med
that the study of what we call metaphysics or theology needs some kind
of physical discipline and it will be well to elucidate this point
before describing the beginnings of speculation.

Tapas, that is asceticism or self-mortification, holds in the religious
thought and practice of India as large a place as sacrifice. We hear of
it as early, for it is mentioned in the Rig Veda[163], and it lasts
longer, for it is a part of contemporary Hinduism just as much as prayer
or worship. It appears even in creeds which disavow it theoretically,
_e.g._ in Buddhism, and evidently has its root in a deep-seated and
persistent instinct.

Tapas is often translated penance but the idea of mortification as an
expiation for sins committed, though not unknown in India, is certainly
not that which underlies the austerities of most ascetics. The word
means literally heat, hence pain or toil, and some think that its origin
should be sought in practices which produced fever, or tended to
concentrate heat in the body. One object of Tapas is to obtain abnormal
powers by the suppression of desires or the endurance of voluntary
tortures. There is an element of truth in this aspiration. Temperance,
chastity and mental concentration are great aids for increasing the
force of thought and will. The Hindu believes that intensity and
perseverance in this road of abstinence and rapture will yield
correspondingly increased results. The many singular phenomena connected
with Indian asceticism have been imperfectly investigated but a
psychological examination would probably find that subjective results
(such as visions and the feeling of flying through the air) are really
produced by the discipline recommended and there may be elements of much
greater value in the various systems of meditation. But this is only the
beginning of Tapas. To the idea that the soul when freed from earthly
desires is best able to comprehend the divine is superadded another
idea, namely that self-mortification is a process of productive labour
akin to intellectual toil. Just as the whole world is supposed to be
permeated by a mysterious principle which can be known and subdued by
the science of the sacrificing priests, so the ascetic is able to
control gods and nature by the force of his austerities. The creative
deities are said to have produced the world by Tapas, just as they are
said to have produced it by sacrifice and Hindu mythology abounds in
stories of ascetics wh