite of light, namely, obscurity and darkness when identified with that which is unclean, hurtful, evil, destructive, and deadly.

This point of view may be more closely defined and considered as follows:

(a) In the first instance the Divine, as the essential purity of Light[39], and the Darkness and Unclean are, it is true,personifiedunder the names of Ormuzd and Ahriman respectively. This personification is, however, throughout entirely superficial. Ormuzd is no essentially free individuality devoid of all relation to external objects[40]as was the God of the Jews, or truly spiritual and personal as is the God of Christianity when conceived as truly personal and self-conscious Spirit; rather Ormuzd, despite the fact that he is described also as king, great spirit and judge, remains inseparable from such external existence as Light and its illuminations. He is exclusively this universal characteristic of all particular existences, in which light and thereby the Divine and Pure are realized, without any additional power to withdraw himself in a spiritual universality and independence into his own substance from that which is thus immediately presented. His consistence rests in the particular facts of existence precisely in an analogous way to that of the genus in the species. It is true that regarded as this universal he is superior to all that is wholly particular,and is the first, most supreme, the kings of kings glorious in his gold, the purest and so forth; but he retains his existence none the less exclusively in all that is luminous and pure as Ahriman in all that is obscure, evil, destructive, and charged with disease.

(b) As a result this mode of vision is at the same time extended to the conception of anempireof light and darkness, and the strife between these forces. In the empire of Ormuzd it is in the first place the Amschaspands, as the seven principal lights of heaven, which receive adoration as Divinity, inasmuch as they are the essential particular existences of Light, and for this reason constitute as a pure and spacious empeopled heaven, the existence of the Divine itself. Every Amschaspand, to which Ormuzd belongs, has assigned to it days of precedence, blessing, and beneficence. The Izeds and Ferners carry the conception still further into specification, which it is probable enough are personifications of Ormuzd himself, albeit they add to him no further shape that we may envisage as human, so that neither the spiritual nor the bodily mode of subjectivity, but simply the existence as light, appearance, illumination, splendour, remains the essential characteristic of the object envisaged.

In the same way also the particular objects of Nature, which themselves do not exist in external form as lights and luminous bodies, such as animals, plants, and so forth, no less than the forms which characterize the human world, whether we view it under its spiritual or bodily presentment, in other words the particular activities and conditions of it, the entire life of the state, the king with the seven great men who support him, the division of classes, cities, the various provinces with their governors, all that is warranted by experience as typical of the best and purest for the protection of the rest—the entire reality, in fact, of this life is regarded as an existence of Ormuzd. For everything that carries within itself and promulgates what has solidity, life, and substance is an existence of Light and Purity, and consequently an existence of Ormuzd; every particular truth, excellence, love, justness, every individual example of life, beneficence, protection, spiritual power and enjoyment or benignity is, according to Zoroaster, regarded as essentiallyLight and Divine. The empire of Ormuzd is the Pure and Illuminating of visible reality; and conformably to this there is no distinction between the phenomena of Nature or Spirit, just as Light and Goodness, the spiritual and the sensuous quality, are inseparably blended in the conception of Ormuzd himself. Thesplendourof a creature is consequently for Zoroaster the very substance of spirit, force, and life-exhalations of every kind, in so far, that is, as they tend to actual conservation and to the removal of everything positively evil and hurtful, for that which is the Real and the Good, whether in beast, man, or vegetable life, is Light, and it is according to the measure and mode of display of this luminousness that the relative power or weakness of the splendour of all objects is determined.

An articulation and graduated division of similar character is found in the empire of Ahriman, merely with the difference that what is spiritually or naturally evil, and generally the destructive and actively negative principle asserts itself in actual masterdom. But the might of Ahriman must not be suffered to spread; the aim of the entire world is consequently assumed to be that of annihilating the Empire of Ahriman, in order that the life, presence, and dominion of Ormuzd may prevail throughout creation.

(c) To this exclusive object the entire life of humanity is consecrate. The life-task of every man consists exclusively in a purification of soul and body, and in the extension of this blessing and this conflict with Ahriman throughout all the conditions and activities of the life of man or Nature. The highest and most sacred duty is consequently to glorify Ormuzd in his creation, and to love, honour, and conform oneself to all that proceeds from his Light and is essentially pure. Ormuzd is the beginning and end of all adoration. Above all else the Parsee is moved to summon the life of Ormuzd in thought and speech; he is the main object of his prayers. And in the exaltation of him, from whom the entire world of the Pure has streamed in its splendour, the devotee is in duty bound to accommodate his adoration of particular objects according to the measure in which they proclaim his majesty, worth, and perfection. So far as they are good and ring sound, to that extent, the Parsee reasons with himself, is Ormuzd alive within them; he loves themas the children of his purity, yea, rejoices over them as in the beginning of his substance, forasmuch as through him was everything brought forth in newness and purity. And for the same reason is all prayer directed first and foremost to the Amschaspands as the most intimate reflections of Ormuzd, as the primates of supreme splendour who surround his throne and advance his dominion. Such prayer to these heavenly spirits is immediately directed to their qualities and activities, and in the case of stars at the time of their uprising. The sun is invoked by day, and always with the changes appropriate to his own motion through sunrise, noonday, or sunset. From morning till noonday the devotion of the Parsee centres in this that Ormuzd may exalt his splendour; at evening he prays that the sun may through Ormuzd and the protecting care of every Tzed perfect the course of his life. But principally we find honour paid to Mithras, who, as the fruit-bringer to the Earth and the wilderness, pours forth the fermenting sap over all Nature, and as mighty champion against all the Devas of contention, war, confusion, and destruction, is the author of peace.

