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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I, by 
+Friedrich Max  Müller
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I
+       Essays on the Science of Religion
+
+Author: Friedrich Max  Müller
+
+Release Date: February 26, 2008 [EBook #24686]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Geetu Melwani, Thierry
+Alberto, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's Note:
+
+This book had a number of typesetting errors such as missing text,
+pages, duplicate pages, and text. The text has been verified with the
+etext available with the Internet Archives
+(http://www.archive.org/details/germanwork01mulluoft) and corrected
+with the addition of missing text and removal of duplicate text. The
+Internet archive edition is a 1872 edition whereas this is a 1867
+edition.
+
+Details of corrections and additions are given at the end of the book.
+
+
+
+                                CHIPS
+
+                       FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                           MAX MÜLLER, M.A.
+
+                 FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD.
+
+
+
+
+
+                              VOLUME I.
+
+                  Essays on the Science of Religion.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                LONDON
+
+                       LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
+
+                                 1867
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_To the Memory_
+
+OF
+
+BARON BUNSEN,
+
+MY FRIEND AND BENEFACTOR.
+
+
+
+
+                      _et quanto diutius
+    Abes, magis cupio tanto et magis desidero._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+More than twenty years have passed since my revered friend Bunsen
+called me one day into his library at Carlton House Terrace, and
+announced to me with beaming eyes that the publication of the Rig-veda
+was secure. He had spent many days in seeing the Directors of the
+East-India Company, and explaining to them the importance of this
+work, and the necessity of having it published in England. At last his
+efforts had been successful, the funds for printing my edition of the
+text and commentary of the Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans had been
+granted, and Bunsen was the first to announce to me the happy result
+of his literary diplomacy. 'Now,' he said, 'you have got a work for
+life--a large block that will take years to plane and polish.' 'But
+mind,' he added, 'let us have from time to time some chips from your
+workshop.'
+
+I have tried to follow the advice of my departed friend, and I have
+published almost every year a few articles on such subjects as had
+engaged my attention, while prosecuting at the same time, as far as
+altered circumstances would allow, my edition of the Rig-veda, and of
+other Sanskrit works connected with it. These articles were chiefly
+published in the 'Edinburgh' and 'Quarterly Reviews,' in the 'Oxford
+Essays,' in 'Macmillan's' and 'Fraser's Magazines,' in the 'Saturday
+Review,' and in the 'Times.' In writing them my principal endeavour
+has been to bring out even in the most abstruse subjects the points of
+real interest that ought to engage the attention of the public at
+large, and never to leave a dark nook or corner without attempting to
+sweep away the cobwebs of false learning, and let in the light of real
+knowledge. Here, too, I owe much to Bunsen's advice, and when last
+year I saw in Cornwall the large heaps of copper ore piled up around
+the mines, like so many heaps of rubbish, while the poor people were
+asking for coppers to buy bread, I frequently thought of Bunsen's
+words, 'Your work is not finished when you have brought the ore from
+the mine: it must be sifted, smelted, refined, and coined before it
+can be of real use, and contribute towards the intellectual food of
+mankind.' I can hardly hope that in this my endeavour to be clear and
+plain, to follow the threads of every thought to the very ends, and to
+place the web of every argument clearly and fully before my readers, I
+have always been successful. Several of the subjects treated in these
+essays are, no doubt, obscure and difficult: but there is no subject,
+I believe, in the whole realm of human knowledge, that cannot be
+rendered clear and intelligible, if we ourselves have perfectly
+mastered it. And now while the two last volumes of my edition of the
+Rig-veda are passing through the press, I thought the time had come
+for gathering up a few armfulls of these chips and splinters, throwing
+away what seemed worthless, and putting the rest into some kind of
+shape, in order to clear my workshop for other work.
+
+The first and second volumes which I am now publishing contain essays
+on the early thoughts of mankind, whether religious or mythological,
+and on early traditions and customs. There is to my mind no subject
+more absorbing than the tracing the origin and first growth of human
+thought;--not theoretically, or in accordance with the Hegelian laws
+of thought, or the Comtian epochs; but historically, and like an
+Indian trapper, spying for every footprint, every layer, every broken
+blade that might tell and testify of the former presence of man in his
+early wanderings and searchings after light and truth.
+
+In the languages of mankind, in which everything new is old and
+everything old is new, an inexhaustible mine has been discovered for
+researches of this kind. Language still bears the impress of the
+earliest thoughts of man, obliterated, it may be, buried under new
+thoughts, yet here and there still recoverable in their sharp original
+outline. The growth of language is continuous, and by continuing our
+researches backward from the most modern to the most ancient strata,
+the very elements and roots of human speech have been reached, and
+with them the elements and roots of human thought. What lies beyond
+the beginnings of language, however interesting it may be to the
+physiologist, does not yet belong to the history of man, in the true
+and original sense of that word. Man means the thinker, and the first
+manifestation of thought is speech.
+
+But more surprising than the continuity in the growth of language, is
+the continuity in the growth of religion. Of religion, too, as of
+language, it may be said that in it everything new is old, and
+everything old is new, and that there has been no entirely new
+religion since the beginning of the world. The elements and roots of
+religion were there, as far back as we can trace the history of man;
+and the history of religion, like the history of language, shows us
+throughout a succession of new combinations of the same radical
+elements. An intuition of God, a sense of human weakness and
+dependence, a belief in a Divine government of the world, a
+distinction between good and evil, and a hope of a better life, these
+are some of the radical elements of all religions. Though sometimes
+hidden, they rise again and again to the surface. Though frequently
+distorted, they tend again and again to their perfect form. Unless
+they had formed part of the original dowry of the human soul, religion
+itself would have remained an impossibility, and the tongues of
+angels would have been to human ears but as sounding brass or a
+tinkling cymbal. If we once understand this clearly, the words of St.
+Augustine which have seemed startling to many of his admirers, become
+perfectly clear and intelligible, when he says:[1] 'What is now called
+the Christian religion, has existed among the ancients, and was not
+absent from the beginning of the human race, until Christ came in the
+flesh: from which time the true religion, which existed already, began
+to be called Christian.' From this point of view the words of Christ
+too, which startled the Jews, assume their true meaning, when He said
+to the centurion of Capernaum: 'Many shall come from the east and the
+west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the
+kingdom of heaven.'
+
+[Footnote 1: August. Retr. 1, 13. 'Res ipsa, quæ nunc religio
+Christiana nuncupatur, erat apud antiquos, nec defuit ab initio
+generis humani, quousque Christus veniret in carnem, unde vera
+religio, quæ jam erat, cœpit appellari Christiana.']
+
+During the last fifty years the accumulation of new and authentic
+materials for the study of the religions of the world, has been most
+extraordinary; but such are the difficulties in mastering these
+materials that I doubt whether the time has yet come for attempting to
+trace, after the model of the Science of Language, the definite
+outlines of the Science of Religion. By a succession of the most
+fortunate circumstances, the canonical books of three of the
+principal religions of the ancient world have lately been recovered,
+the Veda, the Zend-Avesta, and the Tripi_t_aka. But not only have we
+thus gained access to the most authentic documents from which to study
+the ancient religion of the Brahmans, the Zoroastrians, and the
+Buddhists, but by discovering the real origin of Greek, Roman, and
+likewise of Teutonic, Slavonic, and Celtic mythology, it has become
+possible to separate the truly religious elements in the sacred
+traditions of these nations from the mythological crust by which they
+are surrounded, and thus to gain a clearer insight into the real faith
+of the ancient Aryan world.
+
+If we turn to the Semitic world, we find that although no new
+materials have been discovered from which to study the ancient
+religion of the Jews, yet a new spirit of inquiry has brought new life
+into the study of the sacred records of Abraham, Moses, and the
+Prophets; and the recent researches of Biblical scholars, though
+starting from the most opposite points, have all helped to bring out
+the historical interest of the Old Testament, in a manner not dreamt
+of by former theologians. The same may be said of another Semitic
+religion, the religion of Mohammed, since the Koran and the literature
+connected with it were submitted to the searching criticism of real
+scholars and historians. Some new materials for the study of the
+Semitic religions have come from the monuments of Babylon and
+Nineveh. The very images of Bel and Nisroch now stand before our
+eyes, and the inscriptions on the tablets may hereafter tell us even
+more of the thoughts of those who bowed their knees before them. The
+religious worship of the Phenicians and Carthaginians has been
+illustrated by Movers from the ruins of their ancient temples, and
+from scattered notices in classical writers; nay, even the religious
+ideas of the Nomads of the Arabian peninsula, previous to the rise of
+Mohammedanism, have been brought to light by the patient researches of
+Oriental scholars.
+
+There is no lack of idols among the ruined and buried temples of Egypt
+with which to reconstruct the pantheon of that primeval country: nor
+need we despair of recovering more and more of the thoughts buried
+under the hieroglyphics of the inscriptions, or preserved in hieratic
+and demotic MSS., if we watch the brilliant discoveries that have
+rewarded the patient researches of the disciples of Champollion.
+
+Besides the Aryan and Semitic families of religion, we have in China
+three recognised forms of public worship, the religion of Confucius,
+that of Lao-tse, and that of Fo (Buddha); and here, too, recent
+publications have shed new light, and have rendered an access to the
+canonical works of these religions, and an understanding of their
+various purports, more easy, even to those who have not mastered the
+intricacies of the Chinese language.
+
+Among the Turanian nations, a few only, such as the Finns, and the
+Mongolians, have preserved some remnants of their ancient worship and
+mythology, and these too have lately been more carefully collected and
+explained by d'Ohson, Castrèn, and others.
+
+In America the religions of Mexico and Peru had long attracted the
+attention of theologians; and of late years the impulse imparted to
+ethnological researches has induced travellers and missionaries to
+record any traces of religious life that could be discovered among the
+savage inhabitants of Africa, America, and the Polynesian islands.
+
+It will be seen from these few indications, that there is no lack of
+materials for the student of religion; but we shall also perceive how
+difficult it is to master such vast materials. To gain a full
+knowledge of the Veda, or the Zend-Avesta, or the Tripi_t_aka, of the
+Old Testament, the Koran, or the sacred books of China, is the work of
+a whole life. How then is one man to survey the whole field of
+religious thought, to classify the religions of the world according to
+definite and permanent criteria, and to describe their characteristic
+features with a sure and discriminating hand?
+
+Nothing is more difficult to seize than the salient features, the
+traits that constitute the permanent expression and real character of
+a religion. Religion seems to be the common property of a large
+community, and yet it not only varies in numerous sects, as language
+does in its dialects, but it really escapes our firm grasp till we can
+trace it to its real habitat, the heart of one true believer. We speak
+glibly of Buddhism and Brahmanism, forgetting that we are generalizing
+on the most intimate convictions of millions and millions of human
+souls, divided by half the world and by thousands of years.
+
+It may be said that at all events where a religion possesses canonical
+books, or a definite number of articles, the task of the student of
+religion becomes easier, and this, no doubt, is true to a certain
+extent. But even then we know that the interpretation of these
+canonical books varies, so much so that sects appealing to the same
+revealed authorities, as, for instance, the founders of the Vedânta
+and the Sânkhya systems, accuse each other of error, if not of wilful
+error or heresy. Articles too, though drawn up with a view to define
+the principal doctrines of a religion, lose much of their historical
+value by the treatment they receive from subsequent schools; and they
+are frequently silent on the very points which make religion what it
+is.
+
+A few instances may serve to show what difficulties the student of
+religion has to contend with, before he can hope firmly to grasp the
+facts on which his theories are to be based.
+
+Roman Catholic missionaries who had spent their lives in China, who
+had every opportunity, while staying at the court of Pekin, of
+studying in the original the canonical works of Confucius and their
+commentaries, who could consult the greatest theologians then living,
+and converse with the crowds that thronged the temples of the capital,
+differed diametrically in their opinions as to the most vital points
+in the state religion of China. Lecomte, Fouquet, Prémare, and Bouvet
+thought it undeniable that Confucius, his predecessors and his
+disciples, had entertained the noblest ideas on the constitution of
+the universe, and had sacrificed to the true God in the most ancient
+temple of the earth. According to Maigrot, Navarette, on the contrary,
+and even according to the Jesuit Longobardi, the adoration of the
+Chinese was addressed to inanimate tablets, meaningless inscriptions,
+or, in the best case, to coarse ancestral spirits and beings without
+intelligence.[2] If we believe the former, the ancient deism of China
+approached the purity of the Christian religion; if we listen to the
+latter, the absurd fetichism of the multitude degenerated amongst the
+educated, into systematic materialism and atheism. In answer to the
+peremptory texts quoted by one party, the other adduced the glosses of
+accredited interpreters, and the dispute of the missionaries who had
+lived in China and knew Chinese, had to be settled in the last
+instance by a decision of the see of Rome.
+
+[Footnote 2: Abel Rémusat, 'Mélanges,' p. 162.]
+
+There is hardly any religion that has been studied in its sacred
+literature, and watched in its external worship with greater care
+than the modern religion of the Hindus, and yet it would be extremely
+hard to give a faithful and intelligible description of it. Most
+people who have lived in India would maintain that the Indian
+religion, as believed in and practised at present by the mass of the
+people, is idol worship and nothing else. But let us hear one of the
+mass of the people, a Hindu of Benares, who in a lecture delivered
+before an English and native audience defends his faith and the faith
+of his forefathers against such sweeping accusations. 'If by
+idolatry,' he says, "is meant a system of worship which confines our
+ideas of the Deity to a mere image of clay or stone, which prevents
+our hearts from being expanded and elevated with lofty notions of the
+attributes of God, if this is what is meant by idolatry, we disclaim
+idolatry, we abhor idolatry, and deplore the ignorance or
+uncharitableness of those that charge us with this grovelling system
+of worship.... But if, firmly believing, as we do, in the omnipresence
+of God, we behold, by the aid of our imagination, in the form of an
+image any of his glorious manifestations, ought we to be charged with
+identifying them with the matter of the image, whilst during those
+moments of sincere and fervent devotion, we do not even think of
+matter? If at the sight of a portrait of a beloved and venerated
+friend no longer existing in this world, our heart is filled with
+sentiments of love and reverence; if we fancy him present in the
+picture, still looking upon us with his wonted tenderness and
+affection, and then indulge our feelings of love and gratitude, should
+we be charged with offering the grossest insult to him--that of
+fancying him to be no other than a piece of painted paper?... We
+really lament the ignorance or uncharitableness of those who confound
+our representative worship with the Phenician, Grecian, or Roman
+idolatry as represented by European writers, and then charge us with
+polytheism in the teeth of thousands of texts in the Purâ_n_as,
+declaring in clear and unmistakable terms that there is but one God
+who manifests Himself as Brahma, Vish_n_u, and Rudra (Siva), in His
+functions of creation, preservation, and destruction."[3]
+
+[Footnote 3: The modern pandit's reply to the missionary who accuses
+him of polytheism is: "O, these are only various manifestations of the
+one God; the same as, though the sun be one in the heavens, yet he
+appears in multi-form reflections upon the lake. The various sects are
+only different entrances to the one city." See W. W. Hunter, _Annals
+of Rural Bengal_, p. 116.]
+
+In support of these statements, this eloquent advocate quotes numerous
+passages from the sacred literature of the Brahmans, and he sums up
+his view of the three manifestations of the Deity in the words of
+their great poet Kalidâsa, as translated by Mr. Griffith:--
+
+    "In those Three Persons the One God was shown:
+    Each First in place, each Last,--not one alone;
+    Of Siva, Vish_n_u, Brahma, each may be
+    First, second, third, among the Blessed Three."
+
+If such contradictory views can be held and defended with regard to
+religious systems still prevalent amongst us, where we can
+cross-examine living witnesses, and appeal to chapter and verse in
+their sacred writings, what must the difficulty be when we have to
+deal with the religions of the past? I do not wish to disguise these
+difficulties which are inherent in a comparative study of the
+religions of the world. I rather dwell on them strongly, in order to
+show how much care and caution is required in so difficult a subject,
+and how much indulgence should be shown in judging of the shortcomings
+and errors that are unavoidable in so comprehensive a study. It was
+supposed at one time that a comparative analysis of the languages of
+mankind must transcend the powers of man: and yet by the combined and
+well directed efforts of many scholars, great results have here been
+obtained, and the principles that must guide the student of the
+Science of Language are now firmly established. It will be the same
+with the Science of Religion. By a proper division of labor, the
+materials that are still wanting will be collected and published and
+translated, and when that is done, surely man will never rest till he
+has discovered the purpose that runs through the religions of mankind,
+and till he has reconstructed the true _Civitas Dei_ on foundations as
+wide as the ends of the world. The Science of Religion may be the last
+of the sciences which man is destined to elaborate; but when it is
+elaborated, it will change the aspect of the world, and give a new
+life to Christianity itself.
+
+The Fathers of the Church, though living in much more dangerous
+proximity to the ancient religions of the Gentiles, admitted freely
+that a comparison of Christianity and other religions was useful. "If
+there is any agreement," Basilius remarked, "between their (the
+Greeks') doctrines and our own, it may benefit us to know them: if
+not, then to compare them and to learn how they differ, will help not
+a little towards confirming that which is the better of the two."[4]
+
+[Footnote 4: Basilius, _De legendis Græc._ libris, c. v. Εἰ μἑν οὓν ἐστἱ
+τις οἰκειὁτης πρὀς ἀλλἡλους τοῖς λὁγοις, προὔργου ἄν ἡμῖν αὐτῶν ἡ γνῶσις
+γἑνοιτο. εἰ δὲ μὴ, ἀλλἀ το γε παρἁαλληλα θἐντας καταμαθεῖν τὀ διἁφορον, οὐ
+μικρὀν εἰς βεβαἱωσις βελτἱονος.]
+
+But this is not the only advantage of a comparative study of
+religions. The Science of Religion will for the first time assign to
+Christianity its right place among the religions of the world; it will
+show for the first time fully what was meant by the fulness of time;
+it will restore to the whole history of the world, in its unconscious
+progress towards Christianity, its true and sacred character.
+
+Not many years ago great offence was given by an eminent writer who
+remarked that the time had come when the history of Christianity
+should be treated in a truly historical spirit, in the same spirit in
+which we treat the history of other religions, such as Brahmanism,
+Buddhism, or Mohammedanism. And yet what can be truer? He must be a
+man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the
+same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other
+religions. We need not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment
+for that faith which we hold to be the only true one. We should rather
+challenge for it the severest tests and trials, as the sailor would
+for the good ship to which he entrusts his own life, and the lives of
+those who are most dear to him. In the Science of Religion, we can
+decline no comparisons, nor claim any immunities for Christianity, as
+little as the missionary can, when wrestling with the subtle Brahman,
+or the fanatical Mussulman, or the plain speaking Zulu. And if we send
+out our missionaries to every part of the world to face every kind of
+religion, to shrink from no contest, to be appalled by no objections,
+we must not give way at home or within our own hearts to any
+misgivings, that a comparative study of the religions of the world
+could shake the firm foundations on which we must stand or fall.
+
+To the missionary more particularly a comparative study of the
+religions of mankind will be, I believe, of the greatest assistance.
+Missionaries are apt to look upon all other religions as something
+totally distinct from their own, as formerly they used to describe the
+languages of barbarous nations as something more like the twittering
+of birds than the articulate speech of men. The Science of Language
+has taught us that there is order and wisdom in all languages, and
+that even the most degraded jargons contain the ruins of former
+greatness and beauty. The Science of Religion, I hope, will produce a
+similar change in our views of barbarous forms of faith and worship;
+and missionaries, instead of looking only for points of difference,
+will look out more anxiously for any common ground, any spark of the
+true light that may still be revived, any altar that may be dedicated
+afresh to the true God.
+
+And even to us at home, a wider view of the religious life of the
+world may teach many a useful lesson. Immense as is the difference
+between our own and all other religions of the world--and few can know
+that difference who have not honestly examined the foundations of
+their own as well as of other religions--the position which believers
+and unbelievers occupy with regard to their various forms of faith is
+very much the same all over the world. The difficulties which trouble
+us, have troubled the hearts and minds of men as far back as we can
+trace the beginnings of religious life. The great problems touching
+the relation of the Finite to the Infinite, of the human mind as the
+recipient, and of the Divine Spirit as the source of truth, are old
+problems indeed; and while watching their appearance in different
+countries, and their treatment under varying circumstances, we shall
+be able, I believe, to profit ourselves, both by the errors which
+others committed before us, and by the truth which they discovered. We
+shall know the rocks that threaten every religion in this changing and
+shifting world of ours, and having watched many a storm of religious
+controversy and many a shipwreck in distant seas, we shall face with
+greater calmness and prudence the troubled waters at home.
+
+If there is one thing which a comparative study of religions places in
+the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion
+is exposed. It may seem almost like a truism, that no religion can
+continue to be what it was during the lifetime of its founder and its
+first apostles. Yet it is but seldom borne in mind that without
+constant reformation, i. e. without a constant return to its
+fountain-head, every religion, even the most perfect, nay the most
+perfect on account of its very perfection, more even than others,
+suffers from its contact with the world, as the purest air suffers
+from the mere fact of its being breathed.
+
+Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first beginnings, we find
+it free from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases.
+The founders of the ancient religions of the world, as far as we can
+judge, were minds of a high stamp, full of noble aspirations, yearning
+for truth, devoted to the welfare of their neighbours, examples of
+purity and unselfishness. What they desired to found upon earth was
+but seldom realised, and their sayings, if preserved in their original
+form, offer often a strange contrast to the practice of those who
+profess to be their disciples. As soon as a religion is established,
+and more particularly when it has become the religion of a powerful
+state, the foreign and worldly elements encroach more and more on the
+original foundation, and human interests mar the simplicity and purity
+of the plan which the founder had conceived in his own heart, and
+matured in his communings with his God. Even those who lived with
+Buddha, misunderstood his words, and at the Great Council which had to
+settle the Buddhist canon, Asoka, the Indian Constantine, had to
+remind the assembled priests that 'what had been said by Buddha, that
+alone was well said;' and that certain works ascribed to Buddha, as,
+for instance, the instruction given to his son, Râhula, were
+apocryphal, if not heretical.[5] With every century, Buddhism, when it
+was accepted by nations, differing as widely as Mongols and Hindus,
+when its sacred writings were translated into languages as wide apart
+as Sanskrit and Chinese, assumed widely different aspects, till at
+last the Buddhism of the Shamans in the steppes of Tatary is as
+different from the teaching of the original _S_ama_n_a, as the
+Christianity of the leader of the Chinese rebels is from the teaching
+of Christ. If missionaries could show to the Brahmans, the Buddhists,
+the Zoroastrians, nay, even to the Mohammedans, how much their present
+faith differs from the faith of their forefathers and founders, if
+they could place into their hands and read with them in a kindly
+spirit the original documents in which these various religions
+profess to be founded, and enable them to distinguish between the
+doctrines of their own sacred books and the additions of later ages,
+an important advantage would be gained, and the choice between Christ
+and other Masters would be rendered far more easy to many a
+truth-seeking soul. But for that purpose it is necessary that we too
+should see the beam in our own eyes, and learn to distinguish between
+the Christianity of the nineteenth century and the religion of Christ.
+If we find that the Christianity of the nineteenth century does not
+win as many hearts in India and China as it ought, let us remember
+that it was the Christianity of the first century in all its dogmatic
+simplicity, but with its overpowering love of God and man, that
+conquered the world and superseded religions and philosophies, more
+difficult to conquer than the religious and philosophical systems of
+Hindus and Buddhists. If we can teach something to the Brahmans in
+reading with them their sacred hymns, they too can teach us something
+when reading with us the Gospel of Christ. Never shall I forget the
+deep despondency of a Hindu convert, a real martyr to his faith, who
+had pictured to himself from the pages of the New Testament what a
+Christian country must be, and who when he came to Europe found
+everything so different from what he had imagined in his lonely
+meditations at Benares! It was the Bible only that saved him from
+returning to his old religion, and helped him to discern beneath
+theological futilities, accumulated during nearly two thousand years,
+beneath pharisaical hypocrisy, infidelity, and want of charity, the
+buried, but still living seed, committed to the earth by Christ and
+his Apostles. How can a missionary in such circumstances meet the
+surprise and questions of his pupils, unless he may point to that
+seed, and tell them what Christianity was meant to be; unless he may
+show that like all other religions, Christianity, too, has had its
+history; that the Christianity of the nineteenth century is not the
+Christianity of the Middle Ages, that the Christianity of the Middle
+Ages was not that of the early Councils, that the Christianity of the
+early Councils was not that of the Apostles, and 'that what has been
+said by Christ that alone was well said?'
+
+[Footnote 5: See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' Appendice, No. x. §
+4.]
+
+The advantages, however, which missionaries and other defenders of the
+faith will gain from a comparative study of religions, though
+important hereafter, are not at present the chief object of these
+researches. In order to maintain their scientific character, they must
+be independent of all extraneous considerations: they must aim at
+truth, trusting that even unpalatable truths, like unpalatable
+medicine, will reinvigorate the system into which they enter. To
+those, no doubt, who value the tenets of their religion as the miser
+values his pearls and precious stones, thinking their value lessened
+if pearls and stones of the same kind are found in other parts of the
+world, the Science of Religion will bring many a rude shock; but to
+the true believer, truth, wherever it appears, is welcome, nor will
+any doctrine seem to be less true or less precious, because it was
+seen, not only by Moses or Christ, but likewise by Buddha or Lao-tse.
+Nor should it be forgotten that while a comparison of ancient
+religions will certainly show that some of the most vital articles of
+faith are the common property of the whole of mankind, at least of all
+who seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him,
+the same comparison alone can possibly teach us what is peculiar to
+Christianity, and what has secured to it that pre-eminent position
+which now it holds in spite of all obloquy. The gain will be greater
+than the loss, if loss there be, which I, at least, shall never admit.
+
+There is a strong feeling, I know, in the minds of all people against
+any attempt to treat their own religion as a member of a class, and,
+in one sense, that feeling is perfectly justified. To each individual,
+his own religion, if he really believes in it, is something quite
+inseparable from himself, something unique, that cannot be compared to
+anything else, or replaced by anything else. Our own religion is, in
+that respect, something like our own language. In its form it may be
+like other languages; in its essence and in its relation to ourselves,
+it stands alone and admits of no peer or rival.
+
+But in the history of the world, our religion, like our own language,
+is but one out of many; and in order to understand fully the position
+of Christianity in the history of the world, and its true place among
+the religions of mankind, we must compare it, not with Judæism only,
+but with the religious aspirations of the whole world, with all, in
+fact, that Christianity came either to destroy or to fulfil. From this
+point of view Christianity forms part, no doubt, of what people call
+profane history, but by that very fact, profane history ceases to be
+profane, and regains throughout that sacred character of which it had
+been deprived by a false distinction. The ancient Fathers of the
+Church spoke on these subjects with far greater freedom than we
+venture to use in these days. Justin Martyr, in his 'Apology' (A.D
+139), has this memorable passage ('Apol.' i. 46): 'One article of our
+faith then is, that Christ is the first begotten of God, and we have
+already proved Him to be the very Logos (or universal Reason), of
+which mankind are all partakers; and therefore those who live
+according to the Logos are Christians, notwithstanding they may pass
+with you for Atheists; such among the Greeks were Sokrates and
+Herakleitos and the like; and such among the Barbarians were Abraham,
+and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, and Elias, and many others,
+whose actions, nay whose very names, I know, would be tedious to
+relate, and therefore shall pass them over. So, on the other side,
+those who have lived in former times in defiance of the Logos or
+Reason, were evil, and enemies to Christ and murderers of such as
+lived according to the Logos; but _they who have made or make the
+Logos or Reason the rule of their actions are Christians_, and men
+without fear and trembling.'[5_1]
+
+[Footnote 5_1: Τὀν χριστὀν πρωτὁτοκον τοῦ Θεοῦ εἶναι ἐδιδἁχθημεν, καἰ
+προεμηνὑσαμεν Λὁγον ὂντα, οὗ πᾶν γἑνος ἀνθρὡπων μετἑσχε καἰ οἱ μετἀ
+Λὁγου βιὡσαντες χριστιανοἱ εἰσι, κἄν ἄθεοι ἐνομἱσθησαν, οἱον ἐν Ἓλλησι
+μἐν Σωκρἁτης καἰ Ηρἁκλεῖτος καἰ οἱ ὁμοῖοι αὐτοῖς, ἐν βαρβἁροις δἐ
+Ἃβραἀμ καἰ Ανανἱας καἰ ΑϚαρἱας καἰ Μισαὴλ καἰ Ἤλἱας καἰ ἄλλοι πολλοἰ,
+ὤν τἀς πρἁξετς ἣ τἀ ὀνὁματα καταλἑγειν μακρὀν εἲναι ἒπιστἁμενοι, τανῦν
+παραιτοὑμεθα. ὤστε καἰ οἱ προγενὁμενοι ἄνευ Λδγου βιὡσαντες, ἄχρηστοι
+κα.]
+
+'God,' says Clement,[6] 'is the cause of all that is good: only of
+some good gifts He is the primary cause, as of the Old and New
+Testaments, of others the secondary, as of (Greek) philosophy. But
+even philosophy may have been given primarily by Him to the Greeks,
+before the Lord had called the Greeks also. For that philosophy, like
+a teacher, has guided the Greeks also, as the Law did the Hebrews,
+towards Christ. Philosophy, therefore, prepares and opens the way to
+those who are made perfect by Christ.'
+
+[Footnote 6: Clem. Alex. Strom, lib. I, cap. v, § 28. Πἁντων μἐν γἀρ αἲτιος
+τῶν καλῶν ὁ θεὀς, ἀλλἀ τῶν μἐν κατἀ προηγοὑμενον, ὡς τῆς τε διαθήκης τῆς
+παλαιᾶς καἰ τῆς νἑας, τῶν δἐ κατ ἐπακολοὑθημα, ὡς τῆς φιλοσοφἰας τἁχα δἐ
+καἰ προηγουμἑνως τοῖς Ἒλλησιν ἐδὁθη τὁτε πρἰν ἣ τὀν κὑριον καλἑσαι καἰ τοὐς
+Ἒλληυας. Ἐπαιδαγὡγει γἀρ καἰ αὐτὴ τὀ Ἑλληνικὀν ὡς ὁ νὁμος τοὐς Ἑβραἱους εἰς
+Χριστὁν. προπαρασκευἁξει τοἱνυν ἡ φιλοσοφἱα προοδοποιοῦσα τὀν ὑπὀ Χριστοῦ
+τελειοὑμενον.]
+
+
+
+And again: 'It is clear that the same God to whom we owe the Old and
+New Testaments, gave also to the Greeks their Greek philosophy by
+which the Almighty is glorified among the Greeks.'[7]
+
+[Footnote 7: Strom, lib. VI, cap. V, § 42. Πρὀς δἐ καἰ ὂτι ὁ αὐτὀς θεὀς
+ἀμφοῖν ταῖν διαθἡκαιν χορηγὀς, ὁ καἰ τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς φιλοσοφἱας δοτὴρ τοῖς
+Ἓλλησιν, δἰ ἦς ὁ παντοκρἁτωρ παρ Ἓλλησι δοξἁζεται, παρἑστησεν, δῆλον δἐ
+κἀνθἑδε.]
+
+And Clement was by no means the only one who spoke thus freely and
+fearlessly, though, no doubt, his knowledge of Greek philosophy
+qualified him better than many of his contemporaries to speak with
+authority on such subjects.
+
+St. Augustine writes: 'If the Gentiles also had possibly something
+divine and true in their doctrines, our Saints did not find fault with
+it, although for their superstition, idolatry, and pride, and other
+evil habits, they had to be detested, and, unless they improved, to be
+punished by divine judgment. For the apostle Paul, when he said
+something about God among the Athenians, quoted the testimony of some
+of the Greeks who had said something of the same kind: and this, if
+they came to Christ, would be acknowledged in them, and not blamed.
+Saint Cyprian, too, uses such witnesses against the Gentiles. For when
+he speaks of the Magians, he says that the chief among them, Hostanes,
+maintains that the true God is invisible, and that true angels sit at
+His throne; and that Plato agrees with this, and believes in One God,
+considering the others to be angels or demons; and that Hermes
+Trismegistus also speaks of One God, and confesses that He is
+incomprehensible.' (Augustinus, 'De Baptismo contra Donatistas,' lib.
+VI, cap. xliv.)
+
+Every religion, even the most imperfect and degraded, has something
+that ought to be sacred to us, for there is in all religions a secret
+yearning after the true, though unknown, God. Whether we see the Papua
+squatting in dumb meditation before his fetish, or whether we listen
+to Firdusi exclaiming: 'The heighth and the depth of the whole world
+have their centre in Thee, O my God! I do not know Thee what Thou art:
+but I know that Thou art what Thou alone canst be,'--we ought to feel
+that the place whereon we stand is holy ground. There are
+philosophers, no doubt, to whom both Christianity and all other
+religions are exploded errors, things belonging to the past, and to be
+replaced by more positive knowledge. To them the study of the
+religions of the world could only have a pathological interest, and
+their hearts could never warm at the sparks of truth that light up,
+like stars, the dark yet glorious night of the ancient world. They
+tell us that the world has passed through the phases of religious and
+metaphysical errors, in order to arrive at the safe haven of positive
+knowledge of facts. But if they would but study positive facts, if
+they would but read, patiently and thoughtfully, the history of the
+world, as it is, not as it might have been: they would see that, as in
+geology, so in the history of human thought, theoretic uniformity does
+not exist, and that the past is never altogether lost. The oldest
+formations of thought crop out everywhere, and if we dig but deep
+enough, we shall find that even the sandy desert in which we are asked
+to live, rests everywhere on the firm foundation of that primeval, yet
+indestructible granite of the human soul,--religious faith.
+
+There are other philosophers again who would fain narrow the limits of
+the Divine government of the world to the history of the Jewish and of
+the Christian nations, who would grudge the very name of religion to
+the ancient creeds of the world, and to whom the name of natural
+religion has almost become a term of reproach. To them, too, I should
+like to say that if they would but study positive facts, if they would
+but read their own Bible, they would find that the greatness of Divine
+Love cannot be measured by human standards, and that God has never
+forsaken a single human soul that has not first forsaken Him. 'He hath
+made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of
+the earth; and hath determined the times before appointed, and the
+bounds of their habitation: that they should seek the Lord, if haply
+they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from
+every one of us,' If they would but dig deep enough, they too would
+find that what they contemptuously call natural religion, is in
+reality the greatest gift that God has bestowed on the children of
+man, and that without it, revealed religion itself would have no firm
+foundation, no living roots in the heart of man.
+
+If by the essays here collected I should succeed in attracting more
+general attention towards an independent, yet reverent study of the
+ancient religions of the world, and in dispelling some of the
+prejudices with which so many have regarded the yearnings after truth
+embodied in the sacred writings of the Brahmans, the Zoroastrians, and
+the Buddhists, in the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, nay, even in
+the wild traditions and degraded customs of Polynesian savages, I
+shall consider myself amply rewarded for the labour which they have
+cost me. That they are not free from errors, in spite of a careful
+revision to which they have been submitted before I published them in
+this collection, I am fully aware, and I shall be grateful to any one
+who will point them out, little concerned whether it is done in a
+seemly or unseemly manner, as long as some new truth is elicited, or
+some old error effectually exploded. Though I have thought it right in
+preparing these essays for publication, to alter what I could no
+longer defend as true, and also, though rarely, to add some new facts
+that seemed essential for the purpose of establishing what I wished to
+prove, yet in the main they have been left as they were originally
+published. I have added to each the dates when they were written,
+these dates ranging over the last fifteen years, and I must beg my
+readers to bear these dates in mind when judging both of the form and
+the matter of these contributions towards a better knowledge of the
+creeds and prayers, the legends and customs of the ancient world.
+
+M. M.
+
+PARKS END, OXFORD:
+
+_October_, 1867.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF FIRST VOLUME.
+
+
+
+I.      LECTURE ON THE VEDAS OR THE SACRED BOOKS OF THE BRAHMANS,
+          DELIVERED AT LEEDS, 1865
+
+II.     CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS, 1858
+
+III.    THE VEDA AND ZEND-AVESTA, 1853
+
+IV.     THE AITAREYA-BRÂHMANA, 1864
+
+V.      ON THE STUDY OF THE ZEND-AVESTA IN INDIA, 1862
+
+VI.     PROGRESS OF ZEND SCHOLARSHIP, 1865
+
+VII.    GENESIS AND THE ZEND-AVESTA, 1864
+
+VIII.   THE MODERN PARSIS, 1862
+
+IX.     BUDDHISM, 1862
+
+X.      BUDDHIST PILGRIMS, 1857
+
+XI.     THE MEANING OF NIRVÂNA, 1857
+
+XII.    CHINESE TRANSLATIONS OF SANSKRIT TEXTS, 1861
+
+XIII.   THE WORKS OF CONFUCIUS, 1861
+
+XIV.    POPOL VUH, 1862
+
+XV.     SEMITIC MONOTHEISM, 1860
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+LECTURE ON THE VEDAS
+
+OR THE
+
+SACRED BOOKS OF THE BRAHMANS,[8]
+
+DELIVERED AT THE
+
+PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION, LEEDS, MARCH, 1865.
+
+
+I have brought with me one volume of my edition of the Veda, and I
+should not wonder if it were the first copy of the work which has ever
+reached this busy town of Leeds. Nay, I confess I have some misgivings
+whether I have not undertaken a hopeless task, and I begin to doubt
+whether I shall succeed in explaining to you the interest which I feel
+for this ancient collection of sacred hymns, an interest which has
+never failed me while devoting to the publication of this voluminous
+work the best twenty years of my life. Many times have I been asked,
+But what is the Veda? Why should it be published? What are we likely
+to learn from a book composed nearly four thousand years ago, and
+intended from the beginning for an uncultivated race of mere heathens
+and savages,--a book which the natives of India have never published
+themselves, although, to the present day, they profess to regard it as
+the highest authority for their religion, morals, and philosophy? Are
+we, the people of England or of Europe, in the nineteenth century,
+likely to gain any new light on religious, moral, or philosophical
+questions from the old songs of the Brahmans? And is it so very
+certain that the whole book is not a modern forgery, without any
+substantial claims to that high antiquity which is ascribed to it by
+the Hindus, so that all the labour bestowed upon it would not only be
+labour lost, but throw discredit on our powers of discrimination, and
+make us a laughing-stock among the shrewd natives of India? These and
+similar questions I have had to answer many times when asked by
+others, and some of them when asked by myself, before embarking on so
+hazardous an undertaking as the publication of the Rig-veda and its
+ancient commentary. And, I believe, I am not mistaken in supposing
+that many of those who to-night have honoured me with their presence
+may have entertained similar doubts and misgivings when invited to
+listen to a Lecture 'On the Vedas or the Sacred Books of the
+Brahmans.'
+
+[Footnote 8: Some of the points touched upon in this Lecture have been
+more fully treated in my 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature.' As
+the second edition of this work has been out of print for several
+years, I have here quoted a few passages from it in full.]
+
+I shall endeavour, therefore, as far as this is possible within the
+limits of one Lecture, to answer some of these questions, and to
+remove some of these doubts, by explaining to you, first, what the
+Veda really is, and, secondly, what importance it possesses, not only
+to the people of India, but to ourselves in Europe,--and here again,
+not only to the student of Oriental languages, but to every student of
+history, religion, or philosophy; to every man who has once felt the
+charm of tracing that mighty stream of human thought on which we
+ourselves are floating onward, back to its distant mountain-sources;
+to every one who has a heart for whatever has once filled the hearts
+of millions of human beings with their noblest hopes, and fears, and
+aspirations;--to every student of mankind in the fullest sense of that
+full and weighty word. Whoever claims that noble title must not
+forget, whether he examines the highest achievements of mankind in our
+own age, or the miserable failures of former ages, what man is, and in
+whose image and after whose likeness man was made. Whether listening
+to the shrieks of the Shaman sorcerers of Tatary, or to the odes of
+Pindar, or to the sacred songs of Paul Gerhard: whether looking at the
+pagodas of China, or the Parthenon of Athens, or the cathedral of
+Cologne: whether reading the sacred books of the Buddhists, of the
+Jews, or of those who worship God in spirit and in truth, we ought to
+be able to say, like the Emperor Maximilian, 'Homo sum, humani nihil a
+me alienum puto,' or, translating his words somewhat freely, 'I am a
+man, nothing pertaining to man I deem foreign to myself.' Yes, we must
+learn to read in the history of the whole human race something of our
+own history; and as in looking back on the story of our own life, we
+all dwell with a peculiar delight on the earliest chapters of our
+childhood, and try to find there the key to many of the riddles of our
+later life, it is but natural that the historian, too, should ponder
+with most intense interest over the few relics that have been
+preserved to him of the childhood of the human race. These relics are
+few indeed, and therefore very precious, and this I may venture to
+say, at the outset and without fear of contradiction, that there
+exists no literary relic that carries us back to a more primitive, or,
+if you like, more child-like state in the history of man[9] than the
+Veda. As the language of the Veda, the Sanskrit, is the most ancient
+type of the English of the present day, (Sanskrit and English are but
+varieties of one and the same language,) so its thoughts and feelings
+contain in reality the first roots and germs of that intellectual
+growth which by an unbroken chain connects our own generation with the
+ancestors of the Aryan race,--with those very people who at the rising
+and setting of the sun listened with trembling hearts to the songs of
+the Veda, that told them of bright powers above, and of a life to come
+after the sun of their own lives had set in the clouds of the evening.
+Those men were the true ancestors of our race; and the Veda is the
+oldest book we have in which to study the first beginnings of our
+language, and of all that is embodied in language. We are by nature
+Aryan, Indo-European, not Semitic: our spiritual kith and kin are to
+be found in India, Persia, Greece, Italy, Germany; not in Mesopotamia,
+Egypt, or Palestine. This is a fact that ought to be clearly
+perceived, and constantly kept in view, in order to understand the
+importance which the Veda has for us, after the lapse of more than
+three thousand years, and after ever so many changes in our language,
+thought, and religion.
+
+[Footnote 9: 'In the sciences of law and society, old means not old in
+chronology, but in structure: that is most archaic which lies nearest
+to the beginning of human progress considered as a development, and
+that is most modern which is farthest removed from that
+beginning.'--J. F. McLennan, 'Primitive Marriage,' p. 8.]
+
+Whatever the intrinsic value of the Veda, if it simply contained the
+names of kings, the description of battles, the dates of famines, it
+would still be, by its age alone, the most venerable of books. Do we
+ever find much beyond such matters in Egyptian hieroglyphics, or in
+Cuneiform inscriptions? In fact, what does the ancient history of the
+world before Cyrus, before 500 B.C., consist of, but meagre lists of
+Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian dynasties? What do the tablets of
+Karnak, the palaces of Nineveh, and the cylinders of Babylon tell us
+about the thoughts of men? All is dead and barren, nowhere a sigh,
+nowhere a jest, nowhere a glimpse of humanity. There has been but one
+oasis in that vast desert of ancient Asiatic history, the history of
+the Jews. Another such oasis is the Veda. Here, too, we come to a
+stratum of ancient thought, of ancient feelings, hopes, joys, and
+fears,--of ancient religion. There is perhaps too little of kings and
+battles in the Veda, and scarcely anything of the chronological
+framework of history. But poets surely are better than kings, hymns
+and prayers are more worth listening to than the agonies of butchered
+armies, and guesses at truth more valuable than unmeaning titles of
+Egyptian or Babylonian despots. It will be difficult to settle whether
+the Veda is 'the oldest of books,' and whether some of the portions of
+the Old Testament may not be traced back to the same or even an
+earlier date than the oldest hymns of the Veda. But, in the Aryan
+world, the Veda is certainly the oldest book, and its preservation
+amounts almost to a marvel.
+
+It is nearly twenty years ago that my attention was first drawn to
+the Veda, while attending, in the years 1846 and 1847, the lectures of
+Eugène Burnouf at the Collège de France. I was then looking out, like
+most young men at that time of life, for some great work, and without
+weighing long the difficulties which had hitherto prevented the
+publication of the Veda, I determined to devote all my time to the
+collection of the materials necessary for such an undertaking. I had
+read the principal works of the later Sanskrit literature, but had
+found little there that seemed to be more than curious. But to publish
+the Veda, a work that had never before been published in India or in
+Europe, that occupied in the history of Sanskrit literature the same
+position which the Old Testament occupies in the history of the Jews,
+the New Testament in the history of modern Europe, the Koran in the
+history of Mohammedanism,--a work which fills a gap in the history of
+the human mind, and promises to bring us nearer than any other work to
+the first beginnings of Aryan language and Aryan thought,--this seemed
+to me an undertaking not altogether unworthy a man's life. What added
+to the charm of it was that it had once before been undertaken by
+Frederick Rosen, a young German scholar, who died in England before he
+had finished the first book, and that after his death no one seemed
+willing to carry on his work. What I had to do, first of all, was to
+copy not only the text, but the commentary of the Rig-veda, a work
+which when finished will fill six of these large volumes. The author
+or rather the compiler of this commentary, Sâya_n_a Â_k_ârya, lived
+about 1400 after Christ, that is to say, about as many centuries
+after, as the poets of the Veda lived before, the beginning of our
+era. Yet through the 3000 years which separate the original poetry of
+the Veda from the latest commentary, there runs an almost continuous
+stream of tradition, and it is from it, rather than from his own
+brain, that Sâya_n_a draws his explanations of the sacred texts.
+Numerous MSS., more or less complete, more or less inaccurate, of
+Sâya_n_a's classical work, existed in the then Royal Library at Paris,
+in the Library of the East-India House, then in Leadenhall Street, and
+in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. But to copy and collate these MSS.
+was by no means all. A number of other works were constantly quoted in
+Sâya_n_a's commentary, and these quotations had all to be verified. It
+was necessary first to copy these works, and to make indexes to all of
+them, in order to be able to find any passage that might be referred
+to in the larger commentary. Many of these works have since been
+published in Germany and France, but they were not to be procured
+twenty years ago. The work, of course, proceeded but slowly, and many
+times I doubted whether I should be able to carry it through. Lastly
+came the difficulty,--and by no means the smallest,--who was to
+publish a work that would occupy about six thousand pages in quarto,
+all in Sanskrit, and of which probably not a hundred copies would ever
+be sold. Well, I came to England in order to collect more materials at
+the East-India House and at the Bodleian Library, and thanks to the
+exertions of my generous friend Baron Bunsen, and of the late
+Professor Wilson, the Board of Directors of the East-India Company
+decided to defray the expenses of a work which, as they stated in
+their letter, 'is in a peculiar manner deserving of the patronage of
+the East-India Company, connected as it is with the early religion,
+history, and language of the great body of their Indian subjects.' It
+thus became necessary for me to take up my abode in England, which has
+since become my second home. The first volume was published in 1849,
+the second in 1853, the third in 1856, the fourth in 1862. The
+materials for the remaining volumes are ready, so that, if I can but
+make leisure, there is little doubt that before long the whole work
+will be complete.
+
+Now, first, as to the name. Veda means originally knowing or
+knowledge, and this name is given by the Brahmans not to one work, but
+to the whole body of their most ancient sacred literature. Veda is the
+same word which appears in the Greek οἶδα, I know, and in the
+English wise, wisdom, to wit.[10] The name of Veda is commonly given
+to four collections of hymns, which are respectively known by the
+names of Rig-veda, Ya_g_ur-veda, Sâma-veda, and Atharva-veda; but for
+our own purposes, namely for tracing the earliest growth of religious
+ideas in India, the only important, the only real Veda, is the
+Rig-veda.
+
+[Footnote 10:
+
+Sanskrit      Greek  Gothic    Anglo-Saxon   German
+
+véda           οἶδα     vait       wât        ich weiss
+véttha         οἶσθα    vaist      wâst       du weisst
+véda           οἶδε     vait       wât        er weiss
+vidvá          --     vitu       --            --
+vidáthu_h_     ἴστον    vituts      --            --
+vidátu_h_      ἴστον     --        --            --
+vidmá          ἴσμεν    vitum      witon      wir wissen
+vidá           ἴστε     vituth     wite       ihr wisset
+vidú_h_        ἴσασι    vitun      witan      sie wissen.
+]
+
+The other so-called Vedas, which deserve the name of Veda no more than
+the Talmud deserves the name of Bible, contain chiefly extracts from
+the Rig-veda, together with sacrificial formulas, charms, and
+incantations, many of them, no doubt, extremely curious, but never
+likely to interest any one except the Sanskrit scholar by profession.
+
+The Ya_g_ur-veda and Sâma-veda may be described as prayer-books,
+arranged according to the order of certain sacrifices, and intended to
+be used by certain classes of priests.
+
+Four classes of priests were required in India at the most solemn
+sacrifices:
+
+     1. The officiating priests, manual labourers, and acolytes;
+     who have chiefly to prepare the sacrificial ground, to dress
+     the altar, slay the victims, and pour out the libations.
+
+     2. The choristers, who chant the sacred hymns.
+
+     3. The reciters or readers, who repeat certain hymns.
+
+     4. The overseers or bishops, who watch and superintend the
+     proceedings of the other priests, and ought to be familiar
+     with all the Vedas.
+
+The formulas and verses to be muttered by the first class are
+contained in the Ya_g_ur-veda-sanhitâ. The hymns to be sung by the
+second class are in the Sâma-veda-sanhitâ.
+
+The Atharva-veda is said to be intended for the Brahman or overseer,
+who is to watch the proceedings of the sacrifice, and to remedy any
+mistake that may occur.[11]
+
+[Footnote 11: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. 449.]
+
+Fortunately, the hymns to be recited by the third class were not
+arranged in a sacrificial prayer-book, but were preserved in an old
+collection of hymns, containing all that had been saved of ancient,
+sacred, and popular poetry, more like the Psalms than like a ritual; a
+collection made for its own sake, and not for the sake of any
+sacrificial performances.
+
+I shall, therefore, confine my remarks to the Rig-veda, which in the
+eyes of the historical student is the Veda _par excellence_. Now
+Rig-veda means the Veda of hymns of praise, for _R_ich, which before
+the initial soft letter of Veda is changed to _R_ig, is derived from a
+root which in Sanskrit means to celebrate.
+
+In the Rig-veda we must distinguish again between the original collection
+of the hymns or Mantras, called the Sanhitâ or the collection, being
+entirely metrical and poetical, and a number of prose works, called
+Brâhma_n_as and Sûtras, written in prose, and giving information on the
+proper use of the hymns at sacrifices, on their sacred meaning, on their
+supposed authors, and similar topics. These works, too, go by the name of
+Rig-veda: but though very curious in themselves, they are evidently of a
+much later period, and of little help to us in tracing the beginnings of
+religious life in India. For that purpose we must depend entirely on the
+hymns, such as we find them in the Sanhitâ or the collection of the
+Rig-veda.
+
+Now this collection consists of ten books, and contains altogether
+1028 hymns. As early as about 600 B.C. we find that in the theological
+schools of India every verse, every word, every syllable of the Veda
+had been carefully counted. The number of verses as computed in
+treatises of that date, varies from 10,402 to 10,622; that of the
+words is 153,826, that of the syllables 432,000.[12] With these
+numbers, and with the description given in these early treatises of
+each hymn, of its metre, its deity, its number of verses, our modern
+MSS. of the Veda correspond as closely as could be expected.
+
+[Footnote 12: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' second
+edition, p. 219 seq.]
+
+I say, our modern MSS., for all our MSS. are modern, and very modern.
+Few Sanskrit MSS. are more than four or five hundred years old, the
+fact being that in the damp climate of India no paper will last for
+more than a few centuries. How then, you will naturally ask, can it be
+proved that the original hymns were composed between 1200 and 1500
+before the Christian era, if our MSS. only carry us back to about the
+same date after the Christian era? It is not very easy to bridge over
+this gulf of nearly three thousand years, but all I can say is that,
+after carefully examining every possible objection that can be made
+against the date of the Vedic hymns, their claim to that high
+antiquity which is ascribed to them, has not, as far as I can judge,
+been shaken. I shall try to explain on what kind of evidence these
+claims rest.
+
+You know that we possess no MS. of the Old Testament in Hebrew older
+than about the tenth century after the Christian era; yet the
+Septuagint translation by itself would be sufficient to prove that the
+Old Testament, such as we now read it, existed in MS. previous, at
+least, to the third century before our era. By a similar train of
+argument, the works to which I referred before, in which we find every
+hymn, every verse, every word and syllable of the Veda accurately
+counted by native scholars about five or six hundred years before
+Christ, guarantee the existence of the Veda, such as we now read it,
+as far back at least as five or six hundred years before Christ. Now
+in the works of that period, the Veda is already considered, not only
+as an ancient, but as a sacred book; and, more than this, its language
+had ceased to be generally intelligible. The language of India had
+changed since the Veda was composed, and learned commentaries were
+necessary in order to explain to the people, then living, the true
+purport, nay, the proper pronunciation, of their sacred hymns. But
+more than this. In certain exegetical compositions, which are
+generally comprised under the name of Sûtras, and which are
+contemporary with, or even anterior to, the treatises on the
+theological statistics just mentioned, not only are the ancient hymns
+represented as invested with sacred authority, but that other class of
+writings, the Brâhma_n_as, standing half-way between the hymns and the
+Sûtras, have likewise been raised to the dignity of a revealed
+literature. These Brâhma_n_as, you will remember, are prose treatises,
+written in illustration of the ancient sacrifices and of the hymns
+employed at them. Such treatises would only spring up when some kind
+of explanation began to be wanted both for the ceremonial and for the
+hymns to be recited at certain sacrifices, and we find, in
+consequence, that in many cases the authors of the Brâhma_n_as had
+already lost the power of understanding the text of the ancient hymns
+in its natural and grammatical meaning, and that they suggested the
+most absurd explanations of the various sacrificial acts, most of
+which, we may charitably suppose, had originally some rational
+purpose. Thus it becomes evident that the period during which the
+hymns were composed must have been separated by some centuries, at
+least, from the period that gave birth to the Brâhma_n_as, in order to
+allow time for the hymns growing unintelligible and becoming invested
+with a sacred character. Secondly, the period during which the
+Brâhma_n_as were composed must be separated by some centuries from the
+authors of the Sûtras, in order to allow time for further changes in
+the language, and more particularly for the growth of a new theology,
+which ascribed to the Brâhma_n_as the same exceptional and revealed
+character which the Brâhma_n_as themselves ascribed to the hymns. So
+that we want previously to 600 B.C., when every syllable of the Veda
+was counted, at least two strata of intellectual and literary growth,
+of two or three centuries each; and are thus brought to 1100 or 1200
+B.C. as the earliest time when we may suppose the collection of the
+Vedic hymns to have been finished. This collection of hymns again
+contains, by its own showing, ancient and modern hymns, the hymns of
+the sons together with the hymns of their fathers and earlier
+ancestors; so that we cannot well assign a date more recent than 1200
+to 1500 before our era, for the original composition of those simple
+hymns which up to the present day are regarded by the Brahmans with
+the same feelings with which a Mohammedan regards the Koran, a Jew the
+Old Testament, a Christian his Gospel.
+
+That the Veda is not quite a modern forgery can be proved, however, by more
+tangible evidence. Hiouen-thsang, a Buddhist pilgrim, who travelled from
+China to India in the years 629-645, and who, in his diary translated from
+Chinese into French by M. Stanislas Julien, gives the names of the four
+Vedas, mentions some grammatical forms peculiar to the Vedic Sanskrit, and
+states that at his time young Brahmans spent all their time, from the
+seventh to the thirtieth year of their age, in learning these sacred texts.
+At the time when Hiouen-thsang was travelling in India, Buddhism was
+clearly on the decline. But Buddhism was originally a reaction against
+Brahmanism, and chiefly against the exclusive privileges which the Brahmans
+claimed, and which from the beginning were represented by them as based on
+their revealed writings, the Vedas, and hence beyond the reach of human
+attacks. Buddhism, whatever the date of its founder, became the state
+religion of India under A_s_oka, the Constantine of India, in the middle of
+the third century B.C. This A_s_oka was the third king of a new dynasty
+founded by _K_andragupta, the well-known contemporary of Alexander and
+Seleucus, about 315 B.C. The preceding dynasty was that of the Nandas, and
+it is under this dynasty that the traditions of the Brahmans place a number
+of distinguished scholars whose treatises on the Veda we still possess,
+such as _S_aunaka, Kâtyâyana, Â_s_valâyana, and others. Their works, and
+others written with a similar object and in the same style, carry us back
+to about 600 B.C. This period of literature, which is called the Sûtra
+period, was preceded, as we saw, by another class of writings, the
+Brâhma_n_as, composed in a very prolix and tedious style, and containing
+lengthy lucubrations on the sacrifices and on the duties of the different
+classes of priests. Each of the three or four Vedas, or each of the three
+or four classes of priests, has its own Brâhma_n_as and its own Sûtras;
+and as the Brâhma_n_as are presupposed by the Sûtras, while no Sûtra is
+ever quoted by the Brâhma_n_as, it is clear that the period of the
+Brâhma_n_a literature must have preceded the period of the Sûtra
+literature. There are, however, old and new Brâhma_n_as, and there are in
+the Brâhma_n_as themselves long lists of teachers who handed down old
+Brâhma_n_as or composed new ones, so that it seems impossible to
+accommodate the whole of that literature in less than two centuries, from
+about 800 to 600 B.C. Before, however, a single Brâhma_n_a could have been
+composed, it was not only necessary that there should have been one
+collection of ancient hymns, like that contained in the ten books of the
+Rig-veda, but the three or four classes of priests must have been
+established, the officiating priests and the choristers must have had their
+special prayer-books, nay, these prayer-books must have undergone certain
+changes, because the Brâhma_n_as presuppose different texts, called sâkhâs,
+of each of these prayer-books, which are called the Ya_g_ur-veda-sanhitâ,
+the Sâma-veda-sanhitâ, and the Atharva-veda-sanhitâ. The work of collecting
+the prayers for the different classes of priests, and of adding new hymns
+and formulas for purely sacrificial purposes, belonged probably to the
+tenth century B.C., and three generations more would, at least, be required
+to account for the various readings adopted in the prayer-books by
+different sects, and invested with a kind of sacred authority, long before
+the composition of even the earliest among the Brâhma_n_as. If, therefore,
+the years from about 1000 to 800 B.C. are assigned to this collecting age,
+the time before 1000 B.C. must be set apart for the free and natural
+growth of what was then national and religious, but not yet sacred and
+sacrificial poetry. How far back this period extends it is impossible to
+tell; it is enough if the hymns of the Rig-veda can be traced to a period
+anterior to 1000 B.C.
+
+Much in the chronological arrangement of the three periods of Vedic
+literature that are supposed to have followed the period of the
+original growth of the hymns, must of necessity be hypothetical, and
+has been put forward rather to invite than to silence criticism. In
+order to discover truth, we must be truthful ourselves, and must
+welcome those who point out our errors as heartily as those who
+approve and confirm our discoveries. What seems, however, to speak
+strongly in favour of the historical character of the three periods of
+Vedic literature is the uniformity of style which marks the
+productions of each. In modern literature we find, at one and the same
+time, different styles of prose and poetry cultivated by one and the
+same author. A Goethe writes tragedy, comedy, satire, lyrical poetry,
+and scientific prose; but we find nothing like this in primitive
+literature. The individual is there much less prominent, and the
+poet's character disappears in the general character of the layer of
+literature to which he belongs. It is the discovery of such large
+layers of literature following each other in regular succession which
+inspires the critical historian with confidence in the truly
+historical character of the successive literary productions of ancient
+India. As in Greece there is an epic age of literature, where we
+should look in vain for prose or dramatic poetry; as in that country
+we never meet with real elegiac poetry before the end of the eighth
+century, nor with iambics before the same date; as even in more
+modern times rhymed heroic poetry appears in England with the Norman
+conquest, and in Germany the Minnesänger rise and set with the Swabian
+dynasty--so, only in a much more decided manner, we see in the ancient
+and spontaneous literature of India, an age of poets followed by an
+age of collectors and imitators, that age to be succeeded by an age of
+theological prose writers, and this last by an age of writers of
+scientific manuals. New wants produced new supplies, and nothing
+sprang up or was allowed to live, in prose or poetry, except what was
+really wanted. If the works of poets, collectors, imitators,
+theologians, and teachers were all mixed up together--if the
+Brâhma_n_as quoted the Sûtras, and the hymns alluded to the
+Brâhma_n_as--an historical restoration of the Vedic literature of
+India would be almost an impossibility. We should suspect artificial
+influences, and look with small confidence on the historical character
+of such a literary agglomerate. But he who would question the
+antiquity of the Veda must explain how the layers of literature were
+formed that are super-imposed over the original stratum of the poetry
+of the Rishis; he who would suspect a literary forgery must show how,
+when, and for what purpose the 1000 hymns of the Rig-veda could have
+been forged, and have become the basis of the religious, moral,
+political, and literary life of the ancient inhabitants of India.
+
+The idea of revelation, and I mean more particularly book-revelation,
+is not a modern idea, nor is it an idea peculiar to Christianity.
+Though we look for it in vain in the literature of Greece and Rome, we
+find the literature of India saturated with this idea from beginning
+to end. In no country, I believe, has the theory of revelation been
+so minutely elaborated as in India. The name for revelation in
+Sanskrit is _S_ruti, which means hearing; and this title distinguishes
+the Vedic hymns and, at a later time, the Brâhma_n_as also, from all
+other works, which, however sacred, and authoritative to the Hindu
+mind, are admitted to have been composed by human authors. The Laws of
+Manu, for instance, according to the Brahmanic theology, are not
+revelation; they are not _S_ruti, but only Sm_r_iti, which means
+recollection or tradition. If these laws or any other work of
+authority can be proved on any point to be at variance with a single
+passage of the Veda, their authority is at once overruled. According
+to the orthodox views of Indian theologians, not a single line of the
+Veda was the work of human authors. The whole Veda is in some way or
+other the work of the Deity; and even those who received the
+revelation, or, as they express it, those who saw it, were not
+supposed to be ordinary mortals, but beings raised above the level of
+common humanity, and less liable therefore to error in the reception
+of revealed truth. The views entertained of revelation by the orthodox
+theologians of India are far more minute and elaborate than those of
+the most extreme advocates of verbal inspiration in Europe. The human
+element, called paurusheyatva in Sanskrit, is driven out of every
+corner or hiding-place, and as the Veda is held to have existed in the
+mind of the Deity before the beginning of time, every allusion to
+historical events, of which there are not a few, is explained away
+with a zeal and ingenuity worthy of a better cause.
+
+But let me state at once that there is nothing in the hymns themselves
+to warrant such extravagant theories. In many a hymn the author says
+plainly that he or his friends made it to please the gods; that he
+made it, as a carpenter makes a chariot (Rv. I. 130, 6; V. 2, 11), or
+like a beautiful vesture (Rv. V. 29, 15); that he fashioned it in his
+heart and kept it in his mind (Rv. I. 171, 2); that he expects, as his
+reward, the favour of the god whom he celebrates (Rv. IV. 6, 21). But
+though the poets of the Veda know nothing of the artificial theories
+of verbal inspiration, they were not altogether unconscious of higher
+influences: nay, they speak of their hymns as god-given ('devattam,'
+Rv. III. 37, 4). One poets says (Rv. VI. 47, 10): 'O god (Indra) have
+mercy, give me my daily bread! Sharpen my mind, like the edge of iron.
+Whatever I now may utter, longing for thee, do thou accept it; make me
+possessed of God!' Another utters for the first time the famous hymn,
+the Gâyatrî, which now for more than three thousand years has been the
+daily prayer of every Brahman, and is still repeated every morning by
+millions of pious worshippers: 'Let us meditate on the adorable light
+of the divine Creator: may he rouse our minds.'[13] This consciousness
+of higher influences, or of divine help in those who uttered for the
+first time the simple words of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, is
+very different, however, from the artificial theories of verbal
+inspiration which we find in the later theological writings; it is
+indeed but another expression of that deepfelt dependence on the
+Deity, of that surrender and denial of all that seems to be self,
+which was felt more or less by every nation, but by none, I believe,
+more strongly, more constantly, than by the Indian. "It is He that has
+made it,"--namely, the prayer in which the soul of the poet has thrown
+off her burden,--is but a variation of, "It is He that has made us,"
+which is the key-note of all religion, whether ancient or modern,
+whether natural or revealed.
+
+I must say no more to-night of what the Veda is, for I am very anxious
+to explain to you, as far as it is possible, what I consider to be the
+real importance of the Veda to the student of history, to the student
+of religion, to the student of mankind.
+
+[Footnote 13: 'Tat Savitur vare_n_yam bhargo devasya dhîmahi, dhiyo yo
+na_h_ pra_k_odayât.'--Colebrooke, 'Miscellaneous Essays,' i. 30. Many
+passages bearing on this subject have been collected by Dr. Muir in
+the third volume of his 'Sanskrit Texts,' p. 114 seq.]
+
+In the study of mankind there can hardly be a subject more deeply
+interesting than the study of the different forms of religion; and
+much as I value the Science of Language for the aid which it lends us
+in unraveling some of the most complicated tissues of the human
+intellect, I confess that to my mind there is no study more absorbing
+than that of the Religions of the World,--the study, if I may so call
+it, of the various languages in which man has spoken to his Maker, and
+of that language in which his Maker "at sundry times and in divers
+manners" spake to man.
+
+To my mind the great epochs in the world's history are marked not by
+the foundation or the destruction of empires, by the migrations of
+races, or by French revolutions. All this is outward history, made up
+of events that seem gigantic and overpowering to those only who cannot
+see beyond and beneath. The real history of man is the history of
+religion--the wonderful ways by which the different families of the
+human race advanced towards a truer knowledge and a deeper love of
+God. This is the foundation that underlies all profane history: it is
+the light, the soul, and life of history, and without it all history
+would indeed be profane.
+
+On this subject there are some excellent works in English, such as Mr.
+Maurice's "Lectures on the Religions of the World," or Mr. Hardwick's
+"Christ and other Masters;" in German, I need only mention Hegel's
+"Philosophy of Religion," out of many other learned treatises on the
+different systems of religion in the East and the West. But in all
+these works religions are treated very much as languages were treated
+during the last century. They are rudely classed, either according to
+the different localities in which they prevailed, just as in Adelung's
+"Mithridates" you find the languages of the world classified as
+European, African, American, Asiatic, etc.; or according to their age,
+as formerly languages used to be divided into ancient and modern; or
+according to their respective dignity, as languages used to be treated
+as sacred or profane, as classical or illiterate. Now you know that
+the Science of Language has sanctioned a totally different system of
+classification; and that the Comparative Philologist ignores
+altogether the division of languages according to their locality, or
+according to their age, or according to their classical or illiterate
+character. Languages are now classified genealogically, _i. e._
+according to their real relationship; and the most important languages
+of Asia, Europe, and Africa,--that is to say, of that part of the
+world on which what we call the history of man has been acted,--have
+been grouped together into three great divisions, the Aryan or
+Indo-European Family, the Semitic Family, and the Turanian Class.
+According to that division you are aware that English, together with
+all the Teutonic languages of the Continent, Celtic, Slavonic, Greek,
+Latin with its modern offshoots, such as French and Italian, Persian,
+and Sanskrit, are so many varieties of one common type of speech: that
+Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Veda, is no more distinct from
+the Greek of Homer, or from the Gothic of Ulfilas, or from the
+Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, than French is from Italian. All these
+languages together form one family, one whole, in which every member
+shares certain features in common with all the rest, and is at the
+same time distinguished from the rest by certain features peculiarly
+its own. The the world on which what we call the history of man has
+been acted, have been grouped together into three great divisions, the
+Aryan or Indo-European Family, the Semitic Family, and the Turanian
+Class. According to that division you are aware that English together
+with all the Teutonic languages of the Continent, Celtic, Slavonic,
+Greek, Latin with its modern offshoots, such as French and Italian,
+Persian, and Sanskrit, are so many varieties of one common type of
+speech: that Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Veda, is no more
+distinct from the Greek of Homer, or from the Gothic of Ulfilas, or
+from the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, than French is from Italian. All these
+languages together form one family, one whole, in which every member
+shares certain features in common with all the rest, and is at the
+same time distinguished from the rest by certain features peculiarly
+its own. The same applies to the Semitic Family, which comprises, as
+its most important members, the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the
+Arabic of the Koran, and the ancient languages on the monuments of
+Phenicia and Carthage, of Babylon and Assyria. These languages, again,
+form a compact family, and differ entirely from the other family,
+which we called Aryan or Indo-European. The third group of languages,
+for we can hardly call it a family, comprises most of the remaining
+languages of Asia, and counts among its principal members the
+Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, Samoyedic, and Finnic, together with the
+languages of Siam, the Malay islands, Tibet, and Southern India.
+Lastly, the Chinese language stands by itself, as monosyllabic, the
+only remnant of the earliest formation of human speech.
+
+Now I believe that the same division which has introduced a new and
+natural order into the history of languages, and has enabled us to
+understand the growth of human speech in a manner never dreamt of in
+former days, will be found applicable to a scientific study of
+religions. I shall say nothing to-night of the Semitic or Turanian or
+Chinese religions, but confine my remarks to the religions of the
+Aryan family. These religions, though more important in the ancient
+history of the world, as the religions of the Greeks and Romans, of
+our own Teutonic ancestors, and of the Celtic and Slavonic races, are
+nevertheless of great importance even at the present day. For although
+there are no longer any worshippers of Zeus, or Jupiter, of Wodan,
+Esus,[14] or Perkunas,[15] the two religions of Aryan origin which
+still survive, Brahmanism and Buddhism, claim together a decided
+majority among the inhabitants of the globe. Out of the whole
+population of the world,
+
+31.2 per cent are Buddhists,
+13.4 per cent are Brahmanists,
+----
+44.6
+
+which together gives us 44 per cent for what may be called living
+Aryan religions. Of the remaining 56 per cent, 15.7 are Mohammedans,
+8.7 per cent non-descript Heathens, 30.7 per cent Christians, and only
+O.3 per cent Jews.
+
+[Footnote 14: Mommsen, 'Inscriptiones Helveticae,' 40. Becker, 'Die
+inschriftlichen Überreste der Keltischen Sprache,' in 'Beiträge zur
+Vergleichenden Sprachforschung,' vol. iii. p. 341. Lucau, Phars. 1,
+445, 'horrensque feris altaribus Hesus.']
+
+[Footnote 15: Cf. G. Bühler, 'Über Parjanya,' in Benfey's 'Orient und
+Occident,' vol. i. p. 214.]
+
+Now, as a scientific study of the Aryan languages became possible only
+after the discovery of Sanskrit, a scientific study of the Aryan
+religion dates really from the discovery of the Veda. The study of
+Sanskrit brought to light the original documents of three religions,
+the Sacred Books of the Brahmans, the Sacred Books of the Magians, the
+followers of Zoroaster, and the Sacred Books of the Buddhists. Fifty
+years ago, these three collections of sacred writings were all but
+unknown, their very existence was doubted, and there was not a single
+scholar who could have translated a line of the Veda, a line of the
+Zend-Avesta, or a line of the Buddhist Tripi_t_aka. At present large
+portions of these, the canonical writings of the most ancient and most
+important religions of the Aryan race, are published and deciphered,
+and we begin to see a natural progress, and almost a logical
+necessity, in the growth of these three systems of worship. The
+oldest, most primitive, most simple form of Aryan faith finds its
+expression in the Veda. The Zend-Avesta represents in its language, as
+well as in its thoughts, a branching off from that more primitive
+stem; a more or less conscious opposition to the worship of the gods
+of nature, as adored in the Veda, and a striving after a more
+spiritual, supreme, moral deity, such as Zoroaster proclaimed under
+the name of Ahura mazda, or Ormuzd. Buddhism, lastly, marks a decided
+schism, a decided antagonism against the established religion of the
+Brahmans, a denial of the true divinity of the Vedic gods, and a
+proclamation of new philosophical and social doctrines.
+
+Without the Veda, therefore, neither the reforms of Zoroaster nor the
+new teaching of Buddha would have been intelligible: we should not
+know what was behind them, or what forces impelled Zoroaster and
+Buddha to the founding of new religions; how much they received, how
+much they destroyed, how much they created. Take but one word in the
+religious phraseology of these three systems. In the Veda the gods are
+called Deva. This word in Sanskrit means bright,--brightness or light
+being one of the most general attributes shared by the various
+manifestations of the Deity, invoked in the Veda, as Sun, or Sky, or
+Fire, or Dawn, or Storm. We can see, in fact, how in the minds of the
+poets of the Veda, deva from meaning bright, came gradually to mean
+divine. In the Zend-Avesta the same word daêva means evil spirit. Many
+of the Vedic gods, with Indra at their head, have been degraded to the
+position of daêvas, in order to make room for Ahura mazda, the Wise
+Spirit, as the supreme deity of the Zoroastrians. In his confession of
+faith the follower of Zoroaster declares: 'I cease to be a worshipper
+of the daêvas.' In Buddhism, again, we find these ancient Devas, Indra
+and the rest, as merely legendary beings, carried about at shows, as
+servants of Buddha, as goblins or fabulous heroes; but no longer
+either worshipped or even feared by those with whom the name of Deva
+had lost every trace of its original meaning. Thus this one word Deva
+marks the mutual relations of these three religions. But more than
+this. The same word deva is the Latin deus, thus pointing to that
+common source of language and religion, far beyond the heights of the
+Vedic Olympus, from which the Romans, as well as the Hindus, draw the
+names of their deities, and the elements of their language as well as
+of their religion.
