The Masks of God, Volume 2: Oriental Mythology by Joseph Campbell

Campbell offers an explanation of Eastern mythology as it developed into the distinctive religions of Egypt, India, China, and Japan. "The myth of eternal return, which is still basic to Oriental life, displays an order of fixed forms that appear and disappear through all time."–Joseph Campbell.

"Oriental Mythology" is the second in the "Masks of God" series, the follow up to "Primitive Mythology". It covers more of the mind boggling extent of humankind's mythic past, material that is the basis for religion and philosophy. Campbell presents all sorts of details from artifacts dug up by archeologists and some rather long-winded quoted passages. Much of it is rather uneven and challenging to follow, but the payoff is usually Campbell's own commentary which often uses a soaring language to elucidate, to associate and connect different myths of different cultures.

The especially fascinating part of the book for me concerns the mystery of how yoga philosophy and practice came into being and evolved as it did to different forms such as Buddhism and Hinduism. Yoga philosophy defines a very different state of being than the Abrahamic tradition of the West. It does not situate humankind in a state of sin and guilt, stranded in a corrupt world, alienated from a transcendent God; but rather, in a state of ignorance with knowledge as the key to escaping from inevitable suffering caused by the delusion of living in a material world. The ancient civilization in the Indus Valley contains seeds of it's development, but it is far from clear just how it developed and what role the Aryans, who invaded and plundered India, played. In any event, Campbell concludes "tentatively" that yoga is "indigenous" to India.

The many different forms and manifestations of Buddhism follow from the ancient yoga tradition of asceticism. The book is not an good introduction to Buddhism, and it can be difficult to distinguish between the many sects and their different metaphysics and practices. It's influence burgeoned and then waned in India, but spread throughout the Far East, and combined with the Native nature religions of Tao in China and Shinto in Japan. Though Buddhism in whatever form mainly involves a turning away from the affairs of the world, from what is shown here, it has hardly ever failed to provide a civilizing influence.

I have to echo some of the criticisms of other reviewers. The inclusion of a chapter on ancient Egypt and also a section on the hieratic city states of Mesopotamia do not go the way of clarifying how Oriental myth grew as it did. The organization of the book would have been a lot more straightforward if he had gone directly from the introduction, in which Campbell compares East with West, to ancient India and directly to the mysteries of the Orient. He seeks to trace the influence of Egypt and Mesopotamia to the East, but the influences are so scattered and so relative, that it would have been better to have stuck with India, China, and Japan. Also, the final section on Tibet, although illuminating, departs in large measure from the subject matter.