In addition to this the Parsee, in his generally single-toned songs of praise, exalts his ideals, that is, the purest and most veritable examples of human life, the Ferver conceived as pure human spirits, on whatever portion of the Earth's surface they live or have lived. In the chief place prayer is offered to the pure spirit of Zoroaster, and after him to the leading lights of all classes, cities, and provinces; and already in this religion, we find that the spirits of all mankind are contemplated as united together with a sufficient bond in that they are members in the living association of Light, which hereafter in Gorotman shall receive a yet more perfect union.

Finally, not even the animals, mountains, and vegetable world are forgotten, but are appealed to as embodiments of Ormuzd; all that is good and serviceable in them to mankind is extolled, and especially the first and most excellent of its kind is adored as the present existence of Deity. And over and above this worship of Ormuzd and of every form of selected excellence among the pure and beneficent objects of his creation the Zend-Avesta is insistent upon thepracticeof goodness and the purity of thought, word, and deed. The Parsee is to be in the entire display of his external and inward man as Light, as Ormuzd, the Amschaspands, and the Izeds, as Zoroaster and all good men live and do. Such live and have lived in the Light, and all their deeds are Light; therefore shall every man make them an example to his eyes and follow after the same. The more purity of light and goodness man expresses in his life and accomplishment, the nearer he stands to those spirits of heaven. As the Izeds throw the blessing of their beneficence over everything, are a source of life and fruitfulness and friendship, so, too, he must seek to purify Nature, to ennoble her, and to reach abroad the light of life and the joy of plenteousness. In accordance therewith he shall feed the hungry, tend the sick, offer the drink of consolation to the thirsty, give roof and shelter to the wanderer, provide pure seed for the Earth, delve clean channels of water, plant the waste with trees, nourish to the best of his power their growth, care for the sustenance and fructification of things alive, keep pure the lambency of fire, remove from sight the dead and unclean beast, establish marriages, and in the doing thereof the holy Sapandomad, the Ized of the Earth, herself rejoices, averting the harm which the Devas and the Darvands are busy to prepare.

2. If we ask ourselves once more, after this delineation in outline of the fundamental conceptions of this system, what is the symbolical character of the same there can be but one reply, namely, that there is no trace here of anything we have previously described as symbolical. On the one side, no doubt, we have light in its obvious natural form, and on the other it possesses the further significance of all that is rich in goodness, blessing, and permanence. It is, therefore, possible to contend that the actual existence of light is merely an image cognate with this universal significance, which interpenetrates every part of the world of Nature and mankind. If we apply such an interpretation to the conception of Parsees themselves we shall find such a separation of existence and its import to be false; for these the Light as Light is actually the Good, and is so apprehended that it is in the form of light present and active in everything that is good, vital, and positive. The universaland Divine is carried no doubt through the distinctions of the world of particular objects, but in this its differentiated and particularized existence, the substantial and inseparable unity of import and form remains constant, and the distinctions that are involved in this unity do not affect the difference of significancequâsignificance, and its manifestation, but only the distinguishing features of particular objects, such as stars, organic life, human opinions and actions, in which the Divine as Light or Darkness is immediately open to sense.

In the further embrace of such conceptions there are no doubt points of connection with incipient symbolism, but we get out of them no real type of that mode of viewing things in its completeness; they will only pass muster as isolated traits in its direction. To such effect Ormuzd is on one occasion made to say of his beloved one Dschemschid: "The holy Ferver of Dschemschid, the son of Vivengham, was great before me. His hand received from me a dagger, whose sharpness was gold, and whose shaft was gold. Therewith Dschemschid marked out three hundred portions of the Earth. He split up the Earth-realm with his gold-plate, yea, with his dagger and spake: 'Let Sapandomad rejoice.' He spake the holy word with prayer to the tame cattle and the wild and unto men. So his passing through was happiness and blessing for these lands and animals of the home and the field, and men ran together into great dwellings." Here we find in the dagger, and the cleaving of the Earth-soil an image which may be interpreted as significant of agriculture. Agriculture is still no essentially spiritual activity, and just as little is it a purely natural one; it is rather a universal occupation of mankind, which results from reflective thought and experience, and which has point of association with all the relations of life. It is no doubt never expressly stated in this conception of the passing of Dschemschid that this splitting of the Earth with the dagger indicates agriculture; nor is there a single word added of any increase of the fruits of the field by virtue of this division; for the reason, however, that in this particular act more appears to be included than the mere turning over and loosening of the soil, we are led to look for a further significance beneath it. The same observations apply tomore recent conceptions, such as we find exemplified in the later elaboration of the worship of Mithras, where Mithras is represented as a youth who in the dusk of a grotto raises on high the bull's head and plunges a dagger in his neck, whereon a serpent licks up the blood, and a scorpion gnaws his genitals. This symbolical account has received an astronomical and other interpretations. We may, however, find in it a still more universal and profounder meaning, and take the bull generally to personify the principle of Nature, over which man, as essentially spirit, secures the victory, and this though astronomical associations may also be implied in it. That, however, such a revolution as the victory of Spirit over Nature is contained in it is also suggested by the name of Mithras, or mediator, more especially if we refer it to a later period when such uplifting over Nature was already a necessity present to the national consciousness. Symbols such as the above, however, as already observed, only incidentally come to the fore in the conceptions of the ancient Parsees, and do not in any way constitute a principle for their fundamental type of thought.