+
+The Veda, by its language and its thoughts, supplies that distant
+background in the history of all the religions of the Aryan race,
+which was missed indeed by every careful observer, but which formerly
+could be supplied by guess-work only. How the Persians came to worship
+Ormuzd, how the Buddhists came to protest against temples and
+sacrifices, how Zeus and the Olympian gods came to be what they are in
+the mind of Homer, or how such beings as Jupiter and Mars came to be
+worshipped by the Italian peasant:--all these questions, which used to
+yield material for endless and baseless speculations, can now be
+answered by a simple reference to the hymns of the Veda. The religion
+of the Veda is not the source of all the other religions of the Aryan
+world, nor is Sanskrit the mother of all the Aryan languages.
+Sanskrit, as compared to Greek and Latin, is an elder sister, not a
+parent: Sanskrit is the earliest deposit of Aryan speech, as the Veda
+is the earliest deposit of Aryan faith. But the religion and incipient
+mythology of the Veda possess the same simplicity and transparency
+which distinguish the grammar of Sanskrit from Greek, Latin, or German
+grammar. We can watch in the Veda ideas and their names growing, which
+in Persia, Greece, and Rome we meet with only as full-grown or as fast
+decaying. We get one step nearer to that distant source of religious
+thought and language which has fed the different national streams of
+Persia, Greece, Rome, and Germany; and we begin to see clearly, what
+ought never to have been doubted, that there is no religion without
+God, or, as St. Augustine expressed, that 'there is no false religion
+which does not contain some elements of truth.'
+
+I do not wish by what I have said to raise any exaggerated
+expectations as to the worth of these ancient hymns of the Veda, and
+the character of that religion which they indicate rather than fully
+describe. The historical importance of the Veda can hardly be
+exaggerated, but its intrinsic merit, and particularly the beauty or
+elevation of its sentiments, have by many been rated far too high.
+Large numbers of the Vedic hymns are childish in the extreme: tedious,
+low, common-place. The gods are constantly invoked to protect their
+worshippers, to grant them food, large flocks, large families, and a
+long life; for all which benefits they are to be rewarded by the
+praises and sacrifices offered day after day, or at certain seasons of
+the year. But hidden in this rubbish there are precious stones. Only
+in order to appreciate them justly, we must try to divest ourselves of
+the common notions about Polytheism, so repugnant not only to our
+feelings, but to our understanding. No doubt, if we must employ
+technical terms, the religion of the Veda is Polytheism, not
+Monotheism. Deities are invoked by different names, some clear and
+intelligible, such as Agni, fire; Sûrya, the sun; Ushas, dawn; Maruts,
+the storms; P_r_ithivî, the earth; Âp, the waters; Nadî, the rivers;
+others such as Varu_n_a, Mitra, Indra, which have become proper names,
+and disclose but dimly their original application to the great aspects
+of nature, the sky, the sun, the day. But whenever one of these
+individual gods is invoked, they are not conceived as limited by the
+powers of others, as superior or inferior in rank. Each god is to the
+mind of the supplicant as good as all gods. He is felt, at the time,
+as a real divinity,--as supreme and absolute,--without a suspicion of
+those limitations which, to our mind, a plurality of gods _must_
+entail on every single god. All the rest disappear for a moment from
+the vision of the poet, and he only who is to fulfill their desires
+stands in full light before the eyes of the worshippers. In one hymn,
+ascribed to Manu, the poet says: "Among you, O gods, there is none
+that is small, none that is young; you are all great indeed." And this
+is indeed the key-note of the ancient Aryan worship. Yet it would be
+easy to find in the numerous hymns of the Veda, passages in which
+almost every important deity is represented as supreme and absolute.
+Thus in one hymn, Agni (fire) is called "the ruler of the universe,"
+"the lord of men," "the wise king, the father, the brother, the son,
+the friend of man;" nay, all the powers and names of the other gods
+are distinctly ascribed to Agni. But though Agni is thus highly
+exalted, nothing is said to disparage the divine character of the
+other gods. In another hymn another god, Indra, is said to be greater
+than all: "The gods," it is said, "do not reach thee, Indra, nor men;
+thou overcomest all creatures in strength." Another god, Soma, is
+called the king of the world, the king of heaven and earth, the
+conqueror of all. And what more could human language achieve, in
+trying to express the idea of a divine and supreme power, than what
+another poet says of another god, Varu_n_a: "Thou art lord of all, of
+heaven and earth; thou art the king of all, of those who are gods, and
+of those who are men!"
+
+This surely is not what is commonly understood by Polytheism. Yet it
+would be equally wrong to call it Monotheism. If we must have a name
+for it, I should call it Kathenotheism. The consciousness that all the
+deities are but different names of one and the same godhead, breaks
+forth indeed here and there in the Veda. But it is far from being
+general. One poet, for instance, says (Rv. I. 164, 46): "They call him
+Indra, Mitra, Varu_n_a, Agni; then he is the beautiful-winged heavenly
+Garutmat: that which is One the wise call it in divers manners: they
+call it Agni, Yama, Mâtari_s_van." And again (Rv. X. 114, 5): "Wise
+poets make the beautiful-winged, though he is one, manifold by words."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I shall read you a few Vedic verses, in which the religious sentiment
+predominates, and in which we perceive a yearning after truth, and
+after the true God, untrammeled as yet by any names or any
+traditions[16] (Rv. X. 121):--
+
+[Footnote 16: _History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature_, p. 569.]
+
+     1. In the beginning there arose the golden Child--He was the
+     one born lord of all that is. He stablished the earth, and
+     this sky;--Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
+     sacrifice?
+
+     2. He who gives life, He who gives strength; whose command
+     all the bright gods revere; whose shadow is immortality,
+     whose shadow is death;--Who is the God to whom we shall
+     offer our sacrifice?
+
+     3. He who through His power is the one king of the breathing
+     and awakening world--He who governs all, man and beast;--Who
+     is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
+
+     4. He whose greatness these snowy mountains, whose greatness
+     the sea proclaims, with the distant river--He whose these
+     regions are, as it were His two arms;--Who is the God to
+     whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
+
+     5. He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm--He
+     through whom the heaven was stablished,--nay, the highest
+     heaven,--He who measured out the light in the air;--Who is
+     the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
+
+     6. He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His will,
+     look up, trembling inwardly--He over whom the rising sun
+     shines forth;--Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
+     sacrifice?
+
+     7. Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they placed
+     the seed and lit the fire, thence arose He who is the sole
+     life of the bright gods;--Who is the God to whom we shall
+     offer our sacrifice?
+
+     8. He who by His might looked even over the water-clouds,
+     the clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice; He who
+     alone is God above all gods;--
+
+     9. May He not destroy us--He the creator of the earth; or
+     He, the righteous, who created the heaven; He also created
+     the bright and mighty waters;--Who is the God to whom we
+     shall offer our sacrifice?[17]
+
+The following may serve as specimens of hymns addressed to individual
+deities whose names have become the centres of religious thought and
+legendary traditions; deities, in fact, like Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, or
+Minerva, no longer mere germs, but fully developed forms of early
+thought and language:
+
+[Footnote 17: A last verse is added, which entirely spoils the
+poetical beauty and the whole character of the hymn. Its later origin
+seems to have struck even native critics, for the author of the Pada
+text did not receive it. 'O Pra_g_âpati, no other than thou hast
+embraced all these created things; may what we desired when we called
+on thee, be granted to us, may we be lords of riches.']
+
+     HYMN TO INDRA (Rv. I. 53).[18]
+
+     1. Keep silence well![19] we offer praises to the great
+     Indra in the house of the sacrificer. Does he find treasure
+     for those who are like sleepers? Mean praise is not valued
+     among the munificent.
+
+     2. Thou art the giver of horses, Indra, thou art the giver
+     of cows, the giver of corn, the strong lord of wealth: the
+     old guide of man, disappointing no desires, a friend to
+     friends:--to him we address this song.
+
+     3. O powerful Indra, achiever of many works, most brilliant
+     god--all this wealth around here is known to be thine alone:
+     take from it, conqueror! bring it hither! Do not stint the
+     desire of the worshipper who longs for thee!
+
+     4. On these days thou art gracious, and on these
+     nights,[20] keeping off the enemy from our cows and from
+     our stud. Tearing[21] the fiend night after night with the
+     help of Indra, let us rejoice in food, freed from haters.
+
+     5. Let us rejoice, Indra, in treasure and food, in wealth of
+     manifold delight and splendour. Let us rejoice in the
+     blessing of the gods, which gives us the strength of
+     offspring, gives us cows first and horses.
+
+     6. These draughts inspired thee, O lord of the brave! these
+     were vigour, these libations, in battles, when for the sake
+     of the poet, the sacrificer, thou struckest down
+     irresistibly ten thousands of enemies.
+
+     7. From battle to battle thou advancest bravely, from town
+     to town thou destroyest all this with might, when thou,
+     Indra, with Nâmî as thy friend, struckest down from afar the
+     deceiver Namu_k_i.
+
+     8. Thou hast slain Karaṅga and Par_n_aya with the
+     brightest spear of Atithigva. Without a helper thou didst
+     demolish the hundred cities of Vaṅg_r_ida, which were
+     besieged by _R_i_g_i_s_van.
+
+     9. Thou hast felled down with the chariot-wheel these twenty
+     kings of men, who had attacked the friendless
+     Su_s_ravas,[22] and gloriously the sixty thousand and
+     ninety-nine forts.
+
+     10. Thou, Indra, hast succoured Su_s_ravas with thy
+     succours, Tûrvayâ_n_a with thy protections. Thou hast made
+     Kutsa, Atithigva, and Âyu subject to this mighty youthful
+     king.
+
+     11. We who in future, protected by the gods, wish to be thy
+     most blessed friends, we shall praise thee, blessed by thee
+     with offspring, and enjoying henceforth a longer life.
+
+[Footnote 18: I subjoin for some of the hymns here translated, the
+translation of the late Professor Wilson, in order to show what kind
+of difference there is between the traditional rendering of the Vedic
+hymns, as adopted by him, and their interpretation according to the
+rules of modern scholarship:
+
+1. We ever offer fitting praise to the mighty Indra, in the dwelling
+of the worshipper, by which he (the deity) has quickly acquired
+riches, as (a thief) hastily carries (off the property) of the
+sleeping. Praise ill expressed is not valued among the munificent.
+
+2. Thou, Indra, art the giver of horses, of cattle, of barley, the
+master and protector of wealth, the foremost in liberality, (the
+being) of many days; thou disappointest not desires (addressed to
+thee); thou art a friend to our friends: such an Indra we praise.
+
+3. Wise and resplendent Indra, the achiever of great deeds, the riches
+that are spread around are known to be thine: having collected them,
+victor (over thy enemies), bring them to us: disappoint not the
+expectation of the worshipper who trusts in thee.
+
+4. Propitiated by these offerings, by these libations, dispel poverty
+with cattle and horses: may we, subduing our adversary, and relieved
+from enemies by Indra, (pleased) by our libations, enjoy together
+abundant food.
+
+5. Indra, may we become possessed of riches, and of food; and with
+energies agreeable to many, and shining around, may we prosper through
+thy divine favour, the source of prowess, of cattle, and of horses.
+
+6. Those who were thy allies, (the Maruts,) brought thee joy:
+protector of the pious, those libations and oblations (that were
+offered thee on slaying V_r_itra), yielded thee delight, when thou,
+unimpeded by foes, didst destroy the ten thousand obstacles opposed to
+him who praised thee and offered thee libations.
+
+7. Humiliator (of adversaries), thou goest from battle to battle, and
+destroyest by thy might city after city: with thy foe-prostrating
+associate, (the thunderbolt,) thou, Indra, didst slay afar off the
+deceiver named Namu_k_i.
+
+8. Thou hast slain Karaṅga and Par_n_aya with thy bright gleaming
+spear, in the cause of Atithigva: unaided, thou didst demolish the
+hundred cities of Vaṅg_r_ida, when besieged by _R_i_g_i_s_van.
+
+9. Thou, renowned Indra, overthrewest by thy not-to-be-overtaken
+chariot-wheel, the twenty kings of men, who had come against
+Su_s_ravas, unaided, and their sixty thousand and ninety and nine
+followers.
+
+10. Thou, Indra, hast preserved Su_s_ravas by thy succour,
+Tûrvayâ_n_a, by thy assistance: thou hast made Kutsa, Atithigva, and
+Âyu subject to the mighty though youthful Su_s_ravas.
+
+11. Protected by the gods, we remain, Indra, at the close of the
+sacrifice, thy most fortunate friends: we praise thee, as enjoying
+through thee excellent offspring, and a long and prosperous life.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Favete linguis.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Cf. Rv. I. 112, 25, 'dyúbhir aktúbhi_h_,' by day and by
+night; also Rv. III. 31, 16. M. M., 'Todtenbestattung,' p. v.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Professor Benfey reads durayanta_h_, but all MSS. that I
+know, without exception, read darayanta_h_.]
+
+The next hymn is one of many addressed to Agni as the god of fire, not
+only the fire as a powerful element, but likewise the fire of the
+hearth and the altar, the guardian of the house, the minister of the
+sacrifice, the messenger between gods and men:
+
+[Footnote 22: See Spiegel, 'Erân,' p. 269, on Khai Khosru =
+Su_s_ravas.]
+
+     HYMN TO AGNI (Rv. II. 6).
+
+     1. Agni, accept this log which I offer to thee, accept this
+     my service; listen well to these my songs.
+
+     2. With this log, O Agni, may we worship thee, thou son of
+     strength, conqueror of horses! and with this hymn, thou
+     high-born!
+
+     3. May we thy servants serve thee with songs, O granter of
+     riches, thou who lovest songs and delightest in riches.
+
+     4. Thou lord of wealth and giver of wealth, be thou wise and
+     powerful; drive away from us the enemies!
+
+     5. He gives us rain from heaven, he gives us inviolable
+     strength, he gives us food a thousandfold.
+
+     6. Youngest of the gods, their messenger, their invoker,
+     most deserving of worship, come, at our praise, to him who
+     worships thee and longs for thy help.
+
+     7. For thou, O sage, goest wisely between these two
+     creations (heaven and earth, gods and men), like a friendly
+     messenger between two hamlets.
+
+     8. Thou art wise, and thou hast been pleased; perform thou,
+     intelligent Agni, the sacrifice without interruption, sit
+     down on this sacred grass!
+
+The following hymn, partly laudatory, partly deprecatory, is addressed
+to the Maruts or Rudras, the Storm-gods:
+
+     HYMN TO THE MARUTS (Rv. I. 39).[23]
+
+     1. When you thus from afar cast forward your measure, like a
+     blast of fire, through whose wisdom is it, through whose
+     design? To whom do you go, to whom, ye shakers (of the
+     earth)?
+
+     2. May your weapons be firm to attack, strong also to
+     withstand! May yours be the more glorious strength, not that
+     of the deceitful mortal!
+
+     3. When you overthrow what is firm, O ye men, and whirl
+     about what is heavy, ye pass through the trees of the earth,
+     through the clefts of the rocks.
+
+     4. No real foe of yours is known in heaven, nor in earth, ye
+     devourers of enemies! May strength be yours, together with
+     your race, O Rudras, to defy even now.
+
+     5. They make the rocks to tremble, they tear asunder the
+     kings of the forest. Come on, Maruts, like madmen, ye gods,
+     with your whole tribe.
+
+     6. You have harnessed the spotted deer to your chariots, a
+     red deer draws as leader. Even the earth listened at your
+     approach, and men were frightened.
+
+     7. O Rudras, we quickly desire your help for our race. Come
+     now to us with help, as of yore, thus for the sake of the
+     frightened Ka_n_va.
+
+     8. Whatever fiend, roused by you or roused by mortals,
+     attacks us, tear him from us by your power, by your
+     strength, by your aid.
+
+     9. For you, worshipful and wise, have wholly protected
+     Ka_n_va. Come to us, Maruts, with your whole help, as
+     quickly as lightnings come after the rain.
+
+     10. Bounteous givers, ye possess whole strength, whole
+     power, ye shakers (of the earth). Send, O Maruts, against
+     the proud enemy of the poets, an enemy, like an arrow.
+
+[Footnote 23: Professor Wilson translates as follows:
+
+     1. When, Maruts, who make (all things) tremble, you direct
+     your awful (vigour) downwards from afar, as light (descends
+     from heaven), by whose worship, by whose praise (are you
+     attracted)? To what (place of sacrifice), to whom, indeed,
+     do you repair?
+
+     2. Strong be your weapons for driving away (your) foes, firm
+     in resisting them: yours be the strength that merits praise,
+     not (the strength) of a treacherous mortal.
+
+     3. Directing Maruts, when you demolish what is stable, when
+     you scatter what is ponderous, then you make your way
+     through the forest (trees) of earth and the defiles of the
+     mountains.
+
+     4. Destroyers of foes, no adversary of yours is known above
+     the heavens, nor (is any) upon earth: may your collective
+     strength be quickly exerted, sons of Rudra, to humble (your
+     enemies).
+
+     5. They make the mountains tremble, they drive apart the
+     forest trees. Go, divine Maruts, whither you will, with all
+     your progeny, like those intoxicated.
+
+     6. You have harnessed the spotted deer to your chariot; the
+     red deer yoked between them, (aids to) drag the car: the
+     firmament listens for your coming, and men are alarmed.
+
+     7. Rudras, we have recourse to your assistance for the sake
+     of our progeny: come quickly to the timid Ka_n_va, as you
+     formerly came, for our protection.
+
+     8. Should any adversary, instigated by you, or by man,
+     assail us, withhold from him food and strength and your
+     assistance.
+
+     9. Pra_k_etasas, who are to be unreservedly worshipped,
+     uphold (the sacrificer) Ka_n_va: come to us, Maruts, with
+     undivided protective assistances, as the lightnings (bring)
+     the rain.
+
+     10. Bounteous givers, you enjoy unimpaired vigour: shakers
+     (of the earth), you possess undiminished strength: Maruts,
+     let loose your anger, like an arrow, upon the wrathful enemy
+     of the Rishis.
+]
+
+The following is a simple prayer addressed to the Dawn:
+
+     HYMN TO USHAS (Rv. VII. 77).
+
+     1. She shines upon us, like a young wife, rousing every
+     living being to go to his work. When the fire had to be
+     kindled by men, she made the light by striking down
+     darkness.
+
+     2. She rose up, spreading far and wide, and moving
+     everywhere. She grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant
+     garment. The mother of the cows, (the mornings) the leader
+     of the days, she shone gold-coloured, lovely to behold.
+
+     3. She, the fortunate, who brings the eye of the gods, who
+     leads the white and lovely steed (of the sun), the Dawn was
+     seen revealed by her rays, with brilliant treasures,
+     following every one.
+
+     4. Thou who art a blessing where thou art near, drive far
+     away the unfriendly; make the pasture wide, give us safety!
+     Scatter the enemy, bring riches! Raise up wealth to the
+     worshipper, thou mighty Dawn.
+
+     5. Shine for us with thy best rays, thou bright Dawn, thou
+     who lengthenest our life, thou the love of all, who givest
+     us food, who givest us wealth in cows, horses, and chariots.
+
+     6. Thou, daughter of the sky, thou high-born Dawn, whom the
+     Vasish_t_has magnify with songs, give us riches high and
+     wide: all ye gods, protect us always with your blessings.
+
+I must confine myself to shorter extracts, in order to be able to show
+to you that all the principal elements of real religion are present in
+the Veda. I remind you again that the Veda contains a great deal of
+what is childish and foolish, though very little of what is bad and
+objectionable. Some of its poets ascribe to the gods sentiments and
+passions unworthy of the deity, such as anger, revenge, delight in
+material sacrifices; they likewise represent human nature on a low
+level of selfishness and worldliness. Many hymns are utterly unmeaning
+and insipid, and we must search patiently before we meet, here and
+there, with sentiments that come from the depth of the soul, and with
+prayers in which we could join ourselves. Yet there are such
+passages, and they are the really important passages, as marking the
+highest points to which the religious life of the ancient poets of
+India had reached; and it is to these that I shall now call your
+attention.
+
+First of all, the religion of the Veda knows of no idols. The worship
+of idols in India is a secondary formation, a later degradation of the
+more primitive worship of ideal gods.
+
+The gods of the Veda are conceived as immortal: passages in which the
+birth of certain gods is mentioned have a physical meaning: they refer
+to the birth of the day, the rising of the sun, the return of the
+year.
+
+The gods are supposed to dwell in heaven, though several of them, as,
+for instance, Agni, the god of fire, are represented as living among
+men, or as approaching the sacrifice, and listening to the praises of
+their worshippers.
+
+Heaven and earth are believed to have been made or to have been
+established by certain gods. Elaborate theories of creation, which
+abound in the later works, the Brâhma_n_as, are not to be found in the
+hymns. What we find are such passages as:
+
+'Agni held the earth, he stablished the heaven by truthful words' (Rv.
+I. 67, 3).
+
+'Varu_n_a stemmed asunder the wide firmaments; he lifted on high the
+bright and glorious heaven; he stretched out apart the starry sky and
+the earth' (Rv. VII. 86, 1).
+
+More frequently, however, the poets confess their ignorance of the
+beginning of all things, and one of them exclaims:
+
+'Who has seen the first-born? Where was the life, the blood, the soul
+of the world? Who went to ask this from any that knew it? (Rv. I. 164,
+4).[24]
+
+Or again, Rv. X. 81, 4: 'What was the forest, what was the tree out of
+which they shaped heaven and earth? Wise men, ask this indeed in your
+mind, on what he stood when he held the worlds?'
+
+I now come to a more important subject. We find in the Veda, what few
+would have expected to find there, the two ideas, so contradictory to
+the human understanding, and yet so easily reconciled in every human
+heart: God has established the eternal laws of right and wrong, he
+punishes sin and rewards virtue, and yet the same God is willing to
+forgive; just, yet merciful; a judge, and yet a father. Consider, for
+instance, the following lines, Rv. I. 41, 4: 'His path is easy and
+without thorns, who does what is right.'
+
+And again, Rv. I. 41, 9: 'Let man fear Him who holds the four (dice),
+before he throws them down (i. e. God who holds the destinies of men
+in his hand); let no man delight in evil words!'
+
+And then consider the following hymns, and imagine the feelings which
+alone could have prompted them:
+
+     HYMN TO VARU_N_A (Rv. VII. 89).
+
+     1. Let me not yet, O Varu_n_a, enter into the house of clay;
+     have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
+
+     2. If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind;
+     have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
+
+     3. Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god,
+     have I gone wrong; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
+
+     4. Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in the
+     midst of the waters; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
+
+     5. Whenever we men, O Varu_n_a, commit an offence before the
+     heavenly host, whenever we break the law through
+     thoughtlessness; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
+
+[Footnote 24: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. 20 note.]
+
+And again, Rv. VII. 86:
+
+     1. Wise and mighty are the works of him who stemmed asunder
+     the wide firmaments (heaven and earth). He lifted on high
+     the bright and glorious heaven; he stretched out apart the
+     starry sky and the earth.
+
+     2. Do I say this to my own self? How can I get unto
+     Varu_n_a? Will he accept my offering without displeasure?
+     When shall I, with a quiet mind, see him propitiated?
+
+     3. I ask, O Varu_n_a, wishing to know this my sin. I go to
+     ask the wise. The sages all tell me the same: Varu_n_a it is
+     who is angry with thee.
+
+     4. Was it an old sin, O Varu_n_a, that thou wishest to
+     destroy thy friend, who always praises thee? Tell me, thou
+     unconquerable lord, and I will quickly turn to thee with
+     praise, freed from sin.
+
+     5. Absolve us from the sins of our fathers, and from those
+     which we committed with our own bodies. Release Vasish_t_ha,
+     O king, like a thief who has feasted on stolen oxen; release
+     him like a calf from the rope.
+
+     6. It was not our own doing, O Varu_n_a, it was necessity
+     (or temptation), an intoxicating draught, passion, dice,
+     thoughtlessness. The old is there to mislead the young; even
+     sleep brings unrighteousness.
+
+     7. Let me without sin give satisfaction to the angry god,
+     like a slave to the bounteous lord. The lord god enlightened
+     the foolish; he, the wisest, leads his worshipper to wealth.
+
+     8. O lord Varu_n_a, may this song go well to thy heart! May
+     we prosper in keeping and acquiring! Protect us, O gods,
+     always with your blessings!
+
+The consciousness of sin is a prominent feature in the religion of the
+Veda, so is likewise the belief that the gods are able to take away
+from man the heavy burden of his sins. And when we read such passages
+as 'Varu_n_a is merciful even to him who has committed sin' (Rv. VII.
+87, 7), we should surely not allow the strange name of Varu_n_a to jar
+on our ears, but should remember that it is but one of the many names
+which men invented in their helplessness to express their ideas of the
+Deity, however partial and imperfect.
+
+The next hymn, which is taken from the Atharva-veda (IV. 16), will
+show how near the language of the ancient poets of India may approach
+to the language of the Bible:[25]
+
+     1. The great lord of these worlds sees as if he were near.
+     If a man thinks he is walking by stealth, the gods know it
+     all.
+
+     2. If a man stands or walks or hides, if he goes to lie down
+     or to get up, what two people sitting together whisper, king
+     Varu_n_a knows it, he is there as the third.
+
+     3. This earth, too, belongs to Varu_n_a, the king, and this
+     wide sky with its ends far apart. The two seas (the sky and
+     the ocean) are Varu_n_a's loins; he is also contained in
+     this small drop of water.
+
+     4. He who should flee far beyond the sky, even he would not
+     be rid of Varu_n_a, the king. His spies proceed from heaven
+     towards this world; with thousand eyes they overlook this
+     earth.
+
+     5. King Varu_n_a sees all this, what is between heaven and
+     earth, and what is beyond. He has counted the twinklings of
+     the eyes of men. As a player throws the dice, he settles all
+     things.
+
+     6. May all thy fatal nooses, which stand spread out seven by
+     seven and threefold, catch the man who tells a lie, may they
+     pass by him who tells the truth.
+
+[Footnote 25: This hymn was first pointed out by Professor Roth in a
+dissertation on the Atharva-veda (Tübingen, 1856), and it has since
+been translated and annotated by Dr. Muir, in his article on the
+'Vedic Theogony and Cosmogony,' p. 31.]
+
+Another idea which we find in the Veda is that of faith: not only in
+the sense of trust in the gods, in their power, their protection,
+their kindness, but in that of belief in their existence. The Latin
+word credo, I believe, is the same as the Sanskrit _s_raddhâ, and this
+_s_raddhâ occurs in the Veda:
+
+Rv. I. 102, 2. 'Sun and moon go on in regular succession, that we may
+see, Indra, and believe.'
+
+Rv. I. 104, 6. 'Destroy not our future offspring, O Indra, for we have
+believed in thy great power.'
+
+Rv. I. 55, 5. 'When Indra hurls again and again his thunderbolt, then
+they believe in the brilliant god.'[26]
+
+[Footnote 26: During violent thunderstorms the natives of New Holland
+are so afraid of War-ru-gu-ra, the evil spirit, that they seek shelter
+even in caves haunted by Ingnas, subordinate demons, which at other
+times they would enter on no account. There, in silent terror, they
+prostrate themselves with their faces to the ground, waiting until the
+spirit, having expended his fury, shall retire to Uta (hell) without
+having discovered their hiding-place.--'Transactions of Ethnological
+Society,' vol. iii. p. 229. Oldfield, 'The Aborigines of Australia.']
+
+A similar sentiment, namely, that men only believe in the gods when
+they see their signs and wonders in the sky, is expressed by another
+poet (Rv. VIII. 21, 14):
+
+     'Thou, Indra, never findest a rich man to be thy friend;
+     wine-swillers despise thee. But when thou thunderest, when
+     thou gatherest (the clouds), then thou art called, like a
+     father.'
+
+And with this belief in god, there is also coupled that doubt, that
+true scepticism, if we may so call it, which is meant to give to faith
+its real strength. We find passages even in these early hymns where
+the poet asks himself, whether there is really such a god as Indra,--a
+question immediately succeeded by an answer, as if given to the poet
+by Indra himself. Thus we read Rv. VIII. 89, 3:
+
+     'If you wish for strength, offer to Indra a hymn of praise:
+     a true hymn, if Indra truly exist; for some one says, Indra
+     does not exist! Who has seen him? Whom shall we praise?'
+
+Then Indra answers through the poet:
+
+     'Here I am, O worshipper, behold me here! in might I surpass
+     all things.'
+
+Similar visions occur elsewhere, where the poet, after inviting a god
+to a sacrifice, or imploring his pardon for his offences, suddenly
+exclaims that he has seen the god, and that he feels that his prayer
+is granted. For instance:
+
+     HYMN TO VARU_N_A (Rv. I. 25).
+
+     1. However we break thy laws from day to day, men as we are,
+     O god, Varu_n_a,
+
+     2. Do not deliver us unto death, nor to the blow of the
+     furious; nor to the wrath of the spiteful!
+
+     3. To propitiate thee, O Varu_n_a, we unbend thy mind with
+     songs, as the charioteer a weary steed.
+
+     4. Away from me they flee dispirited, intent only on gaining
+     wealth; as birds to their nests.
+
+     5. When shall we bring hither the man, who is victory to the
+     warriors; when shall we bring Varu_n_a, the wide-seeing, to
+     be propitiated?
+
+     [6. This they (Mitra and Varu_n_a) take in common; gracious,
+     they never fail the faithful giver.]
+
+     7. He who knows the place of the birds that fly through the
+     sky, who on the waters knows the ships;--
+
+     8. He, the upholder of order, who knows the twelve months
+     with the offspring of each, and knows the month that is
+     engendered afterwards;--
+
+     9. He who knows the track of the wind, of the wide, the
+     bright, the mighty; and knows those who reside on high;--
+
+     10. He, the upholder of order, Varu_n_a, sits down among his
+     people; he, the wise, sits there to govern.
+
+     11. From thence perceiving all wondrous things, he sees what
+     has been and what will be done.
+
+     12. May he, the wise Âditya, make our paths straight all our
+     days; may he prolong our lives!
+
+     13. Varu_n_a, wearing golden mail, has put on his shining
+     cloak; the spies sat down around him.
+
+     14. The god whom the scoffers do not provoke, nor the
+     tormentors of men, nor the plotters of mischief;--
+
+     15. He, who gives to men glory, and not half glory, who
+     gives it even to our own selves;--
+
+     16. Yearning for him, the far-seeing, my thoughts move
+     onwards, as kine move to their pastures.
+
+     17. Let us speak together again, because my honey has been
+     brought: that thou mayst eat what thou likest, like a
+     friend.
+
+     18. Did I see the god who is to be seen by all, did I see
+     the chariot above the earth? He must have accepted my
+     prayers.
+
+     19. O hear this my calling, Varu_n_a, be gracious now;
+     longing for help, I have called upon thee.
+
+     20. Thou, O wise god, art lord of all, of heaven and earth:
+     listen on thy way.
+
+     21. That I may live, take from me the upper rope, loose the
+     middle, and remove the lowest!
+
+In conclusion, let me tell you that there is in the Veda no trace of
+metempsychosis or that transmigration of souls from human to animal
+bodies which is generally supposed to be a distinguishing feature of
+Indian religion. Instead of this, we find what is really the sine quâ
+non of all real religion, a belief in immortality, and in personal
+immortality. Without a belief in personal immortality, religion surely
+is like an arch resting on one pillar, like a bridge ending in an
+abyss. We cannot wonder at the great difficulties felt and expressed
+by bishop Warburton and other eminent divines, with regard to the
+supposed total absence of the doctrine of immortality or personal
+immortality in the Old Testament; and it is equally startling that the
+Sadducees who sat in the same council with the high-priest, openly
+denied the resurrection.[27] However, though not expressly asserted
+anywhere, a belief in personal immortality is taken for granted in
+several passages of the Old Testament, and we can hardly think of
+Abraham or Moses as without a belief in life and immortality. But
+while this difficulty, so keenly felt with regard to the Jewish
+religion, ought to make us careful in the judgments which we form of
+other religions, and teach us the wisdom of charitable interpretation,
+it is all the more important to mark that in the Veda passages occur
+where immortality of the soul, personal immortality and personal
+responsibility after death, are clearly proclaimed. Thus we read:
+
+[Footnote 27: Acts xxii. 30, xxiii. 6.]
+
+     'He who gives alms goes to the highest place in heaven; he
+     goes to the gods' (Rv. I. 125, 56).
+
+Another poet, after rebuking those who are rich and do not
+communicate, says:
+
+     'The kind mortal is greater than the great in heaven!'
+
+Even the idea, so frequent in the later literature of the Brahmans,
+that immortality is secured by a son, seems implied, unless our
+translation deceives us, in one passage of the Veda (VII. 56, 24):
+'Asmé (íti) vira_h_ maruta_h_ sushmî astu _g_ánânâm yá_h_ ásura_h_ vi
+dhartâ, apá_h_ yéna su-kshitáye tárema, ádha svám óka_h_ abhí vah
+syáma.' 'O Maruts, may there be to us a strong son, who is a living
+ruler of men: through whom we may cross the waters on our way to the
+happy abode; then may we come to your own house!'
+
+One poet prays that he may see again his father and mother after death
+(Rv. I. 24, 1); and the fathers (Pit_r_is) are invoked almost like
+gods, oblations are offered to them, and they are believed to enjoy,
+in company with the gods, a life of never ending felicity (Rv. X. 15,
+16).
+
+We find this prayer addressed to Soma (Rv. IX. 113, 7):
+
+     'Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is
+     placed, in that immortal imperishable world place me, O
+     Soma!'
+
+     'Where king Vaivasvata reigns, where the secret place of
+     heaven is, where these mighty waters are, there make me
+     immortal!
+
+     'Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, where
+     the worlds are radiant, there make me immortal!'
+
+     'Where wishes and desires are, where the place of the bright
+     sun is, where there is freedom and delight, there make me
+     immortal!
+
+     'Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and
+     pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire are
+     attained, there make me immortal!'[28]
+
+Whether the old Rishis believed likewise in a place of punishment for
+the wicked, is more doubtful, though vague allusions to it occur in
+the Rig-veda, and more distinct descriptions are found in the
+Atharva-veda. In one verse it is said that the dead is rewarded for
+his good deeds, that he leaves or casts off all evil, and glorified
+takes his body (Rv. X. 14, 8).[29] The dogs of Yama, the king of the
+departed, present some terrible aspects, and Yama is asked to protect
+the departed from them (Rv. X. 14, 11). Again, a pit (karta) is
+mentioned into which the lawless are said to be hurled down (Rv. IX.
+73, 8), and into which Indra casts those who offer no sacrifices (Rv.
+I. 121, 13). One poet prays that the Âdityas may preserve him from the
+destroying wolf, and from falling into the pit (Rv. II. 29, 6). In one
+passage we read that 'those who break the commandments of Varu_n_a and
+who speak lies are born for that deep place' (Rv. IV. 5, 5).[30]
+
+[Footnote 28: Professor Roth, after quoting several passages from the
+Veda in which a belief in immortality is expressed, remarks with great
+truth: 'We here find, not without astonishment, beautiful conceptions
+on immortality expressed in unadorned language with child-like
+conviction. If it were necessary, we might here find the most powerful
+weapons against the view which has lately been revived, and proclaimed
+as new, that Persia was the only birthplace of the idea of
+immortality, and that even the nations of Europe had derived it from
+that quarter. As if the religious spirit of every gifted race was not
+able to arrive at it by its own strength.'--('Journal of the German
+Oriental Society,' vol. iv. p. 427.) See Dr. Muir's article on Yama,
+in the 'Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,' p. 10.]
+
+[Footnote 29: M. M., Die Todtenbestattung bei den Brahmanen
+'Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft,' vol. ix. p.
+xii.]
+
+[Footnote 30: Dr. Muir, article on Yama, p. 18.]
+
+Surely the discovery of a religion like this, as unexpected as the
+discovery of the jaw-bone of Abbeville, deserves to arrest our
+thoughts for a moment, even in the haste and hurry of this busy life.
+No doubt for the daily wants of life, the old division of religions
+into true and false is quite sufficient; as for practical purposes we
+distinguish only between our own mother-tongue on the one side, and
+all other foreign languages on the other. But, from a higher point of
+view, it would not be right to ignore the new evidence that has come
+to light; and as the study of geology has given us a truer insight
+into the stratification of the earth, it is but natural to expect that
+a thoughtful study of the original works of three of the most
+important religions of the world, Brahmanism, Magism, and Buddhism,
+will modify our views as to the growth or history of religion, as to
+the hidden layers of religious thought beneath the soil on which we
+stand. Such inquires should be undertaken without prejudice and
+without fear: the evidence is placed before us; our duty is to sift it
+critically, to weigh it honestly, and to wait for the results.
+
+Three of these results, to which, I believe, a comparative study of
+religions is sure to lead, I may state before I conclude this Lecture:
+
+     1. We shall learn that religions in their most ancient form,
+     or in the minds of their authors, are generally free from
+     many of the blemishes that attach to them in later times.
+
+     2. We shall learn that there is hardly one religion which
+     does not contain some truth, some important truth; truth
+     sufficient to enable those who seek the Lord and feel after
+     Him, to find Him in their hour of need.
+
+     3. We shall learn to appreciate better than ever what we
+     have in our own religion. No one who has not examined
+     patiently and honestly the other religions of the world, can
+     know what Christianity really is, or can join with such
+     truth and sincerity in the words of St. Paul: 'I am not
+     ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.'
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS.[31]
+
+
+In so comprehensive a work as Mr. Hardwick's 'Christ and other
+Masters,' the number of facts stated, of topics discussed, of
+questions raised, is so considerable that in reviewing it we can
+select only one or two points for special consideration. Mr. Hardwick
+intends to give in his work, of which the third volume has just been
+published, a complete panorama of ancient religion. After having
+discussed in the first volume what he calls the religious tendencies
+of our age, he enters upon an examination of the difficult problem of
+the unity of the human race, and proceeds to draw, in a separate
+chapter, the characteristic features of religion under the Old
+Testament. Having thus cleared his way, and established some of the
+principles according to which the religions of the world should be
+judged, Mr. Hardwick devotes the whole of the second volume to the
+religions of India. We find there, first of all, a short but very
+clear account of the religion of the Veda, as far as it is known at
+present. We then come to a more matter-of-fact representation of
+Brahmanism, or the religion of the Hindus, as represented in the
+so-called Laws of Manu, and in the ancient portions of the two epic
+poems, the Râmâya_n_a and Mahâbhârata. The next chapter is devoted to
+the various systems of Indian philosophy, which all partake more or
+less of a religious character, and form a natural transition to the
+first subjective system of faith in India, the religion of Buddha. Mr.
+Hardwick afterwards discusses, in two separate chapters, the apparent
+and the real correspondences between Hinduism and revealed religion,
+and throws out some hints how we may best account for the partial
+glimpses of truth which exist in the Vedas, the canonical books of
+Buddhism, and the later Purâ_n_as. All these questions are handled
+with such ability, and discussed with so much elegance and eloquence,
+that the reader becomes hardly aware of the great difficulties of the
+subject, and carries away, if not quite a complete and correct, at
+least a very lucid, picture of the religious life of ancient India.
+The third volume, which was published in the beginning of this year,
+is again extremely interesting, and full of the most varied
+descriptions. The religions of China are given first, beginning with
+an account of the national traditions, as collected and fixed by
+Confucius. Then follows the religious system of Lao-tse, or the
+Tao-ism of China, and lastly Buddhism again, only under that modified
+form which it assumed when introduced from India into China. After
+this sketch of the religious life of China, the most ancient centre of
+Eastern civilisation, Mr. Hardwick suddenly transports us to the New
+World, and introduces us to the worship of the wild tribes of America,
+and to the ruins of the ancient temples in which the civilised races
+of that continent, especially the Mexicans, once bowed themselves down
+before their god or gods. Lastly, we have to embark on the South Sea,
+and to visit the various islands which form a chain between the west
+coast of America and the east coast of Africa, stretching over half of
+the globe, and inhabited by the descendants of the once united race of
+the Malayo-Polynesians.
+
+[Footnote 31: 'Christ and other Masters.' An Historical Inquiry into
+some of the chief Parallelisms and Contrasts between Christianity and
+the Religious Systems of the Ancient World, with special reference to
+prevailing Difficulties and Objections. By Charles Hardwick, M.A.,
+Christian Advocate in the University of Cambridge. Parts I, II, III.
+Cambridge, 1858.]
+
+The account which Mr. Hardwick can afford to give of the various
+systems of religion in so short a compass as he has fixed for himself,
+must necessarily be very general; and his remarks on the merits and
+defects peculiar to each, which were more ample in the second volume,
+have dwindled down to much smaller dimensions in the third. He
+declares distinctly that he does not write for missionaries. 'It is
+not my leading object,' he says, 'to conciliate the more thoughtful
+minds of heathendom in favour of the Christian faith. However laudable
+that task may be, however fitly it may occupy the highest and the
+keenest intellect of persons who desire to further the advance of
+truth and holiness among our heathen fellow-subjects, there are
+difficulties nearer home which may in fairness be regarded as
+possessing prior claims on the attention of a Christian Advocate.'
+
+We confess that we regret that Mr. Hardwick should have taken this
+line. If, in writing his criticism on the ancient or modern systems of
+Pagan religion, he had placed himself face to face with a poor
+helpless creature, such as the missionaries have to deal with--a man
+brought up in the faith of his fathers, accustomed to call his god or
+gods by names sacred to him from his first childhood--a man who had
+derived much real help and consolation from his belief in these
+gods--who had abstained from committing crime, because he was afraid
+of the anger of a Divine Being--who had performed severe penance,
+because he hoped to appease the anger of the gods--who had given, not
+only the tenth part of all he valued most, but the half, nay, the
+whole of his property, as a free offering to his priests, that they
+might pray for him or absolve him from his sin--if, in discussing any
+of the ancient or modern systems of Pagan religion, Mr. Hardwick had
+tried to address his arguments to such a person, we believe he would
+himself have felt a more human, real, and hearty interest in his
+subject. He would more earnestly have endeavoured to find out the good
+elements in every form of religious belief. No sensible missionary
+could bring himself to tell a man who has done all that he could do,
+and more than many who have received the true light of the Gospel,
+that he was excluded from all hope of salvation, and by his very birth
+and colour handed over irretrievably to eternal damnation. It is
+possible to put a charitable interpretation on many doctrines of
+ancient heathenism, and the practical missionary is constantly obliged
+to do so. Let us only consider what these doctrines are. They are not
+theories devised by men who wish to keep out the truth of
+Christianity, but sacred traditions which millions of human beings are
+born and brought up to believe in, as we are born and brought up to
+believe in Christianity. It is the only spiritual food which God in
+his wisdom has placed within their reach. But if we once begin to
+think of modern heathenism, and how certain tenets of Lao-tse resemble
+the doctrines of Comte or Spinoza, our equanimity, our historical
+justice, our Christian charity, are gone. We become advocates
+wrangling for victory--we are no longer tranquil observers,
+compassionate friends and teachers. Mr. Hardwick sometimes addresses
+himself to men like Lao-tse or Buddha, who are now dead and gone more
+than two thousand years, in a tone of offended orthodoxy, which may or
+may not be right in modern controversy, but which entirely disregards
+the fact that it has pleased God to let these men and millions of
+human beings be born on earth without a chance of ever hearing of the
+existence of the Gospel. We cannot penetrate into the secrets of the
+Divine wisdom, but we are bound to believe that God has His purpose in
+all things, and that He will know how to judge those to whom so little
+has been given. Christianity does not require of us that we should
+criticise, with our own small wisdom, that Divine policy which has
+governed the whole world from the very beginning. We pity a man who is
+born blind--we are not angry with him; and Mr. Hardwick, in his
+arguments against the tenets of Buddha or Lao-tse, seems to us to
+treat these men too much in the spirit of a policeman who tells a poor
+blind beggar that he is only shamming blindness. However, if, as a
+Christian Advocate, Mr. Hardwick found it impossible to entertain, or
+at least express, any sympathy with the Pagan world, even the cold
+judgment of the historian would have been better than the excited
+pleading of a partisan. Surely it is not necessary, in order to prove
+that our religion is the only true religion, that we should insist on
+the utter falseness of all other forms of belief. We need not be
+frightened if we discover traces of truth, traces even of Christian
+truth, among the sages and lawgivers of other nations. St. Augustine
+was not frightened by this discovery, and every thoughtful Christian
+will feel cheered by the words of that pious philosopher, when he
+boldly declares, that there is no religion which, among its many
+errors, does not contain some real and divine truth. It shows a want
+of faith in God, and in His inscrutable wisdom in the government of
+the world, if we think we ought to condemn all ancient forms of faith,
+except the religion of the Jews. A true spirit of Christianity will
+rather lead us to shut our eyes against many things which are
+revolting to us in the religion of the Chinese, or the wild Americans,
+or the civilised Hindus, and to try to discover, as well as we can,
+how even in these degraded forms of worship a spark of light lies
+hidden somewhere--a spark which may lighten and warm the heart of the
+Gentiles, 'who by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory,
+and honour, and immortality.' There is an undercurrent of thought in
+Mr. Hardwick's book which breaks out again and again, and which has
+certainly prevented him from discovering many a deep lesson which may
+be learnt in the study of ancient religions. He uses harsh language,
+because he is thinking, not of the helpless Chinese, or the dreaming
+Hindu whose tenets he controverts, but of modern philosophers; and he
+is evidently glad of every opportunity where he can show to the latter
+that their systems are mere _rechauffés_ of ancient heathenism. Thus
+he says, in his introduction to the third volume:
+
+     'I may also be allowed to add, that, in the present
+     chapters, the more thoughtful reader will not fail to
+     recognise the proper tendency of certain current
+     speculations, which are recommended to us on the ground that
+     they accord entirely with the last discoveries of science,
+     and embody the deliberate verdicts of the oracle within us.
+     Notwithstanding all that has been urged in their behalf,
+     those theories are little more than a return to
+     long-exploded errors, a resuscitation of extinct volcanoes;
+     or at best, they merely offer to introduce among us an array
+     of civilising agencies, which, after trial in other
+     countries, have been all found wanting. The governing class
+     of China, for example, have long been familiar with the
+     metaphysics of Spinoza. They have also carried out the
+     social principles of M. Comte upon the largest possible
+     scale. For ages they have been what people of the present
+     day are wishing to become in Europe, with this difference
+     only, that the heathen legislator who had lost all faith in
+     God attempted to redress the wrongs and elevate the moral
+     status of his subjects by the study of political science, or
+     devising some new scheme of general sociology; while the
+     positive philosopher of the present day, who has relapsed
+     into the same positions, is in every case rejecting a
+     religious system which has proved itself the mightiest of
+     all civilisers, and the constant champion of the rights and
+     dignity of men. He offers in the stead of Christianity a
+     specious phase of paganism, by which the nineteenth century
+     after Christ may be assimilated to the golden age of Mencius
+     and Confucius; or, in other words, may consummate its
+     religious freedom, and attain the highest pinnacle of human
+     progress, by reverting to a state of childhood and of moral
+     imbecility.'
+
+Few serious-minded persons will like the temper of this paragraph. The
+history of ancient religion is too important, too sacred a subject to
+be used as a masked battery against modern infidelity. Nor should a
+Christian Advocate ever condescend to defend his cause by arguments
+such as a pleader who is somewhat sceptical as to the merits of his
+case, may be allowed to use, but which produce on the mind of the
+Judge the very opposite effect of that which they are intended to
+produce. If we want to understand the religions of antiquity, we must
+try, as well as we can, to enter into the religious, moral, and
+political atmosphere of the ancient world. We must do what the
+historian does. We must become ancients ourselves, otherwise we shall
+never understand the motives and meaning of their faith. Take one
+instance. There are some nations who have always regarded death with
+the utmost horror. Their whole religion may be said to be a fight
+against death, and the chief object of their prayers seems to be a
+long life on earth. The Persian clings to life with intense tenacity,
+and the same feeling exists among the Jews. Other nations, on the
+contrary, regard death in a different light. Death is to them a
+passage from one life to another. No misgiving has ever entered their
+minds as to a possible extinction of existence, and at the first call
+of the priest--nay, sometimes from a mere selfish yearning after a
+better life--they are ready to put an end to their existence on earth.
+Feelings of this kind can hardly be called convictions arrived at by
+the individual. They are national peculiarities, and they exercise an
+irresistible sway over all who belong to the same nation. The loyal
+devotion which the Slavonic nations feel for their sovereign will
+make the most brutalized Russian peasant step into the place where
+his comrade has just been struck down, without a thought of his wife,
+or his mother, or his children, whom he is never to see again. He does
+not do this because, by his own reflection, he has arrived at the
+conclusion that he is bound to sacrifice himself for his emperor or
+for his country--he does it because he knows that every one would do
+the same; and the only feeling of satisfaction in which he would allow
+himself to indulge is, that he was doing his duty. If, then, we wish
+to understand the religions of the ancient nations of the world, we
+must take into account their national character. Nations who value
+life so little as the Hindus, and some of the American and Malay
+nations, could not feel the same horror of human sacrifices, for
+instance, which would be felt by a Jew; and the voluntary death of the
+widow would inspire her nearest relations with no other feeling but
+that of compassion and regret at seeing a young bride follow her
+husband into a distant land. She herself would feel that, in following
+her husband into death, she was only doing what every other widow
+would do--she was only doing her duty. In India, where men in the
+prime of life throw themselves under the car of Jaggernâth, to be
+crushed to death by the idol they believe in--where the plaintiff who
+cannot get redress starves himself to death at the door of his
+judge--where the philosopher who thinks he has learnt all which this
+world can teach him, and who longs for absorption into the Deity,
+quietly steps into the Ganges, in order to arrive at the other shore
+of existence--in such a country, however much we may condemn these
+practices, we must be on our guard and not judge the strange religions
+of such strange creatures according to our own more sober code of
+morality. Let a man once be impressed with a belief that this life is
+but a prison, and that he has but to break through its walls in order
+to breathe the fresh and pure air of a higher life--let him once
+consider it cowardice to shrink from this act, and a proof of courage
+and of a firm faith in God to rush back to that eternal source from
+whence he came--and let these views be countenanced by a whole nation,
+sanctioned by priests, and hallowed by poets, and however we may blame
+and loathe the custom of human sacrifices and religious suicides, we
+shall be bound to confess that to such a man, and to a whole nation of
+such men, the most cruel rites will have a very different meaning from
+what they would have to us. They are not mere cruelty and brutality.
+They contain a religious element, and presuppose a belief in
+immortality, and an indifference with regard to worldly pleasures,
+which, if directed in a different channel, might produce martyrs and
+heroes. Here, at least, there is no danger of modern heresy aping
+ancient paganism; and we feel at liberty to express our sympathy and
+compassion, even with the most degraded of our brethren. The Fijians,
+for instance, commit almost every species of atrocity; but we can
+still discover, as Wilkes remarked in his 'Exploring Expedition,' that
+the source of many of their abhorrent practices is a belief in a
+future state, guided by no just notions of religious or moral
+obligations. They immolate themselves; they think it right to destroy
+their best friends, to free them from the miseries of this life; they
+actually consider it a duty, and perhaps a painful duty, that the son
+should strangle his parents, if requested to do so. Some of the
+Fijians, when interrupted by Europeans in the act of strangling their
+mother, simply replied that she was their mother, and they were her
+children, and they ought to put her to death. On reaching the grave
+the mother sat down, when they all, including children, grandchildren,
+relations, and friends, took an affectionate leave of her. A rope,
+made of twisted tapa, was then passed twice around her neck by her
+sons, who took hold of it and strangled her--after which she was put
+into her grave, with the usual ceremonies. They returned to feast and
+mourn, after which she was entirely forgotten, as though she had not
+existed. No doubt these are revolting rites; but the phase of human
+thought which they disclose is far from being simply revolting. There
+is in these immolations, even in their most degraded form, a grain of
+that superhuman faith which we admire in the temptation of Abraham;
+and we feel that the time will come, nay, that it is coming, when the
+voice of the Angel of the Lord will reach those distant islands, and
+give a higher and better purpose to the wild ravings of their
+religion.
+
+It is among these tribes that the missionary, if he can speak a
+language which they understand, gains the most rapid influence. But he
+must first learn himself to understand the nature of these savages,
+and to translate the wild yells of their devotion into articulate
+language. There is, perhaps, no race of men so low and degraded as the
+Papuas. It has frequently been asserted they had no religion at all.
+And yet these same Papuas, if they want to know whether what they are
+going to undertake is right or wrong, squat before their karwar, clasp
+the hands over the forehead, and bow repeatedly, at the same time
+stating their intentions. If they are seized with any nervous feeling
+during this process, it is considered as a bad sign, and the project
+is abandoned for a time--if otherwise, the idol is supposed to
+approve. Here we have but to translate what they in their helpless
+language call 'nervous feeling' by our word 'conscience,' and we shall
+not only understand what they really mean, but confess, perhaps, that
+it would be well for us if in our own hearts the karwar occupied the
+same prominent place which it occupies in the cottage of every Papua.
+
+_March, 1858._
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THE VEDA AND ZEND-AVESTA.
+
+
+THE VEDA.
+
+
+The main stream of the Aryan nations has always flowed towards the
+north-west. No historian can tell us by what impulse these adventurous
+Nomads were driven on through Asia towards the isles and shores of
+Europe. The first start of this world-wide migration belongs to a
+period far beyond the reach of documentary history; to times when the
+soil of Europe had not been trodden by either Celts, Germans,
+Slavonians, Romans, or Greeks. But whatever it was, the impulse was as
+irresistible as the spell which, in our own times, sends the Celtic
+tribes towards the prairies or the regions of gold across the
+Atlantic. It requires a strong will, or a great amount of inertness,
+to be able to withstand the impetus of such national, or rather
+ethnical, movements. Few will stay behind when all are going. But to
+let one's friends depart, and then to set out ourselves--to take a
+road which, lead where it may, can never lead us to join those again
+who speak our language and worship our gods--is a course which only
+men of strong individuality and great self-dependence are capable of
+pursuing. It was the course adopted by the southern branch of the
+Aryan family, the Brahmanic Aryas of India and the Zoroastrians of
+Iran.
+
+At the first dawn of traditional history we see these Aryan tribes
+migrating across the snow of the Himâlaya southward towards the 'Seven
+Rivers' (the Indus, the five rivers of the Penjâb, and the Sarasvatî),
+and ever since India has been called their home. That before this time
+they had been living in more northern regions, within the same
+precincts with the ancestors of the Greeks, the Italians, Slavonians,
+Germans, and Celts, is a fact as firmly established as that the
+Normans of William the Conqueror were the Northmen of Scandinavia. The
+evidence of language is irrefragable, and it is the only evidence
+worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods. It would
+have been next to impossible to discover any traces of relationship
+between the swarthy natives of India and their conquerors whether
+Alexander or Clive, but for the testimony borne by language. What
+other evidence could have reached back to times when Greece was not
+yet peopled by Greeks, nor India by Hindus? Yet these are the times of
+which we are speaking. What authority would have been strong enough to
+persuade the Grecian army, that their gods and their hero ancestors
+were the same as those of king Porus, or to convince the English
+soldier that the same blood might be running in his veins and in the
+veins of the dark Bengalese? And yet there is not an English jury
+now-a-days, which, after examining the hoary documents of language,
+would reject the claim of a common descent and a spiritual
+relationship between Hindu, Greek, and Teuton. Many words still live
+in India and in England that have witnessed the first separation of
+the northern and southern Aryans, and these are witnesses not to be
+shaken by any cross-examination. The terms for God, for house, for
+father, mother, son, daughter, for dog and cow, for heart and tears,
+for axe and tree, identical in all the Indo-European idioms, are like
+the watchwords of soldiers. We challenge the seeming stranger; and
+whether he answer with the lips of a Greek, a German, or an Indian, we
+recognise him as one of ourselves. Though the historian may shake his
+head, though the physiologist may doubt, and the poet scorn the idea,
+all must yield before the facts furnished by language. There was a
+time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Slavonians, the
+Greeks and Italians, the Persians and Hindus, were living together
+beneath the same roof, separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and
+Turanian races.
+
+It is more difficult to prove that the Hindu was the last to leave
+this common home, that he saw his brothers all depart towards the
+setting sun, and that then, turning towards the south and the east, he
+started alone in search of a new world. But as in his language and in
+his grammar he has preserved something of what seems peculiar to each
+of the northern dialects singly, as he agrees with the Greek and the
+German where the Greek and the German differ from all the rest, and as
+no other language has carried off so large a share of the common Aryan
+heirloom--whether roots, grammar, words, mythes, or legends--it is
+natural to suppose that, though perhaps the eldest brother, the Hindu
+was the last to leave the central home of the Aryan family.
+
+The Aryan nations who pursued a north-westerly direction, stand before
+us in history as the principal nations of north-western Asia and
+Europe. They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of
+history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of
+active life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected
+society and morals, and we learn from their literature and works of
+art the elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of
+philosophy. In continual struggle with each other and with Semitic and
+Turanian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history,
+and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world
+together by the chains of civilisation, commerce, and religion. In a
+word, they represent the Aryan man in his historical character.
+
+But while most of the members of the Aryan family followed this
+glorious path, the southern tribes were slowly migrating towards the
+mountains which gird the north of India. After crossing the narrow
+passes of the Hindukush or the Himâlaya, they conquered or drove
+before them, as it seems without much effort, the aboriginal
+inhabitants of the Trans-Himalayan countries. They took for their
+guides the principal rivers of Northern India, and were led by them to
+new homes in their beautiful and fertile valleys. It seems as if the
+great mountains in the north had afterwards closed for centuries their
+Cyclopean gates against new immigrations, while, at the same time, the
+waves of the Indian Ocean kept watch over the southern borders of the
+peninsula. None of the great conquerors of antiquity,--Sesostris,
+Semiramis, Nebuchadnezzar, or Cyrus,--disturbed the peaceful seats of
+these Aryan settlers. Left to themselves in a world of their own,
+without a past, and without a future before them, they had nothing but
+themselves to ponder on. Struggles there must have been in India also.
+Old dynasties were destroyed, whole families annihilated, and new
+empires founded. Yet the inward life of the Hindu was not changed by
+these convulsions. His mind was like the lotus leaf after a shower of
+rain has passed over it; his character remained the same, passive,
+meditative, quiet, and thoughtful. A people of this peculiar stamp was
+never destined to act a prominent part in the history of the world;
+nay, the exhausting atmosphere of transcendental ideas in which they
+lived could not but exercise a detrimental influence on the active and
+moral character of the Indians. Social and political virtues were
+little cultivated, and the ideas of the useful and the beautiful
+hardly known to them. With all this, however, they had, what the Greek
+was as little capable of imagining, as they were of realising the
+elements of Grecian life. They shut their eyes to this world of
+outward seeming and activity, to open them full on the world of
+thought and rest. The ancient Hindus were a nation of philosophers,
+such as could nowhere have existed except in India, and even there in
+early times alone. It is with the Hindu mind as if a seed were placed
+in a hothouse. It will grow rapidly, its colours will be gorgeous, its
+perfume rich, its fruits precocious and abundant. But never will it be
+like the oak growing in wind and weather, and striking its roots into
+real earth, and stretching its branches into real air beneath the
+stars and the sun of heaven. Both are experiments, the hothouse flower
+and the Hindu mind; and as experiments, whether physiological or
+psychological, both deserve to be studied.
+
+We may divide the whole Aryan family into two branches, the northern
+and the southern. The northern nations, Celts, Greeks, Romans,
+Germans, and Slavonians, have each one act allotted to them on the
+stage of history. They have each a national character to support. Not
+so the southern tribes. They are absorbed in the struggles of thought,
+their past is the problem of creation, their future the problem of
+existence; and the present, which ought to be the solution of both,
+seems never to have attracted their attention, or called forth their
+energies. There never was a nation believing so firmly in another
+world, and so little concerned about this. Their condition on earth is
+to them a problem; their real and eternal life a simple fact. Though
+this is said chiefly with reference to them before they were brought
+in contact with foreign conquerors, traces of this character are still
+visible in the Hindus, as described by the companions of Alexander,
+nay, even in the Hindus of the present day. The only sphere in which
+the Indian mind finds itself at liberty to act, to create, and to
+worship, is the sphere of religion and philosophy; and nowhere have
+religious and metaphysical ideas struck root so deep in the mind of a
+nation as in India. The shape which these ideas took amongst the
+different classes of society, and at different periods of
+civilisation, naturally varies from coarse superstition to sublime
+spiritualism. But, taken as a whole, history supplies no second
+instance where the inward life of the soul has so completely absorbed
+all the other faculties of a people.
+
+It was natural, therefore, that the literary works of such a nation,
+when first discovered in Sanskrit MSS. by Wilkins, Sir W. Jones, and
+others, should have attracted the attention of all interested in the
+history of the human race. A new page in man's biography was laid
+open, and a literature as large as that of Greece or Rome was to be
+studied. The Laws of Manu, the two epic poems, the Râmâya_n_a and
+Mahâbhârata, the six complete systems of philosophy, works on
+astronomy and medicine, plays, stories, fables, elegies, and lyrical
+effusions, were read with intense interest, on account of their age
+not less than their novelty.
+
+Still this interest was confined to a small number of students, and in
+a few cases only could Indian literature attract the eyes of men who,
+from the summit of universal history, survey the highest peaks of
+human excellence. Herder, Schlegel, Humboldt, and Goethe, discovered
+what was really important in Sanskrit literature. They saw what was
+genuine and original, in spite of much that seemed artificial. For the
+artificial, no doubt, has a wide place in Sanskrit literature.
+Everywhere we find systems, rules and models, castes and schools, but
+nowhere individuality, no natural growth, and but few signs of strong
+originality and genius.
+
+There is, however, one period of Sanskrit literature which forms an
+exception, and which will maintain its place in the history of
+mankind, when the name of Kalidâsa and _S_akuntalâ will have been long
+forgotten. It is the most ancient period, the period of the Veda.
+There is, perhaps, a higher degree of interest attaching to works of
+higher antiquity; but in the Veda we have more than mere antiquity. We
+have ancient thought expressed in ancient language. Without insisting
+on the fact that even chronologically the Veda is the first book of
+the Aryan nations, we have in it, at all events, a period in the
+intellectual life of man to which there is no parallel in any other
+part of the world. In the hymns of the Veda we see man left to himself
+to solve the riddle of this world. We see him crawling on like a
+creature of the earth with all the desires and weaknesses of his
+animal nature. Food, wealth, and power, a large family and a long
+life, are the theme of his daily prayers. But he begins to lift up his
+eyes. He stares at the tent of heaven, and asks who supports it? He
+opens his ears to the winds, and asks them whence and whither? He is
+awakened from darkness and slumber by the light of the sun, and him
+whom his eyes cannot behold, and who seems to grant him the daily
+pittance of his existence, he calls 'his life, his breath, his
+brilliant Lord and Protector.' He gives names to all the powers of
+nature, and after he has called the fire Agni, the sun-light Indra,
+the storms Maruts, and the dawn Ushas, they all seem to grow naturally
+into beings like himself, nay, greater than himself. He invokes them,
+he praises them, he worships them. But still with all these gods
+around him, beneath him, and above him, the early poet seems ill at
+rest within himself. There too, in his own breast, he has discovered a
+power that wants a name, a power nearer to him than all the gods of
+nature, a power that is never mute when he prays, never absent when he
+fears and trembles. It seems to inspire his prayers, and yet to
+listen to them; it seems to live in him, and yet to support him and
+all around him. The only name he can find for this mysterious power is
+Bráhman; for bráhman meant originally force, will, wish, and the
+propulsive power of creation. But this impersonal bráhman, too, as
+soon as it is named, grows into something strange and divine. It ends
+by being one of many gods, one of the great triad, worshipped to the
+present day. And still the thought within him has no real name; that
+power which is nothing but itself, which supports the gods, the
+heavens, and every living being, floats before his mind, conceived but
+not expressed. At last he calls it Âtman; for âtman, originally breath
+or spirit, comes to mean Self and Self alone--Self whether divine or
+human, Self whether creating or suffering, Self whether one or all,
+but always Self, independent and free. 'Who has seen the first-born,'
+says the poet, 'when he who has no bones (i. e. form) bore him that
+had bones? Where was the life, the blood, the Self of the world? Who
+went to ask this from any that knew it?' (Rv.I. 164, 4). This idea of
+a divine Self once expressed, everything else must acknowledge its
+supremacy, 'Self is the Lord of all things, Self is the King of all
+things. As all the spokes of a wheel are contained in the nave and the
+circumference, all things are contained in this Self; all selves are
+contained in this Self.[32] Bráhman itself is but Self.'[33]
+
+[Footnote 32: B_r_ihad-âra_n_yaka, IV. 5, 15 ed. Roer, p. 487.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Ibid. p. 478. _K_hândogya-upanishad, VIII. 3, 3-4.]
+
+This Âtman also grew; but it grew, as it were, without attributes. The
+sun is called the Self of all that moves and rests (Rv. I. 115, 1),
+and still more frequently self becomes a mere pronoun. But Âtman
+remained always free from mythe and worship, differing in this from
+the Bráhman (neuter), who has his temples in India even now, and is
+worshipped as Bráhman (masculine), together with Vish_n_u and _S_iva,
+and other popular gods. The idea of the Âtman or Self, like a pure
+crystal, was too transparent for poetry, and therefore was handed over
+to philosophy, which afterwards polished, and turned, and watched it
+as the medium through which all is seen, and in which all is reflected
+and known. But philosophy is later than the Veda, and it is of the
+Vaidik period only I have here to speak.[34]
+
+[Footnote 34: In writing the above, I was thinking rather of the
+mental process that was necessary for the production of such words as
+bráhman, âtman, and others, than of their idiomatic use in the ancient
+literature of India. It might be objected, for instance, that bráhman,
+neut. in the sense of creative power or the principal cause of all
+things, does not occur in the Rig-veda. This is true. But it occurs in
+that sense in the Atharva-veda, and in several of the Brâhma_n_as.
+There we read of 'the oldest or greatest Bráhman which rules
+everything that has been or will be.' Heaven is said to belong to
+Bráhman alone (Atharva-veda X. 8, 1). In the Brâhma_n_as, this Bráhman
+is called the first-born, the self-existing, the best of the gods, and
+heaven and earth are said to have been established by it. Even the
+vital spirits are identified with it (_S_atapatha-brâhma_n_a VIII. 4,
+9, 3).
+
+In other passages, again, this same Brahman is represented as existing
+in man (Atharva-veda X. 7, 17), and in this very passage we can watch
+the transition from the neutral Bráhman into Bráhman, conceived of as
+a masculine:
+
+    Ye purushe bráhma vidus te vidu_h_ paramesh_t_hina_m_,
+    Yo veda paramesh_t_hina_m_, ya_s_ _k_a veda pra_g_âpatim,
+    _G_yesh_t_ha_m_ ye brãhma_n_a_m_ vidus, te skambham anu sa_m_vidu_h_.
+
+    'They who know Bráhman in man, they know the Highest,
+    He who knows the Highest, and he who knows Pra_g_âpati (the lord
+        of creatures),
+    And they who know the oldest Brãhma_n_a, they know the Ground.'
+
+The word Brãhma_n_a which is here used, is a derivative form of
+Bráhman; but what is most important in these lines is the mixing of
+neuter and masculine words, of impersonal and personal deities. This
+process is brought to perfection by changing Bráhman, the neuter, even
+grammatically into Bráhman, a masculine,--a change which has taken
+place in the Âra_n_yakas, where we find Bráhman used as the name of a
+male deity. It is this Bráhman, with the accent on the first, not, as
+has been supposed, brahmán, the priest, that appears again in the
+later literature as one of the divine triad, Bráhman, Vish_n_u,
+_S_iva.
+
+The word bráhman, as a neuter, is used in the Rig-veda in the sense of
+prayer also, originally what bursts forth from the soul, and, in one
+sense, what is revealed. Hence in later times bráhman is used
+collectively for the Veda, the sacred word.
+
+Another word, with the accent on the last syllable, is brahmán, the
+man who prays, who utters prayers, the priest, and gradually the
+Brahman by profession. In this sense it is frequently used in the
+Rig-veda (I. 108, 7), but not yet in the sense of Brahman by birth or
+caste.]
+
+In the Veda, then, we can study a theogony of which that of Hesiod is
+but the last chapter. We can study man's natural growth, and the
+results to which it may lead under the most favourable conditions. All
+was given him that nature can bestow. We see him blest with the
+choicest gifts of the earth, under a glowing and transparent sky,
+surrounded by all the grandeur and all the riches of nature, with a
+language 'capable of giving soul to the objects of sense, and body to
+the abstractions of metaphysics.' We have a right to expect much from
+him, only we must not expect in his youthful poems the philosophy of
+the nineteenth century, or the beauties of Pindar, or, with some
+again, the truths of Christianity. Few understand children, still
+fewer understand antiquity. If we look in the Veda for high poetical
+diction, for striking comparisons, for bold combinations, we shall be
+disappointed. These early poets thought more for themselves than for
+others. They sought rather, in their language, to be true to their own
+thought than to please the imagination of their hearers. With them it
+was a great work achieved for the first time to bind thoughts and
+words together, to find expressions or to form new names. As to
+similes, we must look to the words themselves, which, if we compare
+their radical and their nominal meaning, will be found full of bold
+metaphors. No translation in any modern language can do them justice.
+As to beauty, we must discover it in the absence of all effort, and in
+the simplicity of their hearts. Prose was, at that time, unknown, as
+well as the distinction between prose and poetry. It was the attempted
+imitation of those ancient natural strains of thought which in later
+times gave rise to poetry in our sense of the word, that is to say, to
+poetry as an art, with its counted syllables, its numerous epithets,
+its rhyme and rhythm, and all the conventional attributes of 'measured
+thought.'
+
+In the Veda itself, however--even if by Veda we mean the Rig-veda only
+(the other three, the Sâman, Ya_g_ush, and Âtharva_n_a, having solely
+a liturgical interest, and belonging to an entirely different
+sphere)--in the Rig-veda also, we find much that is artificial,
+imitated, and therefore modern, if compared with other hymns. It is
+true that all the 1017 hymns of the Rig-veda were comprised in a
+collection which existed as such before one of those elaborate
+theological commentaries, known under the name of Brâhma_n_a, was
+written, that is to say, about 800 B.C. But before the date of their
+collection these must have existed for centuries. In different songs
+the names of different kings occur, and we see several generations of
+royal families pass away before us with different generations of
+poets. Old songs are mentioned, and new songs. Poets whose
+compositions we possess are spoken of as the seers of olden times;
+their names in other hymns are surrounded by a legendary halo. In some
+cases, whole books or chapters may be pointed out as more modern and
+secondary, in thought and language. But on the whole the Rig-veda is a
+genuine document, even in its most modern portions not later than the
+time of Lycurgus; and it exhibits one of the earliest and rudest
+phases in the history of mankind; disclosing in its full reality a
+period of which in Greece we have but traditions and names, such as
+Orpheus and Linus, and bringing us as near the beginnings in language,
+thought, and mythology as literary documents can ever bring us in the
+Aryan world.
+
+Though much time and labour have been spent on the Veda, in England
+and in Germany, the time is not yet come for translating it as a
+whole. It is possible and interesting to translate it literally, or in
+accordance with scholastic commentaries, such as we find in India from
+Yâska in the fifth century B.C. down to Sâya_n_a in the fourteenth
+century of the Christian era. This is what Professor Wilson has done
+in his translation of the first book of the Rig-veda; and by strictly
+adhering to this principle and excluding conjectural renderings even
+where they offered themselves most naturally, he has imparted to his
+work a definite character and a lasting value. The grammar of the
+Veda, though irregular, and still in a rather floating state, has
+almost been mastered; the etymology and the meaning of many words,
+unknown in the later Sanskrit, have been discovered. Many hymns, which
+are mere prayers for food, for cattle, or for a long life, have been
+translated, and can leave no doubt as to their real intention. But
+with the exception of these simple petitions, the whole world of Vedic
+ideas is so entirely beyond our own intellectual horizon, that instead
+of translating we can as yet only guess and combine. Here it is no
+longer a mere question of skilful deciphering. We may collect all the
+passages where an obscure word occurs, we may compare them and look
+for a meaning which would be appropriate to all; but the difficulty
+lies in finding a sense which we can appropriate, and transfer by
+analogy into our own language and thought. We must be able to
+translate our feelings and ideas into their language at the same time
+that we translate their poems and prayers into our language. We must
+not despair even where their words seem meaningless and their ideas
+barren or wild. What seems at first childish may at a happier moment
+disclose a sublime simplicity, and even in helpless expressions we may
+recognise aspirations after some high and noble idea. When the scholar
+has done his work, the poet and philosopher must take it up and finish
+it. Let the scholar collect, collate, sift, and reject--let him say
+what is possible or not according to the laws of the Vaidik
+language--let him study the commentaries, the Sûtras, the Brâhma_n_as,
+and even later works, in order to exhaust all the sources from which
+information can be derived. He must not despise the tradition of the
+Brahmans, even where their misconceptions and the causes of their
+misconceptions are palpable. To know what a passage cannot mean is
+frequently the key to its real meaning; and whatever reasons may be
+pleaded for declining a careful perusal of the traditional
+interpretations of Yâska or Sâya_n_a, they can all be traced back to
+an ill-concealed argumentum paupertatis. Not a corner in the
+Brâhma_n_as, the Sûtras, Yâska, and Sâya_n_a should be left unexplored
+before we venture to propose a rendering of our own. Sâya_n_a, though
+the most modern, is on the whole the most sober interpreter. Most of
+his etymological absurdities must be placed to Yâska's account, and
+the optional renderings which he allows for metaphysical, theological,
+or ceremonial purposes, are mostly due to his regard for the
+Brâhma_n_as. The Brâhma_n_as, though nearest in time to the hymns of
+the Rig-veda, indulge in the most frivolous and ill-judged
+interpretations. When the ancient Rishi exclaims with a troubled
+heart, 'Who is the greatest of the gods? Who shall first be praised by
+our songs?'--the author of the Brahma_n_a sees in the interrogative
+pronoun 'Who' some divine name, a place is allotted in the sacrificial
+invocations to a god 'Who,' and hymns addressed to him are called
+'Whoish' hymns. To make such misunderstandings possible, we must
+assume a considerable interval between the composition of the hymns
+and the Brâhma_n_as. As the authors of the Brâhma_n_as were blinded by
+theology, the authors of the still later Niruktas were deceived by
+etymological fictions, and both conspired to mislead by their
+authority later and more sensible commentators, such as Sâya_n_a.
+Where Sâya_n_a has no authority to mislead him, his commentary is at
+all events rational; but still his scholastic notions would never
+allow him to accept the free interpretation which a comparative study
+of these venerable documents forces upon the unprejudiced scholar. We
+must therefore discover ourselves the real vestiges of these ancient
+poets; and if we follow them cautiously, we shall find that with some
+effort we are still able to walk in their footsteps. We shall feel
+that we are brought face to face and mind to mind with men yet
+intelligible to us, after we have freed ourselves from our modern
+conceits. We shall not succeed always: words, verses, nay, whole hymns
+in the Rig-veda, will and must remain to us a dead letter. But where
+we can inspire those early relics of thought and devotion with new
+life, we shall have before us more real antiquity than in all the
+inscriptions of Egypt or Nineveh; not only old names and dates, and
+kingdoms and battles, but old thoughts, old hopes, old faith, and old
+errors, the old Man altogether--old now, but then young and fresh, and
+simple and real in his prayers and in his praises.
+
+The thoughtful bent of the Hindu mind is visible in the Veda also, but
+his mystic tendencies are not yet so fully developed. Of philosophy we
+find but little, and what we find is still in its germ. The active
+side of life is more prominent, and we meet occasionally with wars of
+kings, with rivalries of ministers, with triumphs and defeats, with
+war-songs and imprecations. Moral sentiments and worldly wisdom are
+not yet absorbed by phantastic intuitions. Still the child betrays the
+passions of the man, and there are hymns, though few in number, in the
+Veda, so full of thought and speculation that at this early period no
+poet in any other nation could have conceived them. I give but one
+specimen, the 129th hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-veda. It is a
+hymn which long ago attracted the attention of that eminent scholar H.
+T. Colebrooke, and of which, by the kind assistance of a friend, I am
+enabled to offer a metrical translation. In judging it we should bear
+in mind that it was not written by a gnostic or by a pantheistic
+philosopher, but by a poet who felt all these doubts and problems as
+his own, without any wish to convince or to startle, only uttering
+what had been weighing on his mind, just as later poets would sing the
+doubts and sorrows of their heart.
+
+    Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky
+    Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above.
+    What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed?
+    Was it the water's fathomless abyss?
+    There was not death--yet was there nought immortal,
+    There was no confine betwixt day and night;
+    The only One breathed breathless by itself,
+    Other than It there nothing since has been.
+    Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
+    In gloom profound--an ocean without light--
+    The germ that still lay covered in the husk
+    Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
+    Then first came love upon it, the new spring
+    Of mind--yea, poets in their hearts discerned,
+    Pondering, this bond between created things
+    And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth
+    Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven?
+    Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose--
+    Nature below, and power and will above--
+    Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here,
+    Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?
+    The Gods themselves came later into being--
+    Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
+    He from whom all this great creation came,
+    Whether his will created or was mute,
+    The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,
+    He knows it--or perchance even He knows not.
+
+The grammar of the Veda (to turn from the contents to the structure of
+the work) is important in many respects. The difference between it and
+the grammar of the epic poems would be sufficient of itself to fix the
+distance between these two periods of language and literature. Many
+words have preserved in these early hymns a more primitive form, and
+therefore agree more closely with cognate words in Greek or Latin.
+Night, for instance, in the later Sanskrit is ni_s_â, which is a form
+peculiarly Sanskritic, and agrees in its derivation neither with nox
+nor with νὑξ. The Vaidik na_s_ or nak, night, is as near to
+Latin as can be. Thus mouse in the common Sanskrit is mûshas or
+mûshikâ, both derivative forms if compared with the Latin mus, muris.
+The Vaidik Sanskrit has preserved the same primitive noun in the
+plural mûsh-as = Lat. mures. There are other words in the Veda which
+were lost altogether in the later Sanskrit, while they were preserved
+in Greek and Latin. Dyaus, sky, does not occur as a masculine in the
+ordinary Sanskrit; it occurs in the Veda, and thus bears witness to
+the early Aryan worship of Dyaus, the Greek Zeús. Ushas, dawn, again
+in the later Sanskrit is neuter. In the Veda it is feminine; and even
+the secondary Vaidik form Ushâsâ is proved to be of high antiquity by
+the nearly corresponding Latin form Aurora. Declension and conjugation
+are richer in forms and more unsettled in their usage. It was a
+curious fact, for instance, that no subjunctive mood existed in the
+common Sanskrit. The Greeks and Romans had it, and even the language
+of the Avesta showed clear traces of it. There could be no doubt that
+the Sanskrit also once possessed this mood, and at last it was
+discovered in the hymns of the Rig-veda. Discoveries of this kind may
+seem trifling, but they are as delightful to the grammarian as the
+appearance of a star, long expected and calculated, is to the
+astronomer. They prove that there is natural order in language, and
+that by a careful induction laws can be established which enable us to
+guess with great probability either at the form or meaning of words
+where but scanty fragments of the tongue itself have come down to us.
+
+_October, 1853._
+
+
+THE ZEND-AVESTA.
+
+
+By means of laws like that of the Correspondence of Letters,
+discovered by Rask and Grimm, it has been possible to determine the
+exact form of words in Gothic, in cases where no trace of them
+occurred in the literary documents of the Gothic nation. Single words
+which were not to be found in Ulfilas have been recovered by applying
+certain laws to their corresponding forms in Latin or Old High-German,
+and thus retranslating them into Gothic. But a much greater conquest
+was achieved in Persia. Here comparative philology has actually had to
+create and reanimate all the materials of language on which it was
+afterwards to work. Little was known of the language of Persia and
+Media previous to the Shahnameh of Firdusi, composed about 1000 A.D.,
+and it is due entirely to the inductive method of comparative
+philology that we have now before us contemporaneous documents of
+three periods of Persian language, deciphered, translated, and
+explained. We have the language of the Zoroastrians, the language of
+the Achæmenians, and the language of the Sassanians, which represent
+the history of the Persian tongue in three successive periods--all now
+rendered intelligible by the aid of comparative philology, while but
+fifty years ago their very name and existence were questioned.
+
+The labours of Anquetil Duperron, who first translated the
+Zend-Avesta, were those of a bold adventurer--not of a scholar. Rask
+was the first who, with the materials collected by Duperron and
+himself, analysed the language of the Avesta scientifically. He
+proved--
+
+     1. That Zend was not a corrupted Sanskrit, as supposed by W.
+     Erskine, but that it differed from it as Greek, Latin, or
+     Lithuanian differed from one another and from Sanskrit.
+
+     2. That the modern Persian was really derived from Zend as
+     Italian was from Latin; and
+
+     3. That the Avesta, or the works of Zoroaster, must have
+     been reduced to writing at least previously to Alexander's
+     conquest. The opinion that Zend was an artificial language
+     (an opinion held by men of great eminence in Oriental
+     philology, beginning with Sir W. Jones) is passed over by
+     Rask as not deserving of refutation.
+
+The first edition of the Zend texts, the critical restitution of the
+MSS., the outlines of a Zend grammar, with the translation and
+philological anatomy of considerable portions of the Zoroastrian
+writings, were the work of the late Eugène Burnouf. He was the real
+founder of Zend philology. It is clear from his works, and from Bopp's
+valuable remarks in his 'Comparative Grammar,' that Zend in its
+grammar and dictionary is nearer to Sanskrit than any other
+Indo-European language. Many Zend words can be retranslated into
+Sanskrit simply by changing the Zend letters into their corresponding
+forms in Sanskrit. With regard to the Correspondence of Letters in
+Grimm's sense of the word, Zend ranges with Sanskrit and the classical
+languages. It differs from Sanskrit principally in its sibilants,
+nasals, and aspirates. The Sanskrit s, for instance, is represented by
+the Zend h, a change analogous to that of an original s into the
+Greek aspirate, only that in Greek this change is not general. Thus
+the geographical name hapta hendu, which occurs in the Avesta, becomes
+intelligible if we retranslate the Zend h into the Sanskrit s. For
+sapta sindhu, or the Seven Rivers, is the old Vaidik name of India
+itself, derived from the five rivers of the Penjâb, together with the
+Indus, and the Sarasvatî.
+
+Where Sanskrit differs in words or grammatical peculiarities from the
+northern members of the Aryan family, it frequently coincides with
+Zend. The numerals are the same in all these languages up to 100. The
+name for thousand, however, sahasra, is peculiar to Sanskrit, and does
+not occur in any of the Indo-European dialects except in Zend, where
+it becomes haza_n_ra. In the same manner the German and Slavonic
+languages have a word for thousand peculiar to themselves; as also in
+Greek and Latin we find many common words which we look for in vain in
+any of the other Indo-European dialects. These facts are full of
+historical meaning; and with regard to Zend and Sanskrit, they prove
+that these two languages continued together long after they were
+separated from the common Indo-European stock.
+
+Still more striking is the similarity between Persia and India in
+religion and mythology. Gods unknown to any Indo-European nation are
+worshipped under the same names in Sanskrit and Zend; and the change
+of some of the most sacred expressions in Sanskrit into names of evil
+spirits in Zend, only serves to strengthen the conviction that we have
+here the usual traces of a schism which separated a community that had
+once been united.
+
+Burnouf, who compared the language and religion of the Avesta
+principally with the later classical Sanskrit, inclined at first to
+the opinion that this schism took place in Persia, and that the
+dissenting Brahmans immigrated afterwards into India. This is still
+the prevailing opinion, but it requires to be modified in accordance
+with new facts elicited from the Veda. Zend, if compared with
+classical Sanskrit, exhibits in many points of grammar, features of a
+more primitive character than Sanskrit. But it can now be shown, and
+Burnouf himself admitted it, that when this is the case, the Vaidik
+differs on the very same points from the later Sanskrit, and has
+preserved the same primitive and irregular form as the Zend. I still
+hold, that the name of Zend was originally a corruption of the
+Sanskrit word _k_handas (i. e. metrical language, cf. scandere),[35]
+which is the name given to the language of the Veda by Pâ_n_ini and
+others. When we read in Pâ_n_ini's grammar that certain forms occur in
+_k_handas, but not in the classical language, we may almost always
+translate the word _k_handas by Zend, for nearly all these rules apply
+equally to the language of the Avesta.
+
+[Footnote 35: The derivation of _k_handas, metre, from the same root
+which yielded the Latin scandere, seems to me still the most
+plausible. An account of the various explanations of this word,
+proposed by Eastern and Western scholars, is to be found in Spiegel's
+'Grammar of the Parsi Language' (preface, and p. 205), and in his
+translation of the Vendidad (pp. 44 and 293). That initial _k_h in
+Sanskrit may represent an original sk, has never, as far as I am
+aware, been denied. (Curtius, 'Grundzüge,' p. 60.) The fact that the
+root _k_hand, in the sense of stepping or striding, has not been fixed
+in Sanskrit as a verbal, but only as a nominal base, is no real
+objection either. The same thing has happened over and over again, and
+has been remarked as the necessary result of the dialectic growth of
+language by so ancient a scholar as Yâska. ('Zeitschrift der Deutschen
+Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, vol. viii. p. 373 seq.) That scandere
+in Latin, in the sense of scanning is a late word, does not affect the
+question at all. What is of real importance is simply this, that the
+principal Aryan nations agree in representing metre as a kind of
+stepping or striding. Whether this arose from the fact that ancient
+poetry was accompanied by dancing or rhythmic choral movements, is a
+question which does not concern us here. (Carmen descindentes
+tripodaverunt in verba hæc: Enos Lases, etc. Orelli, 'Inscript.' No.
+2271.) The fact remains that the people of India, Greece, and Italy
+agree in calling the component elements of their verses feet or steps
+(ποὑς, pes, Sanskrit pad or pâda; padapaṅkti, a row of
+feet, and _g_agatî, i. e. andante, are names of Sanskrit metres). It
+is not too much, therefore, to say that they may have considered metre
+as a kind of stepping or striding, and that they may accordingly have
+called it 'stride.' If then we find the name for metre in Sanskrit
+_k_handas, i. e. skandas, and if we find that scando in Latin (from
+which sca(d)la), as we may gather from ascendo and descendo, meant
+originally striding, and that skand in Sanskrit means the same as
+scando in Latin, surely there can be little doubt as to the original
+intention of the Sanskrit name for metre, viz. _k_handas. Hindu
+grammarians derive _k_handas either from _k_had, to cover, or from
+_k_had, to please. Both derivations are possible, as far as the
+letters are concerned. But are we to accept the dogmatic
+interpretation of the theologians of the _K_handogas, who tell us that
+the metres were called _k_handas because the gods, when afraid of
+death, covered themselves with the metres? Or of the Vâ_g_asaneyins,
+who tell us that the _k_handas were so called because they pleased
+Pra_g_âpati? Such artificial interpretations only show that the
+Brahmans had no traditional feeling as to the etymological meaning of
+that word, and that we are at liberty to discover by the ordinary
+means its original intention. I shall only mention from among much
+that has been written on the etymology of _k_handas, a most happy
+remark of Professor Kuhn, who traces the Northern skald, poet, back to
+the same root as the Sanskrit _k_handas, metre. (Kuhn's 'Zeitschrift,'
+vol. iii. p. 428.)]
+
+In mythology also, the 'nomina and numina' of the Avesta appear at
+first sight more primitive than in Manu or the Mahâbhârata. But if
+regarded from a Vaidik point of view, this relation shifts at once,
+and many of the gods of the Zoroastrians come out once more as mere
+reflections and deflections of the primitive and authentic gods of the
+Veda. It can now be proved, even by geographical evidence, that the
+Zoroastrians had been settled in India before they immigrated into
+Persia. I say the Zoroastrians, for we have no evidence to bear us out
+in making the same assertion of the nations of Persia and Media in
+general. That the Zoroastrians and their ancestors started from India
+during the Vaidik period can be proved as distinctly as that the
+inhabitants of Massilia started from Greece. The geographical
+traditions in the first Fargard of the Vendidad do not interfere with
+this opinion. If ancient and genuine, they would embody a remembrance
+preserved by the Zoroastrians, but forgotten by the Vaidik poets--a
+remembrance of times previous to their first common descent into the
+country of the Seven Rivers. If of later origin, and this is more
+likely, they may represent a geographical conception of the
+Zoroastrians after they had become acquainted with a larger sphere of
+countries and nations, subsequent to their emigration from the land of
+the Seven Rivers.[36]
+
+[Footnote 36: The purely mythological character of this geographical
+chapter has been proved by M. Michel Bréal, 'Journal Asiatique,'
+1862.]
+
+These and similar questions of the highest importance for the early
+history of the Aryan language and mythology, however, must await their
+final decision, until the whole of the Veda and the Avesta shall have
+been published. Of this Burnouf was fully aware, and this was the
+reason why he postponed the publication of his researches into the
+antiquities of the Iranian nation. The same conviction is shared by
+Westergaard and Spiegel, who are each engaged in an edition of the
+Avesta, and who, though they differ on many points, agree in
+considering the Veda as the safest key to an understanding of the
+Avesta. Professor Roth, of Tübingen, has well expressed the mutual
+relation of the Veda and Zend-Avesta under the following simile: 'The
+Veda,' he writes, 'and the Zend-Avesta are two rivers flowing from one
+fountain-head: the stream of the Veda is the fuller and purer, and has
+remained truer to its original character; that of the Zend-Avesta has
+been in various ways polluted, has altered its course, and cannot,
+with certainty, be traced back to its source.'
+
+As to the language of the Achæmenians, presented to us in the Persian
+text of the cuneiform inscriptions, there was no room for doubt, as
+soon as it became legible at all, that it was the same tongue as that
+of the Avesta, only in a second stage of its continuous growth. The
+process of deciphering these bundles of arrows by means of Zend and
+Sanskrit has been very much like deciphering an Italian inscription
+without a knowledge of Italian, simply by means of classical and
+mediæval Latin. It would have been impossible, even with the quick
+perception and patient combination of a Grotefend, to read more than
+the proper names and a few titles on the walls of the Persian palaces,
+without the aid of Zend and Sanskrit; and it seems almost
+providential, as Lassen remarked, that these inscriptions, which at
+any previous period would have been, in the eyes of either classical
+or oriental scholars, nothing but a quaint conglomerate of nails,
+wedges, or arrows, should have been rescued from the dust of centuries
+at the very moment when the discovery and study of Sanskrit and Zend
+had enabled the scholars of Europe to grapple successfully with their
+difficulties.
+
+Upon a closer inspection of the language and grammar of these mountain
+records of the Achæmenian dynasty, a curious fact came to light which
+seemed to disturb the historical relation between the language of
+Zoroaster and the language of Darius. At first, historians were
+satisfied with knowing that the edicts of Darius could be explained by
+the language of the Avesta, and that the difference between the two,
+which could be proved to imply a considerable interval of time, was
+such as to exclude for ever the supposed historical identity of Darius
+Hystaspes and Gushtasp, the mythical pupil of Zoroaster. The language
+of the Avesta, though certainly not the language of Zarathustra,[37]
+displayed a grammar so much more luxuriant, and forms so much more
+primitive than the inscriptions, that centuries must have elapsed
+between the two periods represented by these two strata of language.
+When, however, the forms of these languages were subjected to a more
+searching analysis, it became evident that the phonetic system of the
+cuneiform inscriptions was more primitive and regular than even that
+of the earlier portions of the Avesta. This difficulty, however,
+admits of a solution; and, like many difficulties of the kind, it
+tends to confirm, if rightly explained, the very facts and views which
+at first it seemed to overthrow. The confusion in the phonetic system
+of the Zend grammar is no doubt owing to the influence of oral
+tradition. Oral tradition, particularly if confided to the safeguard
+of a learned priesthood, is able to preserve, during centuries of
+growth and change, the sacred accents of a dead language; but it is
+liable at least to the slow and imperceptible influences of a corrupt
+pronunciation. Nowhere can we see this more clearly than in the Veda,
+where grammatical forms that had ceased to be intelligible, were
+carefully preserved, while the original pronunciation of vowels was
+lost, and the simple structure of the ancient metres destroyed by the
+adoption of a more modern pronunciation. The loss of the Digamma in
+Homer is another case in point. There are no facts to prove that the
+text of the Avesta, in the shape in which the Parsis of Bombay and
+Yezd now possess it, was committed to writing previous to the
+Sassanian dynasty (226 A.D.). After that time it can indeed be traced,
+and to a great extent be controlled and checked by the Huzvaresh
+translations made under that dynasty. Additions to it were made, as it
+seems, even after these Huzvaresh translations; but their number is
+small, and we have no reason to doubt that the text of the Avesta, in
+the days of Arda Viraf, was on the whole exactly the same as at
+present. At the time when these translations were made, it is clear
+from their own evidence that the language of Zarathustra had already
+suffered, and that the ideas of the Avesta were no longer fully
+understood even by the learned. Before that time we may infer, indeed,
+that the doctrine of Zoroaster had been committed to writing, for
+Alexander is said to have destroyed the books of the Zoroastrians,
+Hermippus of Alexandria is said to have read them.[38] But whether on
+the revival of the Persian religion and literature, that is to say 500
+years after Alexander, the works of Zoroaster were collected and
+restored from extant MSS., or from oral tradition, must remain
+uncertain, and the disturbed state of the phonetic system would rather
+lead us to suppose a long-continued influence of oral tradition. What
+the Zend language might become, if entrusted to the guardianship of
+memory alone, unassisted by grammatical study and archæological
+research, may be seen at the present day, when some of the Parsis, who
+are unable either to read or write, still mutter hymns and prayers in
+their temples, which, though to them mere sound, disclose to the
+experienced ear of an European scholar the time-hallowed accents of
+Zarathustra's speech.
+
+[Footnote 37: Spiegel states the results of his last researches into
+the language of the different parts of the Avesta in the following
+words:
+
+'We are now prepared to attempt an arrangement of the different
+portions of the Zend-Avesta in the order of their antiquity. First, we
+place the second part of the Ya_s_na, as separated in respect to the
+language of the Zend-Avesta, yet not composed by Zoroaster himself,
+since he is named in the third person; and indeed everything intimates
+that neither he nor his disciple Gushtasp was alive. The second place
+must unquestionably be assigned to the Vendidad. I do not believe that
+the book was originally composed as it now stands: it has suffered
+both earlier and later interpolations; still, its present form may be
+traced to a considerable antiquity. The antiquity of the work is
+proved by its contents, which distinctly show that the sacred
+literature was not yet completed.
+
+'The case is different with the writings of the last period, among
+which I reckon the first part of the Ya_s_na, and the whole of the
+Yeshts. Among these a theological character is unmistakeable, the
+separate divinities having their attributes and titles dogmatically
+fixed.
+
+'Altogether, it is interesting to trace the progress of religion in
+Parsi writings. It is a significant fact, that in the oldest, that is
+to say, the second part of the Ya_s_na, nothing is fixed in the
+doctrine regarding God. In the writings of the second period, that is
+in the Vendidad, we trace the advance to a theological, and, in its
+way, mild and scientific system. Out of this, in the last place, there
+springs the stern and intolerant religion of the Sassanian
+epoch.'--From the Rev. J. Murray Mitchell's Translation.]
+
+[Footnote 38: 'Lectures on the Science of Language,' First Series, p.
+95.]
+
+Thus far the history of the Persian language had been reconstructed by
+the genius and perseverance of Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and last,
+not least, by the comprehensive labours of Rawlinson, from the
+ante-historical epoch of Zoroaster down to the age of Darius and
+Artaxerxes II. It might have been expected that, after that time, the
+contemporaneous historians of Greece would have supplied the sequel.
+Unfortunately the Greeks cared nothing for any language except their
+own; and little for any other history except as bearing on themselves.
+The history of the Persian language after the Macedonian conquest and
+during the Parthian occupation is indeed but a blank page. The next
+glimpse of an authentic contemporaneous document is the inscription of
+Ardeshir, the founder of the new national dynasty of the Sassanians.
+It is written, though, it may be, with dialectic difference, in what
+was once called 'Pehlevi,' and is now more commonly known as
+'Huzvaresh,' this being the proper title of the language of the
+translations of the Avesta. The legends of Sassanian coins, the
+bilingual inscriptions of Sassanian emperors, and the translation of
+the Avesta by Sassanian reformers, represent the Persian language in
+its third phase. To judge from the specimens given by Anquetil
+Duperron, it was not to be wondered at that this dialect, then called
+Pehlevi, should have been pronounced an artificial jargon. Even when
+more genuine specimens of it became known, the language seemed so
+overgrown with Semitic and barbarous words, that it was expelled from
+the Iranian family. Sir W. Jones pronounced it to be a dialect of
+Chaldaic. Spiegel, however, who is now publishing the text of these
+translations, has established the fact that the language is truly
+Aryan, neither Semitic nor barbarous, but Persian in roots and
+grammar. He accounts for the large infusion of foreign terms by
+pointing to the mixed elements in the intellectual and religious life
+of Persia during and before that period. There was the Semitic
+influence of Babylonia, clearly discernible even in the characters of
+the Achæmenian inscriptions; there was the slow infiltration of Jewish
+ideas, customs, and expressions, working sometimes in the palaces of
+Persian kings, and always in the bazars of Persian cities, on high
+roads and in villages; there was the irresistible power of the Greek
+genius, which even under its rude Macedonian garb emboldened oriental
+thinkers to a flight into regions undreamed of in their philosophy;
+there were the academies, the libraries, the works of art of the
+Seleucidæ; there was Edessa on the Euphrates, a city where Plato and
+Aristotle were studied, where Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist tenets
+were discussed, where Ephraem Syrus taught, and Syriac translations
+were circulated which have preserved to us the lost originals of Greek
+and Christian writers. The title of the Avesta under its Semitic form
+Apestako, was known in Syria as well as in Persia, and the true name
+of its author, Zarathustra, is not yet changed in Syriac into the
+modern Zerdusht. While this intellectual stream, principally flowing
+through Semitic channels, was irrigating and inundating the west of
+Asia, the Persian language had been left without literary cultivation.
+Need we wonder, then, that the men, who at the rising of a new
+national dynasty (226) became the reformers, teachers, and prophets of
+Persia, should have formed their language and the whole train of
+their ideas on a Semitic model. Motley as their language may appear to
+a Persian scholar fresh from the Avesta or from Firdusi, there is
+hardly a language of modern Europe which, if closely sifted, would not
+produce the same impression on a scholar accustomed only to the pure
+idiom of Homer, Cicero, Ulfilas, or Cædmon. Moreover; the soul of the
+Sassanian language--I mean its grammar--is Persian and nothing but
+Persian; and though meagre when compared with the grammar of the
+Avesta, it is richer in forms than the later Parsi, the Deri, or the
+language of Firdusi. The supposition (once maintained) that Pehlevi
+was the dialect of the western provinces of Persia is no longer
+necessary. As well might we imagine, (it is Spiegel's apposite
+remark,) that a Turkish work, because it is full of Arabic words,
+could only have been written on the frontiers of Arabia. We may safely
+consider the Huzvaresh of the translations of the Avesta as the
+language of the Sassanian court and hierarchy. Works also like the
+Bundehesh and Minokhired belong by language and thought to the same
+period of mystic incubation, when India and Egypt, Babylonia and
+Greece, were sitting together and gossiping like crazy old women,
+chattering with toothless gums and silly brains about the dreams and
+joys of their youth, yet unable to recall one single thought or
+feeling with that vigour which once gave it life and truth. It was a
+period of religious and metaphysical delirium, when everything became
+everything, when Mâyâ and Sophia, Mitra and Christ, Viraf and Isaiah,
+Belus, Zarvan, and Kronos were mixed up in one jumbled system of inane
+speculation, from which at last the East was delivered by the
+positive doctrines of Mohammed, the West by the pure Christianity of
+the Teutonic nations.
+
+In order to judge fairly of the merits of the Huzvaresh as a language,
+it must be remembered that we know it only from these speculative
+works, and from translations made by men whose very language had
+become technical and artificial in the schools. The idiom spoken by
+the nation was probably much less infected by this Semitic fashion.
+Even the translators sometimes give the Semitic terms only as a
+paraphrase or more distinct expression side by side with the Persian.
+And, if Spiegel's opinion be right that Parsi, and not Huzvaresh, was
+the language of the later Sassanian empire, it furnishes a clear proof
+that Persian had recovered itself, had thrown off the Semitic
+ingredients, and again become a pure and national speech. This dialect
+(the Parsi) also, exists in translations only; and we owe our
+knowledge of it to Spiegel, the author of the first Parsi grammar.
+
+This third period in the history of the Persian language,
+comprehending the Huzvaresh and Parsi, ends with the downfall of the
+Sassanians. The Arab conquest quenched the last sparks of Persian
+nationality; and the fire-altars of the Zoroastrians were never to be
+lighted again, except in the oasis of Yezd and on the soil of that
+country which the Zoroastrians had quitted as the disinherited sons of
+Manu. Still the change did not take place at once. Mohl, in his
+magnificent edition of the Shahnameh, has treated this period
+admirably, and it is from him that I derive the following facts. For a
+time, Persian religion, customs, traditions, and songs survived in the
+hands of the Persian nobility and landed gentry (the Dihkans) who
+lived among the people, particularly in, the eastern provinces, remote
+from the capital and the seats of foreign dominion, Baghdad, Kufah,
+and Mosul. Where should Firdusi have collected the national strains of
+ancient epic poetry which he revived in the Shahnameh (1000 A.D.), if
+the Persian peasant and the Persian knight had not preserved the
+memory of their old heathen heroes, even under the vigilant oppression
+of Mohammedan zealots? True, the first collection of epic traditions
+was made under the Sassanians. But this work, commenced under
+Nushirvan, and finished under Yezdegird, the last of the Sassanians,
+was destroyed by Omar's command. Firdusi himself tells us how this
+first collection was made by the Dihkan Danishver. 'There was a
+Pehlevan,' he says, 'of the family of the Dihkans, brave and powerful,
+wise and illustrious, who loved to study the ancient times, and to
+collect the stories of past ages. He summoned from all the provinces
+old men who possessed portions of (i. e. who knew) an ancient work in
+which many stories were written. He asked them about the origin of
+kings and illustrious heroes, and how they governed the world which
+they left to us in this wretched state. These old men recited before
+him, one after the other, the traditions of the kings and the changes
+in the empire. The Dihkan listened, and composed a book worthy of his
+fame. This is the monument he left to mankind, and great and small
+have celebrated his name.'
+
+The collector of this first epic poem, under Yezdegird, is called a Dihkan
+by Firdusi. Dihkan, according to the Persian dictionaries, means (1)
+farmer, (2) historian; and the reason commonly assigned for this double
+meaning is, that the Persian farmers happened to be well read in history.
+Quatremère, however, has proved that the Dihkans were the landed nobility
+of Persia; that they kept up a certain independence, even under the sway of
+the Mohammedan Khalifs, and exercised in the country a sort of jurisdiction
+in spite of the commissioners sent from Baghdad, the seat of the
+government. Thus Danishver even is called a Dihkan, although he lived
+previous to the Arab conquest. With him, the title was only intended to
+show that it was in the country and among the peasants that he picked up
+the traditions and songs about Jemshid, Feridun, and Rustem. Of his work,
+however, we know nothing. It was destroyed by Omar; and, though it survived
+in an Arabic translation, even this was lost in later times. The work,
+therefore, had to be recommenced when in the eastern provinces of Persia a
+national, though no longer a Zoroastrian, feeling began to revive. The
+governors of these provinces became independent as soon as the power of the
+Khalifs, after its rapid rise, began to show signs of weakness. Though the
+Mohammedan religion had taken root, even among the national party, yet
+Arabic was no longer countenanced by the governors of the eastern
+provinces. Persian was spoken again at their courts, Persian poets were
+encouraged, and ancient national traditions, stripped of their religious
+garb, began to be collected anew. It is said that Jacob, the son of Leis
+(870), the first prince of Persian blood who declared himself independent
+of the Khalifs, procured fragments of Danishver's epic, and had it
+rearranged and continued. Then followed the dynasty of the Samanians, who
+claimed descent from the Sassanian kings. They, as well as the later
+dynasty of the Gaznevides, pursued the same popular policy. They were
+strong because they rested on the support of a national Persian spirit. The
+national epic poet of the Samanians was Dakiki, by birth a Zoroastrian.
+Firdusi possessed fragments of his work, and has given a specimen of it in
+the story of Gushtasp. The final accomplishment, however, of an idea, first
+cherished by Nushirvan, was reserved for Mahmud the Great, the second king
+of the Gaznevide dynasty. By his command collections of old books were made
+all over the empire. Men who knew ancient poems were summoned to the court.
+One of them was Ader Berzin, who had spent his whole life in collecting
+popular accounts of the ancient kings of Persia. Another was Serv Azad,
+from Merv, who claimed descent from Neriman, and knew all the tales
+concerning Sam, Zal, and Rustem, which had been preserved in his family. It
+was from these materials that Firdusi composed his great epic, the
+Shahnameh. He himself declares, in many passages of his poem, that he
+always followed tradition. 'Traditions,' he says, 'have been given by me;
+nothing of what is worth knowing has been forgotten. All that I shall say,
+others have said before me: they plucked before me the fruits in the garden
+of knowledge.' He speaks in detail of his predecessors: he even indicates
+the sources from which he derives different episodes, and it is his
+constant endeavour to convince his readers that what he relates are not
+poetical inventions of his own. Thus only can we account for the fact,
+first pointed out by Burnouf, that many of the heroes in the Shahnameh
+still exhibit the traits, sadly distorted, it is true, but still
+unmistakeable, of Vaidik deities, which had passed through the Zoroastrian
+schism, the Achæmenian reign, the Macedonian occupation, the Parthian wars,
+the Sassanian revival, and the Mohammedan conquest, and of which the
+Dihkans could still sing and tell, when Firdusi's poem impressed the last
+stamp on the language of Zarathustra. Bopp had discovered already, in his
+edition of Nalas (1832), that the Zend Viva_n_hvat was the same as the
+Sanskrit Vivasvat; and Burnouf, in his 'Observations sur la Grammaire
+Comparée de M. Bopp,' had identified a second personage, the Zend
+Kere_s_â_s_pa with the Sanskrit K_r_i_s_â_s_va. But the similarity between
+the Zend Kere_s_â_s_pa and the Garshasp of the Shahnameh opened a new and
+wide prospect to Burnouf, and afterwards led him on to the most striking
+and valuable results. Some of these were published in his last work on
+Zend, 'Études sur la Langue et les Textes Zends.' This is a collection of
+articles published originally in the 'Journal Asiatique' between 1840 and
+1846; and it is particularly the fourth essay, 'Le Dieu Homa,' which has
+opened an entirely new mine for researches into the ancient state of
+religion and tradition common to the Aryans before their schism. Burnouf
+showed that three of the most famous names in the Shahnameh, Jemshid,
+Feridun, and Garshasp, can be traced back to three heroes mentioned in the
+Zend-Avesta as the representatives of the three earliest generations of
+mankind, Yima Kshaêta, Thraêtaona, and Kere_s_â_s_pa; and that the
+prototypes of these Zoroastrian heroes could be found again in the Yama,
+Trita, and K_r_i_s_â_s_va of the Veda. He went even beyond this. He showed
+that, as in Sanskrit, the father of Yama is Vivasvat, the father of Yima in
+the Avesta is Viva_n_hvat. He showed that as Thraêtaona in Persia is the
+son of Âthwya, the patronymic of Trita in the Veda is Âptya. He explained
+the transition of Thraêtaona into Feridun by pointing to the Pehlevi form
+of the name, as given by Neriosengh, Fredun. This change of an aspirated
+dental into an aspirated labial, which by many is considered a flaw in this
+argument, is of frequent occurrence. We have only to think of φήρ and θήρ,
+of dhûma and fumus, of modern Greek φἑλω and θἑλω--nay, Menenius's 'first
+complaint' would suffice to explain it. Burnouf again identified Zohâk, the
+king of Persia, slain by Feridun, whom even Firdusi still knows by the name
+of Ash dahâk, with the Azhi dahâka, the biting serpent, as he translates
+it, destroyed by Thraêtaona in the Avesta; and with regard to the changes
+which these names, and the ideas originally expressed by them, had to
+undergo on the intellectual stage of the Aryan nation, he says: 'Il est
+sans contredit fort curieux de voir une des Divinités indiennes les plus
+vénérées, donner son nom au premier souverain de la dynastie ariopersanne;
+c'est un des faits qui attestent le plus évidemment l'intime union des deux
+branches de la grande famille qui s'est étendue, bien de siècles avant
+notre ère, depuis le Gange jusqu'à l'Euphrate.'
+
+The great achievements of Burnouf in this field of research have been
+so often ignored, and what by right belongs to him has been so
+confidently ascribed to others, that a faithful representation of the
+real state of the case, as here given, will not appear superfluous.
+There is no intention, while giving his due to Burnouf, to detract
+from the merits of other scholars. Some more minute coincidences,
+particularly in the story of Feridun, have subsequently been added by
+Roth, Benfey, and Weber. The first, particularly, has devoted two most
+interesting articles to the identification of Yama-Yima-Jemshid and
+Trita-Thraêtaona-Feridun. Trita, who has generally been fixed upon as
+the Vaidik original of Feridun, because Traitana, whose name
+corresponds more accurately, occurs but once in the Rig-veda, is
+represented in India as one of the many divine powers ruling the
+firmament, destroying darkness, and sending rain, or, as the poets of
+the Veda are fond of expressing it, rescuing the cows and slaying the
+demons that had carried them off. These cows always move along the
+sky, some dark, some bright-coloured. They low over their pasture;
+they are gathered by the winds; and milked by the bright rays of the
+sun, they drop from their heavy udders a fertilising milk upon the
+parched and thirsty earth. But sometimes, the poet says, they are
+carried off by robbers and kept in dark caves near the uttermost ends
+of the sky. Then the earth is without rain; the pious worshipper
+offers up his prayer to Indra, and Indra rises to conquer the cows for
+him. He sends his dog to find the scent of the cattle, and after she
+has heard their lowing, she returns, and the battle commences. Indra
+hurls his thunderbolt; the Maruts ride at his side; the Rudras roar;
+till at last the rock is cleft asunder, the demon destroyed, and the
+cows brought back to their pasture. This is one of the oldest mythes
+or sayings current among the Aryan nations. It appears again in the
+mythology of Italy, in Greece, in Germany. In the Avesta, the battle
+is fought between Thraêtaona and Azhi dahâka, the destroying serpent.
+Traitana takes the place of Indra in this battle in one song of the
+Veda; more frequently it is Trita, but other gods also share in the
+same honour. The demon, again, who fights against the gods is
+likewise called Ahi, or the serpent, in the Veda. But the
+characteristic change that has taken place between the Veda and Avesta
+is that the battle is no longer a conflict of gods and demons for
+cows, nor of light and darkness for rain. It is the battle of a pious
+man against the power of evil. 'Le Zoroastrisme,' as Burnouf says, 'en
+se détachant plus franchement de Dieu et de la nature, a certainement
+tenu plus de compte de l'homme que n'a fait le Brahmanisme, et on peut
+dire qu'il a regagné en profondeur ce qu'il perdait en étendue. Il ne
+m'appartient pas d'indiquer ici ce qu'un système qui tend à développer
+les instincts les plus nobles de notre nature, et qui impose à
+l'homme, comme le plus important de ses devoirs, celui de lutter
+constamment contre le principe du mal, a pu exercer d'influence sur
+les destinées des peuples de l'Asie, chez lesquels il a été adopté à
+diverses époques. On peut cependant déjà dire que le caractère
+religieux et martial tout à la fois, qui paraît avec des traits si
+héroïques dans la plupart des Jeshts, n'a pas dû être sans action sur
+la mâle discipline sous laquelle ont grandi les commencements de la
+monarchie de Cyrus.'
+
+A thousand years after Cyrus (for Zohâk is mentioned by Moses of
+Khorene in the fifth century) we find all this forgotten once more,
+and the vague rumours about Thraêtaona and Azhi Dahâka are gathered at
+last, and arranged and interpreted into something intelligible to
+later ages. Zohâk is a three-headed tyrant on the throne of
+Persia--three-headed, because the Vaidik Ahi was three-headed, only
+that one of Zohâk's heads has now become human. Zohâk has killed
+Jemshid of the Peshdadian dynasty: Feridun now conquers Zohâk on the
+banks of the Tigris. He then strikes him down with his cow-headed
+mace, and is on the point of killing him, when, as Firdusi says, a
+supernatural voice whispered in his ear--[39]
+
+    Slay him not now, his time is not yet come,
+    His punishment must be prolonged awhile;
+    And as he cannot now survive the wound,
+    Bind him with heavy chains--convey him straight
+    Upon the mountain, there within a cave,
+    Deep, dark, and horrible--with none to soothe
+    His sufferings, let the murderer lingering die.
+    The work of heaven performing, Feridun
+    First purified the world from sin and crime.
+    Yet Feridun was not an angel, nor
+    Composed of musk and ambergris. By justice
+    And generosity he gained his fame.
+    Do thou but exercise these princely virtues,
+    And thou wilt be renowned as Feridun.
+
+[Footnote 39: Cf. Atkinson's Shahnameh, p. 48.]
+
+As a last stage in the mythe of the Vaidik Traitana we may mention
+versions like those given by Sir John Malcolm and others, who see in
+Zohâk the representative of an Assyrian invasion lasting during the
+thousand years of Zohâk's reign, and who change Feridun into Arbaces
+the Mede, the conqueror of Sardanapalus. We may then look at the whole
+with the new light which Burnouf's genius has shed over it, and watch
+the retrograde changes of Arbaces into Feridun, of Feridun into
+Phredûn, of Phredûn into Thraêtaona, of Thraêtaona into
+Traitana,--each a separate phase in the dissolving view of mythology.
+
+As to the language of Persia, its biography is at an end with the
+Shahnameh. What follows exhibits hardly any signs of either growth or
+decay. The language becomes more and more encumbered with foreign
+words; but the grammar seems to have arrived at its lowest ebb, and
+withstands further change. From this state of grammatical numbness,
+languages recover by a secondary formation, which grows up slowly and
+imperceptibly at first in the speech of the people; till at last the
+reviving spirit rises upwards, and sweeps away, like the waters in
+spring, the frozen surface of an effete government, priesthood,
+literature, and grammar.
+
+_October, 1853._
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE AITAREYA-BRÂHMANA.[40]
+
+
+The Sanskrit text, with an English translation of the
+Aitareya-brâhma_n_a, just published at Bombay by Dr. Martin Haug, the
+Superintendent of Sanskrit Studies in the Poona College, constitutes
+one of the most important additions lately made to our knowledge of
+the ancient literature of India. The work is published by the Director
+of Public Instruction, in behalf of Government, and furnishes a new
+instance of the liberal and judicious spirit in which Mr. Howard
+bestows his patronage on works of real and permanent utility. The
+Aitareya-brâhma_n_a, containing the earliest speculations of the
+Brahmans on the meaning of their sacrificial prayers, and the purport
+of their ancient religious rites, is a work which could be properly
+edited nowhere but in India. It is only a small work of about two
+hundred pages, but it presupposes so thorough a familiarity with all
+the externals of the religion of the Brahmans, the various offices of
+their priests, the times and seasons of their sacred rites, the form
+of their innumerable sacrificial utensils, and the preparation of
+their offerings, that no amount of Sanskrit scholarship, such as can
+be gained in England, would have been sufficient to unravel the
+intricate speculations concerning the matters which form the bulk of
+the Aitareya-brâhma_n_a. The difficulty was not to translate the text
+word for word, but to gain a clear, accurate, and living conception of
+the subjects there treated. The work was composed by persons, and for
+persons, who, in a general way, knew the performance of the Vedic
+sacrifices as well as we know the performance of our own sacred rites.
+If we placed the English Prayer-book in the hands of a stranger who
+had never assisted at an English service, we should find that, in
+spite of the simplicity and plainness of its language, it failed to
+convey to the uninitiated a clear idea of what he ought and what he
+ought not to do in church. The ancient Indian ceremonial, however, is
+one of the most artificial and complicated forms of worship that can
+well be imagined; and though its details are, no doubt, most minutely
+described in the Brâhma_n_as and the Sûtras, yet, without having seen
+the actual site on which the sacrifices are offered, the altars
+constructed for the occasion, the instruments employed by different
+priests--the _tout-ensemble_, in fact, of the sacred rites--the reader
+seems to deal with words, but with words only, and is unable to
+reproduce in his imagination the acts and facts which were intended to
+be conveyed by them. Various attempts were made to induce some of the
+more learned Brahmans to edit and translate some of their own rituals,
+and thus enable European scholars to gain an idea of the actual
+performance of their ancient sacrifices, and to enter more easily into
+the spirit of the speculations on the mysterious meaning of these
+rituals, which are embodied in the so-called Brâhma_n_as, or 'the
+sayings of the Brahmans.' But although, thanks to the enlightened
+exertions of Dr. Ballantyne and his associates in the Sanskrit College
+of Benares, Brahmans might have been found knowing English quite
+sufficiently for the purpose of a rough and ready translation from
+Sanskrit into English, such was their prejudice against divulging the
+secrets of their craft that none could be persuaded to undertake the
+ungrateful task. Dr. Haug tells us of another difficulty, which we had
+hardly suspected,--the great scarcity of Brahmans familiar with the
+ancient Vedic ritual:
+
+     'Seeing the great difficulties, nay, impossibility of
+     attaining to anything like a real understanding of the
+     sacrificial art from all the numerous books I had collected,
+     I made the greatest efforts to obtain oral information from
+     some of those few Brahmans who are known by the name of
+     _S_rotriyas or _S_rautis, and who alone are the possessors
+     of the sacrificial mysteries as they descended from the
+     remotest times. The task was no easy one, and no European
+     scholar in this country before me ever succeeded in it. This
+     is not to be wondered at; for the proper knowledge of the
+     ritual is everywhere in India now rapidly dying out, and in
+     many parts, chiefly in those under British rule, it has
+     already died out.'
+
+[Footnote 40: 'The Aitareya-brâhma_n_am of the Rig-veda,' edited and
+translated by Martin Haug, Ph.D., Superintendent of Sanskrit Studies
+in the Poona College. Bombay, 1863. London: Trübner & Co.]
+
+Dr. Haug succeeded, however, at last in procuring the assistance of a
+real Doctor of Divinity, who had not only performed the minor Vedic
+sacrifices, such as the full and new-moon offerings, but had
+officiated at some of the great Soma sacrifices, now very rarely to be
+seen in any part of India. He was induced, we are sorry to say by very
+mercenary considerations, to perform the principal ceremonies in a
+secluded part of Dr. Haug's premises. This lasted five days, and the
+same assistance was afterwards rendered by the same worthy and some of
+his brethren whenever Dr. Haug was in any doubt as to the proper
+meaning of the ceremonial treatises which give the outlines of the
+Vedic sacrifices. Dr. Haug was actually allowed to taste that sacred
+beverage, the Soma, which gives health, wealth, wisdom, inspiration,
+nay immortality, to those who receive it from the hands of a
+twice-born priest. Yet, after describing its preparation, all that Dr.
+Haug has to say of it is:
+
+     'The sap of the plant now used at Poona appears whitish, has
+     a very stringent taste, is bitter, but not sour; it is a
+     very nasty drink, and has some intoxicating effect. I tasted
+     it several times, but it was impossible for me to drink more
+     than some teaspoonfuls.'
+
+After having gone through all these ordeals, Dr. Haug may well say
+that his explanations of sacrificial terms, as given in the notes, can
+be relied upon as certain; that they proceed from what he himself
+witnessed, and what he was able to learn from men who had inherited
+the knowledge from the most ancient times. He speaks with some
+severity of those scholars in Europe who have attempted to explain the
+technical terms of the Vedic sacrifices without the assistance of
+native priests, and without even availing themselves carefully of the
+information they might have gained from native commentaries.
+
+In the preface to his edition of the Aitareya-brâhma_n_a, Dr. Haug has
+thrown out some new ideas on the chronology of Vedic literature which
+deserve careful consideration. Beginning with the hymns of the
+Rig-veda, he admits, indeed, that there are in that collection ancient
+and modern hymns, but he doubts whether it will be possible to draw a
+sharp line between what has been called the _K_handas period,
+representing the free growth of sacred poetry, and the Mantra period,
+during which the ancient hymns were supposed to have been collected
+and new ones added, chiefly intended for sacrificial purposes. Dr.
+Haug maintains that some hymns of a decidedly sacrificial character
+should be ascribed to the earliest period of Vedic poetry. He takes,
+for instance, the hymn describing the horse sacrifice, and he
+concludes from the fact that seven priests only are mentioned in it by
+name, and that none of them belongs to the class of the Udgâtars
+(singers) and Brahmans (superintendents), that this hymn was written
+before the establishment of these two classes of priests. As these
+priests are mentioned in other Vedic hymns, he concludes that the hymn
+describing the horse sacrifice is of a very early date. Dr. Haug
+strengthens his case by a reference to the Zoroastrian ceremonial, in
+which, as he says, the chanters and superintendents are entirely
+unknown, whereas the other two classes, the Hotars (reciters) and
+Adhvaryus (assistants) are mentioned by the same names as Zaotar and
+Rathwiskare. The establishment of the two new classes of priests
+would, therefore, seem to have taken place in India after the
+Zoroastrians had separated from the Brahmans; and Dr. Haug would
+ascribe the Vedic hymns in which no more than two classes of priests
+are mentioned to a period preceding, others in which the other two
+classes of priests are mentioned to a period succeeding, that ancient
+schism. We must confess, though doing full justice to Dr. Haug's
+argument, that he seems to us to stretch what is merely negative
+evidence beyond its proper limits. Surely a poet, though acquainted
+with all the details of a sacrifice and the titles of all the priests
+employed in it, might speak of it in a more general manner than the
+author of a manual, and it would be most dangerous to conclude that
+whatever was passed over by him in silence did not exist at the time
+when he wrote. Secondly, if there were more ancient titles of priests,
+the poet would most likely use them in preference to others that had
+been but lately introduced. Thirdly, even the ancient priestly titles
+had originally a more general meaning before they were restricted to
+their technical significance, just as in Europe bishop meant
+originally an overseer, priest an elder, deacon a minister. In several
+hymns, some of these titles--for instance, that of hotar, invoker--are
+clearly used as appellatives, and not as titles. Lastly, one of the
+priests mentioned in the hymn on the horse sacrifice, the Agnimindha,
+is admitted by Dr. Haug himself to be the same as the Âgnîdhra; and if
+we take this name, like all the others, in its technical sense, we
+have to recognise in him one of the four Brahman priests.[41] We
+should thus lose the ground on which Dr. Haug's argument is chiefly
+based, and should have to admit the existence of Brahman priests as
+early at least as the time in which the hymn on the horse sacrifice
+was composed. But, even admitting that allusions to a more or less
+complete ceremonial[42] could be pointed out in certain hymns, this
+might help us no doubt in subdividing and arranging the poetry of the
+second or Mantra period, but it would leave the question, whether
+allusions to ceremonial technicalities are to be considered as
+characteristics of later hymns, entirely unaffected. Dr. Haug, who
+holds that, in the development of the human race, sacrifice comes
+earlier than religious poetry, formulas earlier than prayers,
+Leviticus earlier than the Psalms, applies this view to the
+chronological arrangement of Vedic literature; and he is, therefore,
+naturally inclined to look upon hymns composed for sacrificial
+purposes, more particularly upon the invocations and formulas of the
+Ya_g_ur-veda, and upon the Nivids preserved in the Brâhma_n_as and
+Sûtras, as relics of greater antiquity than the free poetical
+effusions of the Rishis, which defy ceremonial rules, ignore the
+settled rank of priests and deities, and occasionally allude to
+subjects more appropriate for profane than for sacred poetry:
+
+     'The first sacrifices [he writes] were no doubt simple
+     offerings performed without much ceremonial. A few
+     appropriate solemn words, indicating the giver, the nature
+     of the offering, the deity to which, as well as the purpose
+     for which it was offered, were sufficient. All this would be
+     embodied in the sacrificial formulas known in later times
+     principally by the name of Ya_g_ush, whilst the older one
+     appears to have been Yâ_g_yâ. The invocation of the deity by
+     different names, and its invitation to enjoy the meal
+     prepared, may be equally old. It was justly regarded as a
+     kind of Ya_g_ush, and called Nigada or Nivid.'
+
+[Footnote 41: By an accident two lines containing the names of the
+sixteen priests in my 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature' (p.
+469) have been misplaced. Âgnîdhra and Pot_r_i ought to range with the
+Brahmans, Pratihart_r_i and Subrahma_n_ya with the Udgât_r_is. See
+Â_s_val. Sûtras IV. 1 (p. 286, 'Bibliotheca Indica'); and M. M.,
+Todtenbestattung, p. xlvi. It might be said, however, that the
+Agnimindha was meant as one of the Hotrâ_s_a_m_sins, or one of the
+Seven Priests, the Sapta Hotars. See Haug, Aitareya-brâhma_n_a, vol.
+i. p. 58.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Many such allusions were collected in my 'History of
+Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. 486 seq.; some of them have lately
+been independently discovered by others.]
+
+In comparing these sacrificial formulas with the bulk of the Rig-veda
+hymns, Dr. Haug comes to the conclusion that the former are more
+ancient. He shows that certain of these formulas and Nivids were known
+to the poets of the hymns, as they undoubtedly were; but this would
+only prove that these poets were acquainted with these as well as with
+other portions of the ceremonial. It would only confirm the view
+advocated by others, that certain hymns were clearly written for
+ceremonial purposes, though the ceremonial presupposed by these hymns
+may in many cases prove more simple and primitive than the ceremonial
+laid down in the Brâhma_n_as and Sûtras. But if Dr. Haug tells us that
+the Rishis tried their poetical talent first in the composition of
+Yâ_g_yâs, or verses to be recited while an offering was thrown into
+the fire, and that the Yâ_g_yâs were afterwards extended into little
+songs, we must ask, is this fact or theory? And if we are told that
+'there can be hardly any doubt that the hymns which we possess are
+purely sacrificial, and made only for sacrificial purposes, and that
+those which express more general ideas, or philosophical thoughts, or
+confessions of sins, are comparatively late,' we can only repeat our
+former question. Dr. Haug, when proceeding to give his proofs, that
+the purely sacrificial poetry is more ancient than either profane
+songs or hymns of a more general religious character, only produces
+such collateral evidence as may be found in the literary history of
+the Jews and the Chinese--evidence which is curious, but not
+convincing. Among the Aryan nations, it has hitherto been considered
+as a general rule that poetry precedes prose. Now the Yâ_g_yâs and
+Nivids are prose, and though Dr. Haug calls it rhythmical prose, yet,
+as compared with the hymns, they are prose; and though such an
+argument by itself could by no means be considered as sufficient to
+upset any solid evidence to the contrary, yet it is stronger than the
+argument derived from the literature of nations who are neither of
+them Aryan in language or thought.
+
+But though we have tried to show the insufficiency of the arguments
+advanced by Dr. Haug in support of his theory, we are by no means
+prepared to deny the great antiquity of some of the sacrificial
+formulas and invocations, and more particularly of the Nivids to which
+he for the first time has called attention. There probably existed
+very ancient Nivids or invocations, but are the Nivids which we
+possess the identical Nivids alluded to in the hymns? If so, why have
+they no accents, why do they not form part of the Sanhitâs, why were
+they not preserved, discussed, and analysed with the same religious
+care as the metrical hymns? The Nivids which we now possess may, as
+Dr. Haug supposes, have inspired the Rishis with the burden of their
+hymns; but they may equally well have been put together by later
+compilers from the very hymns of the Rishis. There is many a hymn in
+the Sanhitâ of the Rig-veda which may be called a Nivid, i. e. an
+invitation addressed to the gods to come to the sacrifices, and an
+enumeration of the principal names of each deity. Those who believe,
+on more general grounds, that all religion began with sacrifice and
+sacrificial formulas will naturally look on such hymns and on the
+Nivids as relics of a more primitive age; while others who look upon
+prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, and the unfettered expression of
+devotion and wonderment as the first germs of a religious worship,
+will treat the same Nivids as productions of a later age. We doubt
+whether this problem can be argued on general grounds. Admitting that
+the Jews began with sacrifice and ended with psalms, it would by no
+means follow that the Aryan nations did the same, nor would the
+chronological arrangement of the ancient literature of China help us
+much in forming an opinion of the growth of the Indian mind. We must
+take each nation by itself, and try to find out what they themselves
+hold as to the relative antiquity of their literary documents. On
+general grounds, the problem whether sacrifice or prayer comes first,
+may be argued ad infinitum, just like the problem whether the hen
+comes first or the egg. In the special case of the sacred literature
+of the Brahmans, we must be guided by their own tradition, which
+invariably places the poetical hymns of the Rig-veda before the
+ceremonial hymns and formulas of the Ya_g_ur-veda and Sâma-veda. The
+strongest argument that has as yet been brought forward against this
+view is, that the formulas of the Ya_g_ur-veda and the sacrificial
+texts of the Sâma-veda contain occasionally more archaic forms of
+language than the hymns of the Rig-veda. It was supposed, therefore,
+that, although the hymns of the Rig-veda might have been composed at
+an earlier time, the sacrificial hymns and formulas were the first to
+be collected and to be preserved in the schools by means of a strict
+mnemonic discipline. The hymns of the Rig-veda, some of which have no
+reference whatever to the Vedic ceremonial, being collected at a later
+time, might have been stripped, while being handed down by oral
+tradition, of those grammatical forms which in the course of time had
+become obsolete, but which, if once recognised and sanctioned in
+theological seminaries, would have been preserved there with the most
+religious care.
+
+According to Dr. Haug, the period during which the Vedic hymns were
+composed extends from 1400 to 2000 B.C. The oldest hymns, however, and
+the sacrificial formulas he would place between 2000 and 2400 B.C.
+This period, corresponding to what has been called the _K_handas and
+Mantra periods, would be succeeded by the Brâhma_n_a period, and Dr.
+Haug would place the bulk of the Brâhma_n_as, all written in prose,
+between 1400 and 1200 B.C. He does not attribute much weight to the
+distinction made by the Brahmans themselves between revealed and
+profane literature, and would place the Sûtras almost contemporaneous
+with the Brâhma_n_as. The only fixed point from which he starts in his
+chronological arrangement is the date implied by the position of the
+solstitial points mentioned in a little treatise, the _G_yotisha, a
+date which has been accurately fixed by the Rev. E. Main at 1186
+B.C.[43] Dr. Haug fully admits that such an observation was an
+absolute necessity for the Brahmans in regulating their calendar:
+
+     'The proper time [he writes] of commencing and ending their
+     sacrifices, principally the so-called Sattras or sacrificial
+     sessions, could not be known without an accurate knowledge
+     of the time of the sun's northern and southern progress. The
+     knowledge of the calendar forms such an essential part of
+     the ritual, that many important conditions of the latter
+     cannot be carried out without the former. The sacrifices are
+     allowed to commence only at certain lucky constellations,
+     and in certain months. So, for instance, as a rule, no great
+     sacrifice can commence during the sun's southern progress;
+     for this is regarded up to the present day as an unlucky
+     period by the Brahmans, in which even to die is believed to
+     be a misfortune. The great sacrifices generally take place
+     in spring in the months of _K_aitra and Vai_s_âkha (April
+     and May). The Sattras, which lasted for one year, were, as
+     one may learn from a careful perusal of the fourth book of
+     the Aitareya-brâhma_n_a, nothing but an imitation of the
+     sun's yearly course. They were divided into two distinct
+     parts, each consisting of six months of thirty days each; in
+     the midst of both was the Vishuvat, i. e. equator or central
+     day, cutting the whole Sattra into two halves. The
+     ceremonies were in both halves exactly the same, but they
+     were in the latter half performed in an inverted order.'
+
+[Footnote 43: See preface to the fourth volume of my edition of the
+Rig-veda.]
+
+This argument of Dr. Haug's seems correct as far as the date of the
+establishment of the ceremonial is concerned, and it is curious that
+several scholars who have lately written on the origin of the Vedic
+calendar, and the possibility of its foreign origin, should not have
+perceived the intimate relation between that calendar and the whole
+ceremonial system of the Brahmans. Dr. Haug is, no doubt, perfectly
+right when he claims the invention of the Nakshatras, or the Lunar
+Zodiac of the Brahmans, if we may so call it, for India; he may be
+right also when he assigns the twelfth century as the earliest date
+for the origin of that simple astronomical system on which the
+calendar of the Vedic festivals is founded. He calls the theories of
+others, who have lately tried to claim the first discovery of the
+Nakshatras for China, Babylon, or some other Asiatic country, absurd,
+and takes no notice of the sanguine expectations of certain scholars,
+who imagine they will soon have discovered the very names of the
+Indian Nakshatras in Babylonian inscriptions. But does it follow that,
+because the ceremonial presupposes an observation of the solstitial
+points in about the twelfth century, therefore the theological works
+in which that ceremonial is explained, commented upon, and furnished
+with all kinds of mysterious meanings, were composed at that early
+date? We see no stringency whatever in this argument of Dr. Haug's,
+and we think it will be necessary to look for other anchors by which
+to fix the drifting wrecks of Vedic literature.
+
+Dr. Haug's two volumes, containing the text of the
+Aitareya-brâhma_n_a, translation, and notes, would probably never have
+been published, if they had not received the patronage of the Bombay
+Government. However interesting the Brâhma_n_as may be to students of
+Indian literature, they are of small interest to the general reader.
+The greater portion of them is simply twaddle, and what is worse,
+theological twaddle. No person who is not acquainted beforehand with
+the place which the Brâhma_n_as fill in the history of the Indian
+mind, could read more than ten pages without being disgusted. To the
+historian, however, and to the philosopher they are of infinite
+importance--to the former as a real link between the ancient and
+modern literature of India; to the latter as a most important phase
+in the growth of the human mind, in its passage from health to
+disease. Such books, which no circulating library would touch, are
+just the books which Governments, if possible, or Universities and
+learned societies, should patronise; and if we congratulate Dr. Haug
+on having secured the enlightened patronage of the Bombay Government,
+we may congratulate Mr. Howard and the Bombay Government on having, in
+this instance, secured the services of a bonâ fide scholar like Dr.
+Haug.[44]
+
+_March, 1864._
+
+[Footnote 44: A few paragraphs in this review, in which allusion was
+made to certain charges of what might be called 'literary rattening,'
+brought by Dr. Haug against some Sanskrit scholars, and more
+particularly against the editor of the 'Indische Studien' at Berlin,
+have here been omitted, as no longer of any interest. They may be
+seen, however, in the ninth volume of that periodical, where my review
+has been reprinted, though, as usual, very incorrectly. It was not I
+who first brought these accusations, nor should I have felt justified
+in alluding to them, if the evidence placed before me had not
+convinced me that there was some foundation for them. I am willing to
+admit that the language of Dr. Haug and others may have been too
+severe, but few will think that a very loud and boisterous denial is
+the best way to show that the strictures were quite undeserved. If, by
+alluding to these matters and frankly expressing my disapproval of
+them, I have given unnecessary pain, I sincerely regret it. So much
+for the past. As to the future, care, I trust, will be taken,--for the
+sake of the good fame of German scholarship, which, though living in
+England, I have quite as much at heart as if living in Germany,--not
+to give even the faintest countenance to similar suspicions. If my
+remarks should help in producing that result, I shall be glad to bow
+my head in silence under the vials of wrath that have been poured upon
+it.]
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+ON THE STUDY
+
+OF THE
+
+ZEND-AVESTA IN INDIA.[45]
+
+
+Sanskrit scholars resident in India enjoy considerable advantages over
+those who devote themselves to the study of the ancient literature of
+the Brahmans in this country, or in France and Germany. Although
+Sanskrit is no longer spoken by the great mass of the people, there
+are few large towns in which we do not meet with some more or less
+learned natives--the pandits, or, as they used to be called,
+pundits--men who have passed through a regular apprenticeship in
+Sanskrit grammar, and who generally devote themselves to the study of
+some special branch of Sanskrit literature, whether law, or logic, or
+rhetoric, or astronomy, or anything else. These men, who formerly
+lived on the liberality of the Rajahs and on the superstition of the
+people, find it more and more difficult to make a living among their
+own countrymen, and are glad to be employed by any civilian or
+officer who takes an interest in their ancient lore. Though not
+scholars in our sense of the word, and therefore of little use as
+teachers of the language, they are extremely useful to more advanced
+students, who are able to set them to do that kind of work for which
+they are fit, and to check their labours by judicious supervision. All
+our great Sanskrit scholars, from Sir William Jones to H.H. Wilson,
+have fully acknowledged their obligations to their native assistants.
+They used to work in Calcutta, Benares, and Bombay with a pandit at
+each elbow, instead of the grammar and the dictionary which European
+scholars have to consult at every difficult passage. Whenever an
+English Sahib undertook to edit or translate a Sanskrit text, these
+pandits had to copy and to collate MSS., to make a verbal index, to
+produce parallel passages from other writers, and, in many cases, to
+supply a translation into Hindustani, Bengali, or into their own
+peculiar English. In fact, if it had not been for the assistance thus
+fully and freely rendered by native scholars, Sanskrit scholarship
+would never have made the rapid progress which, during less than a
+century, it has made, not only in India, but in almost every country
+of Europe.
+
+[Footnote 45: 'Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion
+of the Parsees.' By Martin Haug, Dr. Phil. Bombay, 1862.]
+
+With this example to follow, it is curious that hardly any attempt
+should have been made by English residents, particularly in the Bombay
+Presidency, to avail themselves of the assistance of the Parsis for
+the purpose of mastering the ancient language and literature of the
+worshippers of Ormuzd. If it is remembered that, next to Sanskrit,
+there is no more ancient language than Zend--and that, next to the
+Veda, there is, among the Aryan nations, no more primitive religious
+code than the Zend-Avesta, it is surprising that so little should have
+been done by the members of the Indian Civil Service in this important
+branch of study. It is well known that such was the enthusiasm kindled
+in the heart of Anquetil Duperron by the sight of a facsimile of a
+page of the Zend-Avesta, that in order to secure a passage to India,
+he enlisted as a private soldier, and spent six years (1754-1761) in
+different parts of Western India, trying to collect MSS. of the sacred
+writings of Zoroaster, and to acquire from the Dustoors a knowledge of
+their contents. His example was followed, though in a less adventurous
+spirit, by Rask, a learned Dane, who after collecting at Bombay many
+valuable MSS. for the Danish Government, wrote in 1826 his essay 'On
+the Age and Genuineness of the Zend Language.' Another Dane, at
+present one of the most learned Zend scholars in Europe, Westergaard,
+likewise proceeded to India (1841-1843), before he undertook to
+publish his edition of the religious books of the Zoroastrians.
+(Copenhagen, 1852.) During all this time, while French and German
+scholars, such as Burnouf, Bopp, and Spiegel, were hard at work in
+deciphering the curious remains of the Magian religion, hardly
+anything was contributed by English students living in the very heart
+of Parsiism at Bombay and Poona.
+
+We are all the more pleased, therefore, that a young German scholar,
+Dr. Haug--who through the judicious recommendation of Mr. Howard,
+Director of Public Instruction in the Bombay Presidency, was appointed
+to a Professorship of Sanskrit in the Poona College--should have
+grasped the opportunity, and devoted himself to a thorough study of
+the sacred literature of the Parsis. He went to India well prepared
+for his task, and he has not disappointed the hopes which those who
+knew him entertained of him on his departure from Germany. Unless he
+had been master of his subject before he went to Poona, the assistance
+of the Dustoors would have been of little avail to him. But knowing
+all that could be known in Europe of the Zend language and literature,
+he knew what questions to ask, he could check every answer, and he
+could learn with his eyes what it is almost impossible to learn from
+books--namely, the religious ceremonial and the ritual observances
+which form so considerable an element in the Vendidad and Vispered.
+The result of his studies is now before us in a volume of 'Essays on
+the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsees,' published
+at Bombay, 1862. It is a volume of only three hundred and sixty-eight
+pages, and sells in England for one guinea. Nevertheless, to the
+student of Zend it is one of the cheapest books ever published. It
+contains four Essays: 1. History of the Researches into the Sacred
+Writings and Religion of the Parsees from the earliest times down to
+the present; 2. Outline of a Grammar of the Zend Language; 3. The
+Zend-Avesta, or the Scripture of the Parsees; 4. Origin and
+Development of the Zoroastrian Religion. The most important portion is
+the Outline of the Zend Grammar; for, though a mere outline, it is the
+first systematic grammatical analysis of that curious language. In
+other languages, we generally begin by learning the grammar, and then
+make our way gradually through the literature. In Zend, the
+grammatical terminations had first to be discovered by a careful
+anatomy of the literature. The Parsis themselves possessed no such
+work. Even their most learned priests are satisfied with learning the
+Zend-Avesta by heart, and with acquiring some idea of its import by
+means of a Pehlevi translation, which dates from the Sassanian period,
+or of a Sanskrit translation of still later date. Hence the
+translation of the Zend-Avesta published by Anquetil Duperron, with
+the assistance of Dustoor Dârâb, was by no means trustworthy. It was,
+in fact, a French translation of a Persian rendering of a Pehlevi
+version of the Zend original. It was Burnouf who, aided by his
+knowledge of Sanskrit, and his familiarity with the principles of
+comparative grammar, approached, for the first time, the very words of
+the Zend original. He had to conquer every inch of ground for himself,
+and his 'Commentaire sur le Yasna' is, in fact, like the deciphering
+of one long inscription, only surpassed in difficulty by his later
+decipherments of the cuneiform inscriptions of the Achæmenian monarchs
+of Persia. Aided by the labours of Burnouf and others, Dr. Haug has at
+last succeeded in putting together the disjecta membra poetæ, and we
+have now in his Outline, not indeed a grammar like that of Pâ_n_ini
+for Sanskrit, yet a sufficient skeleton of what was once a living
+language, not inferior, in richness and delicacy, even to the idiom of
+the Vedas.
+
+There are, at present, five editions, more or less complete, of the
+Zend-Avesta. The first was lithographed under Burnouf's direction, and
+published at Paris 1829-1843. The second edition of the text,
+transcribed into Roman characters, appeared at Leipzig 1850, published
+by Professor Brockhaus. The third edition, in Zend characters, was
+given to the world by Professor Spiegel, 1851; and about the same
+time a fourth edition was undertaken by Professor Westergaard, at
+Copenhagen, 1852 to 1854. There are one or two editions of the
+Zend-Avesta, published in India, with Guzerati translations, which we
+have not seen, but which are frequently quoted by native scholars. A
+German translation of the Zend-Avesta was undertaken by Professor
+Spiegel, far superior in accuracy to that of Anquetil Duperron, yet in
+the main based on the Pehlevi version. Portions of the ancient text
+had been minutely analysed and translated by Dr. Haug, even before his
+departure for the East.
+
+The Zend-Avesta is not a voluminous work. We still call it the
+Zend-Avesta, though we are told that its proper title is Avesta Zend,
+nor does it seem at all likely that the now familiar name will ever be
+surrendered for the more correct one. Who speaks of Cassius Dio,
+though we are told that Dio Cassius is wrong? Nor do we feel at all
+convinced that the name of Avesta Zend is the original and only
+correct name. According to the Parsis, Avesta means sacred text, Zend
+its Pehlevi translation. But in the Pehlevi translations themselves,
+the original work of Zoroaster is spoken of as Avesta Zend. Why it is
+so called by the Pehlevi translators, we are nowhere told by
+themselves, and many conjectures have, in consequence, been started by
+almost every Zend scholar. Dr. Haug supposes that the earliest
+portions of the Zend-Avesta ought to be called Avesta, the later
+portions Zend--Zend meaning, according to him, commentary,
+explanation, gloss. Neither the word Avesta nor Zend, however, occurs
+in the original Zend texts, and though Avesta seems to be the Sanskrit
+avasthâ, the Pehlevi apestak, in the sense of 'authorised text,' the
+etymology of Zend, as derived from a supposed zanti, Sanskrit _gn_âti,
+knowledge, is not free from serious objections. Avesta Zend was most
+likely a traditional name, hardly understood even at the time of the
+Pehlevi translators, who retained it in their writings. It was
+possibly misinterpreted by them, as many other Zend words have been at
+their hands, and may have been originally the Sanskrit word
+_k_handas,[46] which is applied by the Brahmans to the sacred hymns of
+the Veda. Certainty on such a point is impossible; but as it is but
+fair to give a preference to the conjectures of those who are most
+familiar with the subject, we quote the following explanation of Dr.
+Haug:
+
+     'The meaning of the term "Zend" varied at different periods.
+     Originally it meant the interpretation of the sacred texts
+     descended from Zarathustra and his disciples by the
+     successors of the prophet. In the course of time, these
+     interpretations being regarded as equally sacred with the
+     original texts, both were then called Avesta. Both having
+     become unintelligible to the majority of the Zoroastrians,
+     in consequence of their language having died out, they
+     required a Zend or explanation again. This new Zend was
+     furnished by the most learned priests of the Sassanian
+     period in the shape of a translation into the vernacular
+     language of Persia (Pehlevi) in those days, which
+     translation being the only source to the priests of the
+     present time whence to derive any knowledge of the old
+     texts, is therefore the only Zend or explanation they know
+     of.... The name Pazend, to be met with frequently in
+     connection with Avesta and Zend, denotes the further
+     explanation of the Zend doctrine..... The Pazend language is
+     the same as the so-called Parsi, i. e. the ancient Persian,
+     as written till about the time of Firdusi, 1000 A.D.'
+
+[Footnote 46: See page 84.]
+
+Whatever we may think of the nomenclature thus advocated by Dr. Haug,
+we must acknowledge in the fullest manner his great merit in
+separating for the first time the more ancient from the more modern
+parts of the Zend-Avesta. Though the existence of different dialects
+in the ancient texts was pointed out by Spiegel, and although the
+metrical portions of the Ya_s_na had been clearly marked by
+Westergaard, it is nevertheless Haug's great achievement to have
+extracted these early relics, to have collected them, and to have
+attempted a complete translation of them, as far as such an attempt
+could be carried out at the present moment. His edition of the
+Gâthâs--for this is the name of the ancient metrical portions--marks
+an epoch in the history of Zend scholarship, and the importance of the
+recovery of these genuine relics of Zoroaster's religion has been well
+brought out by Bunsen in the least known of his books, 'Gott in der
+Geschichte.' We by no means think that the translations here offered
+by Dr. Haug are final. We hope, on the contrary, that he will go on
+with the work he has so well begun, and that he will not rest till he
+has removed every dark speck that still covers the image of
+Zoroaster's primitive faith. Many of the passages as translated by him
+are as clear as daylight, and carry conviction by their very
+clearness. Others, however, are obscure, hazy, meaningless. We feel
+that they must have been intended for something else, something more
+definite and forcible, though we cannot tell what to do with the
+words as they stand. Sense, after all, is the great test of
+translation. We must feel convinced that there was good sense in these
+ancient poems, otherwise mankind would not have taken the trouble to
+preserve them; and if we cannot discover good sense in them, it must
+be either our fault, or the words as we now read them were not the
+words uttered by the ancient prophets of the world. The following are
+a few specimens of Dr. Haug's translations, in which the reader will
+easily discover the different hues of certainty and uncertainty, of
+sense and mere verbiage:
+
+     1. That I will ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God!