Still less can we describe the cultus, which the Zend-Avesta inculcates, as one of symbolical tendency. We find no trace here, for example, of symbolical dances in celebration or imitation of the interlaced revolutions of the stars; as little any other forms of activity which may pass as the suggestive counterfeit of universal conceptions; rather all actions which are prescribed to the Parsee as imperative in a religious sense are matters directly concerned with the actual enlargement of his purity, either of soul or body, and appear as directed with one intent and one object of realization, namely, that of increasing the actual dominion of Ormuzd over men and the objects of Nature, an object consequently which is not merely symbolized in such activity, but entirely carried out.

3. For the reason, then, that a genuine symbolic type fails absolutely when applied to this religious system, it is equally destitute of a trueartisticcharacter. No doubt we may generally describe its mode of conception aspoeticalfor the particular facts of Nature are just as little as the particular sentiments, circumstances, acts, and affairs of mentreated in their immediate and consequently haphazard and prosaic relation which is void of all significance, and are rather contemplated essentially in the Absolute as very Light; or to put it the other way, the universal essence of the concrete reality of Nature and mankind is not conceived in the universality which is without existence or form, but this universal and that particular is envisaged and expressed in immediate union. Such a mode of viewing existence may possibly claim a certain beauty, breadth, and largeness of its own, and in contrast to gross and senseless idols Light is no doubt as the essentially pure and universal element, an adequate image of Goodness and Truth. But for all that we find that poetry here fails to pass beyond a general conception; it never reaches either art or the works of art. For the Good and the Divine are neither essentially defined, nor is the consistency and form of this content a creation of mind (Spirit); but rather, as we have already found, the thing which is immediately present to sense, namely, the actual sun, stars, fire, organic nature, throughout its vegetation, animal and human life, is conceived as the appropriate form of the Absolute in this its existent andimmediateshape. The sensuous representation is not, as Art requires, the plastic product of mind, shaped and discovered by the same, but immediately identified with and expressed by the external existent shape as its appropriate counterfeit. It is quite true, in another aspect, the particular thing is, by means of the imagination, also fixed in an independent relation to its reality, as, for instance, in the Izeds and Fervers, that is, in the genii of particular men; the poetic invention, however, discovered in this incipient severation is of the weakest kind for the reason that the distinction remains entirely of a formal character, so that the genius, Ized or Ferver, neither includes nor is able to include any real characteristic content of its own, but, instead of this, either repeats one identical content or possesses nothing more than the purely empty form of the subjectivity, which the existing individual already possesses. The product of the imagination here is consequently neither an other and profounder significance nor the self-subsistent form of an essentially richer individuality. And when we moreover find particular objects envisaged on the widerplane of general conceptions and generic types, to which, as appropriate to such types, the imagination vouchsafes a real existence, even here also this uplifting of multiplicity into the sphere of an all-comprehending and essential unity, regarded as the basic core and substance of the individuals that constitute the same species and genus, can only in a yet more indefinite sense be accepted as an activity of the imagination, no real exemplification of either poetry or art. So we have, for instance, in the holy fire of Behram the essence of fire; and in the same way there is a water that underlies all existent water. So, too, Horn is esteemed as the first, purest, and most stalwart among trees, the primordial tree from which the life-sap full of immortality flows; and among all mountains Albordsch, the sacred mountain, is set before us as the primaeval root of the Earth, erect in the splendour of the Light, from which the good deeds of all men proceed, who have possessed the knowledge of Light, and on whom the sun, moon, and stars repose. In general, however, we may affirm that the universal is visibly known in immediate union with the actual objects of sense, and it is merely now and again that universal conceptions are embodied in the particular image.

In yet more prosaic fashion does the cultus of this religion make as its principal object the dominion of Ormuzd a reality which interpenetrates all things, merely requiring this one essential condition to the adequacy of every object, namely, its purity, and without attempting therewith to construct from such any existent form of art that is based upon immediate life, as, for example, the warriors and wrestlers of Greece were so ready to do in their artistic elaboration of physical perfection.

From whatever side, then, or whatever may be the point of view from which we regard this first unity of spiritual universality and sensuous reality, we only get from it thebasisof symbolical art; it still fails to possess a real symbolism of its own, and is unable to produce works of art. In order that we may attain this object, which is the next in view, we must pass away from the union we have just considered, and examine modes of conception where thedifferenceandconflictbetween significance and form is more really emphasized.