+     whether your friend (Sraosha) be willing to recite his own
+     hymn as prayer to my friend (Frashaostra or Vistâspa), thou
+     Wise! and whether he should come to us with the good mind,
+     to perform for us true actions of friendship.
+
+     2. That I will ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God!
+     How arose the best present life (this world)? By what means
+     are the present things (the world) to be supported? That
+     spirit, the holy (Vohu mano), O true wise spirit! is the
+     guardian of the beings to ward off from them every evil; He
+     is the promoter of all life.
+
+     3. That I will ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God!
+     Who was in the beginning the Father and Creator of truth?
+     Who made the sun and stars? Who causes the moon to increase
+     and wane if not Thou? This I wish to know, except what I
+     already know.
+
+     4. That I will ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God!
+     Who is holding the earth and the skies above it? Who made
+     the waters and the trees of the field? Who is in the winds
+     and storms that they so quickly run? Who is the Creator of
+     the good-minded beings, thou Wise?
+
+This is a short specimen of the earliest portion of the Zend-Avesta.
+The following is an account of one of the latest, the so-called Ormuzd
+Yasht:
+
+     'Zarathustra asked Ahuramazda after the most effectual spell
+     to guard against the influence of evil spirits. He was
+     answered by the Supreme Spirit, that the utterance of the
+     different names of Ahuramazda protects best from evil.
+     Thereupon Zarathustra begged Ahuramazda to communicate to
+     him these names. He then enumerates twenty. The first is
+     Ahmi, i. e. "I am;" the fourth, Asha-vahista, i. e. "the
+     best purity;" the sixth, "I am wisdom;" the eighth, "I am
+     knowledge;" the twelfth, Ahura, i. e. "living;" the
+     twentieth, "I am who I am, Mazdao."'
+
+Ahuramazda says then further:
+
+     '"If you call me at day or at night by these names, I shall
+     come to assist and help you; the angel Serosh will then
+     come, the genii of the waters and the trees." For the utter
+     defeat of the evil spirits, bad men, witches, Peris, a
+     series of other names are suggested to Zarathustra, such as
+     protector, guardian, spirit, the holiest, the best
+     fire-priest, etc.'
+
+Whether the striking coincidence between one of the suggested names of
+Ahuramazda, namely, 'I am who I am,' and the explanation of the name
+Jehova, Exodus iii. 14, 'I am that I am,' is accidental or not, must
+depend on the age that can be assigned to the Ormuzd Yasht. The
+chronological arrangement, however, of the various portions of the
+Zend-Avesta is as yet merely tentative, and these questions must
+remain for future consideration. Dr. Haug points out other
+similarities between the doctrines of Zoroaster and the Old and New
+Testaments. 'The Zoroastrian religion,' he writes, 'exhibits a very
+close affinity to, or rather identity with, several important
+doctrines of the Mosaic religion and Christianity, such as the
+personality and attributes of the devil, and the resurrection of the
+dead.' Neither of these doctrines, however, would seem to be
+characteristic of the Old or New Testament, and the resurrection of
+the dead is certainly to be found by implication only, and is nowhere
+distinctly asserted, in the religious books of Moses.
+
+There are other points on which we should join issue with Dr.
+Haug--as, for instance, when, on page 17, he calls the Zend the elder
+sister of Sanskrit. This seems to us in the very teeth of the evidence
+so carefully brought together by himself in his Zend grammar. If he
+means the modern Sanskrit, as distinguished from the Vedic, his
+statement would be right to some extent; but even thus, it would be
+easy to show many grammatical forms in the later Sanskrit more
+primitive than their corresponding forms in Zend. These, however, are
+minor points compared with the great results of his labours which Dr.
+Haug has brought together in these four Essays; and we feel certain
+that all who are interested in the study of ancient language and
+ancient religion will look forward with the greatest expectations to
+Dr. Haug's continued investigations of the language, the literature,
+the ceremonial, and the religion of the descendants of Zoroaster.
+
+_December, 1862._
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+PROGRESS OF ZEND SCHOLARSHIP.[47]
+
+
+There are certain branches of philological research which seem to be
+constantly changing, shifting, and, we hope, progressing. After the
+key to the interpretation of ancient inscriptions has been found, it
+by no means follows that every word can at once be definitely
+explained, or every sentence correctly construed. Thus it happens that
+the same hieroglyphic or cuneiform text is rendered differently by
+different scholars; nay, that the same scholar proposes a new
+rendering not many years after his first attempt at a translation has
+been published. And what applies to the decipherment of inscriptions
+applies with equal force to the translation of ancient texts. A
+translation of the hymns of the Veda, or of the Zend-Avesta, and, we
+may add, of the Old Testament too, requires exactly the same process
+as the deciphering of an inscription. The only safe way of finding the
+real meaning of words in the sacred texts of the Brahmans, the
+Zoroastrians, or the Jews, is to compare every passage in which the
+same word occurs, and to look for a meaning that is equally applicable
+to all, and can at the same time be defended on grammatical and
+etymological grounds. This is no doubt a tedious process, nor can it
+be free from uncertainty; but it is an uncertainty inherent in the
+subject itself, for which it would be unfair to blame those by whose
+genius and perseverance so much light has been shed on the darkest
+pages of ancient history. To those who are not acquainted with the
+efforts by which Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and Rawlinson unravelled
+the inscriptions of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, it may seem
+inexplicable, for instance, how an inscription which at one time was
+supposed to confirm the statement, known from Herodotus, that Darius
+obtained the sovereignty of Persia by the neighing of his horse,
+should now yield so very different a meaning. Herodotus relates that
+after the assassination of Smerdis the six conspirators agreed to
+confer the royal dignity on him whose horse should neigh first at
+sunrise. The horse of Darius neighed first, and he was accordingly
+elected king of Persia. After his election, Herodotus states that
+Darius erected a stone monument containing the figure of a horseman,
+with the following inscription: 'Darius, the son of Hystaspes,
+obtained the kingdom of the Persians by the virtue of his horse
+(giving its name), and of Oibareus, his groom.' Lassen translated one
+of the cuneiform inscriptions, copied originally by Niebuhr from a
+huge slab built in the southern wall of the great platform at
+Persepolis, in the following manner: 'Auramazdis magnus est. Is
+maximus est deorum. Ipse Darium regem constituit, benevolens imperium
+obtulit. Ex voluntate Auramazdis Darius rex sum. Generosus sum Darius
+rex hujus regionis Persicæ; hanc mihi Auramazdis obtulit "hoc
+pomœrio ope equi (Choaspis) claræ virtutis."' This translation was
+published in 1844, and the arguments by which Lassen supported it, in
+the sixth volume of the 'Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes,'
+may be read with interest and advantage even now when we know that
+this eminent scholar was mistaken in his analysis. The first step
+towards a more correct translation was made by Professor Holtzmann,
+who in 1845 pointed out that Smerdis was murdered at Susa, not at
+Persepolis; and that only six days later Darius was elected king of
+Persia, which happened again at Susa, and not at Persepolis. The
+monument, therefore, which Darius erected in the προἁστειον,
+or suburb, in the place where the fortunate event which led to his
+elevation occurred, and the inscription recording the event in loco,
+could not well be looked for at Persepolis. But far more important was
+the evidence derived from a more careful analysis of the words of the
+inscription itself. Niba, which Lassen translated as pomœrium,
+occurs in three other places, where it certainly cannot mean suburb.
+It seems to be an adjective meaning splendid, beautiful. Besides, nibâ
+is a nominative singular in the feminine, and so is the pronoun hyâ
+which precedes, and the two words which follow it--uva_s_pâ and
+umartiyâ. Professor Holtzmann translated therefore the same sentence
+which Professor Lassen had rendered by 'hoc pomœrio ope equi
+(Choaspis) claræ virtutis,' by 'quæ nitida, herbosa, celebris est,' a
+translation which is in the main correct, and has been adopted
+afterwards both by Sir H. Rawlinson and M. Oppert. Sir H. Rawlinson
+translates the whole passage as follows: 'This province of Persia
+which Ormazd has granted to me, which is illustrious, abounding in
+good horses, producing good men.' Thus vanished the horse of Darius,
+and the curious confirmation which the cuneiform inscription was at
+one time supposed to lend to the Persian legend recorded by Herodotus.
+
+[Footnote 47: 'A Lecture on the Original Language of Zoroaster.' By
+Martin Haug. Bombay, 1865.]
+
+It would be easy to point out many passages of this kind, and to use
+them in order to throw discredit on the whole method by which these
+and other inscriptions have lately been deciphered. It would not
+require any great display of forensic or parliamentary eloquence, to
+convince the public at large, by means of such evidence, that all the
+labours of Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and Rawlinson had been in vain,
+and to lay down once for all the general principle that the original
+meaning of inscriptions written in a dead language, of which the
+tradition is once lost, can never be recovered. Fortunately, questions
+of this kind are not settled by eloquent pleading or by the votes of
+majorities, but, on the contrary, by the independent judgment of the
+few who are competent to judge. The fact that different scholars
+should differ in their interpretations, or that the same scholars
+should reject his former translation, and adopt a new one that
+possibly may have to be surrendered again as soon as new light can be
+thrown on points hitherto doubtful and obscure--all this, which in the
+hands of those who argue for victory and not for truth, constitutes so
+formidable a weapon, and appeals so strongly to the prejudices of the
+many, produces very little effect on the minds of those who understand
+the reason of these changes, and to whom each new change represents
+but a new step in advance in the discovery of truth.
+
+Nor should the fact be overlooked that, if there seems to be less
+change in the translation of the books of the Old Testament for
+instance, or of Homer, it is due in a great measure to the absence of
+that critical exactness at which the decipherers of ancient
+inscriptions and the translators of the Veda and Zend-Avesta aim in
+rendering each word that comes before them. If we compared the
+translation of the Septuagint with the authorised version of the Old
+Testament, we should occasionally find discrepancies nearly as
+startling as any that can be found in the different translations of
+the cuneiform inscriptions, or of the Veda and Zend-Avesta. In the
+Book of Job, the Vulgate translates the exhortation of Job's wife by
+'Bless God and die;' the English version by 'Curse God and die;' the
+Septuagint by 'Say some word to the Lord and die.' Though, at the time
+when the Seventy translated the Old Testament, Hebrew could hardly be
+called a dead language, yet there were then many of its words the
+original meaning of which even the most learned rabbi would have had
+great difficulty in defining with real accuracy. The meaning of words
+changes imperceptibly and irresistibly. Even where there is a
+literature, and a printed literature like that of modern Europe, four
+or five centuries work such a change that few even of the most learned
+divines in England would find it easy to read and to understand
+accurately a theological treatise written in English four hundred
+years ago. The same happened, and happened to a far greater extent, in
+ancient languages. Nor was the sacred character attributed to certain
+writings any safeguard. On the contrary, greater violence is done by
+successive interpreters to sacred writings than to any other relics
+of ancient literature. Ideas grow and change, yet each generation
+tries to find its own ideas reflected in the sacred pages of their
+early prophets, and, in addition to the ordinary influences which blur
+and obscure the sharp features of old words, artificial influences are
+here at work distorting the natural expression of words which have
+been invested with a sacred authority. Passages in the Veda or
+Zend-Avesta which do not bear on religious or philosophical doctrines
+are generally explained simply and naturally, even by the latest of
+native commentators. But as soon as any word or sentence can be so
+turned as to support a doctrine, however modern, or a precept, however
+irrational, the simplest phrases are tortured and mangled till at last
+they are made to yield their assent to ideas the most foreign to the
+minds of the authors of the Veda and Zend-Avesta.
+
+To those who take an interest in these matters we may recommend a
+small Essay lately published by the Rev. R. G. S. Browne--the 'Mosaic
+Cosmogony'--in which the author endeavours to establish a literal
+translation of the first chapter of Genesis. Touching the first verb
+that occurs in the Bible, he writes: 'What is the meaning or scope of
+the Hebrew verb, in our authorised version, rendered by "created?" To
+English ears and understandings the sound comes naturally, and by long
+use irresistibly, as the representation of an ex nihilo creation. But,
+in the teeth of all the Rabbinical and Cabbalistic fancies of Jewish
+commentators, and with reverential deference to modern criticism on
+the Hebrew Bible, it is not so. R. D. Kimchi, in his endeavour to
+ascertain the shades of difference existing between the terms used in
+the Mosaic cosmogony, has assumed that our Hebrew verb barâ has the
+full signification of ex nihilo creavit. Our own Castell, a profound
+and self-denying scholar has entertained the same groundless notion.
+And even our illustrious Bryan Walton was not inaccessible to this
+oblique ray of Rabbinical or ignis fatuus.'
+
+Mr. Browne then proceeds to quote Gesenius, who gives as the primary
+meaning of barâ, he cut, cut out, carved, planed down, polished; and
+he refers to Lee, who characterizes it as a silly theory that barâ
+meant to create ex nihilo. In Joshua xvii. 15 and 18, the same verb is
+used in the sense of cutting down trees; in Psalm civ. 30 it is
+translated by 'Thou renewest the face of the earth.' In Arabic, too,
+according to Lane, barâ means properly, though not always, to create
+out of pre-existing matter. All this shows that in the verb barâ, as
+in the Sanskrit tvaksh or taksh, there is no trace of the meaning
+assigned to it by later scholars, of a creation out of nothing. That
+idea in its definiteness was a modern idea, most likely called forth
+by the contact between Jews and Greeks at Alexandria. It was probably
+in contradistinction to the Greek notion of matter as co-eternal with
+the Creator, that the Jews, to whom Jehovah was all in all, asserted,
+for the first time deliberately, that God had made all things out of
+nothing. This became afterwards the received and orthodox view of
+Jewish and Christian divines, though the verb barâ, so far from
+lending any support to this theory, would rather show that, in the
+minds of those whom Moses addressed and whose language he spoke, it
+could only have called forth the simple conception of fashioning or
+arranging--if, indeed, it called forth any more definite conception
+than the general and vague one conveyed by the ποιεῖν of the
+Septuagint. To find out how the words of the Old Testament were
+understood by those to whom they were originally addressed is a task
+attempted by very few interpreters of the Bible. The great majority of
+readers transfer without hesitation the ideas which they connect with
+words as used in the nineteenth century to the mind of Moses or his
+contemporaries, forgetting altogether the distance which divides their
+language and their thoughts from the thoughts and language of the
+wandering tribes of Israel.
+
+How many words, again, there are in Homer which have indeed a traditional
+interpretation, as given by our dictionaries and commentaries, but the
+exact purport of which is completely lost, is best known to Greek scholars.
+It is easy enough to translate πολἑμοιο γἑφυραι by the bridges of war, but
+what Homer really meant by these γἑφυραι has never been explained. It is
+extremely doubtful whether bridges, in our sense of the word, were known at
+all at the time of Homer; and even if it could be proved that Homer used
+γἑφυραι in the sense of a dam, the etymology, i. e., the earliest history
+of the word, would still remain obscure and doubtful. It is easy, again, to
+see that ἱερὁς in Greek means something like the English sacred. But how,
+if it did so, the same adjective could likewise be applied to a fish or to
+a chariot, is a question which, if it is to be answered at all, can only be
+answered by an etymological analysis of the word.[48] To say that sacred
+may mean marvellous, and therefore big, is saying nothing, particularly as
+Homer does not speak of catching big fish, but of catching fish in general.
+
+[Footnote 48: On ἱερὁς, the Sanskrit ishira, lively, see
+Kuhn's 'Zeitschrift,' vol. ii. p. 275, vol. iii. p. 134.]
+
+These considerations--which might be carried much further, but which,
+we are afraid, have carried us away too far from our original
+subject--were suggested to us while reading a lecture lately published
+by Dr. Haug, and originally delivered by him at Bombay, in 1864,
+before an almost exclusively Parsi audience. In that lecture Dr. Haug
+gives a new translation of ten short paragraphs of the Zend-Avesta,
+which he had explained and translated in his 'Essays on the Sacred
+Language of the Parsees,' published in 1862. To an ordinary reader the
+difference between the two translations, published within the space of
+two years, might certainly be perplexing, and calculated to shake his
+faith in the soundness of a method that can lead to such varying
+results. Nor can it be denied that, if scholars who are engaged in
+these researches are bent on representing their last translation as
+final and as admitting of no further improvement, the public has a
+right to remind them that 'finality' is as dangerous a thing in
+scholarship as in politics. Considering the difficulty of translating
+the pages of the Zend-Avesta, we can never hope to have every sentence
+of it rendered into clear and intelligible English. Those who for the
+first time reduced the sacred traditions of the Zoroastrians to
+writing were separated by more than a thousand years from the time of
+their original composition. After that came all the vicissitudes to
+which manuscripts are exposed during the process of being copied by
+more or less ignorant scribes. The most ancient MSS. of the
+Zend-Avesta date from the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is
+true there is an early translation of the Zend-Avesta, the Pehlevi
+translation, and a later one in Sanskrit by Neriosengh. But the
+Pehlevi translation, which was made under the auspices of the
+Sassanian kings of Persia, served only to show how completely the
+literal and grammatical meaning of the Zend-Avesta was lost even at
+that time, in the third century after Christ; while the Sanskrit
+translation was clearly made, not from the original, but from the
+Pehlevi. It is true, also, that even in more modern times the Parsis
+of Bombay were able to give to Anquetil Duperron and other Europeans
+what they considered as a translation of the Zend-Avesta in modern
+Persian. But a scholar like Burnouf, who endeavoured for the first
+time to give an account of every word in the Zend text, to explain
+each grammatical termination, to parse every sentence, and to
+establish the true meaning of each term by an etymological analysis
+and by a comparison of cognate words in Sanskrit, was able to derive
+but scant assistance from these traditional translations. Professor
+Spiegel, to whom we owe a complete edition and translation of the
+Zend-Avesta, and who has devoted the whole of his life to the
+elucidation of the Zoroastrian religion, attributes a higher value to
+the tradition of the Parsis than Dr. Haug. But he also is obliged to
+admit that he could ascribe no greater authority to these traditional
+translations and glosses than a Biblical scholar might allow to
+Rabbinical commentaries. All scholars are agreed in fact on this, that
+whether the tradition be right or wrong, it requires in either case to
+be confirmed by an independent grammatical and etymological analysis
+of the original text. Such an analysis is no doubt as liable to error
+as the traditional translation itself, but it possesses this
+advantage, that it gives reasons for every word that has to be
+translated, and for every sentence that has to be construed. It is an
+excellent discipline to the mind even where the results at which we
+arrive are doubtful or erroneous, and it has imparted to these studies
+a scientific value and general interest which they could not otherwise
+have acquired.
+
+We shall give a few specimens of the translations proposed by
+different scholars of one or two verses of the Zend-Avesta. We cannot
+here enter into the grammatical arguments by which each of these
+translations is supported. We only wish to show what is the present
+state of Zend scholarship, and though we would by no means disguise
+the fact of its somewhat chaotic character, yet we do not hesitate to
+affirm that, in spite of the conflict of the opinions of different
+scholars, and in spite of the fluctuation of systems apparently
+opposed to each other, progress may be reported, and a firm hope
+expressed that the essential doctrines of one of the earliest forms of
+religion may in time be recovered and placed before us in their
+original purity and simplicity. We begin with the Pehlevi translation
+of a passage in Ya_s_na, 45:
+
+     'Thus the religion is to be proclaimed; now give an
+     attentive hearing, and now listen, that is, keep your ear in
+     readiness, make your works and speeches gentle. Those who
+     have wished from nigh and far to study the religion, may now
+     do so. For now all is manifest, that Anhuma (Ormazd)
+     created, that Anhuma created all these beings; that at the
+     second time, at the (time of the) future body, Aharman does
+     not destroy (the life of) the worlds. Aharman made evil
+     desire and wickedness to spread through his tongue.'
+
+Professor Spiegel, in 1859, translated the same passage, of which the
+Pehlevi is a running commentary rather than a literal rendering, as
+follows:
+
+     'Now I will tell you, lend me your ear, now hear what you
+     desired, you that came from near and from afar! It is clear,
+     the wise (spirits) have created all things; evil doctrine
+     shall not for a second time destroy the world. The Evil One
+     has made a bad choice with his tongue.'
+
+Next follows the translation of the passage as published by Dr. Haug
+in 1862:
+
+     'All ye, who have come from nigh and far, listen now and
+     hearken to my speech. Now I will tell you all about that
+     pair of spirits how it is known to the wise. Neither the
+     ill-speaker (the devil) shall destroy the second (spiritual)
+     life, nor that man who, being a liar with his tongue,
+     professes the false (idolatrous) belief.'
+
+The same scholar, in 1865, translates the same passage somewhat
+differently:
+
+     'All you that have come from near and far should now listen
+     and hearken to what I shall proclaim. Now the wise have
+     manifested this universe as a duality. Let not the
+     mischief-maker destroy the second life, since he, the
+     wicked, chose with his tongue the pernicious doctrine.'
+
+The principal difficulty in this paragraph consists in the word which
+Dr. Haug translated by duality, viz. dûm, and which he identifies with
+Sanskrit dvam, i. e. dvandvam, pair. Such a word, as far as we are
+aware, does not occur again in the Zend-Avesta, and hence it is not
+likely that the uncertainty attaching to its meaning will ever be
+removed. Other interpreters take it as a verb in the second person
+plural, and hence the decided difference of interpretation.
+
+The sixth paragraph of the same passage is explained by the Pehlevi
+translator as follows:
+
+     'Thus I proclaimed that among all things the greatest is to
+     worship God. The praise of purity is (due) to him who has a
+     good knowledge, (to those) who depend on Ormazd. I hear
+     Spentô-mainyu (who is) Ormazd; listen to me, to what I shall
+     speak (unto you). Whose worship is intercourse with the Good
+     Mind; one can know (experience) the divine command to do
+     good through inquiry after what is good. That which is in
+     the intellect they teach me as the best, viz. the inborn
+     (heavenly) wisdom, (that is, that the divine wisdom is
+     superior to the human).'
+
+Professor Spiegel translates:
+
+     'Now I will tell you of all things the greatest. It is
+     praise with purity of Him who is wise from those who exist.
+     The holiest heavenly being, Ahuramazda, may hear it, He for
+     whose praise inquiry is made from the holy spirit, may He
+     teach me the best by his intelligence.'
+
+Dr. Haug in 1862:
+
+     'Thus I will tell you of the greatest of all (Sraosha), who
+     is praising the truth, and doing good, and of all who are
+     gathered round him (to assist him), by order of the holy
+     spirit (Ahuramazda). The living Wise may hear me; by means
+     of His goodness the good mind increases (in the world). He
+     may lead me with the best of his wisdom.'
+
+Dr. Haug in 1865:
+
+     'I will proclaim as the greatest of all things that one
+     should be good, praising only truth. Ahuramazda will hear
+     those who are bent on furthering (all that is good). May he
+     whose goodness is communicated by the Good Mind instruct me
+     in his best wisdom.'
+
+To those who are interested in the study of Zend, and wish to judge
+for themselves of the trustworthiness of these various translations,
+we can recommend a most useful work lately published in Germany by Dr.
+F. Justi, 'Handbuch der Zendsprache,' containing a complete
+dictionary, a grammar, and selections from the Zend-Avesta.
+
+_September, 1865._
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+GENESIS AND THE ZEND-AVESTA.[49]
+
+
+O that scholars could have the benefit of a little legal training, and
+learn at least the difference between what is probable and what is
+proven! What an advantage also, if they had occasionally to address a
+jury of respectable tradespeople, and were forced to acquire the art,
+or rather not to shrink from the effort, of putting the most intricate
+and delicate points in the simplest and clearest form of which they
+admit! What a lesson again it would be to men of independent research,
+if, after having amassed ever so many bags full of evidence, they had
+always before their eyes the fear of an impatient judge who wants to
+hear nothing but what is important and essential, and hates to listen
+to anything that is not to the point, however carefully it may have
+been worked out, and however eloquently it may be laid before him!
+There is hardly one book published now-a-days which, if everything in
+it that is not to the purpose were left out, could not be reduced to
+half its size. If authors could make up their minds to omit everything
+that is only meant to display their learning, to exhibit the
+difficulties they had to overcome, or to call attention to the
+ignorance of their predecessors, many a volume of thirty sheets would
+collapse into a pamphlet of fifty pages, though in that form it would
+probably produce a much greater effect than in its more inflated
+appearance.
+
+[Footnote 49: 'Erân, das Land zwischen dem Indus und Tigris, Beiträge
+zur Kenntniss des Landes und seiner Geschichte.' Von Dr. Friedrich
+Spiegel. Berlin, 1863.]
+
+Did the writers of the Old Testament borrow anything from the
+Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, or the Indians, is a simple
+enough question. It is a question that may be treated quite apart from
+any theological theories; for the Old Testament, whatever view the
+Jews may take of its origin, may surely be regarded by the historian
+as a really historical book, written at a certain time in the history
+of the world, in a language then spoken and understood, and
+proclaiming certain facts and doctrines meant to be acceptable and
+intelligible to the Jews, such as they were at that time, an
+historical nation, holding a definite place by the side of their more
+or less distant neighbours, whether Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, or
+Indians. It is well known that we have in the language of the New
+Testament the clear vestiges of Greek and Roman influences, and if we
+knew nothing of the historical intercourse between those two nations
+and the writers of the New Testament, the very expressions used by
+them--not only their language, but their thoughts, their allusions,
+illustrations, and similes--would enable us to say that some
+historical contact had taken place between the philosophers of Greece,
+the lawgivers of Rome, and the people of Judea. Why then should not
+the same question be asked with regard to more ancient times? Why
+should there be any hesitation in pointing out in the Old Testament an
+Egyptian custom, or a Greek word, or a Persian conception? If Moses
+was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, nothing surely would
+stamp his writings as more truly historical than traces of Egyptian
+influences that might be discovered in his laws. If Daniel prospered
+in the reign of Cyrus the Persian, every Persian word that could be
+discovered in Daniel would be most valuable in the eyes of a critical
+historian. The only thing which we may fairly require in
+investigations of this kind is that the facts should be clearly
+established. The subject is surely an important one--important
+historically, quite apart from any theological consequences that may
+be supposed to follow. It is as important to find out whether the
+authors of the Old Testament had come in contact with the language and
+ideas of Babylon, Persia, or Egypt, as it is to know that the Jews, at
+the time of our Lord's appearance, had been reached by the rays of
+Greek and Roman civilisation--that in fact our Lord, his disciples,
+and many of his followers, spoke Greek as well as Hebrew (i. e.
+Chaldee), and were no strangers to that sphere of thought in which the
+world of the Gentiles, the Greeks, and Romans had been moving for
+centuries.
+
+Hints have been thrown out from time to time by various writers that
+certain ideas in the Old Testament might be ascribed to Persian
+influences, and be traced back to the Zend-Avesta, the sacred writings
+of Zoroaster. Much progress has been made in the deciphering of these
+ancient documents, since Anquetil Duperron brought the first
+instalment of MSS. from Bombay, and since the late Eugène Burnouf, in
+his 'Commentaire sur le Yasna,' succeeded in establishing the grammar
+and dictionary of the Zend language upon a safe basis. Several
+editions of the works of Zoroaster have been published in France,
+Denmark, and Germany; and after the labours of Spiegel, Westergaard,
+Haug, and others, it might be supposed that such a question as the
+influence of Persian ideas on the writers of the Old Testament might
+at last be answered either in the affirmative or in the negative. We
+were much pleased, therefore, on finding that Professor Spiegel, the
+learned editor and translator of the Avesta, had devoted a chapter of
+his last work, 'Erân, das Land zwischen dem Indus und Tigris,' to the
+problem in question. We read his chapter, 'Avesta und die Genesis,
+oder die Beziehungen der Eranier zu den Semiten,' with the warmest
+interest, and when we had finished it, we put down the book with the
+very exclamation with which we began our article.
+
+We do not mean to say anything disrespectful to Professor Spiegel, a
+scholar brimfull of learning, and one of the two or three men who know
+the Avesta by heart. He is likewise a good Semitic scholar, and knows
+enough of Hebrew to form an independent opinion on the language,
+style, and general character of the different books of the Old
+Testament. He brings together in his Essay a great deal of interesting
+information, and altogether would seem to be one of the most valuable
+witnesses to give evidence on the point in question. Yet suppose him
+for a moment in a court of justice where, as in a patent case, some
+great issue depends on the question whether certain ideas had first
+been enunciated by the author of Genesis or the author of the Avesta;
+suppose him subjected to a cross-examination by a brow-beating lawyer,
+whose business it is to disbelieve and make others disbelieve every
+assertion that the witness makes, and we are afraid the learned
+Professor would break down completely. Now it may be said that this is
+not the spirit in which learned inquiries should be conducted, that
+authors have a right to a certain respect, and may reckon on a certain
+amount of willingness on the part of their readers. Such a plea may,
+perhaps, be urged when all preliminary questions in a contest have
+been disposed of, when all the evidence has been proved to lie in one
+direction, and when even the most obstinate among the gentlemen of the
+jury feel that the verdict is as good as settled. But in a question
+like this, where everything is doubtful, or, we should rather say,
+where all the prepossessions are against the view which Dr. Spiegel
+upholds, it is absolutely necessary for a new witness to be armed from
+top to toe, to lay himself open to no attack, to measure his words,
+and advance step by step in a straight line to the point that has to
+be reached. A writer like Dr. Spiegel should know that he can expect
+no mercy; nay, he should himself wish for no mercy, but invite the
+heaviest artillery against the floating battery which he has launched
+into the troubled waters of Biblical criticism. If he feels that his
+case is not strong enough, the wisest plan surely is to wait, to
+accumulate new strength if possible, or, if no new evidence is
+forthcoming, to acknowledge openly that there is no case.
+
+M. Bréal--who, in his interesting Essay 'Hercule et Cacus,' has lately
+treated the same problem, the influence of Persian ideas on the
+writers of the Old Testament--gives an excellent example of how a case
+of this kind should be argued. He begins with the apocryphal books,
+and he shows that the name of an evil spirit like Asmodeus, which
+occurs in Tobit, could be borrowed from Persia only. It is a name
+inexplicable in Hebrew, and it represents very closely the Parsi
+Eshem-dev, the Zend Aêshma daêva, the spirit of concupiscence,
+mentioned several times in the Avesta (Vendidad, c. 10), as one of the
+devs, or evil spirits. Now this is the kind of evidence we want for
+the Old Testament. We can easily discover a French word in English,
+nor is it difficult to tell a Persian word in Hebrew. Are there any
+Persian words in Genesis, words of the same kind as Asmodeus in Tobit?
+No such evidence has been brought forward, and the only words we can
+think of which, if not Persian, may be considered of Aryan origin, are
+the names of such rivers as Tigris and Euphrates; and of countries
+such as Ophir and Havilah among the descendants of Shem, Javan,
+Meshech, and others among the descendants of Japhet. These names are
+probably foreign names, and as such naturally mentioned by the author
+of Genesis in their foreign form. If there are other words of Aryan or
+Iranian origin in Genesis, they ought to have occupied the most
+prominent place in Dr. Spiegel's pleading.
+
+We now proceed, and we are again quite willing to admit that, even
+without the presence of Persian words, the presence of Persian ideas
+might be detected by careful analysis. No doubt this is a much more
+delicate process, yet, as we can discover Jewish and Christian ideas
+in the Koran, there ought to be no insurmountable difficulty in
+pointing out any Persian ingredients in Genesis, however disguised and
+assimilated. Only, before we look for such ideas, it is necessary to
+show the channel through which they could possibly have flowed either
+from the Avesta into Genesis, or from Genesis into the Avesta. History
+shows us clearly how Persian words and ideas could have found their
+way into such late works as Tobit, or even into the book of Daniel,
+whether he prospered in the reign of Darius, or in the reign of Cyrus
+the Persian. But how did Persians and Jews come in contact, previously
+to the age of Cyrus? Dr. Spiegel says that Zoroaster was born in
+Arran. This name is given by mediæval Mohammedan writers to the plain
+washed by the Araxes, and was identified by Anquetil Duperron with the
+name Airyana vaê_g_a, which the Zend-Avesta gives to the first created
+land of Ormuzd. The Parsis place this sacred country in the vicinity
+of Atropatene, and it is clearly meant as the northernmost country
+known to the author or authors of the Zend-Avesta. We think that Dr.
+Spiegel is right in defending the geographical position assigned by
+tradition to Airyana vaê_g_a, against modern theories that would place
+it more eastward in the plain of Pamer, nor do we hesitate to admit
+that the name (Airyana vaê_g_a, i. e. the seed of the Aryan) might
+have been changed into Arran. We likewise acknowledge the force of the
+arguments by which he shows that the books now called Zend-Avesta were
+composed in the Eastern, and not in the Western, provinces of the
+Persian monarchy, though we are hardly prepared to subscribe at once
+to his conclusion (p. 270) that, because Zoroaster is placed by the
+Avesta and by later traditions in Arran, or the Western provinces, he
+could not possibly be the author of the Avesta, a literary production
+which would appear to belong exclusively to the Eastern provinces.
+The very tradition to which Dr. Spiegel appeals represents Zoroaster
+as migrating from Arran to Balkh, to the court of Gustasp, the son of
+Lohrasp; and, as one tradition has as much value as another, we might
+well admit that the work of Zoroaster, as a religious teacher, began
+in Balkh, and from thence extended still further East. But admitting
+that Arran, the country washed by the Araxes, was the birthplace of
+Zoroaster, can we possibly follow Dr. Spiegel when he says, Arran
+seems to be identical with Haran, the birthplace of Abraham? Does he
+mean the names to be identical? Then how are the aspirate and the
+double r to be explained? how is it to be accounted for that the
+mediæval corruption of Airyana vaê_g_a, namely Arran, should appear in
+Genesis? And if the dissimilarity of the two names is waived, is it
+possible in two lines to settle the much contested situation of Haran,
+and thus to determine the ancient watershed between the Semitic and
+Aryan nations? The Abbé Banier, more than a hundred years ago, pointed
+out that Haran, whither Abraham repaired, was the metropolis of
+Sabism, and that Magism was practised in Ur of the Chaldees
+('Mythology, explained by History,' vol. i. book iii. cap. 3). Dr.
+Spiegel having, as he believes, established the most ancient
+meeting-point between Abraham and Zoroaster, proceeds to argue that
+whatever ideas are shared in common by Genesis and the Avesta must be
+referred to that very ancient period when personal intercourse was
+still possible between Abraham and Zoroaster, the prophets of the Jews
+and the Iranians. Now, here the counsel for the defence would remind
+Dr. Spiegel that Genesis was not the work of Abraham, nor, according
+to Dr. Spiegel's view, was Zoroaster the author of the Zend-Avesta;
+and that therefore the neighbourly intercourse between Zoroaster and
+Abraham in the country of Arran had nothing to do with the ideas
+shared in common by Genesis and the Avesta. But even if we admitted,
+for argument's sake, that as Dr. Spiegel puts it, the Avesta contains
+Zoroastrian and Genesis Abrahamitic ideas, surely there was ample
+opportunity for Jewish ideas to find admission into what we call the
+Avesta, or for Iranian ideas to find admission into Genesis, after the
+date of Abraham and Zoroaster, and before the time when we find the
+first MSS. of Genesis and the Avesta. The Zend MSS. of the Avesta are
+very modern, so are the Hebrew MSS. of Genesis, which do not carry us
+beyond the tenth century after Christ. The text of the Avesta,
+however, can be checked by the Pehlevi translation, which was made
+under the Sassanian dynasty (226-651 A.D.), just as the text of
+Genesis can be checked by the Septuagint translation, which was made
+in the third century before Christ. Now, it is known that about the
+same time and in the same place--namely at Alexandria--where the Old
+Testament was rendered into Greek, the Avesta also was translated into
+the same language, so that we have at Alexandria in the third century
+B.C. a well established historical contact between the believers in
+Genesis and the believers in the Avesta, and an easy opening for that
+exchange of ideas which, according to Dr. Spiegel, could have taken
+place nowhere but in Arran, and at the time of Abraham and Zoroaster.
+It might be objected that this was wrangling for victory, and not
+arguing for truth, and that no real scholar would admit that the
+Avesta, in its original form, did not go back to a much earlier date
+than the third century before Christ. Yet, when such a general
+principle is to be laid down, that all that Genesis and Avesta share
+in common must belong to a time before Abraham had started for Canaan,
+and Zoroaster for Balkh, other possible means of later intercourse
+should surely not be entirely lost sight of.
+
+For what happens? The very first tradition that is brought forward as
+one common to both these ancient works--namely, that of the Four Ages
+of the World--is confessedly found in the later writings only of the
+Parsis, and cannot be traced back in its definite shape beyond the
+time of the Sassanians (Erân, p. 275). Indications of it are said to
+be found in the earlier writings, but these indications are extremely
+vague. But we must advance a step further, and, after reading very
+carefully the three pages devoted to this subject by Dr. Spiegel, we
+must confess we see no similarity whatever on that point between
+Genesis and the Avesta. In Genesis, the Four Ages have never assumed
+the form of a theory, as in India, Persia, or perhaps in Greece. If we
+say that the period from Adam to Noah is the first, that from Noah to
+Abraham the second, that from Abraham to the death of Jacob the third,
+that beginning with the exile in Egypt the fourth, we are transferring
+our ideas to Genesis, but we cannot say that the writer of Genesis
+himself laid a peculiar stress on this fourfold division. The Parsis,
+on the contrary, have a definite system. According to them the world
+is to last 12,000 years. During the first period of 3,000 years the
+world was created. During the second period Gayo-maratan, the first
+man lived by himself, without suffering from the attacks of evil.
+During the third period of 3,000 years the war between good and evil,
+between Ormuzd and Ahriman, began with the utmost fierceness; and it
+will gradually abate during the fourth period of 3,000 years, which is
+still to elapse before the final victory of good. Where here is the
+similarity between Genesis and the Avesta? We are referred by Dr.
+Spiegel to Dr. Windischmann's 'Zoroastrian Studies,' and to his
+discovery that there are ten generations between Adam and Noah, as
+there are ten generations between Yima and Thraêtaona; that there are
+twelve generations between Shem and Isaac, as there are twelve between
+Thraêtaona and Manus_k_itra; and that there are thirteen generations
+between Isaac and David, as there are thirteen between Manus_k_itra
+and Zarathustra. What has the learned counsel for the defence to say
+to this? First, that the name of Shem is put by mistake for that of
+Noah. Secondly, that Yima, who is here identified with Adam, is never
+represented in the Avesta as the first man, but is preceded there by
+numerous ancestors, and surrounded by numerous subjects, who are not
+his offspring. Thirdly, that in order to establish in Genesis three
+periods of ten, twelve, and thirteen generations, it is necessary to
+count Isaac, who clearly belongs to the third, as a member of the
+second, so that in reality the number of generations is the same in
+one only out of the three periods, which surely proves nothing. As to
+any similarity between the Four Yugas of the Brahmans and the Four
+Ages of the Parsis, we can only say that, if it exists, no one has as
+yet brought it out. The Greeks, again, who are likewise said to share
+the primitive doctrine of the Four Ages, believe really in five, and
+not in four, and separate them in a manner which does not in the
+least remind us of Hindu Yugas, Hebrew patriarchs, or the battle
+between Ormuzd and Ahriman.
+
+We proceed to a second point--the Creation as related in Genesis and
+the Avesta. Here we certainly find some curious coincidences. The
+world is created in six days in Genesis, and in six periods in the
+Avesta, which six periods together form one year. In Genesis the
+creation ends with the creation of man, so it does in the Avesta. On
+all other points Dr. Spiegel admits the two accounts differ, but they
+are said to agree again in the temptation and the fall. As Dr. Spiegel
+has not given the details of the temptation and the fall from the
+Avesta, we cannot judge of the points which he considers to be
+borrowed by the Jews from the Persians; but if we consult M. Bréal,
+who has treated the same subject more fully in his 'Hercule et Cacus,'
+we find there no more than this, that the Dualism of the Avesta, the
+struggle between Ormuzd and Ahriman, or the principles of light and
+darkness, is to be considered as the distant reflex of the grand
+struggle between Indra, the god of the sky, and V_r_itra, the demon of
+night and darkness, which forms the constant burden of the hymns of
+the Rig-veda. In this view there is some truth, but we doubt whether
+it fully exhibits the vital principle of the Zoroastrian religion,
+which is founded on a solemn protest against the whole worship of the
+powers of nature invoked in the Vedas, and on the recognition of one
+supreme power, the God of Light, in every sense of the word--the
+spirit Ahura, who created the world and rules it, and defends it
+against the power of evil. That power of evil which in the most
+ancient portions of the Avesta has not yet received the name of
+Ahriman (i. e. angro mainyus), may afterwards have assumed some of the
+epithets which in an earlier period were bestowed on V_r_itra and
+other enemies of the bright gods, and among them, it may have assumed
+the name of serpent. But does it follow, because the principle of evil
+in the Avesta is called serpent, or azhi dahâka, that therefore the
+serpent mentioned in the third chapter of Genesis must be borrowed
+from Persia? Neither in the Veda nor in the Avesta does the serpent
+ever assume that subtil and insinuating form as in Genesis; and the
+curse pronounced on it, 'to be cursed above all cattle, and above
+every beast of the field,' is not in keeping with the relation of
+V_r_itra to Indra, or Ahriman to Ormuzd, who face each other almost as
+equals. In later books, such as 1 Chronicles xxi. 1, where Satan is
+mentioned as provoking David to number Israel (the very same
+provocation which in 2 Samuel xxiv. 1 is ascribed to the anger of the
+Lord moving David to number Israel and Judah), and in all the passages
+of the New Testament where the power of evil is spoken of as a person,
+we may admit the influence of Persian ideas and Persian expressions,
+though even here strict proof is by no means easy. As to the serpent
+in Paradise, it is a conception that might have sprung up among the
+Jews as well as among the Brahmans; and the serpent that beguiled Eve
+seems hardly to invite comparison with the much grander conceptions of
+the terrible power of V_r_itra and Ahriman in the Veda and Avesta.
+
+Dr. Spiegel next discusses the similarity between the Garden of Eden
+and the Paradise of the Zoroastrians, and though he admits that here
+again he relies chiefly on the Bundehesh, a work of the Sassanian
+period, he maintains that that work may well be compared to Genesis,
+because it contains none but really ancient traditions. We do not for
+a moment deny that this may be so, but in a case like the present,
+where everything depends on exact dates, we decline to listen to such
+a plea. We value Dr. Spiegel's translations from the Bundehesh most
+highly, and we believe with him (p. 283) that there is little doubt as
+to the Pishon being the Indus, and the Gihon the Jaxartes. The
+identification, too, of the Persian river-name Ranha (the Vedic Rasâ)
+with the Araxes, the name given by Herodotus (i. 202) to the Jaxartes,
+seems very ingenious and well established. But we should still like to
+know why and in what language the Indus was first called Pishon, and
+the Jaxartes, or, it may be, the Oxus, Gihon.
+
+We next come to the two trees in the garden of Eden, the tree of
+knowledge and the tree of life. Dr. Windischmann has shown that the
+Iranians, too, were acquainted with two trees, one called Gaokerena,
+bearing the white Haoma, the other called the Painless tree. We are
+told first that these two trees are the same as the one fig tree out
+of which the Indians believe the world to have been created. Now,
+first of all, the Indians believed no such thing, and secondly, there
+is the same difference between one and two trees as there is between
+North and South. But we confess that until we know a good deal more
+about these two trees of the Iranians, we feel no inclination whatever
+to compare the Painless tree and the tree of knowledge of good and
+evil, though perhaps the white Haoma tree might remind us of the tree
+of life, considering that Haoma, as well as the Indian Soma, was
+supposed to give immortality to those who drank its juice. We
+likewise consider the comparison of the Cherubim who keep the way of
+the tree of life and the guardians of the Soma in the Veda and Avesta,
+as deserving attention, and we should like to see the etymological
+derivation of Cherubim from γρὑφες, Greifen, and of Seraphim
+from the Sanskrit sarpa, serpents, either confirmed or refuted.
+
+The Deluge is not mentioned in the sacred writings of the
+Zoroastrians, nor in the hymns of the Rig-veda. It is mentioned,
+however, in one of the latest Brâhma_n_as, and the carefully balanced
+arguments of Burnouf, who considered the tradition of the Deluge as
+borrowed by the Indians from Semitic neighbours, seem to us to be
+strengthened, rather than weakened, by the isolated appearance of the
+story of the Deluge in this one passage out of the whole of the Vedic
+literature. Nothing, however, has yet been pointed out to force us to
+admit a Semitic origin for the story of the Flood, as told in the
+_S_atapatha-brâhma_n_a, and afterwards repeated in the Mahâbhârata and
+the Purâ_n_as: the number of days being really the only point on which
+the two accounts startle us by their agreement.
+
+That Noah's ark rested upon the mountain of Ararat, and that Ararat
+may admit of a Persian etymology, is nothing to the point. The
+etymology itself is ingenious, but no more. The same remark applies to
+all the rest of Dr. Spiegel's arguments. Thraêtaona, who has before
+been compared to Noah, divided his land among his three sons, and gave
+Iran to the youngest, an injustice which exasperated his brothers, who
+murdered him. Now it is true that Noah, too, had three sons, but here
+the similarity ends; for that Terach had three sons, and that one of
+them only, Abram, took possession of the land of promise, and that of
+the two sons of Isaac, the youngest became the heir, is again of no
+consequence for our immediate purpose, though it may remind Dr.
+Spiegel and others of the history of Thraêtaona. We agree with Dr.
+Spiegel, that Zoroaster's character resembles most closely the true
+Semitic notion of a prophet. He is considered worthy of personal
+intercourse with Ormuzd; he receives from Ormuzd every word, though
+not, as Dr. Spiegel says, every letter of the law. But if Zoroaster
+was a real character, so was Abraham, and their being like each other
+proves in no way that they lived in the same place, or at the same
+time, or that they borrowed aught one from the other. What Dr. Spiegel
+says of the Persian name of the Deity, Ahura, is very doubtful. Ahura,
+he says, as well as ahu, means lord, and must be traced back to the
+root ah, the Sanskrit as, which means to be, so that Ahura would
+signify the same as Jahve, he who is. The root 'as' no doubt means to
+be, but it has that meaning because it originally meant to breathe.
+From it, in its original sense of breathing, the Hindus formed asu,
+breath, and asura, the name of God, whether it meant the breathing
+one, or the giver of breath. This asura became in Zend ahura, and if
+it assumed the general meaning of Lord, this is as much a secondary
+meaning as the meaning of demon or evil spirit, which asura assumed in
+the later Sanskrit of the Brâhma_n_as.
+
+After this, Dr. Spiegel proceeds to sum up his evidence. He has no
+more to say, but he believes that he has proved the following points:
+a very early intercourse between Semitic and Aryan nations; a common
+belief shared by both in a paradise situated near the sources of the
+Oxus and Jaxartes; the dwelling together of Abraham and Zoroaster in
+Haran, Arran, or Airyana vaê_g_a. Semitic and Aryan nations, he tells
+us, still live together in those parts of the world, and so it was
+from the beginning. As the form of the Jewish traditions comes nearer
+to the Persian than to the Indian traditions, we are asked to believe
+that these two races lived in the closest contact before, from this
+ancient hearth of civilisation, they started towards the West and the
+East--that is to say, before Abraham migrated to Canaan, and before
+India was peopled by the Brahmans.
+
+We have given a fair account of Dr. Spiegel's arguments, and we need
+not say that we should have hailed with equal pleasure any solid facts
+by which to establish either the dependence of Genesis on the
+Zend-Avesta, or the dependence of the Zend-Avesta on Genesis. It would
+be absurd to resist facts where facts exist; nor can we imagine any
+reason why, if Abraham came into personal contact with Zoroaster, the
+Jewish patriarch should have learnt nothing from the Iranian prophet,
+or vice versâ. If such an intercourse could be established, it would
+but serve to strengthen the historical character of the books of the
+Old Testament, and would be worth more than all the elaborate theories
+that have been started on the purely miraculous origin of these books.
+But though we by no means deny that some more tangible points of
+resemblance may yet be discovered between the Old Testament and the
+Zend-Avesta, we must protest against having so interesting and so
+important a matter handled in such an unbusinesslike manner.
+
+_April, 1864._
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+THE MODERN PARSIS.[50]
+
+I.
+
+
+It is not fair to speak of any religious sect by a name to which its
+members object. Yet the fashion of speaking of the followers of
+Zoroaster as Fire-worshippers is so firmly established that it will
+probably continue long after the last believers in Ormuzd have
+disappeared from the face of the earth. At the present moment, the
+number of the Zoroastrians has dwindled down so much that they hardly
+find a place in the religious statistics of the world. Berghaus in his
+'Physical Atlas' gives the following division of the human race
+according to religion:
+
+Buddhists          31.2 per cent.
+Christians         30.7    "
+Mohammedans        15.7    "
+Brahmanists        13.4    "
+Heathens            8.7    "
+Jews                0.3    "
+
+[Footnote 50: 'The Manners and Customs of the Parsees.' By Dadabhai
+Naoroji, Esq. Liverpool, 1861.
+
+'The Parsee Religion,' By Dadabhai Naoroji, Esq. Liverpool, 1861.]
+
+He nowhere states the number of the Fire-worshippers, nor does he tell
+us under what head they are comprised in his general computation. The
+difficulties of a religious census are very great, particularly when
+we have to deal with Eastern nations. About two hundred years ago,
+travellers estimated the Gabars (as they are called in Persia) at
+eighty thousand families, or about 400,000 souls. At present the
+Parsis in Western India amount to about 100,000, to which, if we add
+5,500 in Yazd and Kirman, we get a total of 105,500. The number of the
+Jews is commonly estimated at 3,600,000; and if they represent 0.3 per
+cent of mankind, the Fire-worshippers could not claim at present more
+than about 0.01 per cent of the whole population of the earth. Yet
+there were periods in the history of the world when the worship of
+Ormuzd threatened to rise triumphant on the ruins of the temples of
+all other gods. If the battles of Marathon and Salamis had been lost,
+and Greece had succumbed to Persia, the state religion of the empire
+of Cyrus, which was the worship of Ormuzd, might have become the
+religion of the whole civilised world. Persia had absorbed the
+Assyrian and Babylonian empires; the Jews were either in Persian
+captivity or under Persian sway at home; the sacred monuments of Egypt
+had been mutilated by the hands of Persian soldiers. The edicts of the
+great king, the king of kings, were sent to India, to Greece, to
+Scythia, and to Egypt; and if 'by the grace of Auramazda' Darius had
+crushed the liberty of Greece, the purer faith of Zoroaster might
+easily have superseded the Olympian fables. Again, under the Sassanian
+dynasty (226-651 A.D.) the revived national faith of the Zoroastrians
+assumed such vigour that Shapur II, like another Diocletian, could
+aim at the extirpation of the Christian faith. The sufferings of the
+persecuted Christians in the East were as terrible as they had ever
+been in the West; nor was it by the weapons of Roman emperors or by
+the arguments of Christian divines that the fatal blow was dealt to
+the throne of Cyrus and the altars of Ormuzd. The power of Persia was
+broken at last by the Arabs; and it is due to them that the religion
+of Ormuzd, once the terror of the world, is now, and has been for the
+last thousand years, a mere curiosity in the eyes of the historian.
+
+The sacred writings of the Zoroastrians, commonly called the
+Zend-Avesta, have for about a century occupied the attention of
+European scholars, and, thanks to the adventurous devotion of Anquetil
+Duperron, and the careful researches of Rask, Burnouf, Westergaard,
+Spiegel, and Haug, we have gradually been enabled to read and
+interpret what remains of the ancient language of the Persian
+religion. The problem was not an easy one, and had it not been for the
+new light which the science of language has shed on the laws of human
+speech, it would have been as impossible to Burnouf as it was to Hyde,
+the celebrated Professor of Hebrew and Arabic at Oxford, to interpret
+with grammatical accuracy the ancient remnants of Zoroaster's
+doctrine. How that problem was solved is well known to all who take an
+interest in the advancement of modern scholarship. It was as great an
+achievement as the deciphering of the cuneiform edicts of Darius; and
+no greater compliment could have been paid to Burnouf and his
+fellow-labourers than that scholars, without inclination to test their
+method, and without leisure to follow these indefatigable pioneers
+through all the intricate paths of their researches, should have
+pronounced the deciphering of the ancient Zend as well as of the
+ancient Persian of the Achæmenian period to be impossible, incredible,
+and next to miraculous.
+
+While the scholars of Europe are thus engaged in disinterring the
+ancient records of the religion of Zoroaster, it is of interest to
+learn what has become of that religion in those few settlements where
+it is still professed by small communities. Though every religion is
+of real and vital interest in its earliest state only, yet its later
+development too, with all its misunderstandings, faults, and
+corruptions, offers many an instructive lesson to the thoughtful
+student of history. Here is a religion, one of the most ancient of the
+world, once the state religion of the most powerful empire, driven
+away from its native soil, deprived of political influence, without
+even the prestige of a powerful or enlightened priesthood, and yet
+professed by a handful of exiles--men of wealth, intelligence, and
+moral worth in Western India--with an unhesitating fervour such as is
+seldom to be found in larger religious communities. It is well worth
+the serious consideration of the philosopher and the divine to
+discover, if possible, the spell by which this apparently effete
+religion continues to command the attachment of the enlightened Parsis
+of India, and makes them turn a deaf ear to the allurements of the
+Brahmanic worship and the earnest appeals of Christian missionaries.
+We believe that to many of our readers the two pamphlets, lately
+published by a distinguished member of the Parsi community, Mr.
+Dadabhai Naoroji, Professor of Guzerati at University College,
+London, will open many problems of a more than passing interest. One
+is a Paper read before the Liverpool Philomathic Society, 'On the
+Manners and Customs of the Parsees;' the other is a Lecture delivered
+before the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, 'On the
+Parsee Religion.'
+
+In the first of these pamphlets, we are told that the small community
+of Parsis in Western India is at the present moment divided into two
+parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals. Both are equally attached
+to the faith of their ancestors, but they differ from each other in
+their modes of life--the Conservatives clinging to all that is
+established and customary, however absurd and mischievous, the
+Liberals desiring to throw off the abuses of former ages, and to avail
+themselves, as much as is consistent with their religion and their
+Oriental character, of the advantages of European civilisation. 'If I
+say,' writes our informant, 'that the Parsees use tables, knives and
+forks, &c., for taking their dinners, it would be true with regard to
+one portion, and entirely untrue with regard to another. In one house
+you see in the dining-room the dinner table furnished with all the
+English apparatus for its agreeable purposes; next door, perhaps, you
+see the gentleman perfectly satisfied with his primitive good old mode
+of squatting on a piece of mat, with a large brass or copper plate
+(round, and of the size of an ordinary tray) before him, containing
+all the dishes of his dinner, spread on it in small heaps, and placed
+upon a stool about two or three inches high, with a small tinned
+copper cup at his side for his drinks, and his fingers for his knives
+and forks. He does this, not because he cannot afford to have a
+table, &c., but because he would not have them in preference to his
+ancestral mode of life, or, perhaps, the thought has not occurred to
+him that he need have anything of the kind.'
+
+Instead, therefore, of giving a general description of Parsi life at
+present, Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji gives us two distinct accounts--first of
+the old, secondly of the new school. He describes the incidents in the
+daily life of a Parsi of the old school, from the moment he gets out
+of bed to the time of his going to rest, and the principal ceremonies
+from the hour of his birth to the hour of his burial. Although we can
+gather from the tenour of his writings that the author himself belongs
+to the Liberals, we must give him credit for the fairness with which
+he describes the party to which he is opposed. There is no sneer, no
+expression of contempt anywhere, even when, as in the case of the
+Nirang, the temptation must have been considerable. What this Nirang
+is we may best state in the words of the writer:
+
+     'The Nirang is the urine of cow, ox, or she-goat, and the
+     rubbing of it over the face and hands is the second thing a
+     Parsee does after getting out of bed. Either before applying
+     the Nirang to the face and hands, or while it remains on the
+     hands after being applied, he should not touch anything
+     directly with his hands; but, in order to wash out the
+     Nirang, he either asks somebody else to pour water on his
+     hands, or resorts to the device of taking hold of the pot
+     through the intervention of a piece of cloth, such as a
+     handkerchief or his Sudrâ, i. e. his blouse. He first pours
+     water on one hand, then takes the pot in that hand and
+     washes his other hand, face and feet.'
+
+Strange as this process of purification may appear, it becomes
+perfectly disgusting when we are told that women, after childbirth,
+have not only to undergo this sacred ablution, but have actually to
+drink a little of the Nirang, and that the same rite is imposed on
+children at the time of their investiture with the Sudrâ and Kusti,
+the badges of the Zoroastrian faith. The Liberal party have completely
+surrendered this objectionable custom, but the old school still keep
+it up, though their faith, as Dadabhai Naoroji says, in the efficacy
+of Nirang to drive away Satan may be shaken. 'The Reformers,' our
+author writes, 'maintain that there is no authority whatever in the
+original books of Zurthosht for the observance of this dirty practice,
+but that it is altogether a later introduction. The old adduce the
+authority of the works of some of the priests of former days, and say
+the practice ought to be observed. They quote one passage from the
+Zend-Avesta corroborative of their opinion, which their opponents deny
+as at all bearing upon the point.' Here, whatever our own feelings may
+be about the Nirang, truth obliges us to side with the old school, and
+if our author had consulted the ninth Fasgard of the Vendidad (page
+120, line 21, in Brockhaus's edition), he would have seen that both
+the drinking and the rubbing in of the so-called Gaomaezo--i. e.
+Nirang--are clearly enjoined by Zoroaster in certain purificatory
+rights. The custom rests, therefore, not only on the authority of a
+few priests of former days, but on the ipsissima verba of the
+Zend-Avesta, the revealed word of Ormuzd; and if, as Dadabhai Naoroji
+writes, the Reformers of the day will not go beyond abolishing and
+disavowing the ceremonies and notions that have no authority in the
+original Zend-Avesta, we are afraid that the washing with Nirang, and
+even the drinking of it, will have to be maintained. A pious Parsi has
+to say his prayers sixteen times at least every day--first on getting
+out of bed, then during the Nirang operation, again when he takes his
+bath, again when he cleanses his teeth, and when he has finished his
+morning ablutions. The same prayers are repeated whenever, during the
+day, a Parsi has to wash his hands. Every meal--and there are
+three--begins and ends with prayer, besides the grace, and before
+going to bed the work of the day is closed by a prayer. The most
+extraordinary thing is that none of the Parsis--not even their
+priests--understand the ancient language in which these prayers are
+composed. We must quote the words of our author, who is himself of the
+priestly caste, and who says:
+
+     'All prayers, on every occasion, are said, or rather
+     recited, in the old original Zend language, neither the
+     reciter nor the people around intended to be edified,
+     understanding a word of it. There is no pulpit among the
+     Parsees. On several occasions, as on the occasion of the
+     Ghumbars, the bimestral holidays, the third day's ceremonies
+     for the dead, and other religious or special holidays, there
+     are assemblages in the temple; prayers are repeated, in
+     which more or less join, but there is no discourse in the
+     vernacular of the people. Ordinarily, every one goes to the
+     fire-temple whenever he likes, or, if it is convenient to
+     him, recites his prayers himself, and as long as he likes,
+     and gives, if so inclined, something to the priests to pray
+     for him.'
+
+In another passage our author says:
+
+     'Far from being the teachers of the true doctrines and
+     duties of their religion, the priests are generally the most
+     bigoted and superstitious, and exercise much injurious
+     influence over the women especially, who, until lately,
+     received no education at all. The priests have, however, now
+     begun to feel their degraded position. Many of them, if they
+     can do so, bring up their sons in any other profession but
+     their own. There are, perhaps, a dozen among the whole body
+     of professional priests who lay claim to a knowledge of the
+     Zend-Avesta: but the only respect in which they are superior
+     to their brethren is, that they have learnt the meanings of
+     the words of the books as they are taught, without knowing
+     the language, either philosophically or grammatically.'
+
+Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji proceeds to give a clear and graphic description
+of the ceremonies to be observed at the birth and the investiture of
+children, at the betrothal of children, at marriages and at funerals,
+and he finally dismisses some of the distinguishing features of the
+national character of the Parsis. The Parsis are monogamists. They do
+not eat anything cooked by a person of another religion; they object
+to beef, pork, or ham. Their priesthood is hereditary. None but the
+son of a priest can be a priest, but it is not obligatory for the son
+of a priest to take orders. The high-priest is called Dustoor, the
+others are called Mobed.
+
+The principal points for which the Liberals among the Parsis are, at
+the present moment, contending, are the abolition of the filthy
+purifications by means of Nirang; the reduction of the large number of
+obligatory prayers; the prohibition of early betrothal and marriage;
+the suppression of extravagance at weddings and funerals; the
+education of women, and their admission into general society. A
+society has been formed, called 'the Rahanumaee Mazdiashna,' i. e. the
+Guide of the Worshippers of God. Meetings are held, speeches made,
+tracts distributed. A counter society, too, has been started, called
+'the True Guides;' and we readily believe what Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji
+tells us--that, as in Europe, so in India, the Reformers have found
+themselves strengthened by the intolerant bigotry and the weakness of
+the arguments of their opponents. The Liberals have made considerable
+progress, but their work is as yet but half done, and they will never
+be able to carry out their religious and social reforms successfully,
+without first entering on a critical study of the Zend-Avesta, to
+which, as yet, they profess to appeal as the highest authority in
+matters of faith, law, and morality.
+
+We propose, in another article, to consider the state of religion
+among the Parsis of the present day.
+
+_August, 1862._
+
+
+II.
+
+The so-called Fire-worshippers certainly do not worship the fire, and
+they naturally object to a name which seems to place them on a level
+with mere idolaters. All they admit is, that in their youth they are
+taught to face some luminous object while worshipping God (p. 7), and
+that they regard the fire, like other great natural phenomena, as an
+emblem of the Divine power (p. 26). But they assure us that they
+never ask assistance or blessings from an unintelligent material
+object, nor is it even considered necessary to turn the face to any
+emblem whatever in praying to Ormuzd. The most honest, however, among
+the Parsis, and those who would most emphatically protest against the
+idea of their ever paying divine honours to the sun or the fire, admit
+the existence of some kind of national instinct--an indescribable awe
+felt by every Parsi with regard to light and fire. The fact that the
+Parsis are the only Eastern people who entirely abstain from smoking
+is very significant; and we know that most of them would rather not
+blow out a candle, if they could help it. It is difficult to analyse
+such a feeling, but it seems, in some respects, similar to that which
+many Christians have about the cross. They do not worship the cross,
+but they have peculiar feelings of reverence for it, and it is
+intimately connected with some of their most sacred rites.
+
+But although most Parsis would be very ready to tell us what they do
+not worship, there are but few who could give a straightforward answer
+if asked what they do worship and believe. Their priests, no doubt,
+would say that they worship Ormuzd and believe in Zoroaster, his
+prophet; and they would appeal to the Zend-Avesta, as containing the
+Word of God, revealed by Ormuzd to Zoroaster. If more closely pressed,
+however, they would have to admit that they cannot understand one word
+of the sacred writings in which they profess to believe, nor could
+they give any reason why they believe Zoroaster to have been a true
+prophet, and not an impostor. 'As a body,' says Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji,
+'the priests are not only ignorant of the duties and objects of their
+own profession, but are entirely uneducated, except that they are able
+to read and write, and that, also, often very imperfectly. They do not
+understand a single word of their prayers and recitations, which are
+all in the old Zend language.'
+
+What, then, do the laity know about religion? What makes the old
+teaching of Zoroaster so dear to them that, in spite of all
+differences of opinion among themselves, young and old seem equally
+determined never to join any other religious community? Incredible as
+it may sound, we are told by the best authority, by an enlightened yet
+strictly orthodox Parsi, that there is hardly a man or a woman who
+could give an account of the faith that is in them. 'The whole
+religious education of a Parsi child consists in preparing by rote a
+certain number of prayers in Zend, without understanding a word of
+them; the knowledge of the doctrines of their religion being left to
+be picked up from casual conversation.' A Parsi, in fact, hardly knows
+what his faith is. The Zend-Avesta is to him a sealed book; and though
+there is a Guzerati translation of it, that translation is not made
+from the original, but from a Pehlevi paraphrase, nor is it recognised
+by the priests as an authorised version. Till about five and twenty
+years ago, there was no book from which a Parsi of an inquiring mind
+could gather the principles of his religion. At that time, and, as it
+would seem, chiefly in order to counteract the influence of Christian
+missionaries, a small Dialogue was written in Guzerati--a kind of
+Catechism, giving, in the form of questions and answers, the most
+important tenets of Parsiism. We shall quote some passages from this
+Dialogue, as translated by Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji. The subject of it is
+thus described:
+
+     _A few Questions and Answers to acquaint the Children of the
+     holy Zarthosti Community with the Subject of the Mazdiashna
+     Religion, _i. e._ the Worship of God._
+
+     _Question._ Whom do we, of the Zarthosti community, believe
+     in?
+
+     _Answer._ We believe in only one God, and do not believe in
+     any besides Him.
+
+     _Q._ Who is that one God?
+
+     _A._ The God who created the heavens, the earth, the angels,
+     the stars, the sun, the moon, the fire, the water, or all
+     the four elements, and all things of the two worlds; that
+     God we believe in. Him we worship, him we invoke, him we
+     adore.
+
+     _Q._ Do we not believe in any other God?
+
+     _A._ Whoever believes in any other God but this, is an
+     infidel, and shall suffer the punishment of hell.
+
+     _Q._ What is the form of our God?
+
+     _A._ Our God has neither face nor form, colour nor shape,
+     nor fixed place. There is no other like him. He is himself
+     singly such a glory that we cannot, praise or describe him;
+     nor our mind comprehend him.
+
+So far, no one could object to this Catechism, and it must be clear
+that the Dualism, which is generally mentioned as the distinguishing
+feature of the Persian religion--the belief in two Gods, Ormuzd, the
+principle of good, and Ahriman, the principle of evil--is not
+countenanced by the modern Parsis. Whether it exists in the
+Zend-Avesta is another question, which, however, cannot be discussed
+at present.[51]
+
+     The Catechism continues:
+
+     _Q._ What is our religion?
+
+     _A._ Our religion is 'Worship of God.'
+
+     _Q._ Whence did we receive our religion?
+
+     _A._ God's true prophet--the true Zurthost (Zoroaster)
+     Asphantamân Anoshirwân--brought the religion to us from God.
+
+Here it is curious to observe that not a single question is asked as
+to the claim of Zoroaster to be considered a true prophet. He is not
+treated as a divine being, nor even as the son of Ormuzd. Plato,
+indeed, speaks of Zoroaster as the son of Oromazes (Alc. i. p. 122 a),
+but this is a mistake, not countenanced, as far as we are aware, by
+any of the Parsi writings, whether ancient or modern. With the Parsis,
+Zoroaster is simply a wise man, a prophet favoured by God, and
+admitted into God's immediate presence; but all this, on his own
+showing only, and without any supernatural credentials, except some
+few miracles recorded of him in books of doubtful authority. This
+shows, at all events, how little the Parsis have been exposed to
+controversial discussions; for, as this is so weak a point in their
+system that it would have invited the attacks of every opponent, we
+may be sure that the Dustoors would have framed some argument in
+defence, if such defence had ever been needed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next extract from the Catechism treats of the canonical books:
+
+[Footnote 51: See page 140.]
+
+     _Q._ What religion has our prophet brought us from God?
+
+     _A._ The disciples of our prophet have recorded in several
+     books that religion. Many of these books were destroyed
+     during Alexander's conquest; the remainder of the books were
+     preserved with great care and respect by the Sassanian
+     kings. Of these again, the greater portion were destroyed at
+     the Mohammedan conquest by Khalif Omar, so that we have now
+     very few books remaining; viz. the Vandidad, the Yazashné,
+     the Visparad, the Khordeh Avesta, the Vistasp Nusk, and a
+     few Pehlevi books. Resting our faith upon these few books,
+     we now remain devoted to our good Mazdiashna religion. We
+     consider these books as heavenly books, because God sent the
+     tidings of these books to us through the holy Zurthost.
+
+Here, again, we see theological science in its infancy. 'We consider
+these books as heavenly books because God sent the tidings of these
+books to us through the holy Zurthost,' is not very powerful logic. It
+would have been more simple to say, 'We consider them heavenly books
+because we consider them heavenly books.' However, whether heavenly or
+not, these few books exist. They form the only basis of the
+Zoroastrian religion, and the principal source from which it is
+possible to derive any authentic information as to its origin, its
+history, and its real character.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That the Parsis are of a tolerant character with regard to such of
+their doctrines as are not of vital importance, may be seen from the
+following extract:
+
+     _Q._ Whose descendants are we?
+
+     _A._ Of Gayomars. By his progeny was Persia populated.
+
+     _Q._ Was Gayomars the first man?
+
+     _A._ According to our religion he was so, but the wise men
+     of our community, of the Chinese, the Hindus, and several
+     other nations, dispute the assertion, and say that there was
+     human population on the earth before Gayomars.
+
+The moral precepts which are embodied in this Catechism do the highest
+credit to the Parsis:
+
+     _Q._ What commands has God sent us through his prophet, the
+     exalted Zurthost?
+
+     _A._ To know God as one; to know the prophet, the exalted
+     Zurthost, as the true prophet; to believe the religion and
+     the Avesta brought by him as true beyond all manner of
+     doubt; to believe in the goodness of God; not to disobey any
+     of the commands of the Mazdiashna religion; to avoid evil
+     deeds; to exert for good deeds; to pray five times in the
+     day; to believe on the reckoning and justice on the fourth
+     morning after death; to hope for heaven and to fear hell; to
+     consider doubtless the day of general destruction and
+     resurrection; to remember always that God has done what he
+     willed, and shall do what he wills; to face some luminous
+     object while worshipping God.
+
+Then follow several paragraphs which are clearly directed against
+Christian missionaries, and more particularly against the doctrine of
+vicarious sacrifice and prayer:
+
+     'Some deceivers, [the Catechism says,] with the view of
+     acquiring exaltation in this world, have set themselves up
+     as prophets, and, going among the labouring and ignorant
+     people, have persuaded them that, "if you commit sin, I
+     shall intercede for you, I shall plead for you, I shall save
+     you," and thus deceive them; but the wise among the people
+     know the deceit.'
+
+This clearly refers to Christian missionaries, but whether Roman
+Catholic or Protestant is difficult to say. The answer given by the
+Parsis is curious and significant:
+
+     'If any one commit sin,' they reply, 'under the belief that
+     he shall be saved by somebody, both the deceiver as well as
+     the deceived shall be damned to the day of Rastâ Khez....
+     There is no saviour. In the other world you shall receive
+     the return according to your actions.... Your saviour is
+     your deeds, and God himself. He is the pardoner and the
+     giver. If you repent your sins and reform, and if the Great
+     Judge consider you worthy of pardon, or would be merciful to
+     you, He alone can and will save you.'
+
+It would be a mistake to suppose that the whole doctrine of the Parsis
+is contained in the short Guzerati Catechism, translated by Mr.
+Dadabhai Naoroji, still less in the fragmentary extracts here given.
+Their sacred writings, the Ya_s_na, Vispered, and Vendidad, the
+productions of much earlier ages, contain many ideas, both religious
+and mythological, which belong to the past, to the childhood of our
+race, and which no educated Parsi could honestly profess to believe in
+now. This difficulty of reconciling the more enlightened faith of the
+present generation with the mythological phraseology of their old
+sacred writings is solved by the Parsis in a very simple manner. They
+do not, like Roman Catholics, prohibit the reading of the Zend-Avesta;
+nor do they, like Protestants, encourage a critical study of their
+sacred texts. They simply ignore the originals of their sacred
+writings. They repeat them in their prayers without attempting to
+understand them, and they acknowledge the insufficiency of every
+translation of the Zend-Avesta that has yet been made, either in
+Pehlevi, Sanskrit, Guzerati, French, or German. Each Parsi has to pick
+up his religion as best he may. Till lately, even the Catechism did
+not form a necessary part of a child's religious education. Thus the
+religious belief of the present Parsi communities is reduced to two or
+three fundamental doctrines; and these, though professedly resting on
+the teaching of Zoroaster, receive their real sanction from a much
+higher authority. A Parsi believes in one God, to whom he addresses
+his prayers. His morality is comprised in these words--pure thoughts,
+pure words, pure deeds. Believing in the punishment of vice and the
+reward of virtue, he trusts for pardon to the mercy of God. There is a
+charm, no doubt, in so short a creed; and if the whole of Zoroaster's
+teaching were confined to this, there would be some truth in what his
+followers say of their religion--namely, that 'it is for all, and not
+for any particular nation.'
+
+If now we ask again, how it is that neither Christians, nor Hindus,
+nor Mohammedans have had any considerable success in converting the
+Parsis, and why even the more enlightened members of that small
+community, though fully aware of the many weak points of their own
+theology, and deeply impressed with the excellence of the Christian
+religion, morals, and general civilisation, scorn the idea of ever
+migrating from the sacred ruins of their ancient faith, we are able to
+discover some reasons; though they are hardly sufficient to account
+for so extraordinary a fact?