Quitting now the sphere of thought in which the identity of the Absolute and its externally envisaged existence is immediately cognized, we have, as an essential determination to start from, the severation of these two aspects hitherto united, acleavagewhich stimulates the effort to restore once more the visible breach by means of an elaborate fusing together of the whole thus divided by a rich use of the images of phantasy. With this attempt the essential need for art is felt for the first time. No sooner has the imagination succeeded in holding fast its envisaged content, which is no longer grasped in immediate union with the objects of sense, in isolated separation from that existence, than for the first time spirit is confronted with the task of reclothing with the material of phantasy for sensuous perception, that is, under the renewed mode of a spiritual product, these general conceptions and of creating through this activity the shapes of art. And for the reason that in the stage of our process where we now find ourselves, this task is capable of only a symbolic solution, we may easily fall under the impression that we stand already in the sphere of genuine symbolism. This, however, is not the case. What immediately faces us here are the forms of a fermenting phantasy[41], which in the restlessness of its fantastic dreams merely indicates the path which conducts us to the real centre of symbolical art. In the first appearance of the distinguishing relation between significance and the mode of its presentation, both the severation and the association are still grasped in a confused manner. This confusion is necessitated by the fact that neither of the parted aspects of difference have as yet attained a totality, capable of emphasizing the precise point in the process, which will serve as the fundamental determination of the opposed side in it, and by means of which for the first,time a really adequate union and reconciliation is rendered possible. Spirit (mind), to illustrate our difficultyfurther, determines by virtue of its own totality the side of the external phenomenon out of its own essential substance quite as really as it does its own spiritual content for the obvious reason that the essentially complete and independent phenomenon only receives its adequate form as the external existence of that which is spiritual. In the case, however, of this primary severation of the significances apprehended by mind, and the existent world of phenomena such aspects of significance are not those of concrete spiritual life, but abstractions, and this expression also is entirely destitute of spiritual intension, and is consequently, in an abstract sense, purely external and sensuous. This twofold impulse in the direction of disunion and union is for the same reason an unsteady gait[42], which ranges from the objects of sense in undefined and unmeasured waste immediately to the aspects of universal import, and is only able to discover for the inward content of consciousness the absolutely opposed form of sensuous shapes. And it is this very contradiction which is set forth as a means of really uniting elements which contradict each other. The result is that instead of so doing it is first driven from one side of the opposition into the other, and then again is hurled in its ceaselessly alternating dance into the former extreme, while it believes that in this rocking to and fro of its strain it has found the means to lull itself to repose. Instead of getting, therefore, a true satisfaction we have thecontradictionmerely affirmed as its genuine resolution, and in addition the union most incomplete of all is set forth as that which art really requires. We must not therefore expect to find in such a field of confusion worse confounded the true forms of beauty. In this restless leap from one opposed extreme to the other all that we find from one point of view in the sensuous material that is absorbed, regarding the same in its singularity no less than as it constitutes its elementary appearance to sense, is that the breadth and potency of every import of universality is associated therewith in what must consequently be a wholly inadequate way. From another aspect that which is most universal, as soon as the process has passed from the same, is shamelessly plunged under the reverse treatment into the very heart of thesensuous present; and if any feeling of the incompatibility of such an effort is consciously perceived, the imagination here is only capable of rendering assistance by means of distortions which carry the particular shapes over and beyond their own secure boundaries, adding to their extension, making them ever more indefinite, by an imaginative leap which mounts to the immeasurable, breaks up every bond of union, and in its very strain after reconciliation reveals each opposing factor in its most unmitigated hostility[43].

These earliest and still most uncontrolled attempts of imagination and art we meet most signally among the ancient races of India, the main defect of whose productions, when viewed relatively to their particular position at this stage of our classification, consists in this, that they are neither able to seize the profounder aspects of significance in independent clarity, nor grasp the reality of sense-perception in its characteristic form and meaning. The Hindoo race has consequently proved itself unable to comprehend either persons or events as parts of continuous history, because to any historical treatment a certain soberness is essential of accepting and understanding facts in their true and independent form, and subject to their mediating links, grounds, causes, and objects, being empirically ascertained. The natural impulse to refer all and everything back to the Divine is hostile to this prosaic reasonableness, no less than its tendency to prefigure for itself in the most ordinary or most sensuous of objects a presence and reality of godhead created by its own imagination. These peoples consequently, through their confused intermingling of the Finite and the Absolute, in which the logical order and permanence of the prosaic facts of ordinary consciousness are disregarded altogether, despite all the profusion and extraordinary boldness of their conceptions, fall into a levity of fantastic mirage which is quite as remarkable, a flightiness which dances from the most spiritual and profoundest matters to the meanest trifle of present experience, in order that itmay interchange and confuse immediately the one extreme with the other.

If we concentrate our attention more closely upon the more conspicuous features of this continuous bout of intoxication, this craze and condition of craze, what we are concerned with is not to trace religious conceptions as such, but merely to emphasize the points of prominence which relate such modes of conception with art. These may be indicated as follows:

1. One extreme of the consciousness of the Hindoo is the consciousness of the Absolute, here regarded as the essentially and absolutely Universal, undifferentiated and consequently wholly indefinite. This supreme of abstractions, inasmuch as it is neither in possession of a particular content, nor is conceived under the mode of concrete personality, is, from whatever side you may look at it, no object at all that the imagination acting through the senses can reclothe for art. Brahman[44], taken in a general sense as this supreme Godhead, is absolutely removed from the sensuous and sense-perception, or rather is not even an object for Thought. For self-consciousness is inseparable from thought, which posits itself as an object of Thought, in order that it may thus come to self-knowledge. Every act of intelligence is an identification of the ego and object, a reconciliation of that which is severed outside from this relation of recognition; what I do not understand remains as something strange and foreign to myself. The mode of union, under the Hindoo conception, of human personality with Brahman is nothing more nor less than a continually ascending process of exhaustion[45]in the direction of this supreme of abstractions, in which not merely the entire concrete content, but also self-consciousness itself, must be eliminated before the final consummation is realized. Or, to put the same thing another way, the Hindoo recognizes no reconciliation and identity with Brahman in the sense that the spirit of humanity becomesconsciousof this union. The unity rather consists in this, that both consciousnessand self-consciousness, and with them the entire content of the objective world and personality totally disappears. This emptying and annihilation to the point of absolute vacuity is treated as the supreme condition under which man is capable of identity with highest Divinity, that is Brahman. An abstraction of this sort, one of the barest it is possible to imagine, whether we consider it from the point of view of the Absolute, as Brahman, or from the human aspect of a purely theoretically conceived cultus that consists in man's self-evaporation[46]and self-annihilation, is in itself no object either for the imagination or art; all the latter can do is to profit by such opportunity as various imaginary representations of what happens by the way to this goal may offer for their exercise.