+
+First, the very compactness of the modern Parsi creed accounts for the
+tenacity with which the exiles of Western India cling to it. A Parsi
+is not troubled with many theological problems or difficulties. Though
+he professes a general belief in the sacred writings of Zoroaster, he
+is not asked to profess any belief in the stories incidentally
+mentioned in the Zend-Avesta. If it is said in the Yasna that
+Zoroaster was once visited by Homa, who appeared before him in a
+brilliant supernatural body, no doctrine is laid down as to the exact
+nature of Homa. It is said that Homa was worshipped by certain ancient
+sages, Viva_n_hvat, Âthwya, and Thrita, and that, as a reward for
+their worship, great heroes were born as their sons. The fourth who
+worshipped Homa was Pourusha_s_pa, and he was rewarded by the birth of
+his son Zoroaster. Now the truth is, that Homa is the same as the
+Sanskrit Soma, well known from the Veda as an intoxicating beverage
+used at the great sacrifices, and afterwards raised to the rank of a
+deity. The Parsis are fully aware of this, but they do not seem in the
+least disturbed by the occurrence of such 'fables and endless
+genealogies.' They would not be shocked if they were told, what is a
+fact, that most of these old wives' fables have their origin in the
+religion which they most detest, the religion of the Veda, and that
+the heroes of the Zend-Avesta are the same who, with slightly changed
+names, appear again as Jemshid, Feridun, Gershâsp, &c., in the epic
+poetry of Firdusi.
+
+Another fact which accounts for the attachment of the Parsis to their
+religion is its remote antiquity and its former glory. Though age has
+little to do with truth, the length of time for which any system has
+lasted seems to offer a vague argument in favour of its strength. It
+is a feeling which the Parsi shares in common with the Jew and the
+Brahman, and which even the Christian missionary appeals to when
+confronting the systems of later prophets.
+
+Thirdly, it is felt by the Parsis that in changing their religion,
+they would not only relinquish the heirloom of their remote
+forefathers, but of their own fathers; and it is felt as a dereliction
+of filial piety to give up what was most precious to those whose
+memory is most precious and almost sacred to themselves.
+
+If in spite of all this, many people, most competent to judge, look
+forward with confidence to the conversion of the Parsis, it is
+because, in the most essential points, they have already, though
+unconsciously, approached as near as possible to the pure doctrines of
+Christianity. Let them but read the Zend-Avesta, in which they profess
+to believe, and they will find that their faith is no longer the faith
+of the Ya_s_na, the Vendidad, and the Vispered. As historical relics,
+these works, if critically interpreted, will always retain a prominent
+place in the great library of the ancient world. As oracles of
+religious faith, they are defunct, and a mere anachronism in the age
+in which we live.
+
+On the other hand, let missionaries read their Bible, and let them
+preach that Christianity which once conquered the world--the genuine
+and unshackled Gospel of Christ and the Apostles. Let them respect
+native prejudices, and be tolerant with regard to all that can be
+tolerated in a Christian community. Let them consider that
+Christianity is not a gift to be pressed on unwilling minds, but the
+highest of all privileges which natives can receive at the hands of
+their present rulers. Natives of independent and honest character
+cannot afford at present to join the ranks of converts without losing
+that true caste which no man ought to lose--namely, self-respect. They
+are driven to prop up their tottering religions, rather than profess a
+faith which seems dictated to them by their conquerors. Such feelings
+ought to be respected. Finally, let missionaries study the sacred
+writings on which the faith of the Parsis is professedly founded. Let
+them examine the bulwarks which they mean to overthrow. They will find
+them less formidable from within than from without. But they will also
+discover that they rest on a foundation which ought never to be
+touched--a faith in one God, the Creator, the Ruler, and the Judge of
+the world.
+
+_August, 1862._
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+BUDDHISM.[52]
+
+
+If the command of St. Paul, 'Prove all things, hold fast that which is
+good,' may be supposed to refer to spiritual things, and, more
+especially, to religious doctrines, it must be confessed that few
+only, whether theologians or laymen, have ever taken to heart the
+apostle's command. How many candidates for holy orders are there who
+could give a straightforward answer if asked to enumerate the
+principal religions of the world, or to state the names of their
+founders, and the titles of the works which are still considered by
+millions of human beings as the sacred authorities for their religious
+belief? To study such books as the Koran of the Mohammedans, the
+Zend-Avesta of the Parsis, the King's of the Confucians, the
+Tao-te-King of the Taoists, the Vedas of the Brahmans, the Tripi_t_aka
+of the Buddhists, the Sûtras of the Jains, or the Granth of the Sikhs,
+would be considered by many mere waste of time. Yet St. Paul's command
+is very clear and simple; and to maintain that it referred to the
+heresies of his own time only, or to the philosophical systems of the
+Greeks and Romans, would be to narrow the horizon of the apostle's
+mind, and to destroy the general applicability of his teaching to all
+times and to all countries. Many will ask what possible good could be
+derived from the works of men who must have been either deceived or
+deceivers, nor would it be difficult to quote some passages in order
+to show the utter absurdity and worthlessness of the religious books
+of the Hindus and Chinese. But this was not the spirit in which the
+apostle of the Gentiles addressed himself to the Epicureans and
+Stoics, nor is this the feeling with which a thoughtful Christian and
+a sincere believer in the divine government of the world is likely to
+rise from a perusal of any of the books which he knows to be or to
+have been the only source of spiritual light and comfort to thousands
+and thousands among the dwellers on earth.
+
+[Footnote 52: 'Le Bouddha et sa Religion.' Par J. Barthélemy
+Saint-Hilaire, Membre de l'Institut. Paris, 1860.]
+
+Many are the advantages to be derived from a careful study of other
+religions, but the greatest of all is that it teaches us to appreciate
+more truly what we possess in our own. When do we feel the blessings
+of our own country more warmly and truly than when we return from
+abroad? It is the same with regard to religion. Let us see what other
+nations have had and still have in the place of religion; let us
+examine the prayers, the worship, the theology even of the most highly
+civilised races,--the Greeks, the Romans, the Hindus, the
+Persians,--and we shall then understand more thoroughly what blessings
+are vouchsafed to us in being allowed to breathe from the first breath
+of life the pure air of a land of Christian light and knowledge. We
+are too apt to take the greatest blessings as matters of course, and
+even religion forms no exception. We have done so little to gain our
+religion, we have suffered so little in the cause of truth, that
+however highly we prize our own Christianity, we never prize it highly
+enough until we have compared it with the religions of the rest of the
+world.
+
+This, however, is not the only advantage; and we think that M.
+Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire has formed too low an estimate of the
+benefits to be derived from a thoughtful study of the religions of
+mankind when he writes of Buddhism: 'Le seul, mais immense service que
+le Bouddhisme puisse nous rendre, c'est par son triste contraste de
+nous faire apprécier mieux encore la valeur inestimable de nos
+croyances, en nous montrant tout ce qu'il en coûte à l'humanité qui ne
+les partage point.' This is not all. If a knowledge of other countries
+and a study of the manners and customs of foreign nations teach us to
+appreciate what we have at home, they likewise form the best cure of
+that national conceit and want of sympathy with which we are too apt
+to look on all that is strange and foreign. The feeling which led the
+Hellenic races to divide the whole world into Greeks and Barbarians is
+so deeply engrained in human nature that not even Christianity has
+been able altogether to remove it. Thus when we cast our first glance
+into the labyrinth of the religions of the world, all seems to us
+darkness, self-deceit, and vanity. It sounds like a degradation of the
+very name of religion to apply it to the wild ravings of Hindu Yogins
+or the blank blasphemies of Chinese Buddhists. But as we slowly and
+patiently wend our way through the dreary prisons, our own eyes seem
+to expand, and we perceive a glimmer of light where all was darkness
+at first. We learn to understand the saying of one who more than
+anybody had a right to speak with authority on this subject, that
+'there is no religion which does not contain a spark of truth.' Those
+who would limit the riches of God's goodness and forbearance and long
+suffering, and would hand over the largest portion of the human race
+to inevitable perdition, have never adduced a tittle of evidence from
+the Gospel or from any other trustworthy source in support of so
+unhallowed a belief. They have generally appealed to the devilries and
+orgies of heathen worship; they have quoted the blasphemies of
+Oriental Sufis and the immoralities sanctioned by the successors of
+Mohammed; but they have seldom, if ever, endeavoured to discover the
+true and original character of the strange forms of faith and worship
+which they call the work of the devil. If the Indians had formed their
+notions of Christianity from the soldiers of Cortez and Pizarro, or if
+the Hindus had studied the principles of Christian morality in the
+lives of Clive and Warren Hastings; or, to take a less extreme case,
+if a Mohammedan, settled in England, were to test the practical
+working of Christian charity by the spirit displayed in the journals
+of our religious parties, their notions of Christianity would be about
+as correct as the ideas which thousands of educated Christians
+entertain of the diabolical character of heathen religion. Even
+Christianity has been depraved into Jesuitism and Mormonism, and if
+we, as Protestants, claim the right to appeal to the Gospel as the
+only test by which our faith is to be judged, we must grant a similar
+privilege to Mohammedans and Buddhists, and to all who possess a
+written, and, as they believe, revealed authority for the articles of
+their faith.
+
+But though no one is likely to deny the necessity of studying each
+religion in its most ancient form and from its original documents,
+before we venture to pronounce our verdict, the difficulties of this
+task are such that in them more than in anything else, must be sought
+the cause why so few of our best thinkers and writers have devoted
+themselves to a critical and historical study of the religions of the
+world. All important religions have sprung up in the East. Their
+sacred books are written in Eastern tongues, and some of them are of
+such ancient date that those even who profess to believe in them,
+admit that they are unable to understand them without the help of
+translations and commentaries. Until very lately the sacred books of
+three of the most important religions, those of the Brahmans, the
+Buddhists, and the Parsis, were totally unknown in Europe. It was one
+of the most important results of the study of Sanskrit, or the ancient
+language of India, that through it the key, not only to the sacred
+books of the Brahmans, the Vedas, but likewise to those of the
+Buddhists and Zoroastrians, was recovered. And nothing shows more
+strikingly the rapid progress of Sanskrit scholarship than that even
+Sir William Jones, whose name has still, with many, a more familiar
+sound than the names of Colebrooke, Burnouf, and Lassen, should have
+known nothing of the Vedas; that he should never have read a line of
+the canonical books of the Buddhists, and that he actually expressed
+his belief that Buddha was the same as the Teutonic deity Wodan or
+Odin, and _S_âkya, another name of Buddha, the same as Shishac, king
+of Egypt. The same distinguished scholar never perceived the intimate
+relationship between the language of the Zend-Avesta and Sanskrit, and
+he declared the whole of the Zoroastrian writings to be modern
+forgeries.
+
+Even at present we are not yet in possession of a complete edition,
+much less of any trustworthy translation, of the Vedas; we only
+possess the originals of a few books of the Buddhist canon; and though
+the text of the Zend-Avesta has been edited in its entirety, its
+interpretation is beset with greater difficulties than that of the
+Vedas or the Tripi_t_aka. A study of the ancient religions of China,
+those of Confucius and Lao-tse, presupposes an acquaintance with
+Chinese, a language which it takes a life to learn thoroughly; and
+even the religion of Mohammed, though more accessible than any other
+Eastern religion, cannot be fully examined except by a master of
+Arabic. It is less surprising, therefore, than it might at first
+appear, that a comprehensive and scholarlike treatment of the
+religions of the world should still be a desideratum. Scholars who
+have gained a knowledge of the language, and thereby free access to
+original documents, find so much work at hand which none but
+themselves can do, that they grudge the time for collecting and
+arranging, for the benefit of the public at large, the results which
+they have obtained. Nor need we wonder that critical historians should
+rather abstain from the study of the religions of antiquity than trust
+to mere translations and second-hand authorities.
+
+Under these circumstances we feel all the more thankful if we meet
+with a writer like M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, who has acquired a
+knowledge of Eastern languages sufficient to enable him to consult
+original texts and to control the researches of other scholars, and
+who at the same time commands that wide view of the history of human
+thought which enables him to assign to each system its proper place,
+to perceive its most salient features, and to distinguish between what
+is really important and what is not, in the lengthy lucubrations of
+ancient poets and prophets. M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire is one of the
+most accomplished scholars of France; and his reputation as the
+translator of Aristotle has made us almost forget that the Professor
+of Greek Philosophy at the Collège de France[53] is the same as the
+active writer in the 'Globe' of 1827, and the 'National' of 1830; the
+same who signed the protest against the July ordinances, and who in
+1848 was Chief Secretary of the Provisional Government. If such a man
+takes the trouble to acquire a knowledge of Sanskrit, and to attend in
+the same College where he was professor, the lectures of his own
+colleague, the late Eugène Burnouf, his publications on Hindu
+philosophy and religion will naturally attract a large amount of
+public interest. The Sanskrit scholar by profession works and
+publishes chiefly for the benefit of other Sanskrit scholars. He is
+satisfied with bringing to light the ore which he has extracted by
+patient labour from among the dusty MSS. of the East-India House. He
+seldom takes the trouble to separate the metal from the ore, to purify
+or to strike it into current coin. He is but too often apt to forget
+that no lasting addition is ever made to the treasury of human
+knowledge unless the results of special research are translated into
+the universal language of science, and rendered available to every
+person of intellect and education. A division of labour seems most
+conducive to this end. We want a class of interpreters, men such as M.
+Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, who are fully competent to follow and to
+control the researches of professional students, and who at the same
+time have not forgotten the language of the world.
+
+[Footnote 53: M. de St. Hilaire resigned the chair of Greek literature
+at the Collège de France after the _coup d'état_ of 1851, declining to
+take the oath of allegiance to the existing government.]
+
+In his work on Buddhism, of which a second edition has just appeared,
+M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire has undertaken to give to the world at
+large the really trustworthy and important results which have been
+obtained by the laborious researches of Oriental scholars, from the
+original documents of that interesting and still mysterious religion.
+It was a task of no ordinary difficulty, for although these researches
+are of very recent date, and belong to a period of Sanskrit
+scholarship posterior to Sir W. Jones and Colebrooke, yet such is the
+amount of evidence brought together by the combined industry of
+Hodgson, Turnour, Csoma de Körös, Stanislas Julien, Foucaux, Fausböll,
+Spence Hardy, but above all, of the late Eugène Burnouf, that it
+required no common patience and discrimination in order to compose
+from such materials so accurate, and at the same time so lucid and
+readable a book on Buddhism as that which we owe to M. Barthélemy
+Saint-Hilaire. The greater part of it appeared originally in the
+'Journal des Savants,' the time-honoured organ of the French Academy,
+which counts on its staff the names of Cousin, Flourens, Villemain,
+Biot, Mignet, Littré, &c, and admits as contributors sixteen only of
+the most illustrious members of that illustrious body, _la crême de la
+crême_.
+
+Though much had been said and written about Buddhism,--enough to
+frighten priests by seeing themselves anticipated in auricular
+confession, beads, and tonsure by the Lamas of Tibet,[54] and to
+disconcert philosophers by finding themselves outbid in positivism and
+nihilism by the inmates of Chinese monasteries,--the real beginning of
+an historical and critical study of the doctrines of Buddha dates from
+the year 1824. In that year Mr. Hodgson announced the fact that the
+original documents of the Buddhist canon had been preserved in
+Sanskrit in the monasteries of Nepal. Before that time our information
+on Buddhism had been derived at random from China, Japan, Burmah,
+Tibet, Mongolia, and Tartary; and though it was known that the
+Buddhist literature in all these countries professed itself to be
+derived, directly or indirectly, from India, and that the technical
+terms of that religion, not excepting the very name of Buddha, had
+their etymology in Sanskrit only, no hope was entertained that the
+originals of these various translations could ever be recovered. Mr.
+Hodgson, who settled in Nepal in 1821, as political resident of the
+East-India Company, and whose eyes were always open, not only to the
+natural history of that little-explored country, but likewise to its
+antiquities, its languages, and traditions, was not long before he
+discovered that his friends, the priests of Nepal, possessed a
+complete literature of their own. That literature was not written in
+the spoken dialects of the country, but in Sanskrit. Mr. Hodgson
+procured a catalogue of all the works, still in existence, which
+formed the Buddhist canon. He afterwards succeeded in procuring copies
+of these works, and he was able in 1824 to send about sixty volumes to
+the Asiatic Society of Bengal. As no member of that society seemed
+inclined to devote himself to the study of these MSS., Mr. Hodgson
+sent two complete collections of the same MSS. to the Asiatic Society
+of London and the Société Asiatique of Paris. Before alluding to the
+brilliant results which the last-named collection produced in the
+hands of Eugène Burnouf, we must mention the labours of other
+students, which preceded the publication of Burnouf's researches.
+
+[Footnote 54: The late Abbé Huc pointed out the similarities between
+the Buddhist and Roman Catholic ceremonials with such _naïveté_, that,
+to his surprise, he found his delightful 'Travels in Tibet' placed on
+the 'Index.' 'On ne peut s'empêcher d'être frappé,' he writes, 'de
+leur rapport avec le Catholicisme. La crosse, la mitre, la dalmatique,
+la chape ou pluvial, que les grands Lamas portent en voyage, ou
+lorsqu'ils font quelque cérémonie hors du temple; l'office à deux
+choeurs, la psalmodie, les exorcismes, l'encensoir soutenu par cinq
+chaines, et pouvant s'ouvrir et se fermer à volonté; les bénédictions
+données par les Lamas en étendant la main droite sur la tête des
+fidèles; le chapelet, le célibat ecclésiastique, les retraites
+spirituelles, le culte des saints, les jeûnes, les processions, les
+litanies, l'eau bénite; voilà autant de rapports que les Bouddhistes
+ont avec nous.' He might have added tonsure, relics, and the
+confessional.]
+
+Mr. Hodgson himself gave to the world a number of valuable essays written
+on the spot, and afterwards collected under the title of 'Illustrations of
+the Literature and Religion of the Buddhists,' Serampore, 1841. He
+established the important fact, in accordance with the traditions of the
+priests of Nepal, that some of the Sanskrit documents which he recovered
+had existed in the monasteries of Nepal ever since the second century of
+our era, and that the whole of that collection had, five or six hundred
+years later, when Buddhism became definitely established in Tibet, been
+translated into the language of that country. As the art of printing had
+been introduced from China into Tibet, there was less difficulty in
+procuring complete copies of the Tibetan translation of the Buddhist canon.
+The real difficulty was to find a person acquainted with the language. By a
+fortunate concurrence of circumstances, however, it so happened that about
+the same time when Mr. Hodgson's discoveries began to attract the attention
+of Oriental scholars at Calcutta, a Hungarian, of the name of Alexander
+Csoma de Körös, arrived there. He had made his way from Hungary to Tibet on
+foot, without any means of his own, and with the sole object of discovering
+somewhere in Central Asia the native home of the Hungarians. Arrived in
+Tibet, his enthusiasm found a new vent in acquiring a language which no
+European before his time had mastered, and in exploring the vast collection
+of the canonical books of the Buddhists, preserved in that language. Though
+he arrived at Calcutta almost without a penny, he met with a hearty welcome
+from the members of the Asiatic Society, and was enabled with their
+assistance to publish the results of his extraordinary researches. People
+have complained of the length of the sacred books of other nations, but
+there are none that approach in bulk to the sacred canon of the Tibetans.
+It consists of two collections, commonly called the Kanjur and Tanjur. The
+proper spelling of their names is Bkah-hgyur, pronounced Kah-gyur, and
+Bstan-hgyur, pronounced Tan-gyur. The Kanjur consists, in its different
+editions, of 100, 102, or 108 volumes folio. It comprises 1083 distinct
+works. The Tanjur consists of 225 volumes folio, each weighing from four to
+five pounds in the edition of Peking. Editions of this colossal code were
+printed at Peking, Lhassa, and other places. The edition of the Kanjur
+published at Peking, by command of the Emperor Khian-Lung, sold for £600. A
+copy of the Kanjur was bartered for 7000 oxen by the Buriates, and the same
+tribe paid 1200 silver roubles for a complete copy of the Kanjur and Tanjur
+together.[55] Such a jungle of religious literature--the most excellent
+hiding-place, we should think, for Lamas and Dalai-Lamas--was too much even
+for a man who could travel on foot from Hungary to Tibet. The Hungarian
+enthusiast, however, though he did not translate the whole, gave a most
+valuable analysis of this immense bible, in the twentieth volume of the
+'Asiatic Researches,' sufficient to establish the fact that the principal
+portion of it was a translation from the same Sanskrit originals which had
+been discovered in Nepal by Mr. Hodgson. Csoma de Körös died soon after he
+had given to the world the first fruits of his labours,--a victim to his
+heroic devotion to the study of ancient languages and religions.
+
+[Footnote 55: 'Die Religion des Buddha,' von Köppen, vol. ii. p.
+282.]
+
+It was another fortunate coincidence that, contemporaneously with the
+discoveries of Hodgson and Csoma de Körös, another scholar, Schmidt of St.
+Petersburg, had so far advanced in the study of the Mongolian language, as
+to be able to translate portions of the Mongolian version of the Buddhist
+canon, and thus forward the elucidation of some of the problems connected
+with the religion of Buddha.
+
+It never rains but it pours. Whereas for years, nay, for centuries,
+not a single original document of the Buddhist religion had been
+accessible to the scholars of Europe, we witness, in the small space
+of ten years, the recovery of four complete Buddhist literatures. In
+addition to the discoveries of Hodgson in Nepal, of Csoma de Körös in
+Tibet, and of Schmidt in Mongolia, the Honourable George Turnour
+suddenly presented to the world the Buddhist literature of Ceylon,
+composed in the sacred language of that island, the ancient Pâli. The
+existence of that literature had been known before. Since 1826 Sir
+Alexander Johnston had been engaged in collecting authentic copies of
+the Mahâvansa, the Râ_g_âvalî, and the Râ_g_aratnâkarî. These copies
+were translated at his suggestion from Pâli into modern Singhalese and
+thence into English. The publication was entrusted to Mr. Edward
+Upham, and the work appeared in 1833, under the title of 'Sacred and
+Historical Works of Ceylon,' dedicated to William IV. Unfortunately,
+whether through fraud or through misunderstanding, the priests who
+were to have procured an authentic copy of the Pâli originals and
+translated them into the vernacular language, appear to have formed a
+compilation of their own from various sources. The official
+translators by whom this mutilated Singhalese abridgment was to have
+been rendered into English, took still greater liberties; and the
+'Sacred and Historical Books of Ceylon' had hardly been published
+before Burnouf, then a mere beginner in the study of Pâli, was able to
+prove the utter uselessness of that translation. Mr. Turnour, however,
+soon made up for this disappointment. He set to work in a more
+scholarlike spirit, and after acquiring himself a knowledge of the
+Pâli language, he published several important essays on the Buddhist
+canon, as preserved in Ceylon. These were followed by an edition and
+translation of the Mahâvansa, or the history of Ceylon, written in the
+fifth century after Christ, and giving an account of the island from
+the earliest times to the beginning of the fourth century A.D. Several
+continuations of that history are in existence, but Mr. Turnour was
+prevented by an early death from continuing his edition beyond the
+original portion of that chronicle. The exploration of the Ceylonese
+literature has since been taken up again by the Rev. D. J. Gogerly
+(Clough), whose essays are unfortunately scattered about in Singhalese
+periodicals and little known in Europe; and by the Rev. Spence Hardy,
+for twenty years Wesleyan Missionary in Ceylon. His two works,
+'Eastern Monachism' and 'Manual of Buddhism,' are full of interesting
+matter, but as they are chiefly derived from Singhalese, and even more
+modern sources, they require to be used with caution.[56]
+
+[Footnote 56: The same author has lately published another valuable
+work, 'The Legends and Theories of the Buddhists.' London, 1866.]
+
+In the same manner as the Sanskrit originals of Nepal were translated
+by Buddhist missionaries into Tibetan, Mongolian, and, as we shall
+soon see, into Chinese and Mandshu,[57] the Pâli originals of Ceylon
+were carried to Burmah and Siam, and translated there into the
+languages of those countries. Hardly anything has as yet been done for
+exploring the literature of these two countries, which open a
+promising field for any one ambitious to follow in the footsteps of
+Hodgson, Csoma, and Turnour.
+
+[Footnote 57: 'Mélanges Asiatiques,' vol. ii. p. 373.]
+
+A very important collection of Buddhist MSS. has lately been brought
+from Ceylon to Europe by M. Grimblot, and is now deposited in the
+Imperial Library at Paris. This collection, to judge from a report
+published in 1866 in the 'Journal des Savants' by M. Barthélemy
+Saint-Hilaire, consists of no less than eighty-seven works; and, as
+some of them are represented by more than one copy, the total number
+of MSS. amounts to one hundred and twenty-one. They fill altogether
+14,000 palm leaves, and are written partly in Singhalese, partly in
+Burmese characters. Next to Ceylon, Burmah and Siam would seem to be
+the two countries most likely to yield large collections of Pâli MSS.,
+and the MSS. which now exist in Ceylon may, to a considerable extent,
+be traced back to these two countries. At the beginning of the
+sixteenth century, the Tamil conquerors of Ceylon are reported to have
+burnt every Buddhist book they could discover, in the hope of thus
+destroying the vitality of that detested religion. Buddhism, however,
+though persecuted--or, more probably, because persecuted--remained
+the national religion of the island, and in the eighteenth century it
+had recovered its former ascendency. Missions were then sent to Siam
+to procure authentic copies of the sacred documents; priests properly
+ordained were imported from Burmah; and several libraries, which
+contain both the canonical and the profane literature of Buddhism,
+were founded at Dadala, Ambagapitya, and other places.
+
+The sacred canon of the Buddhists is called the Tripi_t_aka, i. e. the
+three baskets. The first basket contains all that has reference to
+morality, or Vinaya; the second contains the Sûtras, i. e. the
+discourses of Buddha; the third includes all works treating of
+dogmatic philosophy or metaphysics. The second and third baskets are
+sometimes comprehended under the general name of Dharma, or law, and
+it has become usual to apply to the third basket the name of
+Abhidharma, or by-law. The first and second pi_t_akas contain each
+five separate works; the third contains seven. M. Grimblot has secured
+MSS. of nearly every one of these works, and he has likewise brought
+home copies of the famous commentaries of Buddhaghosha. These
+commentaries are of great importance; for although Buddhaghosha lived
+as late as 430 A.D., he is supposed to have been the translator of
+more ancient commentaries, brought in 316 B.C. to Ceylon from Magadha
+by Mahinda, the son of A_s_oka, translated by him from Pâli into
+Singhalese, and retranslated by Buddhaghosha into Pâli, the original
+language both of the canonical books and of their commentaries.
+Whether historical criticism will allow to the commentaries of
+Buddhaghosha the authority due to documents of the fourth century
+before Christ, is a question that has yet to be settled. But even as a
+collector of earlier traditions and as a writer of the fifth century
+after Christ, his authority would be considerable with regard to the
+solution of some of the most important problems of Indian history and
+chronology. Some scholars who have written on the history of Buddhism
+have clearly shown too strong an inclination to treat the statements
+contained in the commentaries of Buddhaghosha as purely historical,
+forgetting the great interval of time by which he is separated from
+the events which he relates. No doubt if it could be proved that
+Buddhaghosha's works were literal translations of the so-called
+Attakathâs or commentaries brought by Mahinda to Ceylon, this would
+considerably enhance their historical value. But the whole account of
+these translations rests on tradition, and if we consider the
+extraordinary precautions taken, according to tradition, by the LXX
+translators of the Old Testament, and then observe the discrepancies
+between the chronology of the Septuagint and that of the Hebrew text,
+we shall be better able to appreciate the risk of trusting to Oriental
+translations, even to those that pretend to be literal. The idea of a
+faithful literal translation seems altogether foreign to Oriental
+minds. Granted that Mahinda translated the original Pâli commentaries
+into Singhalese, there was nothing to restrain him from inserting
+anything that he thought likely to be useful to his new converts.
+Granted that Buddhaghosha translated these translations back into
+Pâli, why should he not have incorporated any facts that were then
+believed in and had been handed down by tradition from generation to
+generation? Was he not at liberty--nay, would he not have felt it his
+duty, to explain apparent difficulties, to remove contradictions, and
+to correct palpable mistakes? In our time, when even the
+contemporaneous evidence of Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, or Jornandes
+is sifted by the most uncompromising scepticism, we must not expect a
+more merciful treatment for the annals of Buddhism. Scholars engaged
+in special researches are too willing to acquiesce in evidence,
+particularly if that evidence has been discovered by their own efforts
+and comes before them with all the charms of novelty. But, in the
+broad daylight of historical criticism, the prestige of such a witness
+as Buddhaghosha soon dwindles away, and his statements as to kings and
+councils eight hundred years before his time are in truth worth no
+more than the stories told of Arthur by Geoffrey of Monmouth, or the
+accounts we read in Livy of the early history of Rome.
+
+One of the most important works of M. Grimblot's collection, and one
+that we hope will soon be published, is a history of Buddhism in
+Ceylon, called the Dîpavansa. The only work of the same character
+which has hitherto been known is the Mahâvansa, published by the
+Honourable George Turnour. But this is professedly based on the
+Dîpavansa, and is probably of a much later date. Mahânâma, the
+compiler of the Mahâvansa, lived about 500 A. D. His work was
+continued by later chroniclers to the middle of the eighteenth
+century. Though Mahânâma wrote towards the end of the fifth century
+after Christ, his own share of the chronicle seems to have ended with
+the year 302 A.D., and a commentary which he wrote on his own
+chronicle likewise breaks off at that period. The exact date of the
+Dîpavansa is not yet known; but as it also breaks off with the death
+of Mahâsena in 302 A.D., we cannot ascribe to it, for the present, any
+higher authority than could be commanded by a writer of the fourth
+century after Christ.
+
+We now return to Mr. Hodgson. His collections of Sanskrit MSS. had
+been sent, as we saw, to the Asiatic Society of Calcutta from 1824 to
+1839, to the Royal Asiatic Society in London in 1835, and to the
+Société Asiatique of Paris in 1837. They remained dormant at Calcutta
+and in London. At Paris, however, these Buddhist MSS. fell into the
+hands of Burnouf. Unappalled by their size and tediousness, he set to
+work, and was not long before he discovered their extreme importance.
+After seven years of careful study, Burnouf published, in 1844, his
+'Introduction à l'Histoire du Buddhisme.' It is this work which laid
+the foundation for a systematic study of the religion of Buddha.
+Though acknowledging the great value of the researches made in the
+Buddhist literatures of Tibet, Mongolia, China, and Ceylon, Burnouf
+showed that Buddhism, being of Indian origin, ought to be studied
+first of all in the original Sanskrit documents, preserved in Nepal.
+Though he modestly called his work an Introduction to the History of
+Buddhism, there are few points of importance on which his industry has
+not brought together the most valuable evidence, and his genius shed a
+novel and brilliant light. The death of Burnouf in 1851, put an end to
+a work which, if finished according to the plan sketched out by the
+author in the preface, would have been the most perfect monument of
+Oriental scholarship. A volume published after his death, in 1852,
+contains a translation of one of the canonical books of Nepal, with
+notes and appendices, the latter full of the most valuable information
+on some of the more intricate questions of Buddhism. Though much
+remained to be done, and though a very small breach only had been made
+in the vast pile of Sanskrit MSS. presented by Mr. Hodgson to the
+Asiatic Societies of Paris and London, no one has been bold enough to
+continue what Burnouf left unfinished. The only important additions to
+our knowledge of Buddhism since his death are an edition of the
+Lalita-Vistara or the life of Buddha, prepared by a native, the
+learned Babu Rajendralal Mittra; an edition of the Pâli original of
+the Dhammapadam, by Dr. Fausböll, a Dane; and last, not least, the
+excellent translation by M. Stanislas Julien, of the life and travels
+of Hiouen-Thsang. This Chinese pilgrim had visited India from 629 to
+645 A.D., for the purpose of learning Sanskrit, and translating from
+Sanskrit into Chinese some important works on the religion and
+philosophy of the Buddhists; and his account of the geography, the
+social, religious, and political state of India at the beginning of
+the seventh century, is invaluable for studying the practical working
+of that religion at a time when its influence began to decline, and
+when it was soon to be supplanted by modern Brahmanism and
+Mohammedanism.
+
+It was no easy task for M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire to make himself
+acquainted with all these works. The study of Buddhism would almost
+seem to be beyond the power of any single individual, if it required a
+practical acquaintance with all the languages in which the doctrines
+of Buddha have been written down. Burnouf was probably the only man
+who, in addition to his knowledge of Sanskrit, did not shrink from
+acquiring a practical knowledge of Tibetan, Pâli, Singhalese, and
+Burmese, in order to prepare himself for such a task. The same scholar
+had shown, however, that though it was impossible for a Tibetan,
+Mongolian, or Chinese scholar to arrive, without a knowledge of
+Sanskrit, at a correct understanding of the doctrines of Buddha, a
+knowledge of Sanskrit was sufficient for entering into their spirit,
+for comprehending their origin and growth in India, and their
+modification in the different countries where they took root in later
+times. Assisted by his familiarity with Sanskrit, and bringing into
+the field, as a new and valuable auxiliary, his intimate acquaintance
+with nearly all the systems of philosophy and religion of both the
+ancient and modern worlds, M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire has succeeded
+in drawing a picture, both lively and correct, of the origin, the
+character, the strong as well as weak points, of the religion of
+Buddha. He has become the first historian of Buddhism. He has not been
+carried away by a temptation which must have been great for one who is
+able to read in the past the lessons for the present or the future. He
+has not used Buddhism either as a bugbear or as a _beau idéal_. He is
+satisfied with stating in his preface that many lessons might be
+learned by modern philosophers from a study of Buddhism, but in the
+body of the work he never perverts the chair of the historian into the
+pulpit of the preacher.
+
+'This book may offer one other advantage,' he writes, 'and I regret to
+say that at present it may seem to come opportunely. It is the
+misfortune of our times that the same doctrines which form the
+foundation of Buddhism meet at the hands of some of our philosophers
+with a favour which they ill deserve. For some years we have seen
+systems arising in which metempsychosis and transmigration are highly
+spoken of, and attempts are made to explain the world and man without
+either a God or a Providence, exactly as Buddha did. A future life is
+refused to the yearnings of mankind, and the immortality of the soul
+is replaced by the immortality of works. God is dethroned, and in His
+place they substitute man, the only being, we are told, in which the
+Infinite becomes conscious of itself. These theories are recommended
+to us sometimes in the name of science, or of history, or philology,
+or even of metaphysics; and though they are neither new nor very
+original, yet they can do much injury to feeble hearts. This is not
+the place to examine these theories, and their authors are both too
+learned and too sincere to deserve to be condemned summarily and
+without discussion. But it is well that they should know by the
+example, too little known, of Buddhism, what becomes of man if he
+depends on himself alone, and if his meditations, misled by a pride of
+which he is hardly conscious, bring him to the precipice where Buddha
+was lost. Besides, I am well aware of all the differences, and I am
+not going to insult our contemporary philosophers by confounding them
+indiscriminately with Buddha, although addressing to both the same
+reproof. I acknowledge willingly all their additional merits, which
+are considerable. But systems of philosophy must always be judged by
+the conclusions to which they lead, whatever road they may follow in
+reaching them; and their conclusions, though obtained by different
+means, are not therefore less objectionable. Buddha arrived at his
+conclusions 2400 years ago. He proclaimed and practised them with an
+energy which is not likely to be surpassed, even if it be equalled. He
+displayed a child-like intrepidity which no one can exceed, nor can it
+be supposed that any system in our days could again acquire so
+powerful an ascendency over the souls of men. It would be useful,
+however, if the authors of these modern systems would just cast a
+glance at the theories and destinies of Buddhism. It is not philosophy
+in the sense in which we understand this great name, nor is it
+religion in the sense of ancient paganism, of Christianity, or of
+Mohammedanism; but it contains elements of all worked up into a
+perfectly independent doctrine which acknowledges nothing in the
+universe but man, and obstinately refuses to recognise anything else,
+though confounding man with nature in the midst of which he lives.
+Hence all those aberrations of Buddhism which ought to be a warning to
+others. Unfortunately, if people rarely profit by their own faults,
+they profit yet more rarely by the faults of others. (Introduction, p.
+vii.)
+
+But though M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire does not write history merely
+for the sake of those masked batteries which French writers have used
+with so much skill at all times, but more particularly during the late
+years of Imperial sway, it is clear, from the remarks just quoted,
+that our author is not satisfied with simply chronicling the dry facts
+of Buddhism, or turning into French the tedious discourses of its
+founder. His work is an animated sketch, giving too little rather than
+too much. It is just the book which was wanted to dispel the erroneous
+notions about Buddhism, which are still current among educated men,
+and to excite an interest which may lead those who are naturally
+frightened by the appalling proportions of Buddhist literature, and
+the uncouth sounds of Buddhist terminology, to a study of the quartos
+of Burnouf, Turnour, and others. To those who may wish for more
+detailed information on Buddhism, than could be given by M. Barthélemy
+Saint-Hilaire, consistently with the plan of his work, we can strongly
+recommend the work of a German writer, 'Die Religion des Buddha,' von
+Köppen, Berlin, 1857. It is founded on the same materials as the
+French work, but being written by a scholar and for scholars, it
+enters on a more minute examination of all that has been said or
+written on Buddha and Buddhism. In a second volume the same learned
+and industrious student has lately published a history of Buddhism in
+Tibet.
+
+M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire's work is divided into three portions. The
+first contains an account of the origin of Buddhism, a life of Buddha,
+and an examination of Buddhist ethics and metaphysics. In the second,
+he describes the state of Buddhism in India in the seventh century of
+our era, from the materials supplied by the travels of Hiouen-Thsang.
+The third gives a description of Buddhism as actually existing in
+Ceylon, and as lately described by an eye-witness, the Rev. Spence
+Hardy. We shall confine ourselves chiefly to the first part, which
+treats of the life and teaching of Buddha.
+
+M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, following the example of Burnouf, Lassen,
+and Wilson, accepts the date of the Ceylonese era 543 B.C. as the date
+of Buddha's death. Though we cannot enter here into long chronological
+discussions, we must remark, that this date was clearly obtained by
+the Buddhists of Ceylon by calculation, not by historical tradition,
+and that it is easy to point out in that calculation a mistake of
+about seventy years. The more plausible date of Buddha's death is 477
+B.C. For the purposes, however, which M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire had
+in view, this difference is of small importance. We know so little of
+the history of India during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., that
+the stage on which he represents Buddha as preaching and teaching
+would have had very much the same background, the same costume and
+accessories, for the sixth as for the fifth century B.C.
+
+In the life of Buddha, which extends from p. 1 to 79, M. Barthélemy
+Saint-Hilaire follows almost exclusively the Lalita-Vistara. This is
+one of the most popular works of the Buddhists. It forms part of the
+Buddhist canon; and as we know of a translation into Chinese, which M.
+Stanislas Julien ascribes to the year 76 A.D., we may safely refer its
+original composition to an ante-Christian date. It has been published
+in Sanskrit by Babu Rajendralal Mittra, and we owe to M. Foucaux an
+edition of the same work in its Tibetan translation, the first Tibetan
+text printed in Europe. From specimens that we have seen, we should
+think it would be highly desirable to have an accurate translation of
+the Chinese text, such as M. Stanislas Julien alone is able to give
+us.[58] Few people, however, except scholars, would have the patience
+to read this work either in its English or French translation, as may
+be seen from the following specimen, containing the beginning of Babu
+Rajendralal Mittra's version:
+
+     'Om! Salutation to all Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Âryas,
+     _S_râvakas, and Pratyeka Buddhas of all times, past,
+     present, and future; who are adored throughout the farthest
+     limits of the ten quarters of the globe. Thus hath it been
+     heard by me, that once on a time Bhagavat sojourned in the
+     garden of Anâthapi_nd_ada, at _G_etavana, in _S_râvastî,
+     accompanied by a venerable body of 12,000 Bhikshukas. There
+     likewise accompanied him 32,000 Bodhisattvas, all linked
+     together by unity of caste, and perfect in the virtues of
+     pâramitâ; who had made their command over Bodhisattva
+     knowledge a pastime, were illumined with the light of
+     Bodhisattva dhâra_n_îs, and were masters of the dhâra_n_îs
+     themselves; who were profound in their meditations, all
+     submissive to the lord of Bodhisattvas, and possessed
+     absolute control over samâdhi; great in self-command,
+     refulgent in Bodhisattva forbearance, and replete with the
+     Bodhisattva element of perfection. Now then, Bhagavat
+     arriving in the great city of _S_râvastî, sojourned therein,
+     respected, venerated, revered, and adored, by the fourfold
+     congregation; by kings, princes, their counsellors, prime
+     ministers, and followers; by retinues of kshatriyas,
+     brâhma_n_as, householders, and ministers; by citizens,
+     foreigners, _s_râma_n_as, brâhma_n_as, recluses, and
+     ascetics; and although regaled with all sorts of edibles and
+     sauces, the best that could be prepared by purveyors, and
+     supplied with cleanly mendicant apparel, begging pots,
+     couches, and pain-assuaging medicaments, the benevolent
+     lord, on whom had been showered the prime of gifts and
+     applauses, remained unattached to them all, like water on a
+     lotus leaf; and the report of his greatness as the
+     venerable, the absolute Buddha, the learned and
+     well-behaved, the god of happy exit, the great knower of
+     worlds, the valiant, the all-controlling charioteer, the
+     teacher of gods and men, the quinocular lord Buddha fully
+     manifest, spread far and wide in the world. And Bhagavat,
+     having by his own power acquired all knowledge regarding
+     this world and the next, comprising devas, mâras, brâhmyas
+     (followers of Brahmâ), _s_râma_n_as, and brâhma_n_as, as
+     subjects, that is both gods and men, sojourned here,
+     imparting instructions in the true religion, and expounding
+     the principles of a brahma_k_arya, full and complete in its
+     nature, holy in its import, pure and immaculate in its
+     character, auspicious is its beginning, auspicious its
+     middle, auspicious its end.'
+
+[Footnote 58: The advantages to be derived from these Chinese
+translations have been pointed out by M. Stanislas Julien. The
+analytical structure of that language imparts to Chinese translations
+the character almost of a gloss; and though we need not follow
+implicitly the interpretations of the Sanskrit originals, adopted by
+the Chinese translators, still their antiquity would naturally impart
+to them a considerable value and interest. The following specimens
+were kindly communicated to me by M. Stanislas Julien:
+
+     'Je ne sais si je vous ai communiqué autrefois les curieux
+     passages qui suivent: On lit dans le Lotus français, p. 271,
+     l. 14, C'est que c'est une chose difficile à rencontrer que
+     la naissance d'un bouddha, aussi difficile à rencontrer que
+     la fleur de l'Udumbara, que l'introduction du col d'une
+     tortue dans l'ouverture d'un joug formé par le grand océan.
+
+     'Il y a en chinois: un bouddha est difficile à rencontrer,
+     comme les fleurs Udumbara et Palâça; et en outre comme si
+     une tortue borgne voulait rencontrer un trou dans un bois
+     flottant (litt. le trou d'un bois flottant).
+
+     'Lotus français, p. 39, l. 110 (les créatures), enchaînées
+     par la concupiscence comme par la queue du Yak,
+     perpétuellement aveuglées en ce monde par les désirs, elles
+     ne cherchent pas le Buddha.
+
+     'Il y a en chinois: Profondément attachées aux cinq
+     désirs--Elles les aiment comme le Yak aime sa queue. Par la
+     concupiscence et l'amour, elles s'aveuglent elles-mêmes,
+     etc.'
+]
+
+The whole work is written in a similar style, and where fact and
+legend, prose and poetry, sense and nonsense, are so mixed together,
+the plan adopted by M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, of making two lives
+out of one, the one containing all that seems possible, the other what
+seems impossible, would naturally recommend itself. It is not a safe
+process, however, to distil history out of legend by simply straining
+the legendary through the sieve of physical possibility. Many things
+are possible, and may yet be the mere inventions of later writers, and
+many things which sound impossible have been reclaimed as historical,
+after removing from them the thin film of mythological phraseology. We
+believe that the only use which the historian can safely make of the
+Lalita-Vistara, is to employ it, not as evidence of facts which
+actually happened, but in illustration of the popular belief prevalent
+at the time when it was committed to writing. Without therefore
+adopting the division of fact and fiction in the life of Buddha, as
+attempted by M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, we yet believe that in order
+to avoid a repetition of childish absurdities, we shall best consult
+the interest of our readers if we follow his example, and give a short
+and rational abstract of the life of Buddha as handed down by
+tradition, and committed to writing not later than the first century
+B.C.
+
+Buddha, or more correctly, the Buddha,--for Buddha is an appellative
+meaning Enlightened,--was born at Kapilavastu, the capital of a kingdom of
+the same name, situated at the foot of the mountains of Nepal, north of the
+present Oude. His father, the king of Kapilavastu, was of the family of the
+_S_âkyas, and belonged to the clan of the Gautamas. His mother was
+Mâyâdêvî, daughter of king Suprabuddha, and need we say that she was as
+beautiful as he was powerful and just? Buddha was therefore by birth of the
+Kshatriya or warrior caste, and he took the name of _S_âkya from his
+family, and that of Gautama from his clan, claiming a kind of spiritual
+relationship with the honoured race of Gautama. The name of Buddha, or the
+Buddha, dates from a later period of his life, and so probably does the
+name Siddhârtha (he whose objects have been accomplished), though we are
+told that it was given him in his childhood. His mother died seven days
+after his birth, and the father confided the child to the care of his
+deceased wife's sister, who, however, had been his wife even before the
+mother's death. The child grew up a most beautiful and most accomplished
+boy, who soon knew more than his masters could teach him. He refused to
+take part in the games of his playmates, and never felt so happy as when he
+could sit alone, lost in meditation in the deep shadows of the forest. It
+was there that his father found him, when he had thought him lost, and in
+order to prevent the young prince from becoming a dreamer, the king
+determined to marry him at once. When the subject was mentioned by the aged
+ministers to the future heir to the throne, he demanded seven days for
+reflection, and convinced at last that not even marriage could disturb the
+calm of his mind, he allowed the ministers to look out for a princess. The
+princess selected was the beautiful Gopâ, the daughter of Da_nd_apâ_n_i.
+Though her father objected at first to her marrying a young prince who was
+represented to him as deficient in manliness and intellect, he gladly gave
+his consent when he saw the royal suitor distancing all his rivals both in
+feats of arms and power of mind. Their marriage proved one of the happiest,
+but the prince remained, as he had been before, absorbed in meditation on
+the problems of life and death. 'Nothing is stable on earth,' he used to
+say, 'nothing is real. Life is like the spark produced by the friction of
+wood. It is lighted and is extinguished--we know not whence it came or
+whither it goes. It is like the sound of a lyre, and the wise man asks in
+vain from whence it came and whither it goes. There must be some supreme
+intelligence where we could find rest. If I attained it, I could bring
+light to man; if I were free myself, I could deliver the world.' The king,
+who perceived the melancholy mood of the young prince, tried every thing to
+divert him from his speculations: but all was in vain. Three of the most
+ordinary events that could happen to any man, proved of the utmost
+importance in the career of Buddha. We quote the description of these
+occurrences from M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire:
+
+     'One day when the prince with a large retinue drove through
+     the eastern gate of the city on the way to one of his parks,
+     he met on the road an old man, broken and decrepit. One
+     could see the veins and muscles over the whole of his body,
+     his teeth chattered, he was covered with wrinkles, bald, and
+     hardly able to utter hollow and unmelodious sounds. He was
+     bent on his stick, and all his limbs and joints trembled.
+     "Who is that man?" said the prince to his coachman. "He is
+     small and weak, his flesh and his blood are dried up, his
+     muscles stick to his skin, his head is white, his teeth
+     chatter, his body is wasted away; leaning on his stick he is
+     hardly able to walk, stumbling at every step. Is there
+     something peculiar in his family, or is this the common lot
+     of all created beings?"
+
+     '"Sir," replied the coachman, "that man is sinking under old
+     age, his senses have become obtuse, suffering has destroyed
+     his strength, and he is despised by his relations. He is
+     without support and useless, and people have abandoned him,
+     like a dead tree in a forest. But this is not peculiar to
+     his family. In every creature youth is defeated by old age.
+     Your father, your mother, all your relations, all your
+     friends, will come to the same state; this is the appointed
+     end of all creatures."
+
+     '"Alas!" replied the prince, "are creatures so ignorant, so
+     weak and foolish, as to be proud of the youth by which they
+     are intoxicated, not seeing the old age which awaits them!
+     As for me, I go away. Coachman, turn my chariot quickly.
+     What have I, the future prey of old age,--what have I to do
+     with pleasure?" And the young prince returned to the city
+     without going to his park.
+
+     'Another time the prince drove through the southern gate to
+     his pleasure garden, when he perceived on the road a man
+     suffering from illness, parched with fever, his body wasted,
+     covered with mud, without a friend, without a home, hardly
+     able to breathe, and frightened at the sight of himself and
+     the approach of death. Having questioned his coachman, and
+     received from him the answer which he expected, the young
+     prince said, "Alas! health is but the sport of a dream, and
+     the fear of suffering must take this frightful form. Where
+     is the wise man who, after having seen what he is, could any
+     longer think of joy and pleasure?" The prince turned his
+     chariot and returned to the city.
+
+     'A third time he drove to his pleasure garden through the
+     western gate, when he saw a dead body on the road, lying on
+     a bier, and covered with a cloth. The friends stood about
+     crying, sobbing, tearing their hair, covering their heads
+     with dust, striking their breasts, and uttering wild cries.
+     The prince, again calling his coachman to witness this
+     painful scene, exclaimed, "Oh! woe to youth, which must be
+     destroyed by old age! Woe to health, which must be destroyed
+     by so many diseases! Woe to this life, where a man remains
+     so short a time! If there were no old age, no disease, no
+     death; if these could be made captive for ever!" Then
+     betraying for the first time his intentions, the young
+     prince said, "Let us turn back, I must think how to
+     accomplish deliverance."
+
+     'A last meeting put an end to his hesitation. He drove
+     through the northern gate on the way to his pleasure
+     gardens, when he saw a mendicant who appeared outwardly
+     calm, subdued, looking downwards, wearing with an air of
+     dignity his religious vestment, and carrying an alms-bowl.
+
+     '"Who is this man?" asked the prince.
+
+     '"Sir," replied the coachman, "this man is one of those who
+     are called bhikshus, or mendicants. He has renounced all
+     pleasures, all desires, and leads a life of austerity. He
+     tries to conquer himself. He has become a devotee. Without
+     passion, without envy, he walks about asking for alms."
+
+     '"This is good and well said," replied the prince. "The life
+     of a devotee has always been praised by the wise. It will be
+     my refuge, and the refuge of other creatures; it will lead
+     us to a real life, to happiness and immortality."
+
+     'With these words the young prince turned his chariot and
+     returned to the city.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After having declared to his father and his wife his intention of
+retiring from the world, Buddha left his palace one night when all the
+guards that were to have watched him, were asleep. After travelling
+the whole night, he gave his horse and his ornaments to his groom, and
+sent him back to Kapilavastu. 'A monument,' remarks the author of the
+Lalita-Vistara (p. 270), 'is still to be seen on the spot where the
+coachman turned back,' Hiouen-Thsang (II. 330) saw the same monument
+at the edge of a large forest, on his road to Ku_s_inâgara, a city now
+in ruins, and situated about fifty miles E.S.E. from Gorakpur.[59]
+
+[Footnote 59: The geography of India at the time of Buddha, and later
+at the time of Fahian and Hiouen-Thsang, has been admirably treated by
+M. L. Vivien de Saint-Martin, in his 'Mémoire Analytique sur la Carte
+de l'Asie Centrale et de l'Inde,' in the third volume of M. Stanislas
+Julien's 'Pèlerins Bouddhistes.']
+
+Buddha first went to Vai_s_âlî, and became the pupil of a famous
+Brahman, who had gathered round him 300 disciples. Having learnt all
+that the Brahman could teach him, Buddha went away disappointed. He
+had not found the road to salvation. He then tried another Brahman at
+Râ_g_ag_r_iha, the capital of Magadha or Behar, who had 700
+disciples, and there too he looked in vain for the means of
+deliverance. He left him, followed by five of his fellow-students, and
+for six years retired into solitude, near a village named Uruvilva,
+subjecting himself to the most severe penances, previous to his
+appearing in the world as a teacher. At the end of this period,
+however, he arrived at the conviction that asceticism, far from giving
+peace of mind and preparing the way to salvation, was a snare and a
+stumbling-block in the way of truth. He gave up his exercises, and was
+at once deserted as an apostate by his five disciples. Left to himself
+he now began to elaborate his own system. He had learnt that neither
+the doctrines nor the austerities of the Brahmans were of any avail
+for accomplishing the deliverance of man, and freeing him from the
+fear of old age, disease, and death. After long meditations, and
+ecstatic visions, he at last imagined that he had arrived at that true
+knowledge which discloses the cause, and thereby destroys the fear, of
+all the changes inherent in life. It was from the moment when he
+arrived at this knowledge, that he claimed the name of Buddha, the
+Enlightened. At that moment we may truly say that the fate of millions
+of millions of human beings trembled in the balance. Buddha hesitated
+for a time whether he should keep his knowledge to himself, or
+communicate it to the world. Compassion for the sufferings of man
+prevailed, and the young prince became the founder of a religion
+which, after more than 2000 years, is still professed by 455,000,000
+of human beings.[60]
+
+[Footnote 60: Though truth is not settled by majorities, it would be
+interesting to know which religion, counts at the present moment the
+largest numbers of believers. Berghaus, in his 'Physical Atlas,' gives
+the following division of the human race according to religion:
+
+Buddhists            31.2 per cent.
+Christians           30.7    "
+Mohammedans          15.7    "
+Brahmanists          13.4    "
+Heathens              8.7    "
+Jews                  0.3    "
+
+As Berghaus does not distinguish the Buddhists in China from the
+followers of Confucius and Lao-tse, the first place on the scale
+belongs really to Christianity. It is difficult in China to say to
+what religion a man belongs, as the same person may profess two or
+three. The emperor himself, after sacrificing according to the ritual
+of Confucius, visits a Tao-ssé temple, and afterwards bows before an
+image of Fo in a Buddhist chapel. ('Mélanges Asiatiques de St.
+Pétersbourg,' vol. ii. p. 374.)]
+
+The further history of the new teacher is very simple. He proceeded to
+Benares, which at all times was the principal seat of learning in
+India, and the first converts he made were the five fellow-students
+who had left him when he threw off the yoke of the Brahmanical
+observances. Many others followed; but as the Lalita-Vistara breaks
+off at Buddha's arrival at Benares, we have no further consecutive
+account of the rapid progress of his doctrine. From what we can gather
+from scattered notices in the Buddhist canon, he was invited by the
+king of Magadha, Bimbisâra, to his capital, Râ_g_ag_r_iha. Many of his
+lectures are represented as having been delivered at the monastery of
+Kalantaka, with which the king or some rich merchant had presented
+him; others on the Vulture Peak, one of the five hills that surrounded
+the ancient capital.
+
+Three of his most famous disciples, _S_âriputra, Kâtyâyana, and
+Maudgalyâyana, joined him during his stay in Magadha, where he
+enjoyed for many years the friendship of the king. That king was
+afterwards assassinated by his son, A_g_âta_s_atru, and then we hear
+of Buddha as settled for a time at _S_râvastî, north of the Ganges,
+where Anâthapi_nd_ada, a rich merchant, had offered him and his
+disciples a magnificent building for their residence. Most of Buddha's
+lectures or sermons were delivered at _S_râvastî, the capital of
+Ko_s_ala; and the king of Ko_s_ala himself, Prasêna_g_it, became a
+convert to his doctrine. After an absence of twelve years we are told
+that Buddha visited his father at Kapilavastu, on which occasion he
+performed several miracles, and converted all the _S_âkyas to his
+faith. His own wife became one of his followers, and, with his aunt,
+offers the first instance of female Buddhist devotees in India. We
+have fuller particulars again of the last days of Buddha's life. He
+had attained the good age of three score and ten, and had been on a
+visit to Râ_g_ag_r_iha, where the king, A_g_âta_s_atru, the former
+enemy of Buddha, and the assassin of his own father, had joined the
+congregation, after making a public confession of his crimes. On his
+return he was followed by a large number of disciples, and when on the
+point of crossing the Ganges, he stood on a square stone, and turning
+his eyes back towards Râ_g_ag_r_iha, he said, full of emotion, 'This
+is the last time that I see that city.' He likewise visited Vai_s_âlî,
+and after taking leave of it, he had nearly reached the city of
+Ku_s_inâgara, when his vital strength began to fail. He halted in a
+forest, and while sitting under a sâl tree, he gave up the ghost, or,
+as a Buddhist would say, entered into Nirvâ_n_a.
+
+This is the simple story of Buddha's life. It reads much better in
+the eloquent pages of M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, than in the turgid
+language of the Buddhists. If a critical historian, with the materials
+we possess, entered at all on the process of separating truth from
+falsehood, he would probably cut off much of what our biographer has
+left. Professor Wilson, in his Essay on Buddha and Buddhism, considers
+it doubtful whether any such person as Buddha ever actually existed.
+He dwells on the fact that there are at least twenty different dates
+assigned to his birth, varying from 2420 to 453 B.C. He points out
+that the clan of the _S_âkyas is never mentioned by early Hindu
+writers, and he lays much stress on the fact that most of the proper
+names of the persons connected with Buddha suggest an allegorical
+signification. The name of his father means, he whose food is pure;
+that of his mother signifies illusion; his own secular appellation,
+Siddhârtha, he by whom the end is accomplished. Buddha itself means,
+the Enlightened, or, as Professor Wilson translates it less
+accurately, he by whom all is known. The same distinguished scholar
+goes even further, and maintaining that Kapilavastu, the birthplace of
+Buddha, has no place in the geography of the Hindus, suggests that it
+may be rendered, the substance of Kapila; intimating, in fact, the
+Sânkhya philosophy, the doctrine of Kapila Muni, upon which the
+fundamental elements of Buddhism, the eternity of matter, the
+principles of things, and the final extinction, are supposed to be
+planned. 'It seems not impossible,' he continues, 'that _S_âkya Muni
+is an unreal being, and that all that is related of him is as much a
+fiction, as is that of his preceding migrations, and the miracles that
+attended his birth, his life, and his departure.' This is going far
+beyond Niebuhr, far even beyond Strauss. If an allegorical name had
+been invented for the father of Buddha, one more appropriate than
+'Clean-food' might surely have been found. His wife is not the only
+queen known by the name of Mâyâ, Mâyâdêvî, or Mâyâvatî. Why, if these
+names were invented, should his wife have been allowed to keep the
+prosaic name of Gopâ (cowherdess), and his father-in-law, that of
+Da_nd_apâ_n_i, 'Stick-hand?' As to his own name, Siddhârtha, the
+Tibetans maintain that it was given him by his parent, whose wish
+(artha) had been fulfilled (siddha), as we hear of Désirés and
+Dieu-donnés in French. One of the ministers of Da_s_aratha had the
+same name. It is possible also that Buddha himself assumed it in after
+life, as was the case with many of the Roman surnames. As to the name
+of Buddha, no one ever maintained that it was more than a title, the
+Enlightened, changed from an appellative into a proper name, just like
+the name of Christos, the Anointed, or Mohammed, the Expected.[61]
+Kapilavastu would be a most extraordinary compound to express 'the
+substance of the Sânkhya philosophy.' But all doubt on the subject is
+removed by the fact that both Fahian in the fifth, and Hiouen-Thsang
+in the seventh centuries, visited the real ruins of that city.
+
+[Footnote 61: See Sprenger, 'Das Leben des Mohammed,' 1861, vol. i. p.
+155.]
+
+Making every possible allowance for the accumulation of fiction which
+is sure to gather round the life of the founder of every great
+religion, we may be satisfied that Buddhism, which changed the aspect
+not only of India, but of nearly the whole of Asia, had a real
+founder; that he was not a Brahman by birth, but belonged to the
+second or royal caste; that being of a meditative turn of mind, and
+deeply impressed with the frailty of all created things, he became a
+recluse, and sought for light and comfort in the different systems of
+Brâhman philosophy and theology. Dissatisfied with the artificial
+systems of their priests and philosophers, convinced of the
+uselessness, nay of the pernicious influence, of their ceremonial
+practices and bodily penances, shocked, too, by their worldliness and
+pharisaical conceit, which made the priesthood the exclusive property
+of one caste and rendered every sincere approach of man to his Creator
+impossible without their intervention, Buddha must have produced at
+once a powerful impression on the people at large, when breaking
+through all the established rules of caste, he assumed the privileges
+of a Brahman, and throwing away the splendour of his royal position,
+travelled about as a beggar, not shrinking from the defiling contact
+of sinners and publicans. Though when we now speak of Buddhism, we
+think chiefly of its doctrines, the reform of Buddha had originally
+much more of a social than of a religious character. Buddha swept away
+the web with which the Brahmans had encircled the whole of India.
+Beginning as the destroyer of an old, he became the founder of a new
+religion. We can hardly understand how any nation could have lived
+under a system like that of the Brahmanic hierarchy, which coiled
+itself round every public and private act, and would have rendered
+life intolerable to any who had forfeited the favour of the priests.
+That system was attacked by Buddha. Buddha might have taught whatever
+philosophy he pleased, and we should hardly have heard his name. The
+people would not have minded him, and his system would only have been
+a drop in the ocean of philosophical speculation, by which India was
+deluged at all times. But when a young prince assembled round him
+people of all castes, of all ranks, when he defeated the Brahmans in
+public disputations, when he declared the sacrifices by which they
+made their living not only useless but sinful, when instead of severe
+penance or excommunications inflicted by the Brahmans sometimes for
+the most trifling offences, he only required public confession of sin
+and a promise to sin no more: when the charitable gifts hitherto
+monopolised by the Brahmans, began to flow into new channels,
+supporting hundreds and thousands of Buddhist mendicants, more had
+been achieved than probably Buddha himself had ever dreamt of; and he
+whose meditations had been how to deliver the soul of man from misery
+and the fear of death, had delivered the people of India from a
+degrading thraldom and from priestly tyranny.
+
+The most important element of the Buddhist reform has always been its
+social and moral code, not its metaphysical theories. That moral code,
+taken by itself, is one of the most perfect which the world has ever
+known. On this point all testimonies from hostile and from friendly
+quarters agree. Spence Hardy, a Wesleyan Missionary, speaking of the
+Dhamma Padam, or the 'Footsteps of the Law,' admits that a collection
+might be made from the precepts of this work, which in the purity of
+its ethics could hardly be equalled from any other heathen author. M.
+Laboulaye, one of the most distinguished members of the French
+Academy, remarks in the 'Débats' of the 4th of April, 1853: 'It is
+difficult to comprehend how men not assisted by revelation could have
+soared so high, and approached so near to the truth.' Besides the five
+great commandments not to kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery,
+not to lie, not to get drunk, every shade of vice, hypocrisy, anger,
+pride, suspicion, greediness, gossiping, cruelty to animals, is
+guarded against by special precepts. Among the virtues recommended, we
+find not only reverence of parents, care for children, submission to
+authority, gratitude, moderation in time of prosperity, submission in
+time of trial, equanimity at all times, but virtues unknown in any
+heathen system of morality, such as the duty of forgiving insults and
+not rewarding evil with evil. All virtues, we are told, spring from
+Maitrî, and this Maitrî can only be translated by charity and love. 'I
+do not hesitate,' says Burnouf,[62] 'to translate by charity the word
+Maitrî; it does not express friendship or the feeling of particular
+affection which a man has for one or more of his fellow-creatures, but
+that universal feeling which inspires us with good-will towards all
+men and constant willingness to help them.' We add one more testimony
+from the work of M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire:
+
+     'Je n'hésite pas à ajouter,' he writes, 'que, sauf le Christ
+     tout seul, il n'est point, parmi les fondateurs de religion,
+     de figure plus pure ni plus touchante que celle du Bouddha.
+     Sa vie n'a point de tâche. Son constant héroisme égale sa
+     conviction; et si la théorie qu'il préconise est fausse, les
+     exemples personnels qu'il donne sont irréprochables. Il est
+     le modèle achevé de toutes les vertus qu'il prêche; son
+     abnégation, sa charité son inaltérable douceur, ne se
+     démentent point un seul instant; il abandonne à vingt-neuf
+     ans la cour du roi son père pour se faire religieux et
+     mendiant; il prépare silencieusement sa doctrine par six
+     années de retraite et de méditation; il la propage par la
+     seule puissance de la parole et de la persuasion, pendant
+     plus d'un demi-siècle; et quand il meurt entre les bras de
+     ses disciples, c'est avec la sérénité d'un sage qui a
+     pratiqué le bien toute sa vie, et qui est assuré d'avoir
+     trouvé le vrai.' (Page v.)
+
+[Footnote 62: Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 300.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There still remain, no doubt, some blurred and doubtful pages in the
+history of the prince of Kapilavastu; but we have only to look at the
+works on ancient philosophy and religion published some thirty years
+ago, in order to perceive the immense progress that has been made in
+establishing the true historical character of the founder of Buddhism.
+There was a time when Buddha was identified with Christ. The
+Manichæans were actually forced to abjure their belief that Buddha,
+Christ, and Mani were one and the same person.[63] But we are thinking
+rather of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when elaborate
+books were written, in order to prove that Buddha had been in reality
+the Thoth of the Egyptians, that he was Mercury, or Wodan, or
+Zoroaster, or Pythagoras. Even Sir W. Jones, as we saw, identified
+Buddha, first with Odin, and afterwards with Shishak, 'who either in
+person or by a colony from Egypt imported into India the mild heresy
+of the ancient Bauddhas.' At present we know that neither Egypt nor
+the Walhalla of Germany, neither Greece nor Persia, could have
+produced either the man himself or his doctrine. He is the offspring
+of India in mind and soul. His doctrine, by the very antagonism in
+which it stands to the old system of Brahmanism, shows that it could
+not have sprung up in any country except India. The ancient history of
+Brahmanism leads on to Buddhism, with the same necessity with which
+mediæval Romanism led to Protestantism. Though the date of Buddha is
+still liable to small chronological oscillations, his place in the
+intellectual annals of India is henceforth definitely marked: Buddhism
+became the state religion of India at the time of A_s_oka; and
+A_s_oka, the Buddhist Constantine, was the grandson of _K_andragupta,
+the contemporary of Seleucus Nicator. The system of the Brahmans had
+run its course. Their ascendency, at first purely intellectual and
+religious, had gradually assumed a political character. By means of
+the system of caste this influence pervaded the whole social fabric,
+not as a vivifying leaven, but as a deadly poison. Their increasing
+power and self-confidence are clearly exhibited in the successive
+periods of their ancient literature. It begins with the simple hymns
+of the Veda. These are followed by the tracts, known by the name of
+Brâhma_n_as, in which a complete system of theology is elaborated, and
+claims advanced in favour of the Brahmans, such as were seldom
+conceded to any hierarchy. The third period in the history of their
+ancient literature is marked by their Sûtras or Aphorisms, curt and
+dry formularies, showing the Brahmans in secure possession of all
+their claims. Such privileges as they then enjoyed are never enjoyed
+for any length of time. It was impossible for anybody to move or to
+assert his freedom of thought and action without finding himself
+impeded on all sides by the web of the Brahmanic law; nor was there
+anything in their religion to satisfy the natural yearnings of the
+human heart after spiritual comfort. What was felt by Buddha, had been
+felt more or less intensely by thousands; and this was the secret of
+his success. That success was accelerated, however, by political
+events. _K_andragupta had conquered the throne of Magadha, and
+acquired his supremacy in India in defiance of the Brahmanic law. He
+was of low origin, a mere adventurer, and by his accession to the
+throne an important mesh had been broken in the intricate system of
+caste. Neither he nor his successors could count on the support of the
+Brahmans, and it is but natural that his grandson, A_s_oka, should
+have been driven to seek support from the sect founded by Buddha.
+Buddha, by giving up his royal station, had broken the law of caste as
+much as _K_andragupta by usurping it. His school, though it had
+probably escaped open persecution until it rose to political
+importance, could never have been on friendly terms with the Brahmans
+of the old school. The _parvenu_ on the throne saw his natural allies
+in the followers of Buddha, and the mendicants, who by their
+unostentatious behaviour had won golden opinions among the lower and
+middle classes, were suddenly raised to an importance little dreamt of
+by their founder. Those who see in Buddhism, not a social but chiefly
+a religious and philosophical reform, have been deceived by the later
+Buddhist literature, and particularly by the controversies between
+Buddhists and Brahmans, which in later times led to the total
+expulsion of the former from India, and to the political
+re-establishment of Brahmanism. These, no doubt, turn chiefly on
+philosophical problems, and are of the most abstruse and intricate
+character. But such was not the teaching of Buddha. If we may judge
+from 'the four verities,' which Buddha inculcated from the first day
+that he entered on his career as a teacher, his philosophy of life was
+very simple. He proclaims that there was nothing but sorrow in life;
+that sorrow is produced by our affections, that our affections must be
+destroyed in order to destroy the root of sorrow, and that he could
+teach mankind how to eradicate all the affections, all passions, all
+desires. Such doctrines were intelligible; and considering that Buddha
+received people of all castes, who after renouncing the world and
+assuming their yellow robes, were sure of finding a livelihood from
+the charitable gifts of the people, it is not surprising that the
+number of his followers should have grown so rapidly. If Buddha really
+taught the metaphysical doctrines which are ascribed to him by
+subsequent writers--and this is a point which it is impossible to
+settle--not one in a thousand among his followers would have been
+capable of appreciating those speculations. They must have been
+reserved for a few of his disciples, and they would never have formed
+the nucleus for a popular religion.
+
+[Footnote 63: Neander, 'History of the Church,' vol. i. p. 817: Τὀν Ζαραδἀν
+καἰ Βουδἀν καἰ τὀν Χριστὀν καἰ τὀν Μανιχαιὀν ἓνα καἰ τὀν αὐτὀν εἶναι.]
+
+Nearly all who have written on Buddhism, and M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire
+among the rest, have endeavoured to show that these metaphysical doctrines
+of Buddha were borrowed from the earlier systems of Brahmanic philosophy,
+and more particularly from the Sânkhya system. The reputed founder of that
+system is Kapila, and we saw before how Professor Wilson actually changed
+the name of Kapilavastu, the birthplace of Buddha, into a mere
+allegory:--Kapilavastu meaning, according to him, the substance of Kapila
+or of the Sânkhya philosophy. This is not all. Mr. Spence Hardy (p. 132)
+quotes a legend in which it is said that Buddha was in a former existence
+the ascetic Kapila, that the _S_âkya princes came to his hermitage, and
+that he pointed out to them the proper place for founding a new city, which
+city was named after him Kapilavastu. But we have looked in vain for any
+definite similarities between the system of Kapila, as known to us in the
+Sânkhya-sûtras, and the Abhidharma, or the metaphysics of the Buddhists.
+Such similarities would be invaluable. They would probably enable us to
+decide whether Buddha borrowed from Kapila or Kapila from Buddha, and thus
+determine the real chronology of the philosophical literature of India, as
+either prior or subsequent to the Buddhist era. There are certain notions
+which Buddha shares in common not only with Kapila, but with every Hindu
+philosopher. The idea of transmigration, the belief in the continuing
+effects of our good and bad actions, extending from our former to our
+present and from our present to our future lives, the sense that life is a
+dream or a burden, the admission of the uselessness of religious
+observances after the attainment of the highest knowledge, all these
+belong, so to say, to the national philosophy of India. We meet with these
+ideas everywhere, in the poetry, the philosophy, the religion of the
+Hindus. They cannot be claimed as the exclusive property of any system in
+particular. But if we look for more special coincidences between Buddha's
+doctrines and those of Kapila or other Indian philosophers, we look in
+vain. At first it might seem as if the very first aphorism of Kapila,
+namely, 'the complete cessation of pain, which is of three kinds, is the
+highest aim of man,' was merely a philosophical paraphrase of the events
+which, as we saw, determined Buddha to renounce the world in search of the
+true road to salvation. But though the starting-point of Kapila and Buddha
+is the same, a keen sense of human misery and a yearning after a better
+state, their roads diverge so completely and their goals are so far apart,
+that it is difficult to understand how, almost by common consent, Buddha is
+supposed either to have followed in the footsteps of Kapila, or to have
+changed Kapila's philosophy into a religion. Some scholars imagine that
+there was a more simple and primitive philosophy which was taught by
+Kapila, and that the Sûtras which are now ascribed to him, are of later
+date. It is impossible either to prove or to disprove such a view. At
+present we know Kapila's philosophy from his Sûtras only,[64] and these
+Sûtras seem to us posterior, not anterior, to Buddha. Though the name of
+Buddha is not mentioned in the Sûtras, his doctrines are clearly alluded to
+and controverted in several parts of them.
+
+[Footnote 64: Of Kapila's Sûtras, together with the commentary of
+Vi_g_ñâna Bhikshu, a new edition was published in 1856, by Dr.
+Fitz-Edward Hall, in the 'Bibliotheca Indica.' An excellent
+translation of the Aphorisms, with illustrative extracts from the
+commentaries, was printed for the use of the Benares College, by Dr.
+Ballantyne.]
+
+It has been said that Buddha and Kapila were both atheists, and that
+Buddha borrowed his atheism from Kapila. But atheism is an indefinite
+term, and may mean very different things. In one sense every Indian
+philosopher was an atheist, for they all perceived that the gods of
+the populace could not claim the attributes that belong to a Supreme
+Being. But all the important philosophical systems of the Brahmans
+admit, in some form or other, the existence of an Absolute and Supreme
+Being, the source of all that exists, or seems to exist. Kapila, when
+accused of atheism, is not accused of denying the existence of an
+Absolute Being. He is accused of denying the existence of Î_s_vara,
+which in general means the Lord, but which in the passage where it
+occurs, refers to the Î_s_vara of the Yogins, or mystic philosophers.
+They maintained that in an ecstatic state man possesses the power of
+seeing God face to face, and they wished to have this ecstatic
+intuition included under the head of sensuous perceptions. To this
+Kapila demurred. You have not proved the existence of your Lord, he
+says, and therefore I see no reason why I should alter my definition
+of sensuous perception in order to accommodate your ecstatic visions.
+The commentator narrates that this strong language was used by Kapila
+in order to silence the wild talk of the Mystics, and that, though he
+taunted his adversaries with having failed to prove the existence of
+their Lord, he himself did not deny the existence of a Supreme Being.
+Kapila, however, went further. He endeavoured to show that all the
+attributes which the Mystics ascribed to their Lord are inappropriate.
+He used arguments very similar to those which have lately been used
+with such ability by a distinguished Bampton Lecturer. The supreme
+lord of the Mystics, Kapila argued, is either absolute and
+unconditioned (mukta), or he is bound and conditioned (baddha). If he
+is absolute and unconditioned, he cannot enter into the condition of a
+Creator; he would have no desires which could instigate him to create.
+If, on the contrary, he is represented as active, and entering on the
+work of creation, he would no longer be the absolute and unchangeable
+Being which we are asked to believe in. Kapila, like the preacher of
+our own days, was accused of paving the road to atheism, but his
+philosophy was nevertheless admitted as orthodox, because, in addition
+to sensuous perception and inductive reasoning, Kapila professed
+emphatically his belief in revelation, i. e. in the Veda, and allowed
+to it a place among the recognised instruments of knowledge. Buddha
+refused to allow to the Vedas any independent authority whatever, and
+this constituted the fundamental difference between the two
+philosophers.
+
+Whether Kapila's philosophy was really in accordance with the spirit
+of the Veda, is quite a different question. No philosophy, at least
+nothing like a definite system, is to be found in the sacred hymns of
+the Brahmans; and though the Vedânta philosophy does less violence to
+the passages which it quotes from the Veda, the authors of the Veda
+would have been as much surprised at the consequences deduced from
+their words by the Vedântin, as by the strange meaning attributed to
+them by Kapila. The Vedânta philosopher, like Kapila, would deny the
+existence of a Creator in the usual sense of the word. He explained
+the universe as an emanation from Brahman, which is all in all. Kapila
+admitted two principles, an absolute Spirit and Nature, and he looked
+upon the universe as produced by a reflection of Nature thrown on the
+mirror of the absolute Spirit. Both systems seem to regard creation,
+or the created world, as a misfortune, as an unfortunate accident. But
+they maintain that its effects can be neutralised, and that
+emancipation from the bonds of earthly existence is possible by means
+of philosophy. The Vedânta philosopher imagines he is free when he has
+arrived at the knowledge that nothing exists but Brahman; that all
+phenomena are merely the result of ignorance; that after the
+destruction of that ignorance, and of its effects, all is merged again
+in Brahman, the true source of being, thought, and happiness. Kapila
+taught that the spirit became free from all mundane fetters as soon as
+it perceived that all phenomena were only passing reflections produced
+by nature upon the spirit, and as soon as it was able to shut its eyes
+to those illusory visions. Both systems therefore, and the same
+applies to all the other philosophical systems of the Brahmans,
+admitted an absolute or self-existing Being as the cause of all that
+exists or seems to exist. And here lies the specific difference
+between Kapila and Buddha. Buddha, like Kapila, maintained that this
+world had no absolute reality, that it was a snare and an illusion.
+The words, 'All is perishable, all is miserable, all is void,' must
+frequently have passed his lips. But we cannot call things unreal
+unless we have a conception of something that is real. Where, then,
+did Buddha find a reality in comparison with which this world might be
+called unreal? What remedy did he propose as an emancipation from the
+sufferings of this life? Difficult as it seems to us to conceive it,
+Buddha admits of no real cause of this unreal world. He denies the
+existence not only of a Creator, but of any Absolute Being. According
+to the metaphysical tenets, if not of Buddha himself, at least of his
+sect, there is no reality anywhere, neither in the past nor in the
+future. True wisdom consists in perceiving the nothingness of all
+things, and in a desire to become nothing, to be blown out, to enter
+into Nirvâ_n_a. Emancipation is obtained by total extinction, not by
+absorption in Brahman, or by a recovery of the soul's true estate. If
+to be is misery, not to be must be felicity, and this felicity is the
+highest reward which Buddha promised to his disciples. In reading the
+Aphorisms of Kapila, it is difficult not to see in his remarks on
+those who maintain that all is void, covert attacks on Buddha and his
+followers. In one place (I. 43) Kapila argues that if people believed
+in the reality of thought only, and denied the reality of external
+objects, they would soon be driven to admit that nothing at all
+exists, because we perceive our thoughts in the same manner as we
+perceive external objects. This naturally leads him to an examination
+of that extreme doctrine, according to which all that we perceive is
+void, and all is supposed to perish, because it is the nature of
+things that they should perish. Kapila remarks in reference to this
+view (I. 45), that it is a mere assertion of persons who are 'not
+enlightened,' in Sanskrit a-buddha, a sarcastic expression in which it
+is very difficult not to see an allusion to Buddha, or to those who
+claimed for him the title of the Enlightened. Kapila then proceeds to
+give the best answer that could be given to those who taught that
+complete annihilation must be the highest aim of man, as the only
+means of a complete cessation of suffering. 'It is not so,' he says,
+'for if people wish to be free from suffering, it is they themselves
+who wish to be free, just as in this life it is they themselves who
+wish to enjoy happiness. There must be a permanent soul in order to
+satisfy the yearnings of the human heart, and if you deny that soul,
+you have no right to speak of the highest aim--of man.'
+
+Whether the belief in this kind of Nirvâ_n_a, i. e. in a total
+extinction of being, personality, and consciousness, was at any time
+shared by the large masses of the people, is difficult either to
+assert or deny. We know nothing in ancient times of the religious
+convictions of the millions. We only know what a few leading spirits
+believed, or professed to believe. That certain individuals should
+have spoken and written of total extinction as the highest aim of man,
+is intelligible. Job cursed the day on which he was born, and Solomon
+praised the 'dead which are already dead, more than the living which
+are yet alive,' 'Yea, better is he than both they,' he said, 'which
+hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under
+the sun,' Voltaire said in his own flippant way, 'On aime la vie, mais
+le néant ne laisse pas d'avoir du bon;' and a modern German
+philosopher, who has found much favour with those who profess to
+despise Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, writes, 'Considered in its
+objective value, it is more than doubtful that life is preferable to
+the Nothing. I should say even, that if experience and reflection
+could lift up their voices they would recommend to us the Nothing. We
+are what ought not to be, and we shall therefore cease to be.' Under
+peculiar circumstances, in the agonies of despair, or under the
+gathering clouds of madness, such language is intelligible; but to
+believe, as we are asked to believe, that one half of mankind had
+yearned for total annihilation, would be tantamount to a belief that
+there is a difference in kind between man and man. Buddhist
+philosophers, no doubt, held this doctrine, and it cannot be denied
+that it found a place in the Buddhist canon. But even among the
+different schools of Buddhist philosophers, very different views are
+adopted as to the true meaning of Nirvâ_n_a, and with the modern
+Buddhists of Burmah, Nigban, as they call it, is defined simply as
+freedom from old age, disease, and death. We do not find fault with M.
+Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire for having so emphatically pressed the charge
+of nihilism against Buddha himself. In one portion of the Buddhist
+canon the most extreme views of nihilism are put into his mouth. All
+we can say is that that canon is later than Buddha, and that in the
+same canon[65] the founder of Buddhism, after having entered into
+Nirvâ_n_a, is still spoken of as living, nay, as showing himself to
+those who believe in him. Buddha, who denied the existence, or at
+least the divine nature, of the gods worshipped by the Brahmans, was
+raised himself to the rank of a deity by some of his followers (the
+Ai_s_varikas), and we need not wonder therefore if his Nirvâ_n_a too
+was gradually changed into an Elysian field. And finally, if we may
+argue from human nature, such as we find it at all times and in all
+countries, we confess that we cannot bring ourselves to believe that
+the reformer of India, the teacher of so perfect a code of morality,
+the young prince who gave up all he had in order to help those whom
+he saw afflicted in mind, body, or estate, should have cared much
+about speculations which he knew would either be misunderstood, or not
+understood at all, by those whom he wished to benefit; that he should
+have thrown away one of the most powerful weapons in the hands of
+every religious teacher, the belief in a future life, and should not
+have seen, that if this life was sooner or later to end in nothing, it
+was hardly worth the trouble which he took himself, or the sacrifices
+which he imposed on his disciples.
+
+_April, 1862._
+
+[Footnote 65: 'L'enfant égaré,' par Ph. Ed. Foucaux, p. 19.]
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+BUDDHIST PILGRIMS.[66]
+
+
+M. Stanislas Julien has commenced the publication of a work entitled,
+'Voyages des Pèlerins Bouddhistes.' The first volume, published in the
+year 1853, contains the biography of Hiouen-thsang, who, in the middle
+of the seventh century A.D., travelled from China through Central Asia
+to India. The second, which has just reached us, gives us the first
+portion of Hiouen-thsang's own diary.
+
+[Footnote 66: 'Voyages des Pèlerins Bouddhistes.' Vol. I. Histoire de
+la Vie de Hiouen-thsang, et de ses Voyages dans l'Inde, depuis l'an
+629 jusqu'en 645, par Hoeili et Yen-thsong; traduite du Chinois par
+Stanislas Julien.
+
+Vol. II. Mémoires sur les Contrées Occidentales, traduits du Sanscrit
+en Chinois, en l'an 648, par Hiouen-thsang, et du Chinois en Français,
+pas Stanislas Julien. Paris, 1853-1857: B. Duprat. London and
+Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate.]
+
+There are not many books of travel which can be compared to these
+volumes. Hiouen-thsang passed through countries which few had visited
+before him. He describes parts of the world which no one has explored
+since, and where even our modern maps contain hardly more than the
+ingenious conjectures of Alexander von Humboldt. His observations are
+minute; his geographical, statistical, and historical remarks most
+accurate and trustworthy. The chief object of his travels was to study
+the religion of Buddha, the great reformer of India. Some Chinese
+pilgrims visited India before, several after, his time. Hiouen-thsang,
+however, is considered by the Chinese themselves as the most
+distinguished of these pilgrims, and M. Stanislas Julien has rightly
+assigned to him the first place in his collection.
+
+In order to understand what Hiouen-thsang was, and to appreciate his
+life and his labours, we must first cast a glance at the history of a
+religion which, however unattractive and even mischievous it may
+appear to ourselves, inspired her votary with the true spirit of
+devotion and self-sacrifice. That religion has now existed for exactly
+2,400 years. To millions and millions of human beings it has been the
+only preparation for a higher life placed within their reach. And even
+at the present day it counts among the hordes of Asia a more numerous
+array of believers than any other faith, not excluding Mohammedanism
+or Christianity. The religion of Buddha took its origin in India about
+the middle of the sixth century B.C., but it did not assume its
+political importance till about the time of Alexander's invasion. We
+know little, therefore, of its first origin and spreading, because the
+canonical works on which we must chiefly rely for information belong
+to a much later period, and are strongly tinged with a legendary
+character. The very existence of such a being as Buddha, the son of
+_S_uddhodana, king of Kapilavastu, has been doubted. But what can
+never be doubted is this, that Buddhism, such as we find it in
+Russia[67] and Sweden[68] on the very threshold of European
+civilisation, in the north of Asia, in Mongolia, Tatary, China, Tibet,
+Nepal, Siam, Burmah, and Ceylon, had its origin in India. Doctrines
+similar to those of Buddha existed in that country long before his
+time. We can trace them like meandering roots below the surface long
+before we reach the point where the roots strike up into a stem, and
+the stem branches off again into fruit-bearing branches. What was
+original and new in Buddha was his changing a philosophical system
+into a practical doctrine; his taking the wisdom of the few, and
+coining as much of it as he thought genuine for the benefit of the
+many; his breaking with the traditional formalities of the past, and
+proclaiming for the first time, in spite of castes and creeds, the
+equality of the rich and the poor, the foolish and the wise, the
+'twice-born' and the outcast. Buddhism, as a religion and as a
+political fact, was a reaction against Brahmanism, though it retained
+much of that more primitive form of faith and worship. Buddhism, in
+its historical growth, presupposes Brahmanism, and, however hostile
+the mutual relation of these two religions may have been at different
+periods of Indian history, it can be shown, without much difficulty,
+that the latter was but a natural consequence of the former.
+
+The ancient religion of the Aryan inhabitants of India had started, like
+the religion of the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans, Slaves, and Celts,
+with a simple and intelligible mythological phraseology. In the Veda--for
+there is but one real Veda--the names of all the so-called gods or Devas
+betray their original physical character and meaning without disguise. The
+fire was praised and invoked by the name of "Agni" (_ignis_); the earth by
+the name of "P_r_ithvî" (the broad); the sky by the name of "Dyu"
+(Jupiter), and afterwards of "Indra;" the firmament and the waters by the
+name of "Varu_n_a," or Οὐραvὁς. The sun was invoked by many names, such as
+"Sûrya," "Savit_r_i," "Vish_n_u," or "Mitra;" and the dawn rejoiced in such
+titles as "Ushas," "Urva_s_i," "Ahanâ," and "Sûryâ." Nor was the moon
+forgotten. For though it is mentioned but rarely under its usual name of
+"_K_andra," it is alluded to under the more sacred appellation of "Soma;"
+and each of its four phases had received its own denomination. There is
+hardly any part of nature, if it could impress the human mind in any way
+with the ideas of a higher power, of order, eternity, or
+beneficence,--whether the winds, or the rivers, or the trees, or the
+mountains,--without a name and representative in the early Hindu Pantheon.
+No doubt there existed in the human mind, from the very beginning,
+something, whether we call it a suspicion, an innate idea, an intuition, or
+a sense of the Divine. What distinguishes man from the rest of the animal
+creation is chiefly that ineradicable feeling of dependence and reliance
+upon some higher power, a consciousness of bondage, from which the very
+name of "religion" was derived. "It is He that hath made us, and not we
+ourselves." The presence of that power was felt everywhere, and nowhere
+more clearly and strongly than in the rising and setting of the sun, in the
+change of day and night, of spring and winter, of birth and death. But,
+although the Divine presence was felt everywhere, it was impossible in that
+early period of thought, and with a language incapable as yet of expressing
+anything but material objects, to conceive the idea of God in its purity
+and fullness, or to assign to it an adequate and worthy expression.
+Children cannot think the thoughts of men, and the poets of the Veda could
+not speak the language of Aristotle. It was by a slow process that the
+human mind elaborated the idea of one absolute and supreme Godhead; and by
+a still slower process that the human language matured a word to express
+that idea. A period of growth was inevitable, and those who, from a mere
+guess of their own, do not hesitate to speak authoritatively of a primeval
+revelation, which imparted to the Pagan world the idea of the Godhead in
+all its purity, forget that, however pure and sublime and spiritual that
+revelation might have been, there was no language capable as yet of
+expressing the high and immaterial conceptions of that Heaven-sent message.
+The real history of religion, during the earliest mythological period,
+represents to us a slow process of fermentation in thought and language,
+with its various interruptions, its overflowings, its coolings, its
+deposits, and its gradual clearing from all extraneous and foreign
+admixture. This is not only the case among the Indo-European or Aryan races
+in India, in Greece, and in Germany. In Peru, and wherever the primitive
+formations of the intellectual world crop out, the process is exactly the
+same. "The religion of the sun," as it has been boldly said by the author
+of the "Spanish Conquest in America," "was inevitable." It was like a deep
+furrow which that heavenly luminary drew, in its silent procession from
+east to west, over the virgin mind of the gazing multitude; and in the
+impression left there by the first rising and setting of the sun, there lay
+the dark seed of a faith in a more than human being, the first intimation
+of a life without beginning, of a world without end. Manifold seed fell
+afterwards into the soil once broken. Something divine was discovered in
+everything that moved and lived. Names were stammered forth in anxious
+haste, and no single name could fully express what lay hidden in the human
+mind and wanted expression--the idea of an absolute, and perfect, and
+supreme, and immortal Essence. Thus a countless host of nominal gods was
+called into being, and for a time seemed to satisfy the wants of a
+thoughtless multitude. But there were thoughtful men at all times, and
+their reason protested against the contradictions of a mythological
+phraseology, though it had been hallowed by sacred customs and traditions.
+That rebellious reason had been at work from the very first, always ready
+to break the yoke of names and formulas which no longer expressed what they
+were intended to express. The idea which had yearned for utterance was the
+idea of a supreme and absolute Power, and that yearning was not satisfied
+by such names as "Kronos," "Zeus," and "Apollon." The very sound of such a
+word as "God," used in the plural, jarred on the ear, as if we were to
+speak of two universes, or of a single twin. There are many words, as Greek
+and Latin grammarians tell us, which, if used in the plural, have a
+different meaning from what they have in the singular. The Latin "æedes"
+means a temple; if used in the plural it means a house. "Deus" and Θεὁς
+ought to be added to the same class of words. The idea of supreme
+perfection excluded limitation, and the idea of God excluded the
+possibility of many gods. This may seem language too abstract and
+metaphysical for the early times of which we are speaking. But the ancient
+poets of the Vedic hymns have expressed the same thought with perfect
+clearness and simplicity. In the Rig-veda (I. 164, 46) we read:--
+
+"That which is one the sages speak of in many ways--they call it
+'Agni,' 'Yama,' 'Mâtari_s_van.'"
+
+[Footnote 67: See W. Spottiswoode's 'Tarantasse Journey,' p. 220,
+Visit to the Buddhist Temple.]
+
+[Footnote 68: The only trace of the influence of Buddhism among the
+_K_udic races, the Fins, Laps, &c., is found in the name of their
+priests and sorcerers, the Shamans. Shaman is supposed to be a
+corruption of _S_rama_n_a, a name applied to Buddha, and to Buddhist
+priests in general. The ancient mythological religion of the _K_udic
+races has nothing in common with Buddhism. See Castren's 'Lectures on
+Finnish Mythology,' 1853. Finland was ceded by Sweden to Russia in
+1809, See the Author's 'Survey of Languages,' second edition, p. 116.
+Shamanism found its way from India to Siberia viâ Tibet, China, and
+Mongolia. Rules on the formation of magic figures, on the treatment of
+diseases by charms, on the worship of evil spirits, on the acquisition
+of supernatural powers, on charms, incantations, and other branches of
+Shaman witchcraft, are found in the Stan-gyour, or the second part of
+the Tibetan canon, and in some of the late Tantras of the Nepalese
+collection.]
+
+Besides the plurality of gods, which was sure to lead to their
+destruction, there was a taint of mortality which they could not throw
+off. They all derived their being from the life of nature. The god who
+represented the sun was liable, in the mythological language of
+antiquity, to all the accidents which threatened the solar luminary.
+Though he might rise in immortal youth in the morning, he was
+conquered by the shadows of the night, and the powers of winter seemed
+to overthrow his heavenly throne. There is nothing in nature free from
+change, and the gods of nature fell under the thralldom of nature's
+laws. The sun must set, and the solar gods and heroes must die. There
+must be one God, there must be one unchanging Deity; this was the
+silent conviction of the human mind. There are many gods, liable to
+all the vicissitudes of life; this was everywhere the answer of
+mythological religion.
+
+It is curious to observe in how many various ways these two opposite
+principles were kept for a time from open conflict, and how long the
+heathen temples resisted the enemy which was slowly and imperceptibly
+undermining their very foundations. In Greece this mortal element,
+inherent in all gods, was eliminated to a great extent by the
+conception of heroes. Whatever was too human in the ancient legends
+told of Zeus and Apollon was transfered to so-called half-gods or
+heroes, who were represented as the sons or favorites of the gods, and
+who bore their fate under a slightly altered name. The twofold
+character of Herakles as a god and as a hero is acknowledged even by
+Herodotus, and some of his epithets would have been sufficient to
+indicate his solar and originally divine character. But, in order to
+make some of the legends told of the solar deity possible or
+conceivable, it was necessary to represent Herakles as a more human
+being, and to make him rise to the seat of the Immortals only after he
+had endured toils and sufferings incompatible with the dignity of an
+Olympian god. We find the same idea in Peru, only that there it led to
+different results. A thinking, or, as he was called, a freethinking
+Inca[69] remarked that this perpetual travelling of the sun was a sign
+of servitude,[70] and he threw doubts upon the divine nature of such
+an unquiet thing as that great luminary appeared to him to be. And
+this misgiving led to a tradition which, even should it be unfounded
+in history, had some truth in itself, that there was in Peru an
+earlier worship, that of an invisible Deity, the Creator of the world,
+Pachacamac. In Greece, also, there are signs of a similar craving
+after the "Unknown God." A supreme God was wanted, and Zeus, the
+stripling of Creta, was raised to that rank. He became God above all
+gods--ἁπἁντων κὑριος as Pindar calls him. Yet more was
+wanted than a mere Zeus; and thus a supreme Fate or Spell was imagined
+before which all the gods, and even Zeus, had to bow. And even this
+Fate was not allowed to remain supreme, and there was something in the
+destinies of man which was called ὑπἑρμορον, or "beyond
+Fate." The most awful solution, however, of the problem belongs to
+Teutonic mythology. Here, also, some heroes were introduced; but their
+death was only the beginning of the final catastrophe. "All gods must
+die." Such is the last word of that religion which had grown up in the
+forests of Germany, and found a last refuge among the glaciers and
+volcanoes of Iceland. The death of Sigurd, the descendant of Odin,
+could not avert the death of Balder, the son of Odin; and the death of
+Balder was soon to be followed by the death of Odin himself, and of
+all the immortal gods.
+
+All this was inevitable, and Prometheus, the man of forethought, could
+safely predict the fall of Zeus. The struggles by which reason and
+faith overthrow tradition and superstition vary in different countries
+and at different times; but the final victory is always on their side.
+In India the same antagonism manifested itself, but what there seemed
+a victory of reason threatened to become the destruction of all
+religious faith. At first there was hardly a struggle. On the
+primitive mythological stratum of thought two new formations
+arose,--the Brahmanical philosophy and the Brahmanical ceremonial; the
+one opening the widest avenues of philosophical thought, the other
+fencing all religious feeling within the narrowest barriers. Both
+derived their authority from the same source. Both professed to carry
+out the meaning and purpose of the Veda. Thus we see on the one side,
+the growth of a numerous and powerful priesthood, and the
+establishment of a ceremonial which embraced every moment of a man's
+life from his birth to his death. There was no event which might have
+moved the heart to a spontaneous outpouring of praise or thanksgiving,
+which was not regulated by priestly formulas. Every prayer was
+prescribed, every sacrifice determined. Every god had his share, and
+the claims of each deity on the adoration of the faithful were set
+down with such punctiliousness, the danger of offending their pride
+was represented in such vivid colors, that no one would venture to
+approach their presence without the assistance of a well-paid staff of
+masters of divine ceremonies. It was impossible to avoid sin without
+the help of the Brahmans. They alone knew the food that might properly
+be eaten, the air which might properly be breathed, the dress which
+might properly be worn. They alone could tell what god should be
+invoked, what sacrifice be offered; and the slightest mistake of
+pronunciation, the slightest neglect about clarified butter, or the
+length of the ladle in which it was to be offered, might bring
+destruction upon the head of the unassisted worshipper. No nation was
+ever so completely priest-ridden as the Hindus under the sway of the
+Brahmanic law. Yet, on the other side, the same people were allowed to
+indulge in the most unrestrained freedom of thought, and in the
+schools of their philosophy the very names of their gods were never
+mentioned. Their existence was neither denied nor asserted; they were
+of no greater importance in the system of the world of thought than
+trees or mountains, men or animals; and to offer sacrifices to them
+with a hope of rewards, so far from being meritorious, was considered
+as dangerous to that emancipation to which a clear perception of
+philosophical truth was to lead the patient student. There was one
+system which taught that there existed but one Being, without a
+second; that everything else which seemed to exist was but a dream and
+illusion, and that this illusion might be removed by a true knowledge
+of the one Being. There was another system which admitted two
+principles,--one a subjective and self-existent mind, the other
+matter, endowed with qualities. Here the world, with its joys and
+sorrows, was explained as the result of the subjective Self,
+reflecting itself in the mirror of matter; and final emancipation was
+obtained by turning away the eyes from the play of nature, and being
+absorbed in the knowledge of the time and absolute Self. A third
+system started with the admission of atoms, and explained every
+effect, including the elements and the mind, animals, men, and gods,
+from the concurrence of these atoms. In fact, as M. Cousin remarked
+many years ago, the history of the philosophy of India is "un abrégé
+de l'histoire de la philosophie." The germs of all these systems are
+traced back to the Vedas, Brâhma_n_as, and the Upanishads, and the man
+who believed in any of them was considered as orthodox as the devout
+worshipper of the gods; the one was saved by knowledge and faith, the
+other by works and faith.
+
+Such was the state of the Hindu mind when Buddhism arose; or, rather,
+such was the state of the Hindu mind which gave rise to Buddhism.
+Buddha himself went through the school of the Brahmans. He performed
+their penances, he studied their philosophy, and he at last claimed
+the name of "the Buddha," or "the Enlightened," when he threw away the
+whole ceremonial, with its sacrifices, superstitions, penances, and
+castes, as worthless, and changed the complicated systems of
+philosophy into a short doctrine of salvation. This doctrine of
+salvation has been called pure Atheism and Nihilism, and it no doubt
+was liable to both charges in its metaphysical character, and in that
+form in which we chiefly know it. It was Atheistic, not because it
+denied the existence of such gods as Indra and Brahma. Buddha did not
+even condescend to deny their existence. But it was called Atheistic,
+like the Sankhya philosophy, which admitted but one subjective Self,
+and considered creation as an illusion of that Self, imaging itself
+for a while in the mirror of nature. As there was no reality in
+creation, there could be no real Creator. All that seemed to exist was
+the result of ignorance. To remove that ignorance was to remove the
+cause of all that seemed to exist. How a religion which taught the
+annihilation of all existence, of all thought, of all individuality
+and personality, as the highest object of all endeavors, could have
+laid hold of the minds of millions of human beings, and how at the
+same time, by enforcing the duties of morality, justice, kindness, and
+self-sacrifice, it could have exercised a decided beneficial
+influence, not only on the natives of India, but on the lowest
+barbarians of Central Asia, is a riddle which no one has been able to
+solve. We must distinguish, it seems, between Buddhism as a religion,
+and Buddhism as a a religion, and Buddhism as a philosophy.
+The former addressed itself to millions, the latter to a few isolated
+thinkers. It is from these isolated thinkers, however, and from their
+literary compositions, that we are apt to form our notions of what
+Buddhism was, while, as a matter of fact, not one in a thousand would
+have been capable of following these metaphysical speculations. To the
+people at large Buddhism was a moral and religious, not a
+philosophical reform. Yet even its morality has a metaphysical tinge.
+The morality which it teaches is not a morality of expediency and
+rewards. Virtue is not enjoined because it necessarily leads to
+happiness. No; virtue is to be practised, but happiness is to be
+shunned, and the only reward for virtue is that it subdues the
+passions, and thus prepares the human mind for that knowledge which is
+to end in complete annihilation. There are ten commandments which
+Buddha imposes on his disciples.[71] They are--
+
+1. Not to kill.
+2. Not to steal.
+3. Not to commit adultery.
+4. Not to lie.
+5. Not to get intoxicated.
+6. To abstain from unseasonable meals.
+7. To abstain from public spectacles.
+
+[Footnote 69: Helps, _The Spanish Conquest_, vol. iii. p. 503: "Que
+cosa tam inquieta non le parescia ser Dios."]
+
+[Footnote 70: On the servitude of the gods, see the "Essay on
+Comparative Mythology," _Oxford Essays_, 1856, p. 69.]
+
+[Footnote 71: See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 444. Barthélemy
+Saint-Hilaire, 'Du Bouddhisme,' p. 132. Ch.F.Neumann, 'Catechism of
+the Shamans.']
+
+8. To abstain from expensive dresses.
+9. Not to have a large bed.
+10. Not to receive silver or gold.
+
+The duties of those who embraced a religious life were more severe. They
+were not allowed to wear any dress except rags collected in cemeteries, and
+these rags they had to sew together with their own hands. A yellow cloak
+was to be thrown over these rags. Their food was to be extremely simple,
+and they were not to possess anything, except what they could get by
+collecting alms from door to door in their wooden bowls. They had but one
+meal in the morning, and were not allowed to touch any food after midday.
+They were to live in forests, not in cities, and their only shelter was to
+be the shadow of a tree. There they were to sit, to spread their carpet,
+but not to lie down, even during sleep. They were allowed to enter the
+nearest city or village in order to beg, but they had to return to their
+forest before night, and the only change which was allowed, or rather
+prescribed, was when they had to spend some nights in the cemeteries, there
+to meditate on the vanity of all things. And what was the object of all
+this asceticism? Simply to guide each individual towards that path which
+would finally bring him to Nirvâ_n_a, to utter extinction or annihilation.
+The very definition of virtue was that it helped man to cross over to the
+other shore, and that other shore was not death, but cessation of all
+being. Thus charity was considered a virtue; modesty, patience, courage,
+contemplation, and science, all were virtues, but they were practised only
+as a means of arriving at deliverance. Buddha himself exhibited the
+perfection of all these virtues. His charity knew no bounds. When he saw a
+tigress starved, and unable to feed her cubs, he is said to have made a
+charitable oblation of his body to be devoured by them. Hiouen-thsang
+visited the place on the banks of the Indus where this miracle was supposed
+to have happened, and he remarks that the soil is still red there from the
+blood of Buddha, and that the trees and flowers have the same colour.[72]
+As to the modesty of Buddha, nothing could exceed it. One day, king
+Prasena_g_it, the protector of Buddha, called on him to perform miracles,
+in order to silence his adversaries, the Brahmans. Buddha consented. He
+performed the required miracles; but he exclaimed, 'Great king, I do not
+teach the law to my pupils, telling them, Go, ye saints, and before the
+eyes of the Brahmans and householders perform, by means of your
+supernatural powers, miracles greater than any man can perform. I tell
+them, when I teach them the law, Live, ye saints, hiding your good works
+and showing your sins.' And yet, all this self-sacrificing charity, all
+this self-sacrificing humility, by which the life of Buddha was
+distinguished throughout, and which he preached to the multitudes that came
+to listen to him, had, we are told, but one object, and that object was
+final annihilation. It is impossible almost to believe it, and yet when we
+turn away our eyes from the pleasing picture of that high morality which
+Buddha preached for the first time to all classes of men, and look into the
+dark pages of his code of religious metaphysics, we can hardly find another
+explanation. Fortunately, the millions who embraced the doctrines of
+Buddha, and were saved by it from the depths of barbarism, brutality, and
+selfishness, were unable to fathom the meaning of his metaphysical
+doctrines. With them the Nirvâ_n_a to which they aspired, became only a
+relative deliverance from the miseries of human life; nay, it took the
+bright colours of a paradise, to be regained by the pious worshipper of
+Buddha. But was this the meaning of Buddha himself? In his 'Four Verities'
+he does not, indeed, define Nirvâ_n_a, except by cessation of all pain; but
+when he traces the cause of pain, and teaches the means of destroying not
+only pain itself, but the cause of pain, we shall see that his Nirvâ_n_a
+assumes a very different meaning. His 'Four Verities' are very simple. The
+first asserts the existence of pain; the second asserts that the cause of
+pain lies in sin; the third asserts that pain may cease by Nirvâ_n_a; the
+fourth shows the way that leads to Nirvâ_n_a. This way to Nirvâ_n_a
+consists in eight things--right faith (orthodoxy), right judgment (logic),
+right language (veracity), right purpose (honesty), right practice
+(religious life), right obedience (lawful life), right memory, and right
+meditation. All these precepts might be understood as part of a simply
+moral code, closing with a kind of mystic meditation on the highest object
+of thought, and with a yearning after deliverance from all worldly ties.
+Similar systems have prevailed in many parts of the world, without denying
+the existence of an absolute Being, or of a something towards which the
+human mind tends, in which it is absorbed or even annihilated. Awful as
+such a mysticism may appear, yet it leaves still something that exists, it
+acknowledges a feeling of dependence in man. It knows of a first cause,
+though it may have nothing to predicate of it except that it is τὀ κινοῦν
+ἀκινητὁν. A return is possible from that desert. The first cause may be
+called to life again. It may take the names of Creator, Preserver, Ruler;
+and when the simplicity and helplessness of the child have re-entered the
+heart of man, the name of father will come back to the lips which had
+uttered in vain all the names of a philosophical despair. But from the
+Nirvâ_n_a of the Buddhist metaphysician there is no return. He starts from
+the idea that the highest object is to escape pain. Life in his eyes is
+nothing but misery; birth the cause of all evil, from which even death
+cannot deliver him, because he believes in an eternal cycle of existence,
+or in transmigration. There is no deliverance from evil, except by breaking
+through the prison walls, not only of life, but of existence, and by
+extirpating the last cause of existence. What, then, is the cause of
+existence? The cause of existence, says the Buddhist metaphysician, is
+attachment--an inclination towards something; and this attachment arises
+from thirst or desire. Desire presupposes perception of the object desired;
+perception presupposes contact; contact, at least a sentient contact,
+presupposes the senses; and, as the senses can only perceive what has form
+and name, or what is distinct, distinction is the real cause of all the
+effects which end in existence, birth, and pain. Now, this distinction is
+itself the result of conceptions or ideas; but these ideas, so far from
+being, as in Greek philosophy, the true and everlasting forms of the
+Absolute, are here represented as mere illusions, the effects of ignorance
+(avidyâ). Ignorance, therefore, is really the primary cause of all that
+seems to exist. To know that ignorance, as the root of all evil, is the
+same as to destroy it, and with it all effects that flowed from it. In
+order to see how this doctrine affects the individual, let us watch the
+last moments of Buddha as described by his disciples. He enters into the
+first stage of meditation when he feels freedom from sin, acquires a
+knowledge of the nature of all things, and has no desire except that of
+Nirvâ_n_a. But he still feels pleasure; he even uses his reasoning and
+discriminating powers. The use of these powers ceases in the second stage
+of meditation, when nothing remains but a desire after Nirvâ_n_a, and a
+general feeling of satisfaction, arising from his intellectual perfection.
+That satisfaction, also, is extinguished in the third stage. Indifference
+succeeds; yet there is still self-consciousness, and a certain amount of
+physical pleasure. These last remnants are destroyed in the fourth stage;
+memory fades away, all pleasure and pain are gone, and the doors of
+Nirvâ_n_a now open before him. After having passed these four stages once,
+Buddha went through them a second time, but he died before he attained
+again to the fourth stage. We must soar still higher, and though we may
+feel giddy and disgusted, we must sit out this tragedy till the curtain
+falls. After the four stages of meditation[73] are passed, the Buddha (and
+every being is to become a Buddha) enters into the infinity of space; then
+into the infinity of intelligence; and thence he passes into the region of
+nothing. But even here there is no rest. There is still something left--the
+idea of the nothing in which he rejoices. That also must be destroyed, and
+it is destroyed in the fourth and last region, where there is not even the
+idea of a nothing left, and where there is complete rest, undisturbed by
+nothing, or what is not nothing.[74] There are few persons who will take
+the trouble of reasoning out such hallucinations; least of all, persons who
+are accustomed to the sober language of Greek philosophy; and it is the
+more interesting to hear the opinion which one of the best Aristotelean
+scholars of the present day, after a patient examination of the authentic
+documents of Buddhism, has formed of its system of metaphysics. M.
+Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, in a review on Buddhism, published in the
+'Journal des Savants,' says:
+
+     'Buddhism has no God; it has not even the confused and vague
+     notion of a Universal Spirit in which the human soul,
+     according to the orthodox doctrine of Brahmanism, and the
+     Sânkhya philosophy, may be absorbed. Nor does it admit
+     nature, in the proper sense of the word, and it ignores that
+     profound division between spirit and matter which forms the
+     system and the glory of Kapila. It confounds man with all
+     that surrounds him, all the while preaching to him the laws
+     of virtue. Buddhism, therefore, cannot unite the human soul,
+     which it does not even mention, with a God, whom it ignores;
+     nor with nature, which it does not know better. Nothing
+     remained but to annihilate the soul; and in order to be
+     quite sure that the soul may not re-appear under some new
+     form in this world, which has been cursed as the abode of
+     illusion and misery, Buddhism destroys its very elements,
+     and never gets tired of glorying in this achievement. What
+     more is wanted?
+
+[Footnote 72: Vol. i. p. 89, vol. ii. p. 167.]
+
+[Footnote 73: These 'four stages' are described in the same manner in
+the canonical books of Ceylon and Nepal, and may therefore safely be
+ascribed to that original form of Buddhism from which the Southern and
+the Northern schools branched off at a later period. See Burnouf,
+'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 800.]
+
+[Footnote 74: See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 814.]
+
+If this is not the absolute nothing, what is Nirvâ_n_a?'
+
+Such religion, we should say, was made for a mad-house. But Buddhism
+was an advance, if compared with Brahmanism; it has stood its ground
+for centuries, and if truth could be decided by majorities, the show
+of hands, even at the present day, would be in favour of Buddha. The
+metaphysics of Buddhism, like the metaphysics of most religions, not
+excluding our own Gnosticism and Mysticism, were beyond the reach of
+all except a few hardened philosophers or ecstatic dreamers. Human
+nature could not be changed. Out of the very nothing it made a new
+paradise; and he who had left no place in the whole universe for a
+Divine Being, was deified himself by the multitudes who wanted a
+person whom they could worship, a king whose help they might invoke, a
+friend before whom they could pour out their most secret griefs. And
+there remained the code of a pure morality, proclaimed by Buddha.
+There remained the spirit of charity, kindness, and universal pity
+with which he had inspired his disciples.[75] There remained the
+simplicity of the ceremonial he had taught, the equality of all men
+which he had declared, the religious toleration which he had preached
+from the beginning. There remained much, therefore, to account for the
+rapid strides which his doctrine made from the mountain peaks of
+Ceylon to the Tundras of the Samoyedes, and we shall see in the simple
+story of the life of Hiouen-thsang that Buddhism, with all its
+defects, has had its heroes, its martyrs, and its saints.
+
+[Footnote 75: See the 'Dhammapadam,' a Pâli work on Buddhist ethics,
+lately edited by V. Fausböll, a distinguished pupil of Professor
+Westergaard, at Copenhagen. The Rev. Spence Hardy ('Eastern
+Monachism,' p. 169) writes: 'A collection might be made from the
+precepts of this work, that in the purity of its ethics could scarcely
+be equalled from any other heathen author.' Mr. Knighton, when
+speaking of the same work in his 'History of Ceylon' (p. 77), remarks:
+'In it we have exemplified a code of morality, and a list of precepts,
+which, for pureness, excellence, and wisdom, is only second to that of
+the Divine Lawgiver himself.']
+
+Hiouen-thsang, born in China more than a thousand years after the
+death of Buddha, was a believer in Buddhism. He dedicated his whole
+life to the study of that religion; travelling from his native country
+to India, visiting every place mentioned in Buddhist history or
+tradition, acquiring the ancient language in which the canonical books
+of the Buddhists were written, studying commentaries, discussing
+points of difficulty, and defending the orthodox faith at public
+councils against disbelievers and schismatics. Buddhism had grown and
+changed since the death of its founder, but it had lost nothing of its
+vitality. At a very early period a proselytizing spirit awoke among
+the disciples of the Indian reformer, an element entirely new in the
+history of ancient religions. No Jew, no Greek, no Roman, no Brahman
+ever thought of converting people to his own national form of worship.
+Religion was looked upon as private or national property. It was to be
+guarded against strangers. The most sacred names of the gods, the
+prayers by which their favour could be gained, were kept secret. No
+religion, however, was more exclusive than that of the Brahmans. A
+Brahman was born, nay, twice-born. He could not be made. Not even the
+lowest caste, that of the _S_ûdras, would open its ranks to a
+stranger. Here lay the secret of Buddha's success. He addressed
+himself to castes and outcasts. He promised salvation to all; and he
+commanded his disciples to preach his doctrine in all places and to
+all men. A sense of duty, extending from the narrow limits of the
+house, the village, and the country to the widest circle of mankind, a
+feeling of sympathy and brotherhood towards all men, the idea, in
+fact, of humanity, were in India first pronounced by Buddha. In the
+third Buddhist Council, the acts of which have been preserved to us in
+the 'Mahavansa,'[76] we hear of missionaries being sent to the chief
+countries beyond India. This Council, we are told, took place 308
+B.C., 235 years after the death of Buddha, in the 17th year of the
+reign of the famous king A_s_oka, whose edicts have been preserved to
+us on rock inscriptions in various parts of India. There are sentences
+in these inscriptions of A_s_oka which might be read with advantage by
+our own missionaries, though they are now more than 2000 years old.
+Thus it is written on the rocks of Girnar, Dhauli, and Kapurdigiri--
+
+     'Piyadasi, the king beloved of the gods, desires that the
+     ascetics of all creeds might reside in all places. All these
+     ascetics profess alike the command which people should
+     exercise over themselves, and the purity of the soul. But
+     people have different opinions, and different inclinations.'
+
+And again:
+
+     'A man ought to honour his own faith only; but he should
+     never abuse the faith of others. It is thus that he will do
+     no harm to anybody. There are even circumstances where the
+     religion of others ought to be honoured. And in acting
+     thus, a man fortifies his own faith, and assists the faith
+     of others. He who acts otherwise, diminishes his own faith,
+     and hurts the faith of others.'
+
+[Footnote 76: 'Mahavanso,' ed. G. Turnour, Ceylon, 1837, p. 71.]
+
+Those who have no time to read the voluminous works of the late E.
+Burnouf on Buddhism, his 'Introduction à l'Histoire du Buddhisme,' and
+his translation of 'Le Lotus de la bonne Loi,' will find a very
+interesting and lucid account of these councils, and edicts, and
+missions, and the history of Buddhism in general, in a work lately
+published by Mrs. Speir, 'Life in Ancient India.' Buddhism spread in
+the south to Ceylon, in the north to Kashmir, the Himalayan countries,
+Tibet, and China. One Buddhist missionary is mentioned in the Chinese
+annals as early as 217 B.C.;[77] and about the year 120 B.C. a Chinese
+General, after defeating the barbarous tribes north of the Desert of
+Gobi, brought back as a trophy a golden statue, the statue of
+Buddha.[78] It was not, however, till the year 65 A.D. that Buddhism
+was officially recognised by the Emperor Ming-ti[79] as a third state
+religion in China. Ever since, it has shared equal honours with the
+doctrines of Confucius and Lao-tse, in the Celestial Empire, and it is
+but lately that these three established religions have had to fear the
+encroachments of a new rival in the creed of the Chief of the rebels.
+
+[Footnote 77: See 'Foe Koue Ki,' p. 41, and xxxviii. preface.]
+
+[Footnote 78: See 'Foe Koue Ki,' p. 41.]
+
+[Footnote 79: 'Lalita-Vistara,' ed. Foucaux, p. xvii. n.]
+
+After Buddhism had been introduced into China, the first care of its
+teachers was to translate the sacred works from Sanskrit, in which
+they were originally written, into Chinese. We read of the Emperor
+Ming-ti,[80] of the dynasty of Han, sending Tsaï-in and other high
+officials to India, in order to study there the doctrine of Buddha.
+They engaged the services of two learned Buddhists, Matânga and
+Tchou-fa-lan, and some of the most important Buddhist works were
+translated by them into Chinese. 'The Life of Buddha,' the
+'Lalita-Vistara,'[81] a Sanskrit work which, on account of its style
+and language, had been referred by Oriental scholars to a much more
+modern period of Indian literature, can now safely be ascribed to an
+ante-Christian era, if, as we are told by Chinese scholars, it was
+translated from Sanskrit into Chinese, as one of the canonical books
+of Buddhism, as early as the year 76 A.D. The same work was translated
+also into Tibetan; and an edition of it--the first Tibetan work
+printed in Europe--published in Paris by M.E. Foucaux, reflects high
+credit on that distinguished scholar, and on the Government which
+supports these studies in the most liberal and enlightened spirit. The
+intellectual intercourse between the Indian peninsula and the northern
+continent of Asia remained uninterrupted for many centuries. Missions
+were sent from China to India, to report on the political and
+geographical state of the country, but the chief object of interest
+which attracted public embassies and private pilgrims across the
+Himalayan mountains was the religion of Buddha. About three hundred
+years after the public recognition of Buddhism by the Emperor Ming-ti,
+the great stream of Buddhist pilgrims began to flow from China to
+India. The first account which we possess of these pilgrimages refers
+to the travels of Fahian, who visited India towards the end of the
+fourth century. His travels have been translated by Rémusat, but M.
+Julien promises a new and more correct translation. After Fahian, we
+have the travels of Hoei-seng and Song-yun, who were sent to India, in
+518, by command of the Empress, with a view of collecting sacred books
+and relics. Of Hiouen-thsang, who follows next in time, we possess, at
+present, eight out of twelve books; and there is reason to hope that
+the last four books of his Journal will soon follow in M. Julien's
+translation.[82] After Hiouen-thsang, the chief works of Chinese
+pilgrims are the 'Itineraries' of the fifty-six monks, published in
+730, and the travels of Khi-nie, who visited India in 964, at the head
+of three hundred pilgrims. India was for a time the Holy Land of
+China. There lay the scene of the life and death of the great teacher;
+there were the monuments commemorating the chief events of his life;
+there the shrines where his relics might be worshipped; there the
+monasteries where tradition had preserved his sayings and his doings;
+there the books where his doctrine might be studied in its original
+purity; there the schools where the tenets of different sects which
+had sprung up in the course of time might best be acquired.
+
+[Footnote 80: 'Lalita-Vistara,' p. 17.]
+
+[Footnote 81: Two parts of the Sanskrit text have been published in
+the 'Bibliotheca Indica.']
+
+[Footnote 82: They have since been published.]
+
+Some of the pilgrims and envoys have left us accounts of their
+travels, and, in the absence of anything like an historical literature
+in India itself, these Chinese works are of the utmost importance for
+gaining an insight into the social, political, and religious history
+of that country from the beginning of our era to the time of the
+Mohammedan conquest. The importance of Mohammedan writers, so far as
+they treat on the history of India during the Middle Ages, was soon
+recognised, and in a memoir lately published by the most eminent
+Arabic scholar of France, M. Reinaud, new and valuable historical
+materials have been collected--materials doubly valuable in India,
+where no native historian has ever noted down the passing events of
+the day. But, although the existence of similar documents in Chinese
+was known, and although men of the highest literary eminence--such as
+Humboldt, Biot, and others--had repeatedly urged the necessity of
+having a translation of the early travels of the Chinese Pilgrims, it
+seemed almost as if our curiosity was never to be satisfied. France
+has been the only country where Chinese scholarship has ever
+flourished, and it was a French scholar, Abel Rémusat, who undertook
+at last the translation of one of the Chinese Pilgrims. Rémusat died
+before his work was published, and his translation of the travels of
+Fahian, edited by M. Landresse, remained for a long time without being
+followed up by any other. Nor did the work of that eminent scholar
+answer all expectations. Most of the proper names, the names of
+countries, towns, mountains, and rivers, the titles of books, and the
+whole Buddhistic phraseology, were so disguised in their Chinese dress
+that it was frequently impossible to discover their original form.
+
+The Chinese alphabet was never intended to represent the sound of
+words. It was in its origin a hieroglyphic system, each word having
+its own graphic representative. Nor would it have been possible to
+write Chinese in any other way. Chinese is a monosyllabic language. No
+word is allowed more than one consonant and one vowel,--the vowels
+including diphthongs and nasal vowels. Hence the possible number of
+words is extremely small, and the number of significative sounds in
+the Chinese language is said to be no more than 450. No language,
+however, could be satisfied with so small a vocabulary, and in
+Chinese, as in other monosyllabic dialects, each word, as it was
+pronounced with various accents and intonations, was made to convey a
+large number of meanings; so that the total number of words, or rather
+of ideas, expressed in Chinese, is said to amount to 43,496. Hence a
+graphic representation of the mere sound of words would have been
+perfectly useless, and it was absolutely necessary to resort to
+hieroglyphical writing, enlarged by the introduction of determinative
+signs. Nearly the whole immense dictionary of Chinese--at least
+twenty-nine thirtieths--consists of combined signs, one part
+indicating the general sound, the other determining its special
+meaning. With such a system of writing it was possible to represent
+Chinese, but impossible to convey either the sound or the meaning of
+any other language. Besides, some of the most common sounds--such as
+r, b, d, and the short a--are unknown in Chinese.
+
+How, then, were the translators to render Sanskrit names in Chinese?
+The most rational plan would have been to select as many Chinese signs
+as there were Sanskrit letters, and to express one and the same letter
+in Sanskrit always by one and the same sign in Chinese; or, if the
+conception of a consonant without a vowel, and of a vowel without a
+consonant, was too much for a Chinese understanding, to express at
+least the same syllabic sound in Sanskrit, by one and the same
+syllabic sign in Chinese. A similar system is adopted at the present
+day, when the Chinese find themselves under the necessity of writing
+the names of Lord Palmerston or Sir John Bowring; but, instead of
+adopting any definite system of transcribing, each translator seems to
+have chosen his own signs for rendering the sounds of Sanskrit words,
+and to have chosen them at random. The result is that every Sanskrit
+word as transcribed by the Chinese Buddhists is a riddle which no
+ingenuity is able to solve. Who could have guessed that 'Fo-to,' or
+more frequently 'Fo,' was meant for Buddha? 'Ko-lo-keou-lo' for
+Râhula, the son of Buddha? 'Po-lo-naï' for Benares? 'Heng-ho' for
+Ganges? 'Niepan' for Nirv_âna_? 'Chamen' for _S_rama_n_a? 'Feïto' for
+Veda? 'Tcha-li' for Kshattriya? 'Siu-to-lo' for _S_ûdra? 'Fan' or
+'Fan-lon-mo' for Brahma? Sometimes, it is true, the Chinese
+endeavoured to give, besides the sounds, a translation of the meaning
+of the Sanskrit words. But the translation of proper names is always
+very precarious, and it required an intimate knowledge of Sanskrit and
+Buddhist literature to recognise from these awkward translations the
+exact form of the proper names for which they were intended. If, in a
+Chinese translation of 'Thukydides,' we read of a person called
+'Leader of the people,' we might guess his name to have been
+Demagogos, or Laoegos, as well as Agesilaos. And when the name of the
+town of _S_ravasti was written Che-wei, which means in Chinese 'where
+one hears,' it required no ordinary power of combination to find that
+the name of _S_ravasti was derived from a Sanskrit noun, _s_ravas
+(Greek κλἑος, Lat. cluo), which means 'hearing' or 'fame,'
+and that the etymological meaning of the name of _S_ravasti was
+intended by the Chinese 'Che-wei.' Besides these names of places and
+rivers, of kings and saints, there was the whole strange phraseology
+of Buddhism, of which no dictionary gives any satisfactory
+explanation. How was even the best Chinese scholar to know that the
+words which usually mean 'dark shadow' must be taken in the technical
+sense of Nirvâ_n_a, or becoming absorbed in the Absolute, that
+'return-purity' had the same sense, and that a third synonymous
+expression was to be recognised in a phrase which, in ordinary
+Chinese, would have the sense of 'transport-figure-crossing-age?' A
+monastery is called 'origin-door,' instead of 'black-door.' The voice
+of Buddha is called 'the voice of the dragon;' and his doctrine goes
+by the name of 'the door of expedients.'
+
+Tedious as these details may seem, it was almost a duty to state them,
+in order to give an idea of the difficulties which M. Stanislas Julien
+had to grapple with. Oriental scholars labour under great
+disadvantages. Few people take an interest in their works, or, if they
+do, they simply accept the results, but they are unable to appreciate
+the difficulty with which these results were obtained. Many persons
+who have read the translation of the cuneiform inscriptions are glad,
+no doubt, to have the authentic and contemporaneous records of Darius
+and Xerxes. But if they followed the process by which scholars such as
+Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and Rawlinson arrived at their results,
+they would see that the discovery of the alphabet, the language, the
+grammar, and the meaning of the inscriptions of the Achæmenian dynasty
+deserves to be classed with the discoveries of a Kepler, a Newton, or
+a Faraday. In a similar manner, the mere translation of a Chinese work
+into French seems a very ordinary performance; but M. Stanislas
+Julien, who has long been acknowledged as the first Chinese scholar in
+Europe, had to spend twenty years of incessant labour in order to
+prepare himself for the task of translating the 'Travels of
+Hiouen-thsang.' He had to learn Sanskrit, no very easy language; he
+had to study the Buddhist literature written in Sanskrit, Pâli,
+Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese. He had to make vast indices of every
+proper name connected with Buddhism. Thus only could he shape his own
+tools, and accomplish what at last he did accomplish. Most persons
+will remember the interest with which the travels of M.M. Huc and
+Gabet were read a few years ago, though these two adventurous
+missionaries were obliged to renounce their original intention of
+entering India by way of China and Tibet, and were not allowed to
+proceed beyond the famous capital of Lhassa. If, then, it be
+considered that there was a traveller who had made a similar journey
+twelve hundred years earlier--who had succeeded in crossing the
+deserts and mountain passes which separate China from India--who had
+visited the principal cities of the Indian Peninsula, at a time of
+which we have no information, from native or foreign sources, as to
+the state of that country--who had learned Sanskrit, and made a large
+collection of Buddhist works--who had carried on public disputations
+with the most eminent philosophers and theologians of the day--who had
+translated the most important works on Buddhism from Sanskrit into
+Chinese, and left an account of his travels, which still existed in
+the libraries of China--nay, which had been actually printed and
+published--we may well imagine the impatience with which all scholars
+interested in the ancient history of India, and in the subject of
+Buddhism, looked forward to the publication of so important a work.
+Hiouen-thsang's name had first been mentioned in Europe by Abel
+Rémusat and Klaproth. They had discovered some fragments of his
+travels in a Chinese work on foreign countries and foreign nations.
+Rémusat wrote to China to procure, if possible, a complete copy of
+Hiouen-thsang's works. He was informed by Morrison that they were out
+of print. Still, the few specimens which he had given at the end of
+his translation of the 'Foe Koue Ki' had whetted the appetite of
+Oriental scholars. M. Stanislas Julien succeeded in procuring a copy
+of Hiouen-thsang in 1838; and after nearly twenty years spent in
+preparing a translation of the Chinese traveller, his version is now
+before us. If there are but few who know the difficulty of a work like
+that of M. Stanislas Julien, it becomes their duty to speak out,
+though, after all, perhaps the most intelligible eulogium would be,
+that in a branch of study where there are no monopolies and no
+patents, M. Stanislas Julien is acknowledged to be the only man in
+Europe who could produce the article which he has produced in the work
+before us.
+
+We shall devote the rest of our space to a short account of the life and
+travels of Hiouen-thsang. Hiouen-thsang was born in a provincial town of
+China, at a time when the empire was in a chronic state of revolution. His
+father had left the public service, and had given most of his time to the
+education of his four children. Two of them distinguished themselves at a
+very early age--one of them was Hiouen-thsang, the future traveller and
+theologian. The boy was sent to school at a Buddhist monastery, and, after
+receiving there the necessary instruction, partly from his elder brother,
+he was himself admitted as a monk at the early age of thirteen. During the
+next seven years, the young monk travelled about with his brother from
+place to place, in order to follow the lectures of some of the most
+distinguished professors. The horrors of war frequently broke in upon his
+quiet studies, and forced him to seek refuge in the more distant provinces
+of the empire. At the age of twenty he took priest's orders, and had then
+already become famous by his vast knowledge. He had studied the chief
+canonical books of the Buddhist faith, the records of Buddha's life and
+teaching, the system of ethics and metaphysics; and he was versed in the
+works of Confucius and Lao-tse. But still his own mind was agitated by
+doubts. Six years he continued his studies in the chief places of learning
+in China, and where he came to learn he was frequently asked to teach. At
+last, when he saw that none, even the most eminent theologians, were able
+to give him the information he wanted, he formed his resolve of travelling
+to India. The works of earlier pilgrims, such as Fahian and others, were
+known to him. He knew that in India he should find the originals of the
+works which in their Chinese translation left so many things doubtful in
+his mind; and though he knew from the same sources the dangers of his
+journey, yet 'the glory,' as he says, 'of recovering the Law, which was to
+be a guide to all men and the means of their salvation, seemed to him
+worthy of imitation.' In common with several other priests, he addressed a
+memorial to the Emperor to ask leave for their journey. Leave was refused,
+and the courage of his companions failed. Not that of Hiouen-thsang. His
+own mother had told him that, soon before she gave birth to him, she had
+seen her child travelling to the Far West in search of the Law. He was
+himself haunted by similar visions, and having long surrendered worldly
+desires, he resolved to brave all dangers, and to risk his life for the
+only object for which he thought it worth while to live. He proceeded to
+the Yellow River, the Hoang-ho, and to the place where the caravans bound
+for India used to meet, and, though the Governor had sent strict orders not
+to allow any one to cross the frontier, the young priest, with the
+assistance of his co-religionists, succeeded in escaping the vigilance of
+the Chinese 'douaniers.' Spies were sent after him. But so frank was his
+avowal, and so firm his resolution, which he expressed in the presence of
+the authorities, that the Governor himself tore his hue and cry to pieces,
+and allowed him to proceed. Hitherto he had been accompanied by two
+friends. They now left him, and Hiouen-thsang found himself alone, without
+a friend and without a guide. He sought for strength in fervent prayer. The
+next morning a person presented himself, offering his services as a guide.
+This guide conducted him safely for some distance, but left him when they
+approached the desert. There were still five watch-towers to be passed, and
+there was nothing to indicate the road through the desert, except the
+hoof-marks of horses, and skeletons. The traveller followed this melancholy
+track, and, though misled by the 'mirage' of the desert, he reached the
+first tower. Here the arrows of the watchmen would have put an end to his
+existence and his cherished expedition. But the officer in command, himself
+a zealous Buddhist, allowed the courageous pilgrim to proceed, and gave him
+letters of recommendation to the officers of the next towers. The last
+tower, however, was guarded by men inaccessible to bribes, and deaf to
+reasoning. In order to escape their notice, Hiouen-thsang had to make a
+long détour. He passed through another desert, and lost his way. The bag in
+which he carried his water burst, and then even the courage of
+Hiouen-thsang failed. He began to retrace his steps. But suddenly he
+stopped. 'I took an oath,' he said, 'never to make a step backward till I
+had reached India. Why, then, have I come here? It is better I should die
+proceeding to the West than return to the East and live.' Four nights and
+five days he travelled through the desert without a drop of water. He had
+nothing to refresh himself except his prayers--and what were they? Texts
+from a work which taught that there was no God, no Creator, no
+creation,--nothing but mind, minding itself. It is incredible in how
+exhausted an atmosphere the divine spark within us will glimmer on, and
+even warm the dark chambers of the human heart. Comforted by his prayers,
+Hiouen-thsang proceeded, and arrived after some time at a large lake. He
+was in the country of the Oïgour Tatars. They received him well, nay, too
+well. One of the Tatar Khans, himself a Buddhist, sent for the Buddhist
+pilgrim, and insisted on his staying with him to instruct his people.
+Remonstrances proved of no avail. But Hiouen-thsang was not to be
+conquered. 'I know,' he said, 'that the king, in spite of his power, has no
+power over my mind and my will;' and he refused all nourishment, in order
+to put an end to his life. Θανοῦμαι καἰ ἐλευθερήσομαι. Three days he
+persevered, and at last the Khan, afraid of the consequences, was obliged
+to yield to the poor monk. He made him promise to visit him on his return
+to China, and then to stay three years with him. At last, after a delay of
+one month, during which the Khan and his Court came daily to hear the
+lessons of their pious guest, the traveller continued his journey with a
+numerous escort, and with letters of introduction from the Khan to
+twenty-four Princes whose territories the little caravan had to pass. Their
+way lay through what is now called Dsungary, across the Musur-dabaghan
+mountains, the northern portion of the Belur-tag, the Yaxartes valley,
+Bactria, and Kabulistân. We cannot follow them through all the places they
+passed, though the accounts which he gives of their adventures are most
+interesting, and the description of the people most important. Here is a
+description of the Musur-dabaghan mountains:
+
+     'The top of the mountain rises to the sky. Since the
+     beginning of the world the snow has been accumulating, and
+     is now transformed into vast masses of ice, which never
+     melt, either in spring or summer. Hard and brilliant sheets
+     of snow are spread out till they are lost in the infinite,
+     and mingle with the clouds. If one looks at them, the eyes
+     are dazzled by the splendour. Frozen peaks hang down over
+     both sides of the road, some hundred feet high, and twenty
+     feet or thirty feet thick. It is not without difficulty and
+     danger that the traveller can clear them or climb over them.
+     Besides, there are squalls of wind, and tornadoes of snow
+     which attack the pilgrims. Even with double shoes, and in
+     thick furs, one cannot help trembling and shivering.'
+
+During the seven days that Hiouen-thsang crossed these Alpine passes
+he lost fourteen of his companions.
+
+What is most important, however, in this early portion of the Chinese
+traveller is the account which he gives of the high degree of
+civilisation among the tribes of Central Asia. We had gradually
+accustomed ourselves to believe in an early civilisation of Egypt, of
+Babylon, of China, of India; but now that we find the hordes of Tatary
+possessing in the seventh century the chief arts and institutions of
+an advanced society, we shall soon have to drop the name of barbarians
+altogether. The theory of M. Oppert, who ascribes the original
+invention of the cuneiform letters and a civilisation anterior to that
+of Babylon and Nineveh to a Turanian or Scythian race, will lose much
+of its apparent improbability; for no new wave of civilisation had
+reached these countries between the cuneiform period of their
+literature and history and the time of Hiouen-thsang's visit. In the
+kingdom of Okini, on the western frontier of China, Hiouen-thsang
+found an active commerce, gold, silver, and copper coinage;
+monasteries, where the chief works of Buddhism were studied, and an
+alphabet, derived from Sanskrit. As he travelled on he met with mines,
+with agriculture, including pears, plums, peaches, almonds, grapes,
+pomegranates, rice, and wheat. The inhabitants were dressed in silk
+and woollen materials. There were musicians in the chief cities who
+played on the flute and the guitar. Buddhism was the prevailing
+religion, but there were traces of an earlier worship, the Bactrian
+fire-worship. The country was everywhere studded with halls,
+monasteries, monuments, and statues. Samarkand formed at that early
+time a kind of Athens, and its manners were copied by all the tribes
+in the neighbourhood. Balkh, the old capital of Bactria, was still an
+important place on the Oxus, well fortified, and full of sacred
+buildings. And the details which our traveller gives of the exact
+circumference of the cities, the number of their inhabitants, the
+products of the soil, the articles of trade, can leave no doubt in our
+minds that he relates what he had seen and heard himself. A new page
+in the history of the world is here opened, and new ruins pointed out,
+which would reward the pickaxe of a Layard.
+
+But we must not linger. Our traveller, as we said, had entered India
+by way of Kabul. Shortly before he arrived at Pou-lou-cha-pou-lo, i.
+e. the Sanskrit Purushapura, the modern Peshawer, Hiouen-thsang heard
+of an extraordinary cave, where Buddha had formerly converted a
+dragon, and had promised his new pupil to leave him his shadow, in
+order that, whenever the evil passions of his dragon-nature should
+revive, the aspect of his master's shadowy features might remind him
+of his former vows. This promise was fulfilled, and the dragon-cave
+became a famous place of pilgrimage. Our traveller was told that the
+roads leading to the cave were extremely dangerous, and infested by
+robbers--that for three years none of the pilgrims had ever returned
+from the cave. But he replied, 'It would be difficult during a hundred
+thousand Kalpas to meet one single time with the true shadow of
+Buddha; how could I, having come so near, pass on without going to
+adore it?' He left his companions behind, and after asking in vain
+for a guide, he met at last with a boy who showed him to a farm
+belonging to a convent. Here he found an old man who undertook to act
+as his guide. They had hardly proceeded a few miles when they were
+attacked by five robbers. The monk took off his cap and displayed his
+ecclesiastical robes. 'Master,' said one of the robbers, 'where are
+you going?' Hiouen-thsang replied, 'I desire to adore the shadow of
+Buddha.' 'Master,' said the robber, 'have you not heard that these
+roads are full of bandits?' 'Robbers are men,' Hiouen-thsang
+exclaimed, 'and at present, when I am going to adore the shadow of
+Buddha, even though the roads were full of wild beasts, I should walk
+on without fear. Surely, then, I ought not to fear you, as you are men
+whose heart is possessed of pity.' The robbers were moved by these
+words, and opened their hearts to the true faith. After this little
+incident, Hiouen-thsang proceeded with his guide. He passed a stream
+rushing down between two precipitous walls of rock. In the rock itself
+there was a door which opened. All was dark. But Hiouen-thsang
+entered, advanced towards the east, then moved fifty steps backwards,
+and began his devotions. He made one hundred salutations, but he saw
+nothing. He reproached himself bitterly with his former sins, he
+cried, and abandoned himself to utter despair, because the shadow of
+Buddha would not appear before him. At last, after many prayers and
+invocations, he saw on the eastern wall a dim light, of the size of a
+saucepan, such as the Buddhist monks carry in their hands. But it
+disappeared. He continued praying full of joy and pain, and again he
+saw a light, which vanished like lightning. Then he vowed, full of
+devotion and love, that he would never leave the place till he had
+seen the shadow of the 'Venerable of the age.' After two hundred
+prayers, the cave was suddenly bathed in light, and the shadow of
+Buddha, of a brilliant white colour, rose majestically on the wall, as
+when the clouds suddenly open and, all at once, display the marvellous
+image of the 'Mountain of Light.' A dazzling splendour lighted up the
+features of the divine countenance. Hiouen-thsang was lost in
+contemplation and wonder, and would not turn his eyes away from the
+sublime and incomparable object.... After he awoke from his trance, he
+called in six men, and commanded them to light a fire in the cave, in
+order to burn incense; but, as the approach of the light made the
+shadow of Buddha disappear, the fire was extinguished. Then five of
+the men saw the shadow, but the sixth saw nothing. The old man who had
+acted as guide was astounded when Hiouen-thsang told him the vision.
+'Master,' he said, 'without the sincerity of your faith, and the
+energy of your vows, you could not have seen such a miracle.'
+
+This is the account given by Hiouen-thsang's biographers. But we must
+say, to the credit of Hiouen-thsang himself, that in the 'Si-yu-ki,'
+which contains his own diary, the story is told in a different way.
+The cave is described with almost the same words. But afterwards, the
+writer continues: 'Formerly, the shadow of Buddha was seen in the
+cave, bright, like his natural appearance, and with all the marks of
+his divine beauty. One might have said, it was Buddha himself. For
+some centuries, however, it can no longer be seen completely. Though
+one does see something, it is only a feeble and doubtful resemblance.
+If a man prays with sincere faith, and if he has received from above
+a hidden impression, he sees the shadow clearly, but he cannot enjoy
+the sight for any length of time.'
+
+From Peshawer, the scene of this extraordinary miracle, Hiouen-thsang
+proceeded to Kashmir, visited the chief towns of Central India, and
+arrived at last in Magadha, the Holy Land of the Buddhists. Here he
+remained five years, devoting all his time to the study of Sanskrit
+and Buddhist literature, and inspecting every place hallowed by the
+recollections of the past. He then passed through Bengal, and
+proceeded to the south, with a view of visiting Ceylon, the chief seat
+of Buddhism. Baffled in that wish, he crossed the peninsula from east
+to west, ascended the Malabar coast, reached the Indus, and, after
+numerous excursions to the chief places of North-Western India,
+returned to Magadha, to spend there, with his old friends, some of the
+happiest years of his life. The route of his journeyings is laid down
+in a map drawn with exquisite skill by M. Vivien de Saint-Martin. At
+last he was obliged to return to China, and, passing through the
+Penjab, Kabulistan, and Bactria, he reached the Oxus, followed its
+course nearly to its sources on the plateau of Pamir, and, after
+staying some time in the three chief towns of Turkistan, Khasgar,
+Yarkand, and Khoten, he found himself again, after sixteen years of
+travels, dangers, and studies, in his own native country. His fame had
+spread far and wide, and the poor pilgrim, who had once been hunted by
+imperial spies and armed policemen, was now received with public
+honours by the Emperor himself. His entry into the capital was like a
+triumph. The streets were covered with carpets, flowers were
+scattered, and banners flying. Soldiers were drawn up, the
+magistrates went out to meet him, and all the monks of the
+neighbourhood marched along in solemn procession. The trophies that
+adorned this triumph, carried by a large number of horses, were of a
+peculiar kind. First, 150 grains of the dust of Buddha; secondly, a
+golden statue of the great Teacher; thirdly, a similar statue of
+sandal-wood; fourthly, a statue of sandal-wood, representing Buddha as
+descending from heaven; fifthly, a statue of silver; sixthly, a golden
+statue of Buddha conquering the dragons; seventhly, a statue of
+sandal-wood, representing Buddha as a preacher; lastly, a collection
+of 657 works in 520 volumes. The Emperor received the traveller in the
+Phoenix Palace, and, full of admiration for his talents and wisdom,
+invited him to accept a high office in the Government. This
+Hiouen-thsang declined. 'The soul of the administration,' he said, 'is
+still the doctrine of Confucius;' and he would dedicate the rest of
+his life to the Law of Buddha. The Emperor thereupon asked him to
+write an account of his travels, and assigned him a monastery where he
+might employ his leisure in translating the works he had brought back
+from India. His travels were soon written and published, but the
+translation of the Sanskrit MSS. occupied he whole rest of his life.
+It is said that the number of works translated by him, with the
+assistance of a large staff of monks, amounted to 740, in 1,335
+volumes. Frequently he might be seen meditating on a difficult
+passage, when suddenly it seemed as if a higher spirit had enlightened
+his mind. His soul was cheered, as when a man walking in darkness sees
+all at once the sun piercing the clouds and shining in its full
+brightness; and, unwilling to trust to his own understanding, he used
+to attribute his knowledge to a secret inspiration of Buddha and the
+Bodhisattvas. When he found that the hour of death approached, he had
+all his property divided among the poor. He invited his friends to
+come and see him, and to take a cheerful leave of that impure body of
+Hiouen-thsang. 'I desire,' he said, 'that whatever merits I may have
+gained by good works may fall upon other people. May I be born again
+with them in the heaven of the blessed, be admitted to the family of
+Mi-le, and serve the Buddha of the future, who is full of kindness and
+affection. When I descend again upon earth to pass through other forms
+of existence, I desire at every new birth to fulfil my duties towards
+Buddha, and arrive at the last at the highest and most perfect
+intelligence. He died in the year 664--about the same time that
+Mohammedanism was pursuing its bloody conquests in the East, and
+Christianity began to shed its pure light over the dark forests of
+Germany.
+
+It is impossible to do justice to the character of so extraordinary a
+man as Hiouen-thsang in so short a sketch as we have been able to
+give. If we knew only his own account of his life and travels--the
+volume which has just been published at Paris--we should be ignorant
+of the motives which guided him and of the sufferings which he
+underwent. Happily, two of his friends and pupils had left an account
+of their teacher, and M. Stanislas Julien has acted wisely in
+beginning his collection of the Buddhist Pilgrims with the translation
+of that biography. There we learn something of the man himself and of
+that silent enthusiasm which supported him in his arduous work. There
+we see him braving the dangers of the desert, scrambling along
+glaciers, crossing over torrents, and quietly submitting to the
+brutal violence of Indian Thugs. There we see him rejecting the
+tempting invitations of Khans, Kings, and Emperors, and quietly
+pursuing among strangers, within the bleak walls of the cell of a
+Buddhist college, the study of a foreign language, the key to the
+sacred literature of his faith. There we see him rising to eminence,
+acknowledged as an equal by his former teachers, as a superior by the
+most distinguished scholars of India; the champion of the orthodox
+faith, an arbiter at councils, the favourite of Indian kings. In his
+own work there is hardly a word about all this. We do not wish to
+disguise his weaknesses, such as they appear in the same biography. He
+was a credulous man, easily imposed upon by crafty priests, still more
+easily carried away by his own superstitions; but he deserved to have
+lived in better times, and we almost grudge so high and noble a
+character to a country not our own, and to a religion unworthy of such
+a man. Of selfishness we find no trace in him. His whole life belonged
+to the faith in which he was born, and the objects of his labour was
+not so much to perfect himself as to benefit others. He was an honest
+man. And strange, and stiff, and absurd, and outlandish as his outward
+appearance may seem, there is something in the face of that poor
+Chinese monk, with his yellow skin and his small oblique eyes, that
+appeals to our sympathy--something in his life, and the work of his
+life, that places him by right among the heroes of Greece, the martyrs
+of Rome, the knights of the crusades, the explorers of the Arctic
+regions--something that makes us feel it a duty to inscribe his name
+on the roll of the 'forgotten worthies' of the human race. There is a
+higher consanguinity than that of the blood which runs through our
+veins--that of the blood which makes our hearts beat with the same
+indignation and the same joy. And there is a higher nationality than
+that of being governed by the same imperial dynasty--that of our
+common allegiance to the Father and Ruler of all mankind.