2. Conversely the Hindoo view of existence launches itself with just the same immediacy over this very abstraction from all sense into the wildest flood of it. Inasmuch, however, as the immediate and consequently unbroken identity of both sides is in this view cancelled, and instead of this the element ofdifferencewithin this identity has become the basic principle of the type itself, this very contradiction plunges us with no mediating connections from the Finite into the Divine, and again from this latter into what is most transitory of all; and we live and move amongsimulacra, which rise up entirely as the growth of this alternating process, a kind of witches' world, where the definition of every shape eludes our grasp as we endeavour to seize it, is converted all at once into its opposite, or straddles away into mere inflated enormities.

The general modes under which Hindoo art manifests itself may be summarized under the three following points of view:

(a) In the first place we find the full hugeness of the content of the Absolute is imposed by the imagination upon thesensuousin its aspect of singularity in such a way that this particular thing is itself, in its own form and station, taken completely to represent such a content and to exist as such for the imaginative sense. In the Râmâyana, for example, the friend of Râma, namely, the prince of apesHanuman, is a principal personage, and he accomplishes the bravest of exploits. And generally we may observe that among the Hindoos the ape is revered as Divine, and we find, in fact, an entire city of apes. In the ape, as this point of singularity, the infinite content of the Absolute is envisaged and adored. It is just the same with the cow, Sabalâ, which in the Râmâyana during the episodic treatment of the expiations of Visvamitra, appears clothed with immeasurable power. If we take a glance on higher planes we find entire families in India—even though the individual here be merely a vacant and monotonously vegetating life-unit—in whom the Absolute itself, as this concrete reality, is adored in its immediate life and presence as God. This same coincidence is found in Lamaism. Here, too, a single individual receives the highest worship due to the present God. In India, however, this honour is not exclusively paid to one man. Every Brahmin proves at once his claim from the day of his birth in his own caste to be ranked as Brahman, and possesses that second birth of the Spirit which identifies his humanity with God, in the way of Nature through his actual bodily birth, so that the crown of the most Divine itself is immediately referred back upon the entirely commonplace fact of physical existence. For although the Brahmin is under the most sacred obligation to read the Vedâs, and attain by this means an insight into the secrets of Deity, this duty can be actually carried out in the most perfunctory way without detracting in the least from the Brahmin's own divinity. In a similar manner it is one of the modes most common to the representations of Hindooism to have the primordial God set forth as the procreator or begetter, as we find Eros is in the case of Greek mythology. This procreation as Divine activity is further worked into all kinds of representations in a wholly material way, and the private parts, both male and female, are treated as sacred in the highest sense. And in a reverse way, and to no less extent, the Divine, when it passes over in its independent Divinity to the plane of existing reality, is suffered in a wholly trivial manner to get mixed up with everyday details. We may take an example of this from the commencement of the Râmâyana, where Brahmâ has come on a visit to Vâlmîkis,the mythical bard of the Râmâyana. Vâlmîkis receives him entirely in the common Hindoo fashion, pays him a compliment or two, places a stool before him, and supplies him with water and fruits. Brahmâ sits down just like anybody else and constrains his host to do likewise: and there they sit on and sit on until at last Brahmâ orders Vâlmîkis to compose the poem of the Râmâyana.

Modes of conception such as these are still not symbolic in the strict sense; for although we find that here, as the symbol requires, forms are taken from the material of sense and diverted to the use of conceptions of more universal import, we still find the further condition of this requirement wanting, namely, that the particular existences must not actually exist for sense-perception as this absolute significance, but merelysuggestthe same. For the Hindoo imagination the ape, the cow, and the particular Brahmin are not merely a cognate symbol of the Divine, but are contemplated and represented as the Godhead itself, as existences adequate to that Godhead.

It is the contradiction inherent in this immediacy which is the motive force of another feature in the conceptions of Hindoo art. For while, on the one hand, that which is absolutely severed from sense, the spiritual significance out and out, is conceived as the actually Divine, yet, on the other, the particular facts of concrete reality are immediately envisaged by the imagination, even in their sensuous existence, as Divine manifestations. They are no doubt partly only taken to represent particular aspects of the Absolute; but even so the particular thing in its immediacy is still incompatible with the universality, which it is, as adequate to the same, introduced to express; and it appears in all the more glaring contradiction to it for the reason that the significance is here already conceived in its universality, yet, despite of this, an express relation of identity is immediately set up by the imagination between it and the most particular of material facts.

(b) The most obvious way in which Hindoo art endeavours to mitigate this disunion is, as we have already suggested, by themeasurelessextension of its images. Particular shapes are drawn out into colossal and grotesque proportions in order that they may, as forms of sense, attainto universality. The particular form of sense, which is taken to express not itself and its own characteristic meaning as a fact of external existence, but a universal significance which lies outside it, fails to satisfy the imagination until it has been torn out itself into vastness which knows neither measure nor limit. This is the cause of all that extravagant exaggeration of size, not merely in the case of spatial dimension, but also of measurelessness of time-durations, or the reduplication of particular determinations, as in figures with many heads, arms, and so on, by means of which this art strains to compass the breadth and universality of the significance it assumes. The egg, for example, contains the bird within it. This particular fact is enlarged to the measureless conception of a world-egg secreting the universal life of all creation, and in which Brahmâ, the procreating God, accomplishes without effort the year of creation, until by virtue of his thought alone the the two halves of the egg fall asunder. And, in addition to natural objects, human individuals and events are exalted that they may express the significance of truly Divine action in such a way that we can neither hold fast the Divine or the human in their independence, but both seem to run in a continual confusion backwards and forwards into one another. As a striking illustration of such a mode of conception, we have the incarnations of certain Hindoo gods, principally Vishnu, the conserver of life, whose exploits figure largely in the great epic poems. Râmas is, for instance, himself the seventh incarnation of Vishnu (Râmatshandra). From a review of particular demands, actions, circumstances, modes of appearance, and traits of demeanour, we are led to infer from these poems that this content is in great measure borrowed from actual events, that is from the exploits of ancient kings who exercised a powerful influence in creating new conditions of law and order; we find ourselves surrounded by a thoroughly human atmosphere and on the firm ground of reality. But then again, in a converse direction, the entire scene expands, reaches out into the nebulous, playing over and beyond it with universal conceptions, so that we lose the vantage ground we had gained and are robbed of all our bearings. We are treated in just the same way in the Sakuntala. At firstwe have set before us the most gentle and odorous realm of Love, in which everything goes on its way in an entirely human fashion; and then we are all at once snatched from the wealth of this genuine world, and transported into the clouds of the heaven of Indra, where everything suffers change, and our formerly circumscribed sphere is inflated to the measure of the universal import of Nature's life in its relation to the Brahmin and the power of Nature's gods, which is vouchsafed to man in return for his severe self-mortifications.

Such modes of representation are also not to be termed in a strict sense symbolical. That is to say the true symbol suffers the determinate shape, which it applies, to remain under that original definition, because its purpose is not to envisage therein the immediate existent of the significance in its universality, but to point to that import merelythroughthe qualities of the object which are cognate to it. Hindoo art, however, although it severs universality from the singular existing fact, still adds the further requirement that both sides shall be immediately united through the imagination, and is consequently forced to divest determinate existence of its specific limitations, and, albeit in a material fashion, to enlarge in the direction of indefiniteness and generally to change and reconstitute. In this melting down of all clear definition, and in the confusion which results from it, so that that form is always set down as highest for everything, whether phenomena, events, or actions, which in the mode of their figuration can neither for themselves assert nor intrinsically possess and express any control over such content, we may rather seek for features analogous to the type of thesublimethan see any illustration of real symbolism. For in the Sublime, as we shall see for ourselves further on, the finite phenomenon only expresses the Absolute, which it would previsage for conscious sense to the extent that in so doing it escapes from the world of appearance, which fails to comprehend its content. This is just its treatment of eternity. Its idea of it is sublime when it has to be expressed in terms of time-duration, precisely through the emphasis it lays on the fact that no number, however great, is sufficient. In this strain runs the text: "A thousand years in Thy sight are even as a day." Hindoo art contains much of the same or similarnature. It strikes the opening notes of "the Sublime" symphony. The main difference, however, between it and the true Sublimity consists in this, that the Hindoo imagination does not in the wild exuberance of its images bring about the essential nothingness of the phenomena which it makes use of, but rather through just this very measurelessness and unlimited range of its visions believes that it has annihilated and made to vanish all difference and opposition between the Absolute and its mode of configuration. In this extreme type of exaggeration, then, there is ultimately little of real kinship with either true symbolism or Sublimity: it is equally remote from the true sphere of beauty. It offers us no doubt, more particularly in its more sober delineation of that which is exclusively human, much that is endearing and benign, many gracious pictures and tender emotions, the most splendid and seductive descriptions of Nature, the most childlike traits of Love and naïve innocence, and withal much too that is magnanimous and noble; but, none the less, if we review it generally according to the fundamental import of all it expresses, we shall find that the spiritual is throughout rooted in sense, the meanest objects are placed on the same plane as the highest, true definition is wrecked, the Sublime is lowered to the conception of mere immeasurability, and that which is the original material of mythos for the most part vanishes before our eyes in the fantastic dreams of a restless and inquisitive imaginative power, and modes of shaping the same devoid of all intelligent purpose.

(c) In conclusion, the purest form of representation which we meet with at this stage of imaginative conception is that ofpersonification, as it generally applies to thehuman figure.For the reason, however, that the significance on this plane is not as yet grasped as the free subjectivity of Spirit, but rather either under a determination of abstract universality or as a mode of natural existence, one that contains, for example, the life of rivers, mountains, stars, or sun, for this reason it is only employed as means of expression for this kind of content under a mode which really detracts from the full worth of the human form. For the human body, if we view it in its true definition, no less than the form of human activities and events, expresses simply concrete Spiritand a spiritual content, which is self-contained and subsistent in this its reality, and possesses therewith no mere symbol or external sign.