+
+It is but right to state that we owe the publication, at least of the
+second volume of M. Julien's work, to the liberality of the Court of
+Directors of the East-India Company. We have had several opportunities
+of pointing out the creditable manner in which that body has
+patronized literary and scientific works connected with the East, and
+we congratulate the Chairman, Colonel Sykes, and the President of the
+Board of Control, Mr. Vernon Smith, on the excellent choice they have
+made in this instance. Nothing can be more satisfactory than that
+nearly the whole edition of a work which would have remained
+unpublished without their liberal assistance, has been sold in little
+more than a month.
+
+_April, 1857._
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+THE MEANING OF NIRVÂNA.
+
+
+_To the Editor of_ THE TIMES.
+
+
+Sir,--Mr. Francis Barham, of Bath, has protested in a letter, printed
+in 'The Times' of the 24th of April, against my interpretations of
+Nirvâ_n_a, or the summum bonum of the Buddhists. He maintains that the
+Nirvâ_n_a in which the Buddhists believe, and which they represent as
+the highest goal of their religion and philosophy, means union and
+communion with God, or absorption of the individual soul by the divine
+essence, and not, as I tried to show in my articles on the 'Buddhist
+Pilgrims,' utter annihilation.
+
+I must not take up much more of your space with so abstruse a subject
+as Buddhist metaphysics; but at the same time I cannot allow Mr.
+Barham's protest to pass unnoticed. The authorities which he brings
+forward against my account of Buddhism, and particularly against my
+interpretation of Nirvâ_n_a, seem formidable enough. There is Neander,
+the great church historian, Creuzer, the famous scholar, and Hue, the
+well-known traveller and missionary,--all interpreting, as Mr. Barham
+says, the Nirvâ_n_a of the Buddhists in the sense of an apotheosis of
+the human soul, as it was taught in the Vedânta philosophy of the
+Brahmans, the Sufiism of the Persians, and the Christian mysticism of
+Eckhart and Tauler, and not in the sense of absolute annihilation.
+
+Now, with regard to Neander and Creuzer, I must observe that their
+works were written before the canonical books of the Buddhists,
+composed in Sanskrit, had been discovered, or at least before they had
+been sent to Europe, and been analysed by European scholars. Besides,
+neither Neander nor Creuzer was an Oriental scholar, and their
+knowledge of the subject could only be second-hand. It was in 1824
+that Mr. Brian Houghton Hodgson, then resident at the Court of Nepal,
+gave the first intimation of the existence of a large religious
+literature written in Sanskrit, and preserved by the Buddhists of
+Nepal as the canonical books of their faith. It was in 1830 and 1835
+that the same eminent scholar and naturalist presented the first set
+of these books to the Royal Asiatic Society in London. In 1837 he made
+a similar gift to the Société Asiatique of Paris, and some of the most
+important works were transmitted by him to the Bodleian Library at
+Oxford. It was in 1844 that the late Eugène Burnouf published, after a
+careful study of these documents, his classical work, 'Introduction à
+l'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien,' and it is from this book that our
+knowledge of Buddhism may be said to date. Several works have since
+been published, which have added considerably to the stock of
+authentic information on the doctrine of the great Indian reformer.
+There is Burnouf's translation of 'Le Lotus de la bonne Loi,'
+published after the death of that lamented scholar, together with
+numerous essays, in 1852. There are two interesting works by the Rev.
+Spence Hardy--'Eastern Monachism,' London, 1850, and 'A Manual of
+Buddhism,' London, 1853; and there are the publications of M.
+Stanislas Julien, E. Foucaux, the Honourable George Turnour, Professor
+H. H. Wilson, and others, alluded to in my article on the 'Buddhist
+Pilgrims.' It is from these works alone that we can derive correct and
+authentic information on Buddhism, and not from Neander's 'History of
+the Christian Church' or from Creuzer's 'Symbolik.'
+
+If any one will consult these works, he will find that the discussions
+on the true meaning of Nirvâ_n_a are not of modern date, and that, at
+a very early period, different philosophical schools among the
+Buddhists of India, and different teachers who spread the doctrine of
+Buddhism abroad, propounded every conceivable opinion as to the
+orthodox explanation of this term. Even in one and the same school we
+find different parties maintaining different views on the meaning of
+Nirvâ_n_a. There is the school of the Svâbhâvikas, which still exists
+in Nepal. The Svâbhâvikas maintain that nothing exists but nature, or
+rather substance, and that this substance exists by itself
+(svabhâvât), without a Creator or a Ruler. It exists, however, under
+two forms: in the state of Prav_r_itti, as active, or in the state of
+Nirv_r_itti, as passive. Human beings, who, like everything else,
+exist svabhâvât, 'by themselves,' are supposed to be capable of
+arriving at Nirv_r_itti, or passiveness, which is nearly synonymous
+with Nirvâ_n_a. But here the Svâbhâvikas branch off into two sects.
+Some believe that Nirv_r_itti is repose, others that it is
+annihilation; and the former add, 'were it even annihilation
+(sûnyatâ), it would still be good, man being otherwise doomed to an
+eternal migration through all the forms of nature; the more desirable
+of which are little to be wished for; and the less so, at any price to
+be shunned.'[83]
+
+What was the original meaning of Nirvâ_n_a may perhaps best be seen
+from the etymology of this technical term. Every Sanskrit scholar
+knows that Nirvâ_n_a means originally the blowing out, the extinction
+of light, and not absorption. The human soul, when it arrives at its
+perfection, is blown out,[84] if we use the phraseology of the
+Buddhists, like a lamp; it is not absorbed, as the Brahmans say, like
+a drop in the ocean. Neither in the system of Buddhist philosophy, nor
+in the philosophy from which Buddha is supposed to have borrowed, was
+there any place left for a Divine Being by which the human soul could
+be absorbed. Sânkhya philosophy, in its original form, claims the name
+of an-î_s_vara, 'lordless' or 'atheistic' as its distinctive title.
+Its final object is not absorption in God, whether personal or
+impersonal, but Moksha, deliverance of the soul from all pain and
+illusion, and recovery by the soul of its true nature. It is doubtful
+whether the term Nirvâ_n_a was coined by Buddha. It occurs in the
+literature of the Brahmans as a synonyme of Moksha, deliverance;
+Nirv_r_itti, cessation; Apavarga, release; Ni_hs_reyas, summum bonum.
+It is used in this sense in the Mahâbhârata, and it is explained in
+the Amara-Kosha as having the meaning of 'blowing out, applied to a
+fire and to a sage.'[85] Unless, however, we succeed in tracing this
+term in works anterior to Buddha, we may suppose that it was invented
+by him in order to express that meaning of the summum bonum which he
+was the first to preach, and which some of his disciples explained in
+the sense of absolute annihilation.
+
+[Footnote 83: See Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 441; Hodgson, 'Asiatic
+Researches,' vol. xvi.]
+
+[Footnote 84: 'Calm,' 'without wind,' as Nirvâ_n_a is sometimes
+explained, is expressed in Sanskrit by Nirvâta. See Amara-Kosha, sub
+voce.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Different views of the Nirvâ_n_a, as conceived by the
+Tîrthakas or the Brahmans, may be seen in an extract from the
+Lankâvatâra, translated by Burnouf, p. 514.]
+
+The earliest authority to which we can go back, if we want to know the
+original character of Buddhism, is the Buddhist Canon, as settled
+after the death of Buddha at the first Council. It is called
+Tripi_t_aka, or the Three Baskets, the first containing the Sûtras, or
+the discourses of Buddha; the second, the Vinaya, or his code of
+morality; the third, the Abhidharma, or the system of metaphysics. The
+first was compiled by Ânanda, the second by Upâli, the third by
+Kâ_s_yapa--all of them the pupils and friends of Buddha. It may be
+that these collections, as we now possess them, were finally arranged,
+not at the first, but at the third Council. Yet, even then, we have no
+earlier, no more authentic, documents from which we could form an
+opinion as to the original teaching of Buddha; and the Nirvâ_n_a, as
+taught in the metaphysics of Kâ_s_yapa, and particularly in the
+Pra_gn_â-pâramitâ, is annihilation, not absorption. Buddhism,
+therefore, if tested by its own canonical books, cannot be freed from
+the charge of Nihilism, whatever may have been its character in the
+mind of its founder, and whatever changes it may have undergone in
+later times, and among races less inured to metaphysical discussions
+than the Hindus.
+
+The ineradicable feeling of dependence on something else, which is the
+life-spring of all religion, was completely numbed in the early Buddhist
+metaphysicians, and it was only after several generations had passed away,
+and after Buddhism had become the creed of millions, that this feeling
+returned with increased warmth, changing, as I said in my article, the very
+Nothing into a paradise, and deifying the very Buddha who had denied the
+existence of a Deity. That this has been the case in China we know from the
+interesting works of the Abbé Huc, and from other sources, such as the
+'Catechism of the Shamans, or the Laws and Regulations of the Priesthood of
+Buddha in China,' translated by Ch. F. Neumann, London, 1831. In India,
+also, Buddhism, as soon as it became a popular religion, had to speak a
+more human language than that of metaphysical Pyrrhonism. But, if it did
+so, it was because it was shamed into it. This we may see from the very
+nicknames which the Brahmans apply to their opponents, the Bauddhas. They
+call them Nâstikas--those who maintain that there is nothing;
+_S_ûnyavadins-those who maintain that there is a universal void.
+
+The only ground, therefore, on which we may stand, if we wish to
+defend the founder of Buddhism against the charges of Nihilism and
+Atheism, is this, that, as some of the Buddhists admit, the 'Basket of
+Metaphysics' was rather the work of his pupils, not of Buddha
+himself.[86] This distinction between the authentic words of Buddha
+and the canonical books in general, is mentioned more than once. The
+priesthood of Ceylon, when the manifest errors with which their
+canonical commentaries abound, were brought to their notice, retreated
+from their former position, and now assert that it is only the express
+words of Buddha that they receive as undoubted truth.[87] There is a
+passage in a Buddhist work which reminds us somewhat of the last page
+of Dean Milman's 'History of Christianity,' and where we read:
+
+     'The words of the priesthood are good; those of the Rahats
+     (saints) are better; but those of the All-knowing are the
+     best of all.'
+
+[Footnote 86: See Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 41. 'Abuddhoktam
+abhidharma-_s_âstram.' Ibid. p. 454. According to the Tibetan
+Buddhists, however, Buddha propounded the Abhidharma when he was
+fifty-one years old. 'Asiatic Researches,' vol. xx. p. 339.]
+
+[Footnote 87: 'Eastern Monachism,' p. 171.]
+
+This is an argument which Mr. Francis Barham might have used with more
+success, and by which he might have justified, if not the first
+disciples, at least the original founder of Buddhism. Nay, there is a
+saying of Buddha's which tends to show that all metaphysical
+discussion was regarded by him as vain and useless. It is a saying
+mentioned in one of the MSS. belonging to the Bodleian Library. As it
+has never been published before, I may be allowed to quote it in the
+original: Sadasad vi_k_âram na sahate,--'The ideas of being and not
+being do not admit of discussion,'--a tenet which, if we consider that
+it was enunciated before the time of the Eleatic philosophers of
+Greece, and long before Hegel's Logic, might certainly have saved us
+many an intricate and indigestible argument.
+
+A few passages from the Buddhist writings of Nepal and Ceylon will
+best show that the horror nihili was not felt by the metaphysicians
+of former ages in the same degree as it is felt by ourselves. The
+famous hymn which resounds in heaven when the luminous rays of the
+smile of Buddha penetrate through the clouds, is 'All is transitory,
+all is misery, all is void, all is without substance.' Again, it is
+said in the Pra_gn_â-pâramitâ,[88] that Buddha began to think that he
+ought to conduct all creatures to perfect Nirvâ_n_a. But he reflected
+that there are really no creatures which ought to be conducted, nor
+creatures that conduct; and, nevertheless, he did conduct all
+creatures to perfect Nirvâ_n_a. Then, continues the text, why is it
+said that there are neither creatures which arrive at complete
+Nirvâ_n_a, nor creatures which conduct there? Because it is illusion
+which makes creatures what they are. It is as if a clever juggler, or
+his pupil, made an immense number of people to appear on the high
+road, and after having made them to appear, made them to disappear
+again. Would there be anybody who had killed, or murdered, or
+annihilated, or caused them to vanish? No. And it is the same with
+Buddha. He conducts an immense, innumerable, infinite number of
+creatures to complete Nirvâ_n_a, and yet there are neither creatures
+which are conducted, nor creatures that conduct. If a Bodhisattva, on
+hearing this explanation of the Law, is not frightened, then it may be
+said that he has put on the great armour.[89]
+
+[Footnote 88: Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 462.]
+
+[Footnote 89: Ibid. p. 478.]
+
+Soon after, we read: 'The name of Buddha is nothing but a word. The
+name of Bodhisattva is nothing but a word. The name of Perfect Wisdom
+(Pra_gn_â-pâramitâ) is nothing but a word. The name is indefinite, as
+if one says "I," for "I" is something indefinite, because it has no
+limits.'
+
+Burnouf gives the gist of the whole Pra_gn_â-pâramitâ in the following
+words: 'The highest Wisdom, or what is to be known, has no more real
+existence than he who has to know, or the Bodhisattva; no more than he
+who does know, or the Buddha.' But Burnouf remarks that nothing of
+this kind is to be found in the Sûtras, and that Gautama _S_âkya-muni,
+the son of _S_uddhodana, would never have become the founder of a
+popular religion if he had started with similar absurdities. In the
+Sûtras the reality of the objective world is denied; the reality of
+form is denied; the reality of the individual, or the 'I,' is equally
+denied. But the existence of a subject, of something like the Purusha,
+the thinking substance of the Sânkhya philosophy, is spared. Something
+at least exists with respect to which everything else may be said not
+to exist. The germs of the ideas, developed in the Pra_gn_â-pâramitâ,
+may indeed be discovered here and there in the Sûtras.[90] But they
+had not yet ripened into that poisonous plant which soon became an
+indispensable narcotic in the schools of the later Buddhists. Buddha
+himself, however, though, perhaps, not a Nihilist, was certainly an
+Atheist. He does not deny distinctly either the existence of gods, or
+that of God; but he ignores the former, and he is ignorant of the
+latter. Therefore, if Nirvâ_n_a in his mind was not yet complete
+annihilation, still less could it have been absorption into a Divine
+essence. It was nothing but selfishness, in the metaphysical sense of
+the word--a relapse into that being which is nothing but itself. This
+is the most charitable view which we can take of the Nirvâ_n_a, even
+as conceived by Buddha himself, and it is the view which Burnouf
+derived from the canonical books of the Northern Buddhists. On the
+other hand, Mr. Spence Hardy, who in his works follows exclusively the
+authority of the Southern Buddhists, the Pâli and Singhalese works of
+Ceylon, arrives at the same result. We read in his work: 'The Rahat
+(Arhat), who has reached Nirvâ_n_a, but is not yet a Pratyeka-buddha,
+or a Supreme Buddha, says: "I await the appointed time for the
+cessation of existence. I have no wish to live; I have no wish to die.
+Desire is extinct."'
+
+[Footnote 90: Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 520.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a very interesting dialogue between Milinda and Nâgasena,
+communicated by Mr. Spence Hardy, Nirvâ_n_a is represented as
+something which has no antecedent cause, no qualities, no locality. It
+is something of which the utmost we may assert is, that it is:
+
+     _Nâgasena._ Can a man, by his natural strength, go from the
+     city of Sâgal to the forest of Himâla?
+
+     _Milinda._ Yes.
+
+     _Nâgasena._ But could any man, by his natural strength,
+     bring the forest of Himâla to this city of Sâgal?
+
+     _Milinda._ No.
+
+     _Nâgasena._ In like manner, though the fruition of the paths
+     may cause the accomplishment of Nirvâ_n_a, no cause by which
+     Nirvâ_n_a is produced can be declared. The path that leads
+     to Nirvâ_n_a may be pointed out, but not any cause for its
+     production. Why? because that which constitutes Nirvâ_n_a is
+     beyond all computation,--a mystery, not to be
+     understood.... It cannot be said that it is produced, nor
+     that it is not produced; that it is past or future or
+     present. Nor can it be said that it is the seeing of the
+     eye, or the hearing of the ear, or the smelling of the nose,
+     or the tasting of the tongue, or the feeling of the body.
+
+     _Milinda._ Then you speak of a thing that is not; you merely
+     say that Nirvâ_n_a is Nirvâ_n_a;--therefore there is no
+     Nirvâ_n_a.
+
+     _Nâgasena._ Great king, Nirvâ_n_a is.
+
+Another question also, whether Nirvâ_n_a is something different from
+the beings that enter into it, has been asked by the Buddhists
+themselves:
+
+     _Milinda._ Does the being who acquires it, attain something
+     that has previously existed?--or is it his own product, a
+     formation peculiar to himself?
+
+     _Nâgasena._ Nirvâ_n_a does not exist previously to its
+     reception; nor is it that which was brought into existence.
+     Still to the being who attains it, there is Nirvâ_n_a.
+
+In opposition, therefore, to the more advanced views of the Nihilistic
+philosophers of the North, Nâgasena maintains the existence of
+Nirvâ_n_a, and of the being that has entered Nirvâ_n_a. He does not
+say that Buddha is a mere word. When asked by king Milinda, whether
+the all-wise Buddha exists, he replies:
+
+     _Nâgasena._ He who is the most meritorious (Bhagavat) does
+     exist.
+
+     _Milinda._ Then can you point out to me the place in which
+     he exists?
+
+     _Nâgasena._ Our Bhagavat has attained Nirvâ_n_a, where there
+     is no repetition of birth. We cannot say that he is here,
+     or that he is there. When a fire is extinguished, can it be
+     said that it is here, or that it is there? Even so, our
+     Buddha has attained extinction (Nirvâ_n_a). He is like the
+     sun that has set behind the Astagiri mountain. It cannot be
+     said that he is here, or that he is there: but we can point
+     him out by the discourses he delivered. In them he lives.
+
+At the present moment, the great majority of Buddhists would probably
+be quite incapable of understanding the abstract speculation of their
+ancient masters. The view taken of Nirvâ_n_a in China, Mongolia, and
+Tatary may probably be as gross as that which most of the Mohammedans
+form of their paradise. But, in the history of religion, the historian
+must go back to the earliest and most original documents that are to
+be obtained. Thus only may he hope to understand the later
+developments which, whether for good or evil, every form of faith has
+had to undergo.
+
+_April, 1857._
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+CHINESE TRANSLATIONS
+
+OF
+
+SANSKRIT TEXTS.[91]
+
+
+Well might M. Stanislas Julien put εὕρηκα on the title-page
+of his last work, in which he explains his method of deciphering the
+Sanskrit words which occur in the Chinese translations of the Buddhist
+literature of India. We endeavoured to explain the laborious character
+and the important results of his researches on this subject on a
+former occasion, when reviewing his translation of the 'Life and
+Travels of the Buddhist Pilgrim Hiouen-thsang.' At that time, however,
+M. Julien kept the key of his discoveries to himself. He gave us the
+results of his labours without giving us more than a general idea of
+the process by which those results had been obtained. He has now
+published his 'Méthode pour déchiffrer et transcrire les noms
+sanscrits qui se rencontrent dans les livres chinois,' and he has
+given to the public his Chinese-Sanskrit dictionary, the work of
+sixteen years of arduous labour, containing all the Chinese characters
+which are used for representing phonetically the technical terms and
+proper names of the Buddhist literature of India.
+
+[Footnote 91: 'Méthode pour déchiffrer et transcrire les noms
+sanscrits qui se rencontrent dans les livres chinois.' Par M.
+Stanislas Julien, Membre de l'Institut. Paris, 1861.]
+
+In order fully to appreciate the labours and discoveries of M. Julien
+in this remote field of Oriental literature, we must bear in mind that
+the doctrine of Buddha arose in India about two centuries before
+Alexander's invasion. It became the state religion of India soon after
+Alexander's conquest, and it produced a vast literature, which was
+collected into a canon at a council held about 246 B.C. Very soon
+after that council, Buddhism assumed a proselytizing character. It
+spread in the south to Ceylon, in the north to Kashmir, the Himalayan
+countries, Tibet, and China. In the historical annals of China, on
+which, in the absence of anything like historical literature in
+Sanskrit, we must mainly depend for information on the spreading of
+Buddhism, one Buddhist missionary is mentioned as early as 217 B.C.;
+and about the year 120 B.C. a Chinese general, after defeating the
+barbarous tribes north of the desert of Gobi, brought back as a trophy
+a golden statue--the statue of Buddha. It was not, however, till the
+year 65 A.D. that Buddhism was officially recognised by the Chinese
+Emperor as a third state religion. Ever since, it has shared equal
+honours with the doctrines of Confucius and Lao-tse in the Celestial
+Empire; and it is but lately that these three established religions
+have had to fear the encroachments of a new rival in the creed of the
+Chief of the rebels.
+
+Once established in China, and well provided with monasteries and
+benefices, the Buddhist priesthood seems to have been most active in
+its literary labours. Immense as was the Buddhist literature of India,
+the Chinese swelled it to still more appalling proportions. The first
+thing to be done was to translate the canonical books. This seems to
+have been the joint work of Chinese who had acquired a knowledge of
+Sanskrit during their travels in India, and of Hindus who settled in
+Chinese monasteries in order to assist the native translators. The
+translation of books which profess to contain a new religious doctrine
+is under all circumstances a task of great difficulty. It was so
+particularly when the subtle abstractions of the Buddhist religion had
+to be clothed in the solid, matter-of-fact idiom of the Chinese. But
+there was another difficulty which it seemed almost impossible to
+overcome. Many words, not only proper names, but the technical terms
+also of the Buddhist creed, had to be preserved in Chinese. They were
+not to be translated, but to be transliterated. But how was this to be
+effected with a language which, like Chinese, had no phonetic
+alphabet? Every Chinese character is a word; it has both sound and
+meaning; and it is unfit, therefore, for the representation of the
+sound of foreign words. In modern times, certain characters have been
+set apart for the purpose of writing the proper names and titles of
+foreigners; but such is the peculiar nature of the Chinese system of
+writing, that even with this alphabet it is only possible to represent
+approximatively the pronunciation of foreign words. In the absence,
+however, of even such an alphabet, the translators of the Buddhist
+literature seem to have used their own discretion--or rather
+indiscretion--in appropriating, without any system, whatever Chinese
+characters seemed to them to come nearest to the sound of Sanskrit
+words. Now the whole Chinese language consists in reality of about
+four hundred words, or significative sounds, all monosyllabic. Each of
+these monosyllabic sounds embraces a large number of various meanings,
+and each of these various meanings is represented by its own sign.
+Thus it has happened that the Chinese Dictionary contains 43,496
+signs, whereas the Chinese language commands only four hundred
+distinct utterances. Instead of being restricted, therefore, to one
+character which always expresses the same sound, the Buddhist
+translators were at liberty to express one and the same sound in a
+hundred different ways. Of this freedom they availed themselves to the
+fullest extent. Each translator, each monastery, fixed on its own
+characters for representing the pronunciation of Sanskrit words. There
+are more than twelve hundred Chinese characters employed by various
+writers in order to represent the forty-two simple letters of the
+Sanskrit alphabet. The result has been that even the Chinese were
+after a time unable to read--i. e. to pronounce--these random
+transliterations. What, then, was to be expected from Chinese scholars
+in Europe? Fortunately, the Chinese, to save themselves from their own
+perplexities, had some lists drawn up, exhibiting the principles
+followed by the various translators in representing the proper names,
+the names of places, and the technical terms of philosophy and
+religion which they had borrowed from the Sanskrit. With the help of
+these lists, and after sixteen years consecrated to the study of the
+Chinese translations of Sanskrit works and of other original
+compositions of Buddhist authors, M. Julien at last caught up the
+thread that was to lead him through this labyrinth; and by means of
+his knowledge of Sanskrit, which he acquired solely for that purpose,
+he is now able to do what not even the most learned among the
+Buddhists in China could accomplish--he is able to restore the exact
+form and meaning of every word transferred from Sanskrit into the
+Buddhist literature of China.
+
+Without this laborious process, which would have tired out the
+patience and deadened the enthusiasm of most scholars, the treasures
+of the Buddhist literature preserved in Chinese were really useless.
+Abel Rémusat, who during his lifetime was considered the first Chinese
+scholar in Europe, attempted indeed a translation of the travels of
+Fahian, a Buddhist pilgrim, who visited India about the end of the
+fourth century after Christ. It was in many respects a most valuable
+work, but the hopelessness of reducing the uncouth Chinese terms to
+their Sanskrit originals made it most tantalising to look through its
+pages. Who was to guess that Ho-kia-lo was meant for the Sanskrit
+Vyâkara_n_a, in the sense of sermons; Po-to for the Sanskrit Avadâna,
+parables; Kia-ye-i for the Sanskrit Kâ_s_yapîyas, the followers of
+Kâ_s_yapa? In some instances, Abel Rémusat, assisted by Chézy, guessed
+rightly; and later Sanskrit scholars, such as Burnouf, Lassen, and
+Wilson, succeeded in re-establishing, with more or less certainty, the
+original form of a number of Sanskrit words, in spite of their Chinese
+disguises. Still there was no system, and therefore no certainty, in
+these guesses, and many erroneous conclusions were drawn from
+fragmentary translations of Chinese writers on Buddhism, which even
+now are not yet entirely eliminated from the works of Oriental
+scholars. With M. Julien's method, mathematical certainty seems to
+have taken the place of learned conjectures; and whatever is to be
+learnt from the Chinese on the origin, the history, and the true
+character of Buddha's doctrine may now be had in an authentic and
+unambiguous form.
+
+But even after the principal difficulties have been cleared away
+through the perseverance of M. Stanislas Julien, and after we have
+been allowed to reap the fruits of his labours in his masterly
+translation of the 'Voyages des Pèlerins Bouddhistes,' there still
+remains one point that requires some elucidation. How was it that the
+Chinese, whose ears no doubt are of the same construction as our own,
+should have made such sad work of the Sanskrit names which they
+transcribed with their own alphabet? Much may be explained by the
+defects of their language. Such common sounds as v, g, r, b, d, and
+short a, are unknown in Chinese as initials; no compound consonants
+are allowed, every consonant being followed by a vowel; and the final
+letters are limited to a very small number. This, no doubt, explains,
+to a great extent, the distorted appearance of many Sanskrit words
+when written in Chinese. Thus, Buddha could only be written Fo to.
+There was no sign for an initial b, nor was it possible to represent a
+double consonant, such as ddh. Fo to was the nearest approach to
+Buddha of which Chinese, when written, was capable. But was it so in
+speaking? Was it really impossible for Fahian and Hiouen-thsang, who
+had spent so many years in India, and who were acquainted with all the
+intricacies of Sanskrit grammar, to distinguish between the sounds of
+Buddha and Fo to? We cannot believe this. We are convinced that
+Hiouen-thsang, though he wrote, and could not but write, Fo to with
+the Chinese characters, pronounced Buddha just as we pronounce it, and
+that it was only among the unlearned that Fo to became at last the
+recognised name of the founder of Buddhism, abbreviated even to the
+monosyllabic Fo, which is now the most current appellation of 'the
+Enlightened.' In the same manner the Chinese pilgrims wrote Niepan,
+but they pronounced Nirvâ_n_a; they wrote Fan-lon-mo, and pronounced
+Brahma.
+
+Nor is it necessary that we should throw all the blame of these
+distortions on the Chinese. On the contrary, it is almost certain that
+some of the discrepancies between the Sanskrit of their translations
+and the classical Sanskrit of Pâ_n_ini were due to the corruption
+which, at the time when Buddhism arose, and still more at the time
+when Buddhism spread to China, had crept into the spoken language of
+India. Sanskrit had ceased to be the spoken language of the people
+previous to the time of A_s_oka. The edicts which are still preserved
+on the rocks of Dhauli, Girnar, and Kapurdigiri are written in a
+dialect which stands to Sanskrit in the same relation as Italian to
+Latin. Now it is true, no doubt, that the canonical books of the
+Buddhists are written in a tolerably correct Sanskrit, very different
+from the Italianized dialect of A_s_oka. But that Sanskrit was, like
+the Greek of Alexandria, like the Latin of Hungary, a learned idiom,
+written by the learned for the learned; it was no longer the living
+speech of India. Now it is curious that in many of the canonical
+Buddhist works which we still possess, the text which is written in
+Sanskrit prose is from time to time interrupted by poetical portions,
+called Gâthâs or ballads, in which the same things are told in verse
+which had before been related in prose. The dialect of these songs or
+ballads is full of what grammarians would call irregularities, that is
+to say, full of those changes which every language undergoes in the
+mouths of the people. In character these corruptions are the same as
+those which have been observed in the inscriptions of A_s_oka, and
+which afterwards appear in Pâli and the modern Prâkrit dialects of
+India. Various conjectures have been started to explain the
+amalgamation of the correct prose text and the free and easy poetical
+version of the same events, as embodied in the sacred literature of
+the Buddhists. Burnouf, the first who instituted a critical inquiry
+into the history and literature of Buddhism, supposed that there was,
+besides the canon fixed by the three convocations, another digest of
+Buddhist doctrines composed in the popular style, which may have
+developed itself, as he says, subsequently to the preaching of
+_S_âkya, and which would thus be intermediate between the regular
+Sanskrit and the Pâli. He afterwards, however, inclines to another
+view--namely, that these Gâthâs were written out of India by men to
+whom Sanskrit was no longer familiar, and who endeavoured to write in
+the learned language, which they ill understood, with the freedom
+which is imparted by the habitual use of a popular but imperfectly
+determined dialect. Other Sanskrit scholars have proposed other
+solutions of this strange mixture of correct prose and incorrect
+poetry in the Buddhist literature; but none of them was satisfactory.
+The problem seems to have been solved at last by a native scholar,
+Babu Rajendralal, a curious instance of the reaction of European
+antiquarian research on the native mind of India. Babu Rajendralal
+reads Sanskrit of course with the greatest ease. He is a pandit by
+profession, but he is at the same time a scholar and critic in our
+sense of the word. He has edited Sanskrit texts after a careful
+collation of MSS., and in his various contributions to the 'Journal of
+the Asiatic Society of Bengal,' he has proved himself completely above
+the prejudices of his class, freed from the erroneous views on the
+history and literature of India in which every Brahman is brought up,
+and thoroughly imbued with those principles of criticism which men
+like Colebrooke, Lassen, and Burnouf have followed in their researches
+into the literary treasures of his country. His English is remarkably
+clear and simple, and his arguments would do credit to any Sanskrit
+scholar in England. We quote from his remarks on Burnouf's account of
+the Gâthâs, as given in that scholar's 'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien:'
+
+     'Burnouf's opinion on the origin of the Gâthâs, we venture
+     to think, is founded on a mistaken estimate of Sanskrit
+     style. The poetry of the Gâthâ has much artistic elegance
+     which at once indicates that it is not the composition of
+     men who were ignorant of the first principles of grammar.
+     The authors display a great deal of learning, and discuss
+     the subtlest questions of logic and metaphysics with much
+     tact and ability, and it is difficult to conceive that men
+     who were perfectly familiar with the most intricate forms of
+     Sanskrit logic, who have expressed the most abstruse
+     metaphysical ideas in precise and often in beautiful
+     language, who composed with ease and elegance in Ârya,
+     To_t_aka, and other difficult measures, were unacquainted
+     with the rudiments of the language in which they wrote, and
+     were unable to conjugate the verb to be in all its forms....
+     The more reasonable conjecture appears to be that the Gâthâ
+     is the production of bards who were contemporaries or
+     immediate successors of _S_âkya, who recounted to the devout
+     congregations of the prophet of Magadha, the sayings and
+     doings of their great teacher in popular and easy-flowing
+     verses, which in course of time came to be regarded as the
+     most authentic source of all information connected with the
+     founder of Buddhism. The high estimation in which the
+     ballads and improvisations of bards are held in India and
+     particularly in the Buddhist writings, favours this
+     supposition; and the circumstance that the poetical portions
+     are generally introduced in corroboration of the narration
+     of the prose, with the words "Thereof this may be said,"
+     affords a strong presumptive evidence.'
+
+Now this, from the pen of a native scholar, is truly remarkable. The
+spirit of Niebuhr seems to have reached the shores of India, and this
+ballad theory comes out more successfully in the history of Buddha
+than in the history of Romulus. The absence of anything like cant in
+the mouth of a Brahman speaking of Buddhism, the _bête noire_ of all
+orthodox Brahmans, is highly satisfactory, and our Sanskrit scholars
+in Europe will have to pull hard if, with such men as Babu Rajendralal
+in the field, they are not to be distanced in the race of scholarship.
+
+We believe, then, that Babu Rajendralal is right, and we look upon the
+dialect of the Gâthâs as a specimen of the Sanskrit spoken by the
+followers of Buddha about the time of A_s_oka and later. And this will
+help us to understand some of the peculiar changes which the Sanskrit
+of the Chinese Buddhists must have undergone, even before it was
+disguised in the strange dress of the Chinese alphabet. The Chinese
+pilgrims did not hear the Sanskrit pronounced as it was pronounced in
+the Parishads according to the strict rules of their _S_ikshâ or
+phonetics. They heard it as it was spoken in Buddhist monasteries, as
+it was sung in the Gâthâs of Buddhist minstrels, as it was preached in
+the Vyâkara_n_as or sermons of Buddhist friars. For instance. In the
+Gâthâs a short a is frequently lengthened. We find nâ instead of na,
+'no.' The same occurs in the Sanskrit of the Chinese Buddhists. (See
+Julien, 'Méthode,' p. 18; p. 21.) We find there also vistâra instead
+of vistara, &c. In the dialect of the Gâthâs nouns ending in
+consonants, and therefore irregular, are transferred to the easier
+declension in a. The same process takes place in modern Greek and in
+the transition of Latin into Italian; it is, in fact, a general
+tendency of all languages which are carried on by the stream of living
+speech. Now this transition from one declension to another had taken
+place before the Chinese had appropriated the Sanskrit of the Buddhist
+books. The Sanskrit nabhas becomes nabha in the Gâthâs; locative
+nabhe, instead of nabhasi. If, therefore, we find in Chinese lo-che
+for the Sanskrit ra_g_as, dust, we may ascribe the change of r into l
+to the inability of the Chinese to pronounce or to write an r. We may
+admit that the Chinese alphabet offered nothing nearer to the sound of
+_g_a than tche; but the dropping of the final s has no excuse in
+Chinese, and finds its real explanation in the nature of the Gâthâ
+dialect. Thus the Chinese Fan-lan-mo does not represent the correct
+Sanskrit Brahman, but the vulgar form Brahma. The Chinese so-po for
+sarva, all, thomo for dharma, law, find no explanation in the dialect
+of the Gâthâs, but the suppression of the r before v and m, is of
+frequent occurrence in the inscriptions of A_s_oka. The omission of
+the initial s in words like sthâna, place, sthavira, an elder, is
+likewise founded on the rules of Pâli and Prâkrit, and need not be
+placed to the account of the Chinese translators. In the inscription
+of Girnar sthavira is even reduced to thaira. The s of the nominative
+is frequently dropped in the dialect of the Gâthâs, or changed into o.
+Hence we might venture to doubt whether it is necessary to give to the
+character 1780 of M. Julien's list, which generally has the value of
+ta, a second value sta. This s is only wanted to supply the final s of
+kas, the interrogative pronoun, in such a sentence as kas
+tadgu_n_a_h_? what is the use of this? Now here we are inclined to
+believe that the final s of kas had long disappeared in the popular
+language of India, before the Chinese came to listen to the strange
+sounds and doctrines of the disciples of Buddha. They probably heard
+ka tadgu_n_a, or ka taggu_n_a, and this they represented as best they
+could by the Chinese kia-to-kieou-na.
+
+With these few suggestions we leave the work of M. Stanislas Julien.
+It is in reality a work done once for all--one huge stone and
+stumbling-block effectually rolled away which for years had barred the
+approach to some most valuable documents of the history of the East.
+Now that the way is clear, let us hope that others will follow, and
+that we shall soon have complete and correct translations of the
+travels of Fahian and other Buddhist pilgrims whose works are like so
+many Murray's 'Handbooks of India,' giving us an insight into the
+social, political, and religious state of that country at a time when
+we look in vain for any other historical documents.
+
+_March, 1861._
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+THE WORKS OF CONFUCIUS.[92]
+
+
+In reviewing the works of missionaries, we have repeatedly dwelt on
+the opportunities of scientific usefulness which are open to the
+messengers of the Gospel in every part of the world. We are not afraid
+of the common objection that missionaries ought to devote their whole
+time and powers to the one purpose for which they are sent out and
+paid by our societies. Missionaries cannot always be engaged in
+teaching, preaching, converting, and baptising the heathen. A
+missionary, like every other human creature, ought to have his leisure
+hours; and if those leisure hours are devoted to scientific pursuits,
+to the study of the languages or the literature of the people among
+whom he lives, to a careful description of the scenery and antiquities
+of the country, the manners, laws, and customs of its inhabitants,
+their legends, their national poetry, or popular stories, or, again,
+to the cultivation of any branch of natural science, he may rest
+assured that he is not neglecting the sacred trust which he accepted,
+but is only bracing and invigorating his mind, and keeping it from
+that stagnation which is the inevitable result of a too monotonous
+employment. The staff of missionaries which is spread over the whole
+globe supplies the most perfect machinery that could be devised for
+the collection of all kinds of scientific knowledge. They ought to be
+the pioneers of science. They should not only take out--they should
+also bring something home; and there is nothing more likely to
+increase and strengthen the support on which our missionary societies
+depend, nothing more sure to raise the intellectual standard of the
+men selected for missionary labour, than a formal recognition of this
+additional duty. There may be exceptional cases where missionaries are
+wanted for constant toil among natives ready to be instructed, and
+anxious to be received as members of a Christian community. But, as a
+general rule, the missionary abroad has more leisure than a clergyman
+at home, and time sits heavy on the hands of many whose congregations
+consist of no more than ten or twenty souls. It is hardly necessary to
+argue this point, when we can appeal to so many facts. The most
+successful missionaries have been exactly those whose names are
+remembered with gratitude, not only by the natives among whom they
+laboured, but also by the savants of Europe; and the labours of the
+Jesuit missionaries in India and China, of the Baptist missionaries at
+Serampore, of Gogerly and Spence Hardy in Ceylon, of Caldwell in
+Tinnevelly, of Wilson in Bombay, of Moffat, Krapf, and last, but not
+least, of Livingstone, will live not only in the journals of our
+academies, but likewise in the annals of the missionary Church.
+
+[Footnote 92: 'The Chinese Classics;' with a Translation, Critical and
+Exegetical Notes. By James Legge, D.D., of the London Missionary
+Society. Hong Kong, 1861.]
+
+The first volume of an edition of the Chinese Classics, which we have
+just received from the Rev. Dr. J. Legge, of the London Missionary
+Society, is a new proof of what can be achieved by missionaries, if
+encouraged to devote part of their time and attention to scientific
+and literary pursuits. We do not care to inquire whether Dr. Legge has
+been successful as a missionary. Even if he had not converted a single
+Chinese, he would, after completing the work which he has just begun,
+have rendered most important aid to the introduction of Christianity
+into China. He arrived in the East towards the end of 1839, having
+received only a few months' instruction in Chinese from Professor Kidd
+in London. Being stationed at Malacca, it seemed to him then--and he
+adds 'that the experience of twenty-one years has given its sanction
+to the correctness of the judgment'--that he could not consider
+himself qualified for the duties of his position until he had
+thoroughly mastered the classical books of the Chinese, and
+investigated for himself the whole field of thought through which the
+sages of China had ranged, and in which were to be found the
+foundations of the moral, social, and political life of the people. He
+was not able to pursue his studies without interruption, and it was
+only after some years, when the charge of the Anglo-Chinese College
+had devolved upon him, that he could procure the books necessary to
+facilitate his progress. After sixteen years of assiduous study, Dr.
+Legge had explored the principal works of Chinese literature; and he
+then felt that he could render the course of reading through which he
+had passed more easy to those who were to follow after him, by
+publishing, on the model of our editions of the Greek and Roman
+Classics, a critical text of the Classics of China, together with a
+translation and explanatory notes. His materials were ready, but
+there was the difficulty of finding the funds necessary for so costly
+an undertaking. Scarcely, however, had Dr. Legge's wants become known
+among the British and other foreign merchants in China, than one of
+them, Mr. Joseph Jardine, sent for the Doctor, and said to him, 'I
+know the liberality of the merchants in China, and that many of them
+would readily give their help to such an undertaking; but you need not
+have the trouble of canvassing the community. If you are prepared to
+undertake the toil of the publication, I will bear the expense of it.
+We make our money in China, and we should be glad to assist in
+whatever promises to be a benefit to it.' The result of this
+combination of disinterested devotion on the part of the author, and
+enlightened liberality on the part of his patron, lies now before us
+in a splendid volume of text, translation, and commentary, which, if
+the life of the editor is spared (and the sudden death of Mr. Jardine
+from the effects of the climate is a warning how busily death is at
+work among the European settlers in those regions), will be followed
+by at least six other volumes.
+
+The edition is to comprise the books now recognised as of highest
+authority by the Chinese themselves. These are the five King's and the
+four Shoo's. King means the warp threads of a web, and its application
+to literary compositions rests on the same metaphor as the Latin word
+textus, and the Sanskrit Sûtra, meaning a yarn, and a book. Shoo
+simply means writings. The five King's are, 1. the Yih, or the Book of
+Changes; 2. the Shoo, or the Book of History; 3. the She, or the Book
+of Poetry; 4. the Le Ke, or Record of Rites; and 5. the Chun Tsew, or
+Spring and Autumn; a chronicle extending from 721 to 480 B.C. The four
+Shoo's consist of, 1. the Lun Yu, or Digested Conversations between
+Confucius and his disciples; 2. Ta Hëo, or Great Learning, commonly
+attributed to one of his disciples; 3. the Chung Yung, or Doctrine of
+the Mean, ascribed to the grandson of Confucius; 4. of the works of
+Mencius, who died 288 B.C.
+
+The authorship of the five King's is loosely attributed to Confucius;
+but it is only the fifth, or 'the Spring and Autumn,' which can be
+claimed as the work of the philosopher. The Yih, the Shoo, and the She
+King were not composed, but only compiled by him, and much of the Le
+Ke is clearly from later hands. Confucius, though the founder of a
+religion and a reformer, was thoroughly conservative in his
+tendencies, and devotedly attached to the past. He calls himself a
+transmitter, not a maker, believing in and loving the ancients (p.
+59). 'I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge,' he
+says, 'I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it
+there' (p. 65). The most frequent themes of his discourses were the
+ancient songs, the history, and the rules of propriety established by
+ancient sages (p. 64). When one of his contemporaries wished to do
+away with the offering of a lamb as a meaningless formality, Confucius
+reproved him with the pithy sentence, 'You love the sheep, I love the
+ceremony.' There were four things, we are told, which Confucius
+taught--letters, ethics, devotion of soul, and truthfulness (p. 66).
+When speaking of himself, he said, 'At fifteen, I had my mind bent on
+learning. At thirty, I stood firm. At forty, I had no doubt. At fifty,
+I knew the decrees of heaven. At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ
+for the reception of truth. At seventy, I could follow what my heart
+desired, without transgressing what was right' (p. 10). Though this
+may sound like boasting, it is remarkable how seldom Confucius himself
+claims any superiority above his fellow-creatures. He offers his
+advice to those who are willing to listen, but he never speaks
+dogmatically; he never attempts to tyrannize over the minds or hearts
+of his friends. If we read his biography, we can hardly understand how
+a man whose life was devoted to such tranquil pursuits, and whose
+death scarcely produced a ripple on the smooth and silent surface of
+the Eastern world, could have left the impress of his mind on millions
+and millions of human beings--an impress which even now, after 2339
+years, is clearly discernible in the national character of the largest
+empire of the world. Confucius died in 478 B.C., complaining that of
+all the princes of the empire there was not one who would adopt his
+principles and obey his lessons. After two generations, however, his
+name had risen to be a power--the rallying point of a vast movement of
+national and religious regeneration. His grandson speaks of him as the
+ideal of a sage, as the sage is the ideal of humanity at large. Though
+Tze-tze claims no divine honour for his grandsire, he exalts his
+wisdom and virtue beyond the limits of human nature. This is a
+specimen of the language which he applies to Confucius:
+
+     'He may be compared to heaven and earth in their supporting
+     and containing, their overshadowing and curtaining all
+     things; he may be compared to the four seasons in their
+     alternating progress, and to the sun and moon in their
+     successive shining.... Quick in apprehension, clear in
+     discernment, of far-reaching intellect and all-embracing
+     knowledge, he was fitted to exercise rule; magnanimous,
+     generous, benign, and mild, he was fitted to exercise
+     forbearance; impulsive, energetic, firm, and enduring, he
+     was fitted to maintain a firm hold; self-adjusted, grave,
+     never swerving from the Mean, and correct, he was fitted to
+     command reverence; accomplished, distinctive, concentrative,
+     and searching, he was fitted to exercise discrimination....
+     All-embracing and vast, he was like heaven; deep and active
+     as a fountain, he was like the abyss.... Therefore his fame
+     overspreads the Middle Kingdom and extends to all barbarous
+     tribes. Wherever ships and carriages reach, wherever the
+     strength of man penetrates, wherever the heavens overshadow
+     and the earth sustains, wherever the sun and moon shine,
+     wherever frost and dews fall, all who have blood and breath
+     unfeignedly honour and love him. Hence it is said--He is the
+     equal of Heaven' (p. 53).
+
+This is certainly very magnificent phraseology, but it will hardly
+convey any definite impression to the minds of those who are not
+acquainted with the life and teaching of the great Chinese sage. These
+may be studied now by all who can care for the history of human
+thought, in the excellent work of Dr. Legge. The first volume, just
+published, contains the Confucian Analects, the Great Learning, and
+the Doctrine of the Mean, or the First, Second, and Third Shoo's, and
+will, we hope, soon be followed by the other Chinese Classics.[93] We
+must here confine ourselves to giving a few of the sage's sayings,
+selected from thousands that are to be found in the Confucian
+Analects. Their interest is chiefly historical, as throwing light on
+the character of one of the most remarkable men in the history of the
+human race. But there is besides this a charm in the simple
+enunciation of simple truths; and such is the fear of truism in our
+modern writers that we must go to distant times and distant countries
+if we wish to listen to that simple Solomonic wisdom which is better
+than the merchandize of silver and the gain thereof than fine gold.
+
+[Footnote 93: Dr. Legge has since published: vol. ii. containing the
+works of Mencius; vol. iii. part 1. containing the first part of the
+Shoo King; vol. iii. part 2. containing the fifth part of the Shoo
+King.]
+
+Confucius shows his tolerant spirit when he says, 'The superior man is
+catholic, and no partisan. The mean man is a partisan, and not
+catholic' (p. 14).
+
+There is honest manliness in his saying, 'To see what is right, and
+not to do it, is want of courage' (p. 18).
+
+His definition of knowledge, though less profound than that of
+Socrates, is nevertheless full of good sense:
+
+     'The Master said, "Shall I teach you what knowledge is? When
+     you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do
+     not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it--this is
+     knowledge"' (p. 15).
+
+Nor was Confucius unacquainted with the secrets of the heart: 'It is
+only the truly virtuous man,' he says in one place, 'who can love or
+who can hate others' (p. 30). In another place he expresses his belief
+in the irresistible charm of virtue: 'Virtue is not left to stand
+alone,' he says; 'he who practises it will have neighbours.' He bears
+witness to the hidden connection between intellectual and moral
+excellence: 'It is not easy,' he remarks, 'to find a man who has
+learned for three years without coming to be good' (p. 76). In his
+ethics, the golden rule of the Gospel, 'Do ye unto others as ye would
+that others should do to you,' is represented as almost unattainable.
+Thus we read, 'Tsze-Kung said, "What I do not wish men to do to me, I
+also wish not to do to men." The Master said, "Tsze, you have not
+attained to that,"' The Brahmans, too, had a distant perception of the
+same truth, which is expressed, for instance, in the Hitopadesa in the
+following words: 'Good people show mercy unto all beings, considering
+how like they are to themselves.' On subjects which transcend the
+limits of human understanding, Confucius is less explicit; but his
+very reticence is remarkable, when we consider the recklessness with
+which Oriental philosophers launch into the depths of religious
+metaphysics. Thus we read (p. 107):
+
+     'Ke Loo asked about serving the spirits of the dead. The
+     Master said, "While you are not able to serve men, how can
+     you serve their spirits?"
+
+     Ke Loo added, "I venture to ask about death." He was
+     answered, "While you do not know life, how can you know
+     about death?"'
+
+And again (p. 190):
+
+     'The Master said, "I would prefer not speaking."
+
+     Tsze-Kung said, "If you, Master, do not speak, what shall
+     we, your disciples, have to record?"
+
+     The Master said, "Does Heaven speak? The four seasons pursue
+     their courses, and all things are continually being
+     produced; but does Heaven say anything?"'
+
+_November, 1861._
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+POPOL VUH.
+
+
+A book called 'Popol Vuh,'[94] and pretending to be the original text
+of the sacred writings of the Indians of Central America, will be
+received by most people with a sceptical smile. The Aztec children who
+were shown all over Europe as descendants of a race to whom, before
+the Spanish conquest, divine honours were paid by the natives of
+Mexico, and who turned out to be unfortunate creatures that had been
+tampered with by heartless speculators, are still fresh in the memory
+of most people; and the 'Livre des Sauvages,'[95] lately published by
+the Abbé Domenech, under the auspices of Count Walewsky, has somewhat
+lowered the dignity of American studies in general. Still, those who
+laugh at the 'Manuscrit Pictographique Américain' discovered by the
+French Abbé in the library of the French Arsénal, and edited by him
+with so much care as a precious relic of the old Red-skins of North
+America, ought not to forget that there would be nothing at all
+surprising in the existence of such a MS., containing genuine
+pictographic writing of the Red Indians. The German critic of Abbé
+Domenech, M. Petzholdt,[96] assumes much too triumphant an air in
+announcing his discovery that the 'Manuscrit Pictographique' was the
+work of a German boy in the backwoods of America. He ought to have
+acknowledged that the Abbé himself had pointed out the German scrawls
+on some of the pages of his MS.; that he had read the names of Anna
+and Maria; and that he never claimed any great antiquity for the book
+in question. Indeed, though M. Petzholdt tells us very confidently
+that the whole book is the work of a naughty, nasty, and profane
+little boy, the son of German settlers in the backwoods of America, we
+doubt whether anybody who takes the trouble to look through all the
+pages will consider this view as at all satisfactory, or even as more
+probable than that of the French Abbé. We know what boys are capable
+of in pictographic art from the occasional defacements of our walls
+and railings; but we still feel a little sceptical when M. Petzholdt
+assures us that there is nothing extraordinary in a boy filling a
+whole volume with these elaborate scrawls. If M. Petzholdt had taken
+the trouble to look at some of the barbarous hieroglyphics that have
+been collected in North America, he would have understood more readily
+how the Abbé Domenech, who had spent many years among the Red Indians,
+and had himself copied several of their inscriptions, should have
+taken the pages preserved in the library of the Arsénal at Paris as
+genuine specimens of American pictography. There is a certain
+similarity between these scrawls and the figures scratched on rocks,
+tombstones, and trees by the wandering tribes of North America; and
+though we should be very sorry to endorse the opinion of the
+enthusiastic Abbé, or to start any conjecture of our own as to the
+real authorship of the 'Livre des Sauvages,' we cannot but think that
+M. Petzholdt would have written less confidently, and certainly less
+scornfully, if he had been more familiar than he seems to be with the
+little that is known of the picture-writing of the Indian tribes. As a
+preliminary to the question of the authenticity of the 'Popol Vuh,' a
+few words on the pictorial literature of the Red Indians of North
+America will not be considered out of place. The 'Popol Vuh' is not
+indeed a 'Livre des Sauvages,' but a literary composition in the true
+sense of the word. It contains the mythology and history of the
+civilised races of Central America, and comes before us with
+credentials that will bear the test of critical inquiry. But we shall
+be better able to appreciate the higher achievements of the South
+after we have examined, however cursorily, the rude beginnings in
+literature among the savage races of the North.
+
+[Footnote 94: 'Popol Vuh:' le Livre Sacré et les Mythes de l'Antiquité
+Américaine, avec les Livres Héroïques et Historiques des Quichés. Par
+l'Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg. Paris: Durand, 1861.]
+
+[Footnote 95: 'Manuscrit Pictographique Américain,' précédé d'une
+Notice sur l'Idéographie des Peaux-Rouges. Par l'Abbé Em. Domenech.
+Ouvrage publié sous les auspices de M. le Ministre d'Etat et de la
+Maison de l'Empereur. Paris, 1860.]
+
+[Footnote 96: 'Das Buch der Wilden im Lichte Französischer
+Civilisation.' Mit Proben aus dem in Paris als 'Manuscrit
+Pictographique Américain,' veröffentlichten Schmierbuche eines
+Deutsch-Amerikanischen Hinterwälder Jungen. Von J. Petzholdt. Dresden,
+1861.]
+
+Colden, in his 'History of the Five Nations,' informs us that when, in
+1696, the Count de Frontenac marched a well-appointed army into the
+Iroquois country, with artillery and all other means of regular
+military offence, he found, on the banks of the Onondaga, now called
+Oswego River, a tree, on the trunk of which the Indians had depicted
+the French army, and deposited two bundles of cut rushes at its foot,
+consisting of 1434 pieces; an act of symbolical defiance on their
+part, which was intended to warn their Gallic invaders that they would
+have to encounter this number of warriors.
+
+This warlike message is a specimen of Indian picture-writing. It
+belongs to the lowest stage of graphic representation, and hardly
+differs from the primitive way in which the Persian ambassadors
+communicated with the Greeks, or the Romans with the Carthaginians.
+Instead of the lance and the staff of peace between which the
+Carthaginians were asked to choose, the Red Indians would have sent an
+arrow and a pipe, and the message would have been equally understood.
+This, though not yet _peindre la parole_, is nevertheless a first
+attempt at _parler aux yeux_. It is a first beginning which may lead
+to something more perfect in the end. We find similar attempts at
+pictorial communication among other savage tribes, and they seem to
+answer every purpose. In Freycinet and Arago's 'Voyage to the Eastern
+Ocean' we are told of a native of the Carolina Islands, a Tamor of
+Sathoual, who wished to avail himself of the presence of a ship to
+send to a trader at Botta, M. Martinez, some shells which he had
+promised to collect in exchange for a few axes and some other
+articles. This he expressed to the captain, who gave him a piece of
+paper to make the drawing, and satisfactorily executed the commission.
+The figure of a man at the top denoted the ship's captain, who by his
+outstretched hands represented his office as a messenger between the
+parties. The rays or ornaments on his head denote rank or authority.
+The vine beneath him is a type of friendship. In the left column are
+depicted the number and kinds of shells sent; in the right column the
+things wished for in exchange--namely, seven fish-hooks, three large
+and four small, two axes, and two pieces of iron.
+
+The inscriptions which are found on the Indian graveboards mark a step
+in advance. Every warrior has his crest, which is called his totem,
+and is painted on his tombstone. A celebrated war-chief, the Adjetatig
+of Wabojeeg, died on Lake Superior, about 1793. He was of the clan of
+the Addik, or American reindeer. This fact is symbolized by the figure
+of the deer. The reversed position denotes death. His own personal
+name, which was White Fisher, is not noticed. But there are seven
+transverse strokes on the left, and these have a meaning--namely, that
+he had led seven war parties. Then there are three perpendicular lines
+below his crest, and these again are readily understood by every
+Indian. They represent the wounds received in battle. The figure of a
+moose's head is said to relate to a desperate conflict with an enraged
+animal of this kind; and the symbols of the arrow and the pipe are
+drawn to indicate the chief's influence in war and peace.
+
+There is another graveboard of the ruling chief of Sandy Lake on the
+Upper Mississippi. Here the reversed bird denotes his family name or
+clan, the Crane. Four transverse lines above it denote that he had
+killed four of his enemies in battle. An analogous custom is mentioned
+by Aristotle ('Politica,' vii. 2, p. 220, ed. Göttling). Speaking of
+the Iberians, he states that they placed as many obelisks round the
+grave of a warrior as he had killed enemies in battle.
+
+But the Indians went further; and though they never arrived at the
+perfection of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, they had a number of
+symbolic emblems which were perfectly understood by all their tribes.
+Eating is represented by a man's hand lifted to his mouth. Power over
+man is symbolized by a line drawn in the figure from the mouth to the
+heart; power in general by a head with two horns. A circle drawn
+around the body at the abdomen denotes full means of subsistence. A
+boy drawn with waved lines from each ear and lines leading to the
+heart represents a pupil. A figure with a plant as head, and two
+wings, denotes a doctor skilled in medicine, and endowed with the
+power of ubiquity. A tree with human legs, a herbalist or professor of
+botany. Night is represented by a finely crossed or barred sun, or a
+circle with human legs. Rain is figured by a dot or semicircle filled
+with water and placed on the head. The heaven with three disks of the
+sun is understood to mean three days' journey, and a landing after a
+voyage is represented by a tortoise. Short sentences, too, can be
+pictured in this manner. A prescription ordering abstinence from food
+for two, and rest for four, days is written by drawing a man with two
+bars on the stomach and four across the legs. We are told even of
+war-songs and love-songs composed in this primitive alphabet; but it
+would seem as if, in these cases, the reader required even greater
+poetical imagination than the writer. There is one war-song consisting
+of four pictures--
+
+     1. The sun rising.
+
+     2. A figure pointing with one hand to the earth and the
+     other extended to the sky.
+
+     3. The moon with two human legs.
+
+     4. A figure personifying the Eastern woman, i. e. the
+     evening star.
+
+These four symbols are said to convey to the Indian the following
+meaning:
+
+    I am rising to seek the war path;
+    The earth and the sky are before me;
+    I walk by day and by night;
+    And the evening star is my guide.
+
+The following is a specimen of a love-song:
+
+     1. Figure representing a god (monedo) endowed with magic
+     power.
+
+     2. Figure beating the drum and singing; lines from his
+     mouth.
+
+     3. Figure surrounded by a secret lodge.
+
+     4. Two bodies joined with one continuous arm.
+
+     5. A woman on an island.
+
+     6. A woman asleep; lines from his ear towards her.
+
+     7. A red heart in a circle.
+
+This poem is intended to express these sentiments:
+
+     1. It is my form and person that make me great--
+
+     2. Hear the voice of my song, it is my voice.
+
+     3. I shield myself with secret coverings.
+
+     4. All your thoughts are known to me, blush!
+
+     5. I could draw you hence were you ever so far--
+
+     6. Though you were on the other hemisphere--
+
+     7. I speak to your naked heart.
+
+All we can say is, that if the Indians can read this writing, they are
+greater adepts in the mysteries of love than the judges of the old
+_Cours d'amour_. But it is much more likely that these war-songs and
+love-songs are known to the people beforehand, and that their writings
+are only meant to revive what exists in the memory of the reader. It
+is a kind of mnemonic writing, and it has been used by missionaries
+for similar purposes, and with considerable success. Thus, in a
+translation of the Bible in the Massachusetts language by Eliot, the
+verses from 25 to 32 in the thirtieth chapter of Proverbs, are
+expressed by 'an ant, a coney, a locust, a spider, a river (symbol of
+motion), a lion, a greyhound, a he-goat and king, a man foolishly
+lifting himself to take hold of the heavens.' No doubt these symbols
+would help the reader to remember the proper order of the verses, but
+they would be perfectly useless without a commentary or without a
+previous knowledge of the text.
+
+We are told that the famous Testéra, brother of the chamberlain of
+François I, who came to America eight or nine years after the taking
+of Mexico, finding it impossible to learn the language of the natives,
+taught them the Bible history and the principal doctrines of the
+Christian religion, by means of pictures, and that these diagrams
+produced a greater effect on the minds of the people, who were
+accustomed to this style of representation, than all other means
+employed by the missionaries. But here again, unless these pictures
+were explained by interpreters, they could by themselves convey no
+meaning to the gazing crowds of the natives. The fullest information
+on this subject is to be found in a work by T. Baptiste, 'Hiéroglyphes
+de la conversion, où par des estampes et des figures on apprend aux
+naturels à desirer le ciel.'
+
+There is no evidence to show that the Indians of the North ever
+advanced beyond the rude attempts which we have thus described, and of
+which numerous specimens may be found in the voluminous work of
+Schoolcraft, published by authority of Congress, 'Historical and
+Statistical Information respecting the History, Condition, and
+Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States,' Philadelphia,
+1851-1855. There is no trace of anything like literature among the
+wandering tribes of the North, and until a real 'Livre des Sauvages'
+turns up to fill this gap, they must continue to be classed among the
+illiterate races.[97]
+
+[Footnote 97: 'Manuscrit Pictographique,' pp. 26, 29.]
+
+It is very different if we turn our eyes to the people of Central and
+South America, to the races who formed the population of Mexico,
+Guatemala, and Peru, when conquered by the Spaniards. The Mexican
+hieroglyphics published by Lord Kingsborough are not to be placed in
+the same category with the totems and the pictorial scratches of the
+Red-skins. They are, first of all, of a much more artistic character,
+more conventional in their structure, and hence more definite in their
+meaning. They are coloured, written on paper, and in many respects
+quite on a level with the hieroglyphic inscriptions and hieratic
+papyri of Egypt. Even the conception of speaking to the ear through
+the eye, of expressing sound by means of outlines, was familiar to the
+Mexicans, though they seem to have applied their phonetic signs to the
+writing of the names of places and persons only. The principal object,
+indeed, of the Mexican hieroglyphic manuscripts was not to convey new
+information, but rather to remind the reader by means of mnemonic
+artifices of what he had learnt beforehand. This is acknowledged by
+the best authorities, by men who knew the Indians shortly after their
+first intercourse with Europeans, and whom we may safely trust in what
+they tell us of the oral literature and hieroglyphic writings of the
+natives. Acosta, in his 'Historia natural y moral,' vi. 7, tells us
+that the Indians were still in the habit of reciting from memory the
+addresses and speeches of their ancient orators, and numerous songs
+composed by their national poets. As it was impossible to acquire
+these by means of hieroglyphics or written characters such as were
+used by the Mexicans, care was taken that those speeches and poems
+should be learnt by heart. There were colleges and schools for that
+purpose, where these and other things were taught to the young by the
+aged in whose memory they seemed to be engraved. The young men who
+were brought up to be orators themselves had to learn the ancient
+compositions word by word; and when the Spaniards came and taught them
+to read and write the Spanish language, the Indians soon began to
+write for themselves, a fact attested by many eye-witnesses.
+
+Las Casas, the devoted friend of the Indians, writes as follows:
+
+     'It ought to be known that in all the republics of this
+     country, in the kingdoms of New Spain and elsewhere, there
+     was amongst other professions, that of the chroniclers and
+     historians. They possessed a knowledge of the earliest
+     times, and of all things concerning religion, the gods, and
+     their worship. They knew the founders of cities, and the
+     early history of their kings and kingdoms. They knew the
+     modes of election and the right of succession; they could
+     tell the number and characters of their ancient kings, their
+     works, and memorable achievements whether good or bad, and
+     whether they had governed well or ill. They knew the men
+     renowned for virtue and heroism in former days, what wars
+     they had waged, and how they had distinguished themselves;
+     who had been the earliest settlers, what had been their
+     ancient customs, their triumphs and defeats. They knew, in
+     fact, whatever belonged to history; and were able to give an
+     account of all the events of the past.... These chroniclers
+     had likewise to calculate the days, months, and years; and
+     though they had no writing like our own, they had their
+     symbols and characters through which they understood
+     everything; they had their great books, which were composed
+     with such ingenuity and art that our alphabet was really of
+     no great assistance to them.... Our priests have seen those
+     books, and I myself have seen them likewise, though many
+     were burnt at the instigation of the monks, who were afraid
+     that they might impede the work of conversion. Sometimes
+     when the Indians who had been converted had forgotten
+     certain words, or particular points of the Christian
+     doctrine, they began--as they were unable to read our
+     books--to write very ingeniously with their own symbols and
+     characters, drawing the figures which corresponded either to
+     the ideas or to the sounds of our words. I have myself seen
+     a large portion of the Christian doctrine written in figures
+     and images, which they read as we read the characters of a
+     letter; and this is a very extraordinary proof of their
+     genius.... There never was a lack of those chroniclers. It
+     was a profession which passed from father to son, highly
+     respected in the whole republic; each historian instructed
+     two or three of his relatives. He made them practise
+     constantly, and they had recourse to him whenever a doubt
+     arose on a point of history.... But not these young
+     historians only went to consult him; kings, princes, and
+     priests came to ask his advice. Whenever there was a doubt
+     as to ceremonies, precepts of religion, religious festivals,
+     or anything of importance in the history of the ancient
+     kingdoms, every one went to the chroniclers to ask for
+     information.'
+
+In spite of the religious zeal of Dominican and Franciscan friars, a
+few of these hieroglyphic MSS. escaped the flames, and may now be seen
+in some of our public libraries, as curious relics of a nearly extinct
+and forgotten literature. The first collection of these MSS. and other
+American antiquities was due to the zeal of the Milanese antiquarian,
+Boturini, who had been sent by the Pope in 1736 to regulate some
+ecclesiastical matters, and who devoted the eight years of his stay in
+the New World to rescuing whatever could be rescued from the scattered
+ruins of ancient America. Before, however, he could bring these
+treasures safe to Europe, he was despoiled of his valuables by the
+Spanish Viceroy; and when at last he made his escape with the remnants
+of his collection, he was taken prisoner by an English cruiser, and
+lost everything. The collection, which remained at Mexico, became the
+subject of several lawsuits, and after passing through the hands of
+Veytia and Gama, who both added to it considerably, it was sold at
+last by public auction. Humboldt, who was at that time passing through
+Mexico, acquired some of the MSS., which he gave to the Royal Museum
+at Berlin. Others found their way into private hands, and after many
+vicissitudes they have mostly been secured by the public libraries or
+private collectors of Europe. The most valuable part of that
+unfortunate shipwreck is now in the hands of M. Aubin, who was sent to
+Mexico in 1830 by the French Government, and who devoted nearly
+twenty years to the same work which Boturini had commenced a hundred
+years before. He either bought the dispersed fragments of the
+collections of Boturini, Gama, and Pichardo, or procured accurate
+copies; and he has brought to Europe, what is, if not the most
+complete, at least the most valuable and most judiciously arranged
+collection of American antiquities. We likewise owe to M. Aubin the
+first accurate knowledge of the real nature of the ancient Mexican
+writing; and we look forward with confident hope to his still
+achieving in his own field as great a triumph as that of Champollion,
+the decipherer of the hieroglyphics of Egypt.
+
+One of the most important helps towards the deciphering of the
+hieroglyphic MSS. of the Americans is to be found in certain books
+which, soon after the conquest of Mexico, were written down by natives
+who had learnt the art of alphabetic writing from their conquerors,
+the Spaniards. Ixtlilxochitl, descended from the royal family of
+Tetzcuco, and employed as interpreter by the Spanish Government, wrote
+the history of his own country from the earliest time to the arrival
+of Cortez. In writing this history he followed the hieroglyphic
+paintings as they had been explained to him by the old chroniclers.
+Some of these very paintings, which formed the text-book of the
+Mexican historian, have been recovered by M. Aubin; and as they helped
+the historian in writing his history, that history now helps the
+scholar in deciphering their meaning. It is with the study of works
+like that of Ixtlilxochitl that American philology ought to begin.
+They are to the student of American antiquities what Manetho is to
+the student of Egyptian hieroglyphics, or Berosus to the decipherer of
+the cuneiform inscriptions. They are written in dialects not more than
+three hundred years old, and still spoken by large numbers of natives,
+with such modifications as three centuries are certain to produce.
+They give us whatever was known of history, mythology, and religion
+among the people whom the Spaniards found in Central and South America
+in the possession of most of the advantages of a long-established
+civilisation. Though we must not expect to find in them what we are
+accustomed to call history, they are nevertheless of great historical
+interest, as supplying the vague outlines of a distant past, filled
+with migrations, wars, dynasties, and revolutions, such as were
+cherished in the memory of the Greeks at the time of Solon, and
+believed in by the Romans at the time of Cato. They teach us that the
+New World which was opened to Europe a few centuries ago, was in its
+own eyes an old world, not so different in character and feelings from
+ourselves as we are apt to imagine when we speak of the Red-skins of
+America, or when we read the accounts of the Spanish conquerors, who
+denied that the natives of America possessed human souls, in order to
+establish their own right of treating them like wild beasts.
+
+The 'Popol Vuh,' or the sacred book of the people of Guatemala, of
+which the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg has just published the original
+text, together with a literal French translation, holds a very
+prominent rank among the works composed by natives in their own native
+dialects, and written down by them with the letters of the Roman
+alphabet. There are but two works that can be compared to it in their
+importance to the student of American antiquities and American
+languages, namely, the 'Codex Chimalpopoca' in Nahuatl, the ancient
+written language of Mexico, and the 'Codex Cakchiquel' in the dialect
+of Guatemala. These, together with the work published by the Abbé
+Brasseur de Bourbourg under the title of 'Popol Vuh,' must form the
+starting-point of all critical inquiries into the antiquities of the
+American people.
+
+The first point which has to be determined with regard to books of
+this kind is whether they are genuine or not: whether they are what
+they pretend to be--compositions about three centuries old, founded on
+the oral traditions and the pictographic documents of the ancient
+inhabitants of America, and written in the dialects as spoken at the
+time of Columbus, Cortez, and Pizarro. What the Abbé Brasseur de
+Bourbourg has to say on this point amounts to this:--The manuscript
+was first discovered by Father Francisco Ximenes towards the end of
+the seventeenth century. He was curé of Santo-Tomas Chichicastenango,
+situated about three leagues south of Santa-Cruz del Quiché, and
+twenty-two leagues north-east of Guatemala. He was well acquainted
+with the languages of the natives of Guatemala, and has left a
+dictionary of their three principal dialects, his 'Tesoro de las
+Lenguas Quiché, Cakchiquel y Tzutohil.' This work, which has never
+been printed, fills two volumes, the second of which contains the copy
+of the MS. discovered by Ximenes. Ximenes likewise wrote a history of
+the province of the preachers of San-Vincente de Chiapas y Guatemala,
+in four volumes. Of this he left two copies. But three volumes only
+were still in existence when the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg visited
+Guatemala, and they are said to contain valuable information on the
+history and traditions of the country. The first volume contains the
+Spanish translation of the manuscript which occupies us at present.
+The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg copied that translation in 1855. About
+the same time a German traveller, Dr. Scherzer, happened to be at
+Guatemala, and had copies made of the works of Ximenes. These were
+published at Vienna, in 1856.[98] The French Abbé, however, was not
+satisfied with a mere reprint of the text and its Spanish translation
+by Ximenes, a translation which he qualifies as untrustworthy and
+frequently unintelligible. During his travels in America he acquired a
+practical knowledge of several of the native dialects, particularly of
+the Quiché, which is still spoken in various dialects by about six
+hundred thousand people. As a priest he was in daily intercourse with
+these people; and it was while residing among them and able to consult
+them like living dictionaries, that, with the help of the MSS. of
+Ximenes, he undertook his own translation of the ancient chronicles of
+the Quichés. From the time of the discovery of Ximenes, therefore, to
+the time of the publication of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, all
+seems clear and satisfactory. But there is still a century to be
+accounted for, from the end of the sixteenth century, when the
+original is supposed to have been written, to the end of the
+seventeenth, when it was first discovered by Ximenes at
+Chichicastenango.
+
+[Footnote 98: Mr. A. Helps was the first to point out the importance
+of this work in his excellent 'History of the Spanish Conquest in
+America.']
+
+These years are not bridged over. We may appeal, however, to the
+authority of the MS. itself, which carries the royal dynasties down to
+the Spanish Conquest, and ends with the names of the two princes, Don
+Juan de Rojas and Don Juan Cortes, the sons of Tecum and Tepepul.
+These princes, though entirely subject to the Spaniards, were allowed
+to retain the insignia of royalty to the year 1558, and it is shortly
+after their time that the MS. is supposed to have been written. The
+author himself says in the beginning that he wrote 'after the word of
+God (chabal Dios) had been preached, in the midst of Christianity; and
+that he did so because people could no longer see the 'Popol Vuh,'
+wherein it was clearly shown that they came from the other side of the
+sea, the account of our living in the land of shadow, and how we saw
+light and life.' There is no attempt at claiming for his work any
+extravagant age or mysterious authority. It is acknowledged to have
+been written when the Castilians were the rulers of the land; when
+bishops were preaching the word of Dios, the new God; when the ancient
+traditions of the people were gradually dying out. Even the title of
+'Popol Vuh,' which the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg has given to this
+work, is not claimed for it by its author. He says that he wrote when
+the 'Popol Vuh' was no longer to be seen. Now 'Popol Vuh' means the
+book of the people, and referred to the traditional literature in
+which all that was known about the early history of the nation, their
+religion and ceremonies, was handed down from age to age.
+
+It is to be regretted that the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg should have
+sanctioned the application of this name to the Quiché MS. discovered
+by Father Ximenes, and that he should apparently have translated it by
+'Livre sacré' instead of 'Livre national,' or 'Libro del comun,' as
+proposed by Ximenes. Such small inaccuracies are sure to produce great
+confusion. Nothing but a desire to have a fine sounding title could
+have led the editor to commit this mistake, for he himself confesses
+that the work published by him has no right to the title 'Popol Vuh,'
+and that 'Popol Vuh' does not mean 'Livre sacré.' Nor is there any
+more reason to suppose, with the learned Abbé, that the first two
+books of the Quiché MS. contain an almost literal transcript of the
+'Popol Vuh,' or that the 'Popol Vuh; was the original of the
+'Teo-Amoxtli,' or the sacred book of the Toltecs. All we know is, that
+the author wrote his anonymous work because the 'Popol Vuh'--the
+national book, or the national tradition--was dying out, and that he
+comprehended in the first two sections the ancient traditions common
+to the whole race, while he devoted the last two to the historical
+annals of the Quichés, the ruling nation at the time of the Conquest
+in what is now the republic of Guatemala. If we look at the MS. in
+this light, there is nothing at all suspicious in its character and
+its contents. The author wished to save from destruction the stories
+which he had heard as a child of his gods and his ancestors. Though
+the general outline of these stories may have been preserved partly in
+the schools, partly in the pictographic MSS., the Spanish Conquest had
+thrown everything into confusion, and the writer had probably to
+depend chiefly on his own recollections. To extract consecutive
+history from these recollections, is simply impossible. All is vague,
+contradictory, miraculous, absurd. Consecutive history is altogether
+a modern idea, of which few only of the ancient nations had any
+conception. If we had the exact words of the 'Popol Vuh,' we should
+probably find no more history there than we find in the Quiché MS. as
+it now stands. Now and then, it is true, one imagines one sees certain
+periods and landmarks, but in the next page all is chaos again. It may
+be difficult to confess that with all the traditions of the early
+migrations of Cecrops and Danaus into Greece, with the Homeric poems
+of the Trojan war, and the genealogies of the ancient dynasties of
+Greece, we know nothing of Greek history before the Olympiads, and
+very little even then. Yet the true historian does not allow himself
+to indulge in any illusions on this subject, and he shuts his eyes
+even to the most plausible reconstructions.
+
+The same applies with a force increased a hundredfold to the ancient
+history of the aboriginal races of America, and the sooner this is
+acknowledged, the better for the credit of American scholars. Even the
+traditions of the migrations of the Chichimecs, Colhuas, and Nahuas,
+which form the staple of all American antiquarians, are no better than
+the Greek traditions about Pelasgians, Æolians, and Ionians; and it
+would be a mere waste of time to construct out of such elements a
+systematic history, only to be destroyed again sooner or later by some
+Niebuhr, Grote, or Lewis.
+
+But if we do not find history in the stories of the ancient races of
+Guatemala, we do find materials for studying their character, for
+analysing their religion and mythology, for comparing their principles
+of morality, their views of virtue, beauty, and heroism, to those of
+other races of mankind. This is the charm, the real and lasting charm,
+of such works as that presented to us for the first time in a
+trustworthy translation by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg.
+Unfortunately there is one circumstance which may destroy even this
+charm. It is just possible that the writers of this and other American
+MSS. may have felt more or less consciously the influence of European
+and Christian ideas, and if so, we have no sufficient guarantee that
+the stories they tell represent to us the American mind in its
+pristine and genuine form. There are some coincidences between the Old
+Testament and the Quiché MS. which are certainly startling. Yet even
+if a Christian influence has to be admitted, much remains in these
+American traditions which is so different from anything else in the
+national literatures of other countries, that we may safely treat it
+as the genuine growth of the intellectual soil of America. We shall
+give, in conclusion, some extracts to bear out our remarks; but we
+ought not to part with Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg without expressing
+to him our gratitude for his excellent work, and without adding a hope
+that he may be able to realise his plan of publishing a 'Collection of
+documents written in the indigenous languages, to assist the student
+of the history and philology of ancient America,' a collection of
+which the work now published is to form the first volume.
+
+
+_Extracts from the 'Popol Vuh.'_
+
+The Quiché MS. begins with an account of the creation. If we read it
+in the literal translation of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, with all
+the uncouth names of divine and other beings that have to act their
+parts in it, it does not leave any very clear impression on our minds.
+Yet after reading it again and again, some salient features stand out
+more distinctly, and make us feel that there was a groundwork of noble
+conceptions which has been covered and distorted by an aftergrowth of
+fantastic nonsense. We shall do best for the present to leave out all
+proper names, which only bewilder the memory and which convey no
+distinct meaning even to the scholar. It will require long-continued
+research before it can be determined whether the names so profusely
+applied to the Deity were intended as the names of so many distinct
+personalities, or as the names of the various manifestations of one
+and the same Power. At all events, they are of no importance to us
+till we can connect more distinct ideas than it is possible to gather
+from the materials now at hand, with such inharmonious sounds as
+Tzakol, Bitol, Alom, Qaholom, Hun-Ahpu-Vuch, Gucumatz, Quax-Cho, &c.
+Their supposed meanings are in some cases very appropriate, such as
+the Creator, the Fashioner, the Begetter, the Vivifier, the Ruler, the
+Lord of the green planisphere, the Lord of the azure surface, the
+Heart of heaven; in other cases we cannot fathom the original
+intention of names such as the feathered serpent, the white boar, _le
+tireur de sarbacane au sarigue_, and others; and they therefore sound
+to our ears simply absurd. Well, the Quichés believed that there was a
+time when all that exists in heaven and earth was made. All was then
+in suspense, all was calm and silent; all was immovable, all peaceful,
+and the vast space of the heavens was empty. There was no man, no
+animal, no shore, no trees; heaven alone existed. The face of the
+earth was not to be seen; there was only the still expanse of the sea
+and the heaven above. Divine Beings were on the waters like a growing
+light. Their voice was heard as they meditated and consulted, and when
+the dawn rose, man appeared. Then the waters were commanded to retire,
+the earth was established that she might bear fruit and that the light
+of day might shine on heaven and earth.
+
+'For, they said, we shall receive neither glory nor honour from all we
+have created until there is a human being--a being endowed with
+reason. "Earth," they said, and in a moment the earth was formed. Like
+a vapour it rose into being, mountains appeared from the waters like
+lobsters, and the great mountains were made. Thus was the creation of
+the earth, when it was fashioned by those who are the Heart of heaven,
+the Heart of the earth; for thus were they called who first gave
+fertility to them, heaven and earth being still inert and suspended in
+the midst of the waters.'
+
+Then follows the creation of the brute world, and the disappointment
+of the gods when they command the animals to tell their names and to
+honour those who had created them. Then the gods said to the animals:
+
+'You will be changed, because you cannot speak. We have changed your
+speech. You shall have your food and your dens in the woods and crags;
+for our glory is not perfect, and you do not invoke us. There will be
+beings still that can salute us; we shall make them capable of
+obeying. Do your task; as to your flesh, it will be broken by the
+tooth.'
+
+Then follows the creation of man. His flesh was made of earth (_terre
+glaise_). But man was without cohesion or power, inert and aqueous;
+he could not turn his head, his sight was dim, and though he had the
+gift of speech, he had no intellect. He was soon consumed again in the
+water.
+
+And the gods consulted a second time how to create beings that should
+adore them, and after some magic ceremonies, men were made of wood,
+and they multiplied. But they had no heart, no intellect, no
+recollection of their Creator; they did not lift up their heads to
+their Maker, and they withered away and were swallowed up by the
+waters.
+
+Then follows a third creation, man being made of a tree called tzité,
+woman of the marrow of a reed called sibac. They, too, did neither
+think nor speak before him who had made them, and they were likewise
+swept away by the waters and destroyed. The whole nature--animals,
+trees, and stones--turned against men to revenge the wrongs they had
+suffered at their hands, and the only remnant of that early race is to
+be found in small monkeys which still live in the forests.
+
+Then follows a story of a very different character, and which
+completely interrupts the progress of events. It has nothing to do
+with the creation, though it ends with two of its heroes being changed
+into sun and moon. It is a story very much like the fables of the
+Brahmans or the German Mährchen. Some of the principal actors in it
+are clearly divine beings who have been brought down to the level of
+human nature, and who perform feats and tricks so strange and
+incredible that in reading them we imagine ourselves in the midst of
+the Arabian Nights. In the struggles of the two favourite heroes
+against the cruel princes of Xibalba, there may be reminiscences of
+historical events; but it would be perfectly hopeless to attempt to
+extricate these from the mass of fable by which they are surrounded.
+The chief interest of the American tale consists in the points of
+similarity which it exhibits with the tales of the Old World. We shall
+mention two only--the repeated resuscitation of the chief heroes, who,
+even when burnt and ground to powder and scattered on the water, are
+born again as fish and changed into men; and the introduction of
+animals endowed with reason and speech. As in the German tales,
+certain peculiarities in the appearance and natural habits of animals
+are frequently accounted for by events that happened 'once upon a
+time'--for instance, the stumpy tail of the bear, by his misfortune
+when he went out fishing on the ice--so we find in the American tales,
+'that it was when the two principal heroes (Hun-Ahpu and Xbalanqué)
+had caught the rat and were going to strangle it over the fire, that
+_le rat commença à porter une queue sans poil_. Thus, because a
+certain serpent swallowed a frog who was sent as a messenger,
+therefore _aujourd'hui encore les serpents engloutissent les
+crapauds_.'
+
+The story, which well deserves the attention of those who are
+interested in the origin and spreading of popular tales, is carried on
+to the end of the second book, and it is only in the third that we
+hear once more of the creation of man.
+
+Three attempts, as we saw, had been made and had failed. We now hear
+again that before the beginning of dawn, and before the sun and moon
+had risen, man had been made, and that nourishment was provided for
+him which was to supply his blood, namely, yellow and white maize.
+Four men are mentioned as the real ancestors of the human race, or
+rather of the race of the Quichés. They were neither begotten by the
+gods nor born of woman, but their creation was a wonder wrought by the
+Creator. They could reason and speak, their sight was unlimited, and
+they knew all things at once. When they had rendered thanks to their
+Creator for their existence, the gods were frightened and they
+breathed a cloud over the eyes of men that they might see a certain
+distance only, and not be like the gods themselves. Then while the
+four men were asleep, the gods gave them beautiful wives, and these
+became the mothers of all tribes, great and small. These tribes, both
+black and white, lived and spread in the East. They did not yet
+worship the gods, but only turned their faces up to heaven, hardly
+knowing what they were meant to do here below. Their features were
+sweet, so was their language, and their intellect was strong.
+
+We now come to a most interesting passage, which is intended to
+explain the confusion of tongues. No nation, except the Jews, has
+dwelt much on the problem why there should be many languages instead
+of one. Grimm, in his 'Essay on the Origin of Language,' remarks: 'It
+may seem surprising that neither the ancient Greeks nor the ancient
+Indians attempted to propose or to solve the question as to the origin
+and the multiplicity of human speech. Holy Writ strove to solve at
+least one of these riddles, that of the multiplicity of languages, by
+means of the tower of Babel. I know only one other poor Esthonian
+legend which might be placed by the side of this biblical solution.
+"The old god," they say, "when men found their first seats too narrow,
+resolved to spread them over the whole earth, and to give to each
+nation its own language. For this purpose he placed a caldron of water
+on the fire, and commanded the different races to approach it in
+order, and to select for themselves the sounds which were uttered by
+the singing of the water in its confinement and torture.'"
+
+Grimm might have added another legend which is current among the
+Thlinkithians, and was clearly framed in order to account for the
+existence of different languages. The Thlinkithians are one of the
+four principal races inhabiting Russian America. They are called
+Kaljush, Koljush, or Kolosh by the Russians, and inhabit the coast
+from about 60° to 45° N.L., reaching therefore across the Russian
+frontier as far as the Columbia River, and they likewise hold many of
+the neighbouring islands. Weniaminow estimates their number, both in
+the Russian and English colonies, at 20 to 25,000. They are evidently
+a decreasing race, and their legends, which seem to be numerous and
+full of original ideas, would well deserve the careful attention of
+American ethnologists. Wrangel suspected a relationship between them
+and the Aztecs of Mexico. These Thlinkithians believe in a general
+flood or deluge, and that men saved themselves in a large floating
+building. When the waters fell, the building was wrecked on a rock,
+and by its own weight burst into two pieces. Hence arose the
+difference of languages. The Thlinkithians with their language
+remained on one side; on the other side were all the other races of
+the earth.[99]
+
+[Footnote 99: Holmberg, 'Ethnographische Skizzen über die Völker des
+Russischen Amerika,' Helsingfors, 1855.]
+
+Neither the Esthonian nor the Thlinkithian legend, however, offers any
+striking points of coincidence with the Mosaic accounts. The
+analogies, therefore, as well as the discrepancies, between the ninth
+chapter of Genesis and the chapter here translated from the Quiché MS.
+require special attention:
+
+     'All had but one language, and they did not invoke as yet
+     either wood or stones; they only remembered the word of the
+     Creator, the Heart of heaven and earth.
+
+     'And they spoke while meditating on what was hidden by the
+     spring of day; and full of the sacred word, full of love,
+     obedience, and fear, they made their prayers, and lifting
+     their eyes up to heaven, they asked for sons and daughters:
+
+     '"Hail! O Creator and Fashioner, thou who seest and hearest
+     us! do not forsake us, O God, who art in heaven and earth,
+     Heart of the sky, Heart of the earth! Give us offspring and
+     descendants as long as the sun and dawn shall advance. Let
+     there be seed and light. Let us always walk on open paths,
+     on roads where there is no ambush. Let us always be quiet
+     and in peace with those who are ours. May our lives run on
+     happily. Give us a life secure from reproach. Let there be
+     seed for harvest, and let there be light."
+
+     'They then proceeded to the town of Tulan, where they
+     received their gods.
+
+     'And when all the tribes were there gathered together, their
+     speech was changed, and they did not understand each other
+     after they arrived at Tulan. It was there that they
+     separated, and some went to the East, others came here. Even
+     the language of the four ancestors of the human race became
+     different. "Alas," they said, "we have left our language.
+     How has this happened? We are ruined! How could we have been
+     led into error? We had but one language when we came to
+     Tulan; our form of worship was but one. What we have done is
+     not good," replied all the tribes in the woods and under the
+     lianas.'
+
+The rest of the work, which consists altogether of four books, is
+taken up with an account of the migrations of the tribes from the
+East, and their various settlements. The four ancestors of the race
+seem to have had a long life, and when at last they came to die, they
+disappeared in a mysterious manner, and left to their sons what is
+called the Hidden Majesty, which was never to be opened by human
+hands. What it was we do not know. There are many subjects of interest
+in the chapters which follow, only we must not look there for history,
+although the author evidently accepts as truly historical what he
+tells us about the successive generations of kings. But when he brings
+us down at last, after sundry migrations, wars, and rebellions, to the
+arrival of the Castilians, we find that between the first four
+ancestors of the human or of the Quiché race and the last of their
+royal dynasties, there intervene only fourteen generations, and the
+author, whoever he was, ends with the confession:
+
+'This is all that remains of the existence of Quiché; for it is
+impossible to see the book in which formerly the kings could read
+everything, as it has disappeared. It is over with all those of
+Quiché! It is now called Santa-Cruz!'
+
+_March, 1862._
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+SEMITIC MONOTHEISM.[100]
+
+
+A work such as M. Renan's 'Histoire Générale et Système Comparé des
+Langues Sémitiques' can only be reviewed chapter by chapter. It
+contains a survey not only, as its title would lead us to suppose, of
+the Semitic languages, but of the Semitic languages and nations; and,
+considering that the whole history of the civilised world has hitherto
+been acted by two races only, the Semitic and the Aryan, with
+occasional interruptions produced by the inroads of the Turanian race,
+M. Renan's work comprehends in reality half of the history of the
+ancient world. We have received as yet the first volume only of this
+important work, and before the author had time to finish the second,
+he was called upon to publish a second edition of the first, which
+appeared in 1858, with important additions and alterations.
+
+[Footnote 100: 'Histoire Générale et Système Comparé des Langues
+Sémitiques.' Par Ernest Renan, Membre de l'Institut. Seconde édition,
+Paris, 1858.
+
+'Nouvelles Considérations sur le Caractère Général des Peuples
+Sémitiques, et en particulier sur leur Tendance au Monothéisme,' Par
+Ernest Renan. Paris, 1859.]
+
+In writing the history of the Semitic race it is necessary to lay down
+certain general characteristics common to all the members of that
+race, before we can speak of nations so widely separated from each
+other as the Jews, the Babylonians, Phenicians, Carthaginians, and
+Arabs, as one race or family. The most important bond which binds
+these scattered tribes together into one ideal whole is to be found in
+their language. There can be as little doubt that the dialects of all
+the Semitic nations are derived from one common type as there is about
+the derivation of French, Spanish, and Italian from Latin, or of
+Latin, Greek, German, Celtic, Slavonic, and Sanskrit from the
+primitive idiom of the ancestors of the Aryan race. The evidence of
+language would by itself be quite sufficient to establish the fact
+that the Semitic nations descended from common ancestors, and
+constitute what, in the science of language, may be called a distinct
+race. But M. Renan was not satisfied with this single criterion of the
+relationship of the Semitic tribes, and he has endeavoured to draw,
+partly from his own observations, partly from the suggestions of other
+scholars, such as Ewald and Lassen, a more complete portrait of the
+Semitic man. This was no easy task. It was like drawing the portrait
+of a whole family, omitting all that is peculiar to each individual
+member, and yet preserving the features which, constitute the general
+family likeness. The result has been what might be expected. Critics
+most familiar with one or the other branch of the Semitic family have
+each and all protested that they can see no likeness in the portrait.
+It seems to some to contain features which it ought not to contain,
+whereas others miss the very expression which appears to them most
+striking.
+
+The following is a short abstract of what M. Renan considers the
+salient points in the Semitic character:
+
+'Their character,' he says, 'is religious rather than political, and
+the mainspring of their religion is the conception of the unity of
+God. Their religious phraseology is simple, and free from mythological
+elements. Their religious feelings are strong, exclusive, intolerant,
+and sustained by a fervour which finds its peculiar expression in
+prophetic visions. Compared to the Aryan nations, they are found
+deficient in scientific and philosophical originality. Their poetry is
+chiefly subjective or lyrical, and we look in vain among their poets
+for excellence in epic and dramatic compositions. Painting and the
+plastic arts have never arrived at a higher than the decorative stage.
+Their political life has remained patriarchal and despotic, and their
+inability to organise on a large scale has deprived them of the means
+of military success. Perhaps the most general feature of their
+character is a negative one,--their inability to perceive the general
+and the abstract, whether in thought, language, religion, poetry, or
+politics; and, on the other hand, a strong attraction towards the
+individual and personal, which makes them monotheistic in religion,
+lyrical in poetry, monarchical in politics, abrupt in style, and
+impractical for speculation.'
+
+One cannot look at this bold and rapid outline of the Semitic
+character without perceiving how many points it contains which are
+open to doubt and discussion. We shall confine our remarks to one
+point, which, in our mind, and, as far as we can see, in M. Renan's
+mind likewise, is the most important of all--namely, the supposed
+monotheistic tendency of the Semitic race. M. Renan asserts that this
+tendency belongs to the race by instinct,--that it forms the rule, not
+the exception; and he seems to imply that without it the human race
+would never have arrived at the knowledge or worship of the One God.
+
+If such a remark had been made fifty years ago, it would have roused
+little or no opposition. 'Semitic' was then used in a more restricted
+sense, and hardly comprehended more than the Jews and Arabs. Of this
+small group of people it might well have been said, with such
+limitations as are tacitly implied in every general proposition on the
+character of individuals or nations, that the work set apart for them
+by a Divine Providence in the history of the world was the preaching
+of a belief in one God. Three religions have been founded by members
+of that more circumscribed Semitic family--the Jewish, the Christian,
+the Mohammedan; and all three proclaim, with the strongest accent, the
+doctrine that there is but one God.
+
+Of late, however, not only have the limits of the Semitic family been
+considerably extended, so as to embrace several nations notorious for
+their idolatrous worship, but the history of the Jewish and Arab
+tribes has been explored so much more fully, that even there traces of
+a wide-spread tendency to polytheism have come to light.
+
+The Semitic family is divided by M. Renan into two great branches,
+differing from each other in the form of their monotheistic belief,
+yet both, according to their historian, imbued from the beginning with
+the instinctive faith in one God:
+
+1. The nomad branch, consisting of Arabs, Hebrews, and the
+neighbouring tribes of Palestine, commonly called the descendants of
+Terah; and
+
+2. The political branch, including the nations of Phenicia, of Syria,
+Mesopotamia, and Yemen.
+
+Can it be said that all these nations, comprising the worshippers of
+Elohim, Jehovah, Sabaoth, Moloch, Nisroch, Rimmon, Nebo, Dagon,
+Ashtaroth, Baal or Bel, Baal-peor, Baal-zebub, Chemosh, Milcom,
+Adrammelech, Annamelech, Nibhaz and Tartak, Ashima, Nergal,
+Succoth-benoth, the Sun, Moon, planets, and all the host of heaven,
+were endowed with a monotheistic instinct? M. Renan admits that
+monotheism has always had its principal bulwark in the nomadic branch,
+but he maintains that it has by no means been so unknown among the
+members of the political branch as is commonly supposed. But where are
+the criteria by which, in the same manner as their dialects, the
+religions of the Semitic races could be distinguished from the
+religions of the Aryan and Turanian races? We can recognise any
+Semitic dialect by the triliteral character of its roots. Is it
+possible to discover similar radical elements in all the forms of
+faith, primary or secondary, primitive or derivative, of the Semitic
+tribes? M. Renan thinks that it is. He imagines that he hears the
+key-note of a pure monotheism through all the wild shoutings of the
+priests of Baal and other Semitic idols, and he denies the presence of
+that key-note in any of the religious systems of the Aryan nations,
+whether Greeks or Romans, Germans or Celts, Hindus or Persians. Such
+an assertion could not but rouse considerable opposition, and so
+strong seems to have been the remonstrances addressed to M. Renan by
+several of his colleagues in the French Institute that, without
+awaiting the publication of the second volume of his great work, he
+has thought it right to publish part of it as a separate pamphlet. In
+his 'Nouvelles Considérations sur le Caractère Général des Peuples
+Sémitiques, et en particulier sur leur Tendance au Monothéisme,' he
+endeavours to silence the objections raised against the leading idea
+of his history of the Semitic race. It is an essay which exhibits not
+only the comprehensive knowledge of the scholar, but the warmth and
+alacrity of the advocate. With M. Renan the monotheistic character of
+the descendants of Shem is not only a scientific tenet, but a moral
+conviction. He wishes that his whole work should stand or fall with
+this thesis, and it becomes, therefore, all the more the duty of the
+critic, to inquire whether the arguments which he brings forward in
+support of his favourite idea are valid or not.
+
+It is but fair to M. Renan that, in examining his statements, we
+should pay particular attention to any slight modifications which he
+may himself have adopted in his last memoir. In his history he asserts
+with great confidence, and somewhat broadly, that 'le monothéisme
+résume et explique tous les caractères de la race Sémitique.' In his
+later pamphlet he is more captious. As an experienced pleader he is
+ready to make many concessions in order to gain all the more readily
+our assent to his general proposition. He points out himself with
+great candour the weaker points of his argument, though, of course,
+only in order to return with unabated courage to his first
+position,--that of all the races of mankind the Semitic race alone was
+endowed with the instinct of monotheism. As it is impossible to deny
+the fact that the Semitic nations, in spite of this supposed
+monotheistic instinct, were frequently addicted to the most degraded
+forms of a polytheistic idolatry, and that even the Jews, the most
+monotheistic of all, frequently provoked the anger of the Lord by
+burning incense to other gods, M. Renan remarks that when he speaks of
+a nation in general he only speaks of the intellectual aristocracy of
+that nation. He appeals in self-defence to the manner in which
+historians lay down the character of modern nations. 'The French,' he
+says, 'are repeatedly called "_une nation spirituelle_," and yet no
+one would wish to assert either that every Frenchman is _spirituel_,
+or that no one could be _spirituel_ who is not a Frenchman.' Now, here
+we may grant to M. Renan that if we speak of '_esprit_' we naturally
+think of the intellectual minority only, and not of the whole bulk of
+a nation; but if we speak of religion, the case is different. If we
+say that the French believe in one God only, or that they are
+Christians, we speak not only of the intellectual aristocracy of
+France but of every man, woman, and child born and bred in France.
+Even if we say that the French are Roman Catholics, we do so only
+because we know that there is a decided majority in France in favour
+of the unreformed system of Christianity. But if, because some of the
+most distinguished writers of France have paraded their contempt for
+all religious dogmas, we were to say broadly that the French are a
+nation without religion, we should justly be called to order for
+abusing the legitimate privileges of generalization. The fact that
+Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and Jeremiah were firm believers in one God
+could not be considered sufficient to support the general proposition
+that the Jewish nation was monotheistic by instinct. And if we
+remember that among the other Semitic races we should look in vain for
+even four such names, the case would seem to be desperate to any one
+but M. Renan.
+
+We cannot believe that M. Renan would be satisfied with the admission
+that there had been among the Jews a few leading men who believed in
+one God, or that the existence of but one God was an article of faith
+not quite unknown among the other Semitic races; yet he has hardly
+proved more. He has collected, with great learning and ingenuity, all
+traces of monotheism in the annals of the Semitic nations; but he has
+taken no pains to discover the traces of polytheism, whether faint or
+distinct, which are disclosed in the same annals. In acting the part
+of an advocate he has for a time divested himself of the nobler
+character of the historian.
+
+If M. Renan had looked with equal zeal for the scattered vestiges both
+of a monotheistic and of a polytheistic worship, he would have drawn,
+perhaps, a less striking, but we believe a more faithful, portrait of
+the Semitic man. We may accept all the facts of M. Renan, for his
+facts are almost always to be trusted; but we cannot accept his
+conclusions, because they would be in contradiction to other facts
+which M. Renan places too much in the background, or ignores
+altogether. Besides, there is something in the very conclusions to
+which he is driven by his too partial evidence which jars on our ears,
+and betrays a want of harmony in the premises on which he builds.
+Taking his stand on the fact that the Jewish race was the first of all
+the nations of the world to arrive at the knowledge of one God, M.
+Renan proceeds to argue that, if their monotheism had been the result
+of a persevering mental effort--if it had been a discovery like the
+philosophical or scientific discoveries of the Greeks, it would be
+necessary to admit that the Jews surpassed all other nations of the
+world in intellect and vigour of speculation. This, he admits, is
+contrary to fact:
+
+     'Apart la supériorité de son culte, le peuple juif n'en a
+     aucune autre; c'est un des peuples les moins doués pour la
+     science et la philosophie parmi les peuples de l'antiquité;
+     il n'a une grande position ni politique ni militaire. Ses
+     institutions sont purement conservatrices; les prophètes,
+     qui représentent excellemment son génie, sont des hommes
+     essentiellement réactionnaires, se reportant toujours vers
+     un idéal antérieur. Comment expliquer, au sein d'une société
+     aussi étroite et aussi peu développée, une révolution
+     d'idées qu'Athènes et Alexandrie n'ont pas réussi à
+     accomplir?'
+
+M. Renan then defines the monotheism of the Jews, and of the Semitic
+nations in general, as the result of a low, rather than of a high
+state of intellectual cultivation: 'Il s'en faut,' he writes (p. 40),
+'que le monothéisme soit le produit d'une race qui a des idées
+exaltées en fait de religion; c'est en réalité le fruit d'une race qui
+a peu de besoins religieux. C'est comme _minimum_ de religion, en fait
+de dogmes et en fait de pratiques extérieures, que le monothéisme est
+surtout accommodé aux besoins des populations nomades.'
+
+But even this _minimum_ of religious reflection which is required,
+according to M. Renan, for the perception of the unity of God, he
+grudges to the Semitic nations, and he is driven in the end (p. 73)
+to explain the Semitic Monotheism as the result of a religious
+instinct, analogous to the instinct which led each race to the
+formation of its own language.
+
+Here we miss the usual clearness and precision which distinguish most
+of M. Renan's works. It is always dangerous to transfer expressions
+from one branch of knowledge to another. The word 'instinct' has its
+legitimate application in natural history, where it is used of the
+unconscious acts of unconscious beings. We say that birds build their
+nests by instinct, that fishes swim by instinct, that cats catch mice
+by instinct; and, though no natural philosopher has yet explained what
+instinct is, yet we accept the term as a conventional expression for
+an unknown power working in the animal world.
+
+If we transfer this word to the unconscious acts of conscious beings,
+we must necessarily alter its definition. We may speak of an
+instinctive motion of the arm, but we only mean a motion which has
+become so habitual as to require no longer any special effort of the
+will.
+
+If, however, we transfer the word to the conscious thoughts of
+conscious beings, we strain the word beyond its natural capacities, we
+use it in order to avoid other terms which would commit us to the
+admission either of innate ideas or inspired truths. We use a word in
+order to avoid a definition. It may sound more scientific to speak of
+a monotheistic instinct rather than of the inborn image or the
+revealed truth of the One living God; but is instinct less mysterious
+than revelation? Can there be an instinct without an instigation or an
+instigator? And whose hand was it that instigated the Semitic mind to
+the worship of one God? Could the same hand have instigated the Aryan
+mind to the worship of many gods? Could the monotheistic instinct of
+the Semitic race, if an instinct, have been so frequently obscured, or
+the polytheistic instinct of the Aryan race, if an instinct, so
+completely annihilated, as to allow the Jews to worship on all the
+high places round Jerusalem, and the Greeks and Romans to become
+believers in Christ? Fishes never fly, and cats never catch frogs.
+These are the difficulties into which we are led; and they arise
+simply and solely from our using words for their sound rather than for
+their meaning. We begin by playing with words, but in the end the
+words will play with us.
+
+There are, in fact, various kinds of monotheism, and it becomes our
+duty to examine more carefully what they mean and how they arise.
+There is one kind of monotheism, though it would more properly be
+called theism, or henotheism, which forms the birthright of every
+human being. What distinguishes man from all other creatures, and not
+only raises him above the animal world, but removes him altogether
+from the confines of a merely natural existence, is the feeling of
+sonship inherent in and inseparable from human nature. That feeling
+may find expression in a thousand ways, but there breathes through all
+of them the inextinguishable conviction, 'It is He that hath made us,
+and not we ourselves.' That feeling of sonship may with some races
+manifest itself in fear and trembling, and it may drive whole
+generations into religious madness and devil worship. In other
+countries it may tempt the creature into a fatal familiarity with the
+Creator, and end in an apotheosis of man, or a headlong plunging of
+the human into the divine. It may take, as with the Jews, the form of
+a simple assertion that 'Adam was the son of God,' or it may be
+clothed in the mythological phraseology of the Hindus, that Manu, or
+man, was the descendant of Svayambhu, the Self-existing. But, in some
+form or other, the feeling of dependence on a higher Power breaks
+through in all the religions of the world, and explains to us the
+meaning of St. Paul, 'that God, though in times past He suffered all
+nations to walk in their own ways, nevertheless He left not Himself
+without witness, in that He did good and gave us rain from heaven, and
+fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.'
+
+This primitive intuition of God and the ineradicable feeling of
+dependence on God, could only have been the result of a primitive
+revelation, in the truest sense of that word. Man, who owed his
+existence to God, and whose being centred and rested in God, saw and
+felt God as the only source of his own and of all other existence. By
+the very act of the creation, God had revealed Himself. There He was,
+manifested in His works, in all His majesty and power, before the face
+of those to whom He had given eyes to see and ears to hear, and into
+whose nostrils He had breathed the breath of life, even the Spirit of
+God.
+
+This primitive intuition of God, however, was in itself neither
+monotheistic nor polytheistic, though it might become either,
+according to the expression which it took in the languages of man. It
+was this primitive intuition which supplied either the subject or the
+predicate in all the religions of the world, and without it no
+religion, whether true or false, whether revealed or natural, could
+have had even its first beginning. It is too often forgotten by those
+who believe that a polytheistic worship was the most natural
+unfolding of religious life, that polytheism must everywhere have been
+preceded by a more or less conscious theism. In no language does the
+plural exist before the singular. No human mind could have conceived
+the idea of gods without having previously conceived the idea of a
+god. It would be, however, quite as great a mistake to imagine,
+because the idea of a god must exist previously to that of gods, that
+therefore a belief in One God preceded everywhere the belief in many
+gods. A belief in God as exclusively One, involves a distinct negation
+of more than one God, and that negation is possible only after the
+conception, whether real or imaginary, of many gods.
+
+The primitive intuition of the Godhead is neither monotheistic nor
+polytheistic, and it finds its most natural expression in the simplest
+and yet the most important article of faith--that God is God. This
+must have been the faith of the ancestors of mankind previously to any
+division of race or confusion of tongues. It might seem, indeed, as if
+in such a faith the oneness of God, though not expressly asserted, was
+implied, and that it existed, though latent, in the first revelation
+of God. History, however, proves that the question of oneness was yet
+undecided in that primitive faith, and that the intuition of God was
+not yet secured against the illusions of a double vision. There are,
+in reality, two kinds of oneness which, when we enter into
+metaphysical discussions, must be carefully distinguished, and which
+for practical purposes are well kept separate by the definite and
+indefinite articles. There is one kind of oneness which does not
+exclude the idea of plurality; there is another which does. When we
+say that Cromwell was a Protector of England, we do not assert that he
+was the only protector. But if we say that he was the Protector of
+England, it is understood that he was the only man who enjoyed that
+title. If, therefore, an expression had been given to that primitive
+intuition of the Deity, which is the mainspring of all later religion,
+it would have been--'There is a God,' but not yet 'There is but "One
+God."' The latter form of faith, the belief in One God, is properly
+called monotheism, whereas the term of henotheism would best express
+the faith in a single god.
+
+We must bear in mind that we are here speaking of a period in the
+history of mankind when, together with the awakening of ideas, the
+first attempts only were being made at expressing the simplest
+conceptions by means of a language most simple, most sensuous, and
+most unwieldy. There was as yet no word sufficiently reduced by the
+wear and tear of thought to serve as an adequate expression for the
+abstract idea of an immaterial and supernatural Being. There were
+words for walking and shouting, for cutting and burning, for dog and
+cow, for house and wall, for sun and moon, for day and night. Every
+object was called by some quality which had struck the eye as most
+peculiar and characteristic. But what quality should be predicated of
+that Being of which man knew as yet nothing but its existence?
+Language possessed as yet no auxiliary verbs. The very idea of being
+without the attributes of quality or action, had never entered into
+the human mind. How then was that Being to be called which had
+revealed its existence, and continued to make itself felt by
+everything that most powerfully impressed the awakening mind, but
+which as yet was known only like a subterraneous spring by the waters
+which it poured forth with inexhaustible strength? When storm and
+lightning drove a father with his helpless family to seek refuge in
+the forests, and the fall of mighty trees crushed at his side those
+who were most dear to him, there were, no doubt, feelings of terror
+and awe, of helplessness and dependence, in the human heart which
+burst forth in a shriek for pity or help from the only Being that
+could command the storm. But there was no name by which He could be
+called. There might be names for the storm-wind and the thunderbolt,
+but these were not the names applicable to Him that rideth upon the
+heavens of heavens, which were of old. Again, when after a wild and
+tearful night the sun dawned in the morning, smiling on man--when
+after a dreary and deathlike winter spring came again with its
+sunshine and flowers, there were feelings of joy and gratitude, of
+love and adoration in the heart of every human being; but though there
+were names for the sun and the spring, for the bright sky and the
+brilliant dawn, there was no word by which to call the source of all
+this gladness, the giver of light and life.
+
+At the time when we may suppose that the first attempts at finding a
+name for God were made, the divergence of the languages of mankind had
+commenced. We cannot dwell here on the causes which led to the
+multiplicity of human speech; but whether we look on the confusion of
+tongues as a natural or supernatural event, it was an event which the
+science of language has proved to have been inevitable. The ancestors
+of the Semitic and the Aryan nations had long become unintelligible to
+each other in their conversations on the most ordinary topics, when
+they each in their own way began to look for a proper name for God.
+Now one of the most striking differences between the Aryan and the
+Semitic forms of speech was this:--In the Semitic languages the roots
+expressive of the predicates which were to serve as the proper names
+of any subjects, remained so distinct within the body of a word, that
+those who used the word were unable to forget its predicative meaning,
+and retained in most cases a distinct consciousness of its appellative
+power. In the Aryan languages, on the contrary, the significative
+element, or the root of a word, was apt to become so completely
+absorbed by the derivative elements, whether prefixes or suffixes,
+that most substantives ceased almost immediately to be appellative,
+and were changed into mere names or proper names. What we mean can
+best be illustrated by the fact that the dictionaries of Semitic
+languages are mostly arranged according to their roots. When we wish
+to find the meaning of a word in Hebrew or Arabic we first look for
+its root, whether triliteral or biliteral, and then look in the
+dictionary for that root and its derivatives. In the Aryan languages,
+on the contrary, such an arrangement would be extremely inconvenient.
+In many words it is impossible to detect the radical element. In
+others, after the root is discovered, we find that it has not given
+birth to any other derivatives which would throw their converging rays
+of light on its radical meaning. In other cases, again, such seems to
+have been the boldness of the original name-giver that we can hardly
+enter into the idiosyncrasy which assigned such a name to such an
+object.
+
+This peculiarity of the Semitic and Aryan languages must have had the
+greatest influence on the formation of their religious phraseology. The
+Semitic man would call on God in adjectives only, or in words which always
+conveyed a predicative meaning. Every one of his words was more or less
+predicative, and he was therefore restricted in his choice to such words as
+expressed some one or other of the abstract qualities of the Deity. The
+Aryan man was less fettered in his choice. Let us take an instance. Being
+startled by the sound of thunder, he would at first express his impression
+by the single phrase, It thunders,--βρουτᾶ. Here the idea of God is
+understood rather than expressed, very much in the same manner as the
+Semitic proper names Zabd (present), Abd (servant), Aus (present), are
+habitually used for Zabd-allah, Abd-allah, Aus-allah,--the servant of God,
+the gift of God. It would be more in accordance with the feelings and
+thoughts of those who first used these so-called impersonal verbs to
+translate them by He thunders, He rains, He snows. Afterwards, instead of
+the simple impersonal verb He thunders, another expression naturally
+suggested itself. The thunder came from the sky, the sky was frequently
+called Dyaus (the bright one), in Greek Ζεὑς; and though it was not the
+bright sky which thundered, but the dark, yet Dyaus had already ceased to
+be an expressive predicate, it had become a traditional name, and hence
+there was nothing to prevent an Aryan man from saying Dyaus, or the sky
+thunders, in Greek Ζεὑς βρουτᾶ. Let us here mark the almost irresistible
+influence of language on the mind. The word Dyaus, which at first meant
+bright, had lost its radical meaning, and now meant simply sky. It then
+entered into a new stage. The idea which had first been expressed by the
+pronoun or the termination of the third person, He thunders, was taken up
+into the word Dyaus, or sky. He thunders, and Dyaus thunders, became
+synonymous expressions, and by the mere habit of speech He became Dyaus,
+and Dyaus became He. Henceforth Dyaus remained as an appellative of that
+unseen though ever present Power, which had revealed its existence to man
+from the beginning, but which remained without a name long after every
+beast of the field and every fowl of the air had been named by Adam.
+
+Now, what happened in this instance with the name of Dyaus, happened
+again and again with other names. When men felt the presence of God in
+the great and strong wind, in the earthquake, or the fire, they said
+at first, He storms, He shakes, He burns. But they likewise said, the
+storm (Marut) blows, the fire (Agni) burns, the subterraneous fire
+(Vulcanus) upheaves the earth. And after a time the result was the
+same as before, and the words meaning originally wind or fire were
+used, under certain restrictions, as names of the unknown God. As long
+as all these names were remembered as mere names or attributes of one
+and the same Divine Power, there was as yet no polytheism, though, no
+doubt, every new name threatened to obscure more and more the
+primitive intuition of God. At first, the names of God, like fetishes
+or statues, were honest attempts at expressing or representing an idea
+which could never find an adequate expression or representation. But
+the eidolon, or likeness, became an idol; the nomen, or name, lapsed
+into a numen, or demon, as soon as they were drawn away from their
+original intention. If the Greeks had remembered that Zeus was but a
+name or symbol of the Deity, there would have been no more harm in
+calling God by that name than by any other. If they had remembered
+that Kronos, and Uranos, and Apollon were all but so many attempts at
+naming the various sides, or manifestations, or aspects, or persons of
+the Deity, they might have used these names in the hours of their
+various needs, just as the Jews called on Jehovah, Elohim, and
+Sabaoth, or as Roman Catholics implore the help of Nunziata, Dolores,
+and Notre-Dame-de-Grace.
+
+What, then, is the difference between the Aryan and Semitic
+nomenclature for the Deity? Why are we told that the pious invocations
+of the Aryan world turned into a blasphemous mocking of the Deity,
+whereas the Semitic nations are supposed to have found from the first
+the true name of God? Before we look anywhere else for an answer to
+the question, we must look to language itself, and here we see that
+the Semitic dialects could never, by any possibility, have produced
+such names as the Sanskrit Dyaus (Zeus), Varu_n_a (Uranos), Marut
+(Storm, Mars), or Ushas (Eos). They had no doubt names for the bright
+sky, for the tent of heaven, and for the dawn. But these names were so
+distinctly felt as appellatives, that they could never be thought of
+as proper names, whether as names of the Deity, or as names of
+deities. This peculiarity has been illustrated with great skill by M.
+Renan. We differ from him when he tries to explain the difference
+between the mythological phraseology of the Aryan and the theological
+phraseology of the Semitic races, by assigning to each a peculiar
+theological instinct. We cannot, in fact, see how the admission of
+such an instinct, i. e. of an unknown and incomprehensible power,
+helps us in any way whatsoever to comprehend this curious mental
+process. His problem, however, is exactly the same as ours, and it
+would be impossible to state that problem in a more telling manner
+than he has done.
+
+'The rain,' he says (p. 79), 'is represented, in all the primitive
+mythologies of the Aryan race, as the fruit of the embraces of Heaven
+and Earth.' 'The bright sky,' says Æschylus, in a passage which one
+might suppose was taken from the Vedas, 'loves to penetrate the earth;
+the earth on her part aspires to the heavenly marriage. Rain falling
+from the loving sky impregnates the earth, and she produces for
+mortals pastures of the flocks and the gifts of Ceres.' In the Book of
+Job,[101] on the contrary, it is God who tears open the waterskins of
+Heaven (xxxviii. 37), who opens the courses for the floods (ibid. 25),
+who engenders the drops of dew (ibid. 28):
+
+    'He draws towards Him the mists from the waters,
+    Which pour down as rain, and form their vapours.
+    Afterwards the clouds spread them out,
+    They fall as drops on the crowds of men.' (Job xxxvi. 27, 28.)
+
+[Footnote 101: We give the extracts according to M. Renan's
+translation of the Book of Job (Paris, 1859, Michel Lévy).]
+
+    'He charges the night with damp vapours,
+    He drives before Him the thunder-bearing cloud.
+    It is driven to one side or the other by His command.
+    To execute all that He ordains
+    On the face of the universe,
+    Whether it be to punish His creatures
+    Or to make thereof a proof of His mercy,' (Job xxxvii. 11-13.)
+
+Or, again, Proverbs xxx. 4:
+
+     'Who hath gathered the wind in His fists? Who hath bound the
+     waters in a garment? Who hath established all the ends of
+     the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son's name, if
+     thou canst tell?'
+
+It has been shown by ample evidence from the Rig-veda how many mythes
+were suggested to the Aryan world by various names of the dawn, the
+day-spring of life. The language of the ancient Aryans of India had
+thrown out many names for that heavenly apparition, and every name, as
+it ceased to be understood, became, like a decaying seed, the germ of
+an abundant growth of mythe and legend. Why should not the same have
+happened to the Semitic names for the dawn? Simply and solely because
+the Semitic words had no tendency to phonetic corruption; simply and
+solely because they continued to be felt as appellatives, and would
+inevitably have defeated every attempt at mythological phraseology
+such as we find in India and Greece. When the dawn is mentioned in the
+Book of Job (ix. 11), it is God 'who commandeth the sun and it riseth
+not, and sealeth up the stars.' It is His power which causeth the
+day-spring to know its place, that it might take hold of the ends of
+the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it (Job xxxviii. 12,
+13; Renan, 'Livre de Job,' pref. 71). Shahar, the dawn, never becomes
+an independent agent; she is never spoken of as Eos rising from the
+bed of her husband Tithonos (the setting sun), solely and simply
+because the word retained its power as an appellative, and thus could
+not enter into any mythological metamorphosis.
+
+Even in Greece there are certain words which have remained so pellucid
+as to prove unfit for mythological refraction. Selene in Greek is so
+clearly the moon that her name would pierce through the darkest clouds
+of mythe and fable. Call her Hecate, and she will bear any disguise,
+however fanciful. It is the same with the Latin Luna. She is too
+clearly the moon to be mistaken for anything else, but call her
+Lucina, and she will readily enter into various mythological phases.
+If, then, the names of sun and moon, of thunder and lightning, of
+light and day, of night and dawn could not yield to the Semitic races
+fit appellatives for the Deity, where were they to be found? If the
+names of Heaven or Earth jarred on their ears as names unfit for the
+Creator, where could they find more appropriate terms? They would not
+have objected to real names such as Jupiter Optimus Maximus, or
+Ζεὐς κὑδιστος μἑγιστος, if such words could have been framed
+in their dialects, and the names of Jupiter and Zeus could have been
+so ground down as to become synonymous with the general term for
+'God.' Not even the Jews could have given a more exalted definition of
+the Deity than that of Optimus Maximus--the Best and the Greatest;
+and their very name of God, Jehovah, is generally supposed to mean no
+more than what the Peleiades of Dodona said of Zeus, Ζεὐς ἦν, Ζεὐς ἐστἱν,
+Ζεὐς ἓσσεται ὦ μεγἁλε Ζεῦ, 'He was, He is, He will be, Oh
+great Zeus!' Not being able to form such substantives as Dyaus, or
+Varu_n_a, or Indra, the descendants of Shem fixed on the predicates
+which in the Aryan prayers follow the name of the Deity, and called
+Him the Best and the Greatest, the Lord and King. If we examine the
+numerous names of the Deity in the Semitic dialects we find that they
+are all adjectives, expressive of moral qualities. There is El,
+strong; Bel or Baal, Lord; Beel-samin, Lord of Heaven; Adonis (in
+Phenicia), Lord; Marnas (at Gaza), our Lord; Shet, Master, afterwards
+a demon; Moloch, Milcom, Malika, King; Eliun, the Highest (the God of
+Melchisedek); Ram and Rimmon, the Exalted; and many more names, all
+originally adjectives and expressive of certain general qualities of
+the Deity, but all raised by one or the other of the Semitic tribes to
+be the names of God or of that idea which the first breath of life,
+the first sight of this world, the first consciousness of existence,
+had for ever impressed and implanted in the human mind.
+
+But do these names prove that the people who invented them had a clear
+and settled idea of the unity of the Deity? Do we not find among the
+Aryan nations that the same superlatives, the same names of Lord and
+King, of Master and Father, are used when the human mind is brought
+face to face with the Divine, and the human heart pours out in prayer
+and thanksgiving the feelings inspired by the presence of God?
+Brahman, in Sanskrit, meant originally Power, the same as El. It
+resisted for a long time the mythological contagion, but at last it
+yielded like all other names of God, and became the name of one God.
+By the first man who formed or fixed these names, Brahman, like El,
+and like every name of God, was meant, no doubt, as the best
+expression that could be found for the image reflected from the
+Creator upon the mind of the creature. But in none of these words can
+we see any decided proof that those who framed them had arrived at the
+clear perception of One God, and were thus secured against the danger
+of polytheism. Like Dyaus, like Indra, like Brahman, Baal and El and
+Moloch were names of God, but not yet of the One God.
+
+And we have only to follow the history of these Semitic names in order
+to see that, in spite of their superlative meaning, they proved no
+stronger bulwark against polytheism than the Latin Optimus Maximus.
+The very names which we saw explained before as meaning the Highest,
+the Lord, the Master, are represented in the Phenician mythology as
+standing to each other in the relation of Father and Son. (Renan, p.
+60.) There is hardly one single Semitic tribe which did not at times
+forget the original meaning of the names by which they called on God.
+If the Jews had remembered the meaning of El, the Omnipotent, they
+could not have worshipped Baal, the Lord, as different from El. But as
+the Aryan tribes bartered the names of their gods, and were glad to
+add the worship of Zeus to that of Uranos, the worship of Apollon to
+that of Zeus, the worship of Hermes to that of Apollon, the Semitic
+nations likewise were ready to try the gods of their neighbours. If
+there had been in the Semitic race a truly monotheistic instinct, the
+history of those nations would become perfectly unintelligible.
+Nothing is more difficult to overcome than an instinct: naturam furcâ
+expellas, tamen usque recurret. But the history even of the Jews is
+made up of an almost uninterrupted series of relapses into polytheism.
+Let us admit, on the contrary, that God had in the beginning revealed
+Himself the same to the ancestors of the whole human race. Let us then
+observe the natural divergence of the languages of man, and consider
+the peculiar difficulties that had to be overcome in framing names for
+God, and the peculiar manner in which they were overcome in the
+Semitic and Aryan languages, and everything that follows will be
+intelligible. If we consider the abundance of synonymes into which all
+ancient languages burst out at their first starting--if we remember
+that there were hundreds of names for the earth and the sky, the sun
+and the moon, we shall not be surprised at meeting with more than one
+name for God both among the Semitic and the Aryan nations. If we
+consider how easily the radical or significative elements of words
+were absorbed and obscured in the Aryan, and how they stood out in
+bold relief in the Semitic languages, we shall appreciate the
+difficulty which the Shemites experienced in framing any name that
+should not seem to take too one-sided a view of the Deity by
+predicating but one quality, whether strength, dominion, or majesty;
+and we shall equally perceive the snare which their very language laid
+for the Aryan nations, by supplying them with a number of words which,
+though they seemed harmless as meaning nothing except what by
+tradition or definition they were made to mean, yet were full of
+mischief owing to the recollections which, at any time, they might
+revive. Dyaus in itself was as good a name as any for God, and in some
+respects more appropriate than its derivative deva, the Latin deus,
+which the Romance nations still use without meaning any harm. But
+Dyaus had meant sky for too long a time to become entirely divested of
+all the old mythes or sayings which were true of Dyaus, the sky, but
+could only be retained as fables if transferred to Dyaus, God. Dyaus,
+the Bright, might be called the husband of the earth; but, when the
+same mythe was repeated of Zeus, the god, then Zeus became the husband
+of Demeter, Demeter became a goddess, a daughter sprang from their
+union, and all the sluices of mythological madness were opened. There
+were a few men, no doubt, at all times, who saw through this
+mythological phraseology, who called on God, though they called him
+Zeus, or Dyaus, or Jupiter. Xenophanes, one of the earliest Greek
+heretics, boldly maintained that there was but 'one God, and that He
+was not like unto men, either in body or mind.'[102] A poet in the
+Veda asserts distinctly, 'They call Him Indra, Mitra, Varu_n_a, Agni;
+then He is the well-winged heavenly Garutmat; that which is One the
+wise call it many ways--they call it Agni, Yama, Mâtari_s_van.'[103]
+
+[Footnote 102: Xenophanes, about contemporary with Cyrus, as quoted by
+Clemens Alex., Strom. v, p. 601,--εἲϛ θεὀς ἒν τε θεοῖσι καἰ ἀνθρὡποισι
+μἑγιστος, οὔτε δἑμας θνητοῖσιν ὁμοἳἱος οὐδἐ νοἡμα.]
+
+[Footnote 103: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' by M. M., p.
+567.]
+
+But, on the whole, the charm of mythology prevailed among the Aryan
+nations, and a return to the primitive intuition of God and a total
+negation of all gods, wore rendered more difficult to the Aryan than
+to the Semitic man. The Semitic man had hardly ever to resist the
+allurements of mythology. The names with which he invoked the Deity
+did not trick him by their equivocal character. Nevertheless, these
+Semitic names, too, though predicative in the beginning, became
+subjective, and from being the various names of One Being, lapsed into
+names of various beings. Hence arose a danger which threatened
+well-nigh to bar to the Semitic race the approach to the conception
+and worship of the One God.
+
+Nowhere can we see this danger more clearly than in the history of the
+Jews. The Jews had, no doubt, preserved, from the beginning the idea
+of God, and their names of God contained nothing but what might by
+right be ascribed to Him. They worshipped a single God, and, whenever
+they fell into idolatry, they felt that they had fallen away from God.
+But that God, under whatever name they invoked Him, was especially
+their God, their own national God, and His existence did not exclude
+the existence of other gods or demons. Of the ancestors of Abraham and
+Nachor, even of their father Terah, we know that in old time, when
+they dwelt on the other side of the flood, they served other gods
+(Joshua xxiv. 2). At the time of Joshua these gods were not yet
+forgotten, and instead of denying their existence altogether, Joshua
+only exhorts the people to put away the gods which their fathers
+served on the other side of the flood and in Egypt, and to serve the
+Lord: 'Choose ye this day,' he says, 'whom you will serve; whether the
+gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the
+flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell; but as
+for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.'
+
+Such a speech, exhorting the people to make their choice between
+various gods, would have been unmeaning if addressed to a nation which
+had once conceived the unity of the Godhead. Even images of the gods
+were not unknown to the family of Abraham, for, though we know nothing
+of the exact form of the teraphim, or images which Rachel stole from
+her father, certain it is that Laban calls them his gods (Genesis
+xxxi. 19, 30). But what is much more significant than these traces of
+polytheism and idolatry is the hesitating tone in which some of the
+early patriarchs speak of their God. When Jacob flees before Esau into
+Padan-Aram and awakes from his vision at Bethel, he does not profess
+his faith in the One God, but he bargains, and says, 'If God will be
+with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me
+bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my
+father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God: and this
+stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house: and of all
+that thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee'
+(Genesis xxviii. 20-22). Language of this kind evinces not only a
+temporary want of faith in God, but it shows that the conception of
+God had not yet acquired that complete universality which alone
+deserves to be called monotheism, or belief in the One God. To him who
+has seen God face to face there is no longer any escape or doubt as to
+who is to be his god; God is his god, whatever befall. But this Jacob
+learnt not until he had struggled and wrestled with God, and committed
+himself to His care at the very time when no one else could have
+saved him. In that struggle Jacob asked for the true name of God, and
+he learnt from God that His name was secret (Genesis xxxii. 29). After
+that, his God was no longer one of many gods. His faith was not like
+the faith of Jethro (Exodus xxvii. 11), the priest of Midian, the
+father-in-law of Moses, who when he heard of all that God had done for
+Moses acknowledged that God (Jehovah) was greater than all gods
+(Elohim). This is not yet faith in the One God. It is a faith hardly
+above the faith of the people who were halting between Jehovah and
+Baal, and who only when they saw what the Lord did for Elijah, fell on
+their faces and said, 'The Lord He is the God.'
+
+And yet this limited faith in Jehovah as the God of the Jews, as a God
+more powerful than the gods of the heathen, as a God above all gods,
+betrays itself again and again in the history of the Jews. The idea of
+many gods is there, and wherever that idea exists, wherever the plural
+of god is used in earnest, there is polytheism. It is not so much the
+names of Zeus, Hermes, &c., which constitute the polytheism of the
+Greeks; it is the plural θεοἱ, gods, which contains the
+fatal spell. We do not know what M. Renan means when he says that
+Jehovah with the Jews 'n'est pas le plus grand entre plusieurs dieux;
+c'est le Dieu unique.' It was so with Abraham, it was so after Jacob
+had been changed into Israel, it was so with Moses, Elijah, and
+Jeremiah. But what is the meaning of the very first commandment, 'Thou
+shalt have no other gods before me?' Could this command have been
+addressed to a nation to whom the plural of God was a nonentity? It
+might be answered that the plural of God was to the Jews as revolting
+as it is to us, that it was revolting to their faith, if not to their
+reason. But how was it that their language tolerated the plural of a
+word which excludes plurality as much as the word for the centre of a
+sphere? No man who had clearly perceived the unity of God, could say
+with the Psalmist (lxxxvi. 8), 'Among the gods there is none like unto
+Thee, O Lord, neither are there any works like unto Thy works.' Though
+the same poet says, 'Thou art God alone,' he could not have compared
+God with other gods, if his idea of God had really reached that
+all-embracing character which it had with Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and
+Jeremiah. Nor would God have been praised as the 'great king above all
+gods' by a poet in whose eyes the gods of the heathen had been
+recognised as what they were--mighty shadows, thrown by the mighty
+works of God, and intercepting for a time the pure light of the
+Godhead.
+
+We thus arrive at a different conviction from that which M. Renan has
+made the basis of the history of the Semitic race. We can see nothing
+that would justify the admission of a monotheistic instinct, granted
+to the Semitic, and withheld from the Aryan race. They both share in
+the primitive intuition of God, they are both exposed to dangers in
+framing names for God, and they both fall into polytheism. What is
+peculiar to the Aryan race is their mythological phraseology,
+superadded to their polytheism; what is peculiar to the Semitic race
+is their belief in a national god--in a god chosen by his people as
+his people had been chosen by him.
+
+No doubt, M. Renan might say that we ignored his problem, and that we
+have not removed the difficulties which drove him to the admission of
+a monotheistic instinct. How is the fact to be explained, he might
+ask, that the three great religions of the world in which the unity of
+the Deity forms the key-note, are of Semitic origin, and that the
+Aryan nations, wherever they have been brought to a worship of the One
+God, invoke Him with names borrowed from the Semitic languages?
+
+But let us look more closely at the facts before we venture on
+theories. Mohammedanism, no doubt, is a Semitic religion, and its very
+core is monotheism. But did Mohammed invent monotheism? Did he invent
+even a new name of God? (Renan, p. 23.) Not at all. His object was to
+destroy the idolatry of the Semitic tribes of Arabia, to dethrone the
+angels, the Jin, the sons and daughters who had been assigned to
+Allah, and to restore the faith of Abraham in one God. (Renan, p. 37.)
+
+And how is it with Christianity? Did Christ come to preach a faith in
+a new God? Did He or His disciples invent a new name of God? No,
+Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil; and the God whom He
+preached was the God of Abraham.
+
+And who is the God of Jeremiah, of Elijah, and of Moses? We answer
+again, the God of Abraham.
+
+Thus the faith in the One living God, which seemed to require the
+admission of a monotheistic instinct, grafted in every member of the
+Semitic family, is traced back to one man, to him 'in whom all
+families of the earth shall be blessed' (Genesis xii. 3, Acts iii. 25,
+Galatians iii. 8). If from our earliest childhood we have looked upon
+Abraham, the friend of God, with love and veneration; if our first
+impressions of a truly god-fearing life were taken from him, who left
+the land of his fathers to live a stranger in the land whither God
+had called him, who always listened to the voice of God, whether it
+conveyed to him the promise of a son in his old age, or the command to
+sacrifice that son, his only son Isaac, his venerable figure will
+assume still more majestic proportions when we see in him the
+life-spring of that faith which was to unite all the nations of the
+earth, and the author of that blessing which was to come on the
+Gentiles through Jesus Christ.
+
+And if we are asked how this one Abraham possessed not only the
+primitive intuition of God as He had revealed Himself to all mankind,
+but passed through the denial of all other gods to the knowledge of
+the one God, we are content to answer that it was by a special Divine
+Revelation. We do not indulge in theological phraseology, but we mean
+every word to its fullest extent. The Father of Truth chooses His own
+prophets, and He speaks to them in a voice stronger than the voice of
+thunder. It is the same inner voice through which God speaks to all of
+us. That voice may dwindle away, and become hardly audible; it may
+lose its Divine accent, and sink into the language of worldly
+prudence; but it may also, from time to time, assume its real nature,
+with the chosen of God, and sound into their ears as a voice from
+Heaven. A 'divine instinct' may sound more scientific, and less
+theological; but in truth it would neither be an appropriate name for
+what is a gift or grace accorded to but few, nor would it be a more
+scientific, i. e. a more intelligible word than 'special revelation.'
+
+The important point, however, is not whether the faith of Abraham
+should be called a divine instinct or a revelation; what we wish here
+to insist on is that that instinct, or that revelation, was special,
+granted to one man, and handed down from him to Jews, Christians, and
+Mohammedans, to all who believe in the God of Abraham. Nor was it
+granted to Abraham entirely as a free gift. Abraham was tried and
+tempted before he was trusted by God. He had to break with the faith
+of his fathers; he had to deny the gods who were worshipped by his
+friends and neighbours. Like all the friends of God, he had to hear
+himself called an infidel and atheist, and in our own days he would
+have been looked upon as a madman for attempting to slay his son. It
+was through special faith that Abraham received his special
+revelation, not through instinct, not through abstract meditation, not
+through ecstatic visions. We want to know more of that man than we do;
+but, even with the little we know of him, he stands before us as a
+figure second only to one in the whole history of the world. We see
+his zeal for God, but we never see him contentious. Though Melchisedek
+worshipped God under a different name, invoking Him as Eliun, the Most
+High, Abraham at once acknowledged in Melchisedek a worshipper and
+priest of the true God, or Elohim, and paid him tithes. In the very
+name of Elohim we seem to trace the conciliatory spirit of Abraham.
+Elohim is a plural, though it is followed by the verb in the singular.
+It is generally said that the genius of the Semitic languages
+countenances the use of plurals for abstract conceptions, and that
+when Jehovah is called Elohim, the plural should be translated by 'the
+Deity.' We do not deny the fact, but we wish for an explanation, and
+an explanation is suggested by the various phases through which, as
+we saw, the conception of God passed in the ancient history of the
+Semitic mind. Eloah was at first the name for God, and as it is found
+in all the dialects of the Semitic family except the Phenician (Renan,
+p. 61), it may probably be considered as the most ancient name of the
+Deity, sanctioned at a time when the original Semitic speech had not
+yet branched off into national dialects. When this name was first used
+in the plural, it could only have signified, like every plural, many
+Eloahs, and such a plural could only have been formed after the
+various names of God had become the names of independent deities, i.
+e. during a polytheistic stage. The transition from this into the
+monotheistic stage could be effected in two ways--either by denying
+altogether the existence of the Elohim, and changing them into devils,
+as the Zoroastrians did with the Devas of their Brahmanic ancestors;
+or by taking a higher view, and looking upon the Elohim as so many
+names, invented with the honest purpose of expressing the various
+aspects of the Deity, though in time diverted from their original
+purpose. This is the view taken by St. Paul of the religion of the
+Greeks when he came to declare unto them 'Him whom they ignorantly
+worshipped,' and the same view was taken by Abraham. Whatever the
+names of the Elohim, worshipped by the numerous clans of his race,
+Abraham saw that all the Elohim were meant for God, and thus Elohim,
+comprehending by one name everything that ever had been or could be
+called divine, became the name with which the monotheistic age was
+rightly inaugurated,--a plural, conceived and construed as a singular.
+Jehovah was all the Elohim, and therefore there could be no other God.
+From this point of view the Semitic name of the Deity, Elohim, which
+seemed at first not only ungrammatical but irrational, becomes
+perfectly clear and intelligible, and it proves better than anything
+else that the true monotheism could not have risen except on the ruins
+of a polytheistic faith. It is easy to scoff at the gods of the
+heathen, but a cold-hearted philosophical negation of the gods of the
+ancient world is more likely to lead to Deism or Atheism than to a
+belief in the One living God, the Father of all mankind, 'who hath
+made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of
+the earth; and hath determined the times before appointed, and the
+bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply
+they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from
+every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as
+certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also His
+offspring.'
+
+Taking this view of the historical growth of the idea of God, many of
+the difficulties which M. Renan has to overcome by most elaborate and
+sometimes hair-splitting arguments, disappear at once. M. Renan, for
+instance, dwells much on Semitic proper names in which the names of
+the Deity occur, and he thinks that, like the Greek names Theodorus or
+Theodotus, instead of Zenodotus, they prove the existence of a faith
+in one God. We should say they may or may not. As Devadatta, in
+Sanskrit, may mean either 'given by God,' or 'given by the gods,' so
+every proper name which M. Renan quotes, whether of Jews, or Edomites,
+Ishmaelites, Ammonites, Moabites, and Themanites, whether from the
+Bible, or from Arab historians, from Greek authors, Greek
+inscriptions, the Egyptian papyri, the Himyaritic and Sinaitic
+inscriptions and ancient coins, are all open to two interpretations.
+'The servant of Baal' may mean the servant of the Lord, but it may
+also mean the servant of Baal, as one of many lords, or even the
+servant of the Baalim or the Lords. The same applies to all other
+names. 'The gift of El' may mean 'the gift of the only strong God;'
+but it may likewise mean 'the gift of the El,' as one of many gods, or
+even 'the gift of the Els,' in the sense of the strong gods. Nor do we
+see why M. Renan should take such pains to prove that the name of
+Orotal or Orotulat, mentioned by Herodotos (III. 8), may be
+interpreted as the name of a supreme deity; and that Alilat, mentioned
+by the same traveller, should be taken, not as the name of a goddess,
+but as a feminine noun expressive of the abstract sense of the deity.
+Herodotos says distinctly that Orotal was a deity like Bacchus; and
+Alilat, as he translates her name by Οὐρανἱη, must have
+appeared to him as a goddess, and not as the Supreme Deity. One verse
+of the Koran is sufficient to show that the Semitic inhabitants of
+Arabia worshipped not only gods, but goddesses also. 'What think ye of
+Allat, al Uzza, and Manah, that other third goddess?'
+
+If our view of the development of the idea of God be correct, we can
+perfectly understand how, in spite of this polytheistic phraseology,
+the primitive intuition of God should make itself felt from time to
+time, long before Mohammed restored the belief of Abraham in one God.
+The old Arabic prayer mentioned by Abulfarag may be perfectly genuine:
+'I dedicate myself to thy service, O God! Thou hast no companion,
+except thy companion, of whom thou art absolute master, and of
+whatever is his.' The verse pointed out to M. Renan by M. Caussin de
+Perceval from the Moallaka of Zoheyr, was certainly anterior to
+Mohammed: 'Try not to hide your secret feelings from the sight of
+Allah; Allah knows all that is hidden.' But these quotations serve no
+more to establish the universality of the monotheistic instinct in the
+Semitic race than similar quotations from the Veda would prove the
+existence of a conscious monotheism among the ancestors of the Aryan
+race. There too we read, 'Agni knows what is secret among mortals'
+(Rig-veda VIII. 39, 6): and again, 'He, the upholder of order,
+Varu_n_a, sits down among his people; he, the wise, sits there to
+govern. From thence perceiving all wondrous things, he sees what has
+been and what will be done.'[104] But in these very hymns, better than
+anywhere else, we learn that the idea of supremacy and omnipotence
+ascribed to one god did by no means exclude the admission of other
+gods, or names of God. All the other gods disappear from the vision of
+the poet while he addresses his own God, and he only who is to fulfil
+his desires stands in full light before the eyes of the worshipper as
+the supreme and only God.
+
+[Footnote 104: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' by M. M., p.
+536.]
+
+The Science of Religion is only just beginning, and we must take care
+how we impede its progress by preconceived notions or too hasty
+generalizations. During the last fifty years the authentic documents
+of the most important religions of the world have been recovered in a
+most unexpected and almost miraculous manner. We have now before us
+the canonical books of Buddhism; the Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster is no
+longer a sealed book; and the hymns of the Rig-veda have revealed a
+state of religion anterior to the first beginnings of that mythology
+which in Homer and Hesiod stands before us as a mouldering ruin. The
+soil of Mesopotamia has given back the very images once worshipped by
+the most powerful of the Semitic tribes, and the cuneiform
+inscriptions of Babylon and Nineveh have disclosed the very prayers
+addressed to Baal or Nisroch. With the discovery of these documents a
+new era begins in the study of religion. We begin to see more clearly
+every day what St. Paul meant in his sermon at Athens. But as the
+excavator at Babylon or Nineveh, before he ventures to reconstruct the
+palaces of these ancient kingdoms, sinks his shafts into the ground
+slowly and circumspectly lest he should injure the walls of the
+ancient palaces which he is disinterring; as he watches every
+corner-stone lest he mistake their dark passages and galleries, and as
+he removes with awe and trembling the dust and clay from the brittle
+monuments lest he destroy their outlines, and obliterate their
+inscriptions, so it behoves the student of the history of religion to
+set to work carefully, lest he should miss the track, and lose himself
+in an inextricable maze. The relics which he handles are more precious
+than the ruins of Babylon; the problems he has to solve are more
+important than the questions of ancient chronology; and the
+substructions which he hopes one day to lay bare are the world-wide
+foundations of the eternal kingdom of God.
+
+We look forward with the highest expectations to the completion of M.
+Renan's work, and though English readers will differ from many of the
+author's views, and feel offended now and then at his blunt and
+unguarded language, we doubt not that they will find his volumes both
+instructive and suggestive. They are written in that clear and
+brilliant style which has secured to M. Renan the rank of one of the
+best writers of French, and which throws its charm even over the dry
+and abstruse inquiries into the grammatical forms and radical elements
+of the Semitic languages.
+
+_April, 1860._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Note: List of corrections.
+
+Duplication of paragraphs.
+
+Page xix
+
+Duplication of pages.
+
+3 pages after 236
+
+Missing text
+
+Page xviii - last paragraph
+
+Page xxviii - last paragraph
+
+Page 18
+
+Page 46
+
+Page 89
+
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+
+Page 99
+
+Page 116
+
+Pages missing
+
+3 pages after 233
+
+The page numbers have gone awry because of the corrections. Any
+reference to page numbers may be made to the Internet Archive edition.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I, by 
+Friedrich Max  M�ller
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I
+       Essays on the Science of Religion
+
+Author: Friedrich Max  M�ller
+
+Release Date: February 26, 2008 [EBook #24686]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Geetu Melwani, Thierry
+Alberto, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's Note:
+
+This book had a number of typesetting errors such as missing text,
+pages, duplicate pages, and text. The text has been verified with the
+etext available with the Internet Archives
+(http://www.archive.org/details/germanwork01mulluoft) and corrected
+with the addition of missing text and removal of duplicate text. The
+Internet archive edition is a 1872 edition whereas this is a 1867
+edition.
+
+Details of corrections and additions are given at the end of the book.
+
+
+
+                                CHIPS
+
+                       FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                           MAX M�LLER, M.A.
+
+                 FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD.
+
+
+
+
+
+                              VOLUME I.
+
+                  Essays on the Science of Religion.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                LONDON
+
+                       LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
+
+                                 1867
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_To the Memory_
+
+OF
+
+BARON BUNSEN,
+
+MY FRIEND AND BENEFACTOR.
+
+
+
+
+                      _et quanto diutius
+    Abes, magis cupio tanto et magis desidero._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+More than twenty years have passed since my revered friend Bunsen
+called me one day into his library at Carlton House Terrace, and
+announced to me with beaming eyes that the publication of the Rig-veda
+was secure. He had spent many days in seeing the Directors of the
+East-India Company, and explaining to them the importance of this
+work, and the necessity of having it published in England. At last his
+efforts had been successful, the funds for printing my edition of the
+text and commentary of the Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans had been
+granted, and Bunsen was the first to announce to me the happy result
+of his literary diplomacy. 'Now,' he said, 'you have got a work for
+life--a large block that will take years to plane and polish.' 'But
+mind,' he added, 'let us have from time to time some chips from your
+workshop.'
+
+I have tried to follow the advice of my departed friend, and I have
+published almost every year a few articles on such subjects as had
+engaged my attention, while prosecuting at the same time, as far as
+altered circumstances would allow, my edition of the Rig-veda, and of
+other Sanskrit works connected with it. These articles were chiefly
+published in the 'Edinburgh' and 'Quarterly Reviews,' in the 'Oxford
+Essays,' in 'Macmillan's' and 'Fraser's Magazines,' in the 'Saturday
+Review,' and in the 'Times.' In writing them my principal endeavour
+has been to bring out even in the most abstruse subjects the points of
+real interest that ought to engage the attention of the public at
+large, and never to leave a dark nook or corner without attempting to
+sweep away the cobwebs of false learning, and let in the light of real
+knowledge. Here, too, I owe much to Bunsen's advice, and when last
+year I saw in Cornwall the large heaps of copper ore piled up around
+the mines, like so many heaps of rubbish, while the poor people were
+asking for coppers to buy bread, I frequently thought of Bunsen's
+words, 'Your work is not finished when you have brought the ore from
+the mine: it must be sifted, smelted, refined, and coined before it
+can be of real use, and contribute towards the intellectual food of
+mankind.' I can hardly hope that in this my endeavour to be clear and
+plain, to follow the threads of every thought to the very ends, and to
+place the web of every argument clearly and fully before my readers, I
+have always been successful. Several of the subjects treated in these
+essays are, no doubt, obscure and difficult: but there is no subject,
+I believe, in the whole realm of human knowledge, that cannot be
+rendered clear and intelligible, if we ourselves have perfectly
+mastered it. And now while the two last volumes of my edition of the
+Rig-veda are passing through the press, I thought the time had come
+for gathering up a few armfulls of these chips and splinters, throwing
+away what seemed worthless, and putting the rest into some kind of
+shape, in order to clear my workshop for other work.
+
+The first and second volumes which I am now publishing contain essays
+on the early thoughts of mankind, whether religious or mythological,
+and on early traditions and customs. There is to my mind no