From one point of view consequently this personification, albeit the significance, which it is invoked to represent, is taken to belong to the spiritual no less than the natural, yet, on account of the abstractness which clings to this form of significance, is on this stage of thought still of a superficial nature, and needs yet many other modes of representation to be rendered clear to the closer inspection, forms with which it is here confusedly mingled and thereby itself made obscure. And, moreover, taking it under another aspect, it is not the subjectivity here and its form which supplies the characterization, but rather itsexpressions, actions, and so forth; for it is in deed and action that the more defined line of severation first asserts itself, which can be brought into relation with the specific content of the universal significances. In that case, however, we are again face to face with the defect that it is not the conscious subject, but merely itsmeans of expression, which supply the signification, no less than the confusion of thought, that events and deeds, instead of constituting the reality and the existence of the subject as determinately self-realized, preserve its content and significance elsewhere. A series of such actions is able therefore very possibly to carry with it a certain result and consequence, which is derived from the content which such a series subserves as its expression. This consequent result is, however, to an extent equally great, liable again to be interrupted and in part suspended by that which is central in the personification and the man[47], because subjective activity is also a stimulus to capricious action and its manifestation, so that both that which is significant and that which is destitute of this quality keep up their varied and irregular interplay just in so far as the imaginationis unable to unite their significant characteristics and the forms which are appropriate to them in one substantial and secure mode of association. And, moreover, if it is the purely natural aspect of such facts which is exclusively accepted as the unified content, in that case the material must inevitably prove itself inadequate to support the human form, just as this, being only fully adapted as a means of expressing Spirit, is on its side incapable of representing what is wholly natural. In all these respects such a mode of personification as the one we are examining fails to express a true mode; for the truth of art requires, as the truth universally requires, that there should be a complete concordance between the inward and the outward, that is, the notion and its reality. Greek mythology, for example, personified the Pontine sea; Scamander possesses its river gods, nymphs, dryads, and so forth. In other words it builds up Nature in the most various forms as the content of its human divinities. It does not, however, suffer its personification to remain purely formal and superficial, but creates thereby real individuals, in whom the purely natural significance fades into the background, and the human element, on the contrary, which has taken up and absorbed such material out of Nature, becomes the prominent factor. Hindoo art, on the other hand, is unable to advance beyond a grotesque intermingling of these two sides of Nature and humanity, so that neither is treated according to its rightful claim, and both are merely given the forms which are appropriate to the other.

Speaking in a general way we cannot consider even these personifications to be as yet strictly symbolical, for the reason that owing to their formal superficiality they do not stand in any essential relation to or mode of association more truly intimate with the more determinate form which they are presumed to express. At the same time we may note here, with respect to other particular modifications and attributes, with which such personifications appear to be intermingled, and which are taken to express the more defined qualities generally attached to Divinities, an impulse in the direction of symbolic representation, for which the personification then stands merely as the universal type of widest connotation.

If we turn now to the more important examples of the imaginative sense on the plane we are now considering, we have first to draw attention to Trimûrtis, the triformed Godhead. This Deity includes in the first placeBrahmâ, the activity which brings forth and procreates, the creator of the world, Lord of all the gods and much more beside. On the one hand he is to be kept distinct from Brahman (as Neuter), that is from the ultimate Being, and is the first-born of such. In another aspect, however, he again seems to fall into union with this abstract Godhead, as generally happens with Hindoo thought where the lines of difference are rarely held secure, and part are allowed to vanish and the rest simply to get confused with each other. The form with which he is most closely identified has much that is symbolical about it; he is formed with four heads and four hands, and with the latter are his sceptre and ring[48]. He is of a red colour, an obvious suggestion of sunlight, since these Divinities invariably carry qualities which are of universal significance in Nature and which are thus personified in them. ThesecondDeity of this triune Trimûrtis, is Vishnu, the preserving Godhead, thethirdSivas, the destructive Power. The symbols employed to represent these gods are countless. For by reason of the universality of the significances they express they comprehend an infinite number of varied activities. In part these are related to particular phenomena of Nature, mainly the elementary, such as, for example, the quality of "fiery,"[49]which is an attribute of Vishnu, and frequently we have set before us shapes of the most antagonistic description.

In the conception of this triform god we have the fact at once brought home to us in the clearest way that the form of Spirit is not yet able to assert itself in its Truth if for no other reason than this, that here it is not the spiritual which constitutes the truly permeating significance. That is to say, this trinity of gods would only be Spirit if the third god were an essentially concrete unity, a unity which returned upon itself from the differentiation and reduplication of itssubstance. For God, according to the true conception of Godhead, is Spirit as this active and absolute self-differentiation and Unity, a conception which is generally what constitutes the notion of Spirit. In this Trimûrtis, however, the triune God is not by any means such a concrete totality, but merely a passage from this to that, a metamorphosis, a procreator, a destroyer, and so forth. We must be accordingly very careful not to imagine that we have discovered the highest Truth in these most primordial gropings of man's reason, and in this one note of concord which, no doubt, as mere rhythmic expression[50], contains the triune form of Deity, that is, the fundamental conception of Christian theology, believe that we already have before us a recognition of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

Starting from such fundamental conceptions as those of Brahman and Trimûrtis, Hindoo imagination expatiates still further without let in a countless number of the most varied formed Divinities. For those primary significances of universal application which are apprehended as essential Deity are of such a kind that they may be rediscovered in an infinite number of phenomena, which are again personified and symbolized as gods, and each and all combine in throwing the greatest obstacles in the way of any intelligible system by reason of the indefinite character and confusing volubility[51]of this type of imagination, which fails utterly to grasp the real nature of anything that it discovers, and merely wrests everything that it touches from its own appropriate sphere. For these gods of subordinate rank, at the head of which we may place such a Divinity as Indrus, who represents the Air and the Heavens, the chief material is furnished by the general forces of Nature, such as stars, rivers, and mountains conceived in the various phases of their activity, their change, their influence on mankind, whether beneficent or hurtful, preservative or destructive. One of the most important subjects, however, of Hindooimagination and art is the origin of gods and the rest of creation, in other words its Theogony and Cosmogony. For this type of imagination is generally rooted in the continual effort to carry over that which is most removed from sense into the very heart of the external world, or in the reverse process once more to expunge that which stands nearest to sense and Nature by means of the barest abstraction. Consequently the origin of the gods is referred back to the primordial Godhead[52], and at the same time the workings and existence of Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Sivas are represented as actual in mountains, streams, and human events. A cosmological content of this kind can, on the one hand, contain an independent and specific order of Deities, while on the other these gods are made to merge in those universal significances of the supremest type of Godhead. Such theogonies and cosmogonies are numerous and of every conceivable variety. When anyone ventures, therefore, to say that the Hindoos have thus or thus portrayed the creation of the world or the origin of Nature, such a statement can only be taken to apply to a particular sect or book; you can very easily find a perfectly different account of these events elsewhere. The imagination of this people in the pictures and images they have created is exhaustless.

A mode of conception which is conspicuous throughout the entire series of these creation stories is the constantly repeated presentation of the creative act not in the form ofspiritual fiat, but of a purelynaturalprocess ofgeneration.Only after having made ourselves thoroughly conversant with this mode of imaginative vision shall we discover the key to unlock the meaning of many representations which at first totally confound all our feelings of shame, shamelessness being here apparently driven to its furthest limits, and in its utter sensuousness carried beyond all belief. A striking example of this mode of imaginative treatment is offered us by the notoriously popular episode from the Râmâyana, known as the descent of Gangâ. This tale is narrated on the occasion when Râmas happens by chance to come to the Ganges. The wintry and ice-covered Himavân, the prince of the mountains, was father by the slender Menâ of two daughters, Gangâ, the elder, and the beautiful Umâthe younger one. Certain gods, more particularly Indras, beseech the father to send them Gangâ, in order that they may institute the sacred rites, and as Himavat proves himself quite ready to accede to their request Gangâ mounts on high to the blessed gods. After this follows the further story of Umâ, who after accomplishing wonderful actions of humility and penitence, is espoused to Rudras, that is, Sivas. From this union spring up wild and unfruitful mountains. For a hundred years long Sivas lay with Umâ in the bridal embrace, without intermission, so that the gods aghast at the procreative power of Sivas, and full of anxiety for the productive child, beseech him that he will divert the stream of his strength on the Earth. This passage the English translator has not ventured to translate literally, for the reason that it flings too much for him every shred of shame or modesty to the winds. Sivas hearkens to the beseechings of the gods, and staying his former procreative ardour, that he may not utterly confound the universe, he loosens the seminal flood over the Earth. Out of this, transpierced with fire, rises up the white mountain which separates India from Tartary. Umâ, however, falls into scorn and anger at this complaisance, and thereon curses all wedlock. In this section of the tale we have what are mainly fearful and distorted pictures which run so entirely counter to our ordinary notions of imagination and intelligent senses that the most we can do is to observe what they would appear to offer in default of either. Schlegel has omitted to translate this section of the episode and merely added in his own words how Gangâ descends once more on the Earth. And this took place in the following way. A certain forebear of Râmas, Sagaras, was father of a bad son, and by a second wife he was father of no less than 60,000 sons, who came into the world in a pumpkin, were, however, raised up into stalwart men on clarified butter in pitchers[53]. Now it chanced one day that Sagaras was of a mind to sacrifice a steed, which was, however, seized from him by Vishnu in the form of a serpent. On this Sagaras sends forth his 60,000 sons. But no sooner had they come to Vishnu after great hardships and a long searching than abreath of hers burns them all to ashes. After a weary waiting a certain grandson of Sagaras, by name Ansumân the Shining, son of Asamaschas, set forth to find his 60,000 uncles and the sacrificial steed. He actually comes upon both the steed Siwas and the heap of ashes. The king of birds, Garudas, however, notifies to him the fact that unless the stream of the holy Gangâ flows down from heaven over the heap of ashes his relations will be unable to return to life. Whereupon the stalwart Ansumân endures for 32,000 years on the mountain-top of Himavân the sternest mortifications. All in vain. Neither his own chastisements nor those of yet another 30,000 years of his son Dwilipas are of the slightest avail. At last the son of Dwilipas, the glorious Bhagîrathas, succeeds in accomplishing the feat, but only after mortifications which last 1,000 years. Then the Gangâ plunges down; but in order that the Earth may not thereby shiver in pieces, Siwas now bows his head so that the water runs into his mane. Thereupon yet further mortifications are enjoined upon Bhagîrathas, in order that Gangâ may be free to stream forth from these locks. Finally she is poured forth in six streams; the seventh Bhagîrathas conducts after mighty privations to the place of the 60,000, who mount up to heaven, and therewith Bhagîrathas rules for yet many a year over his people in peace.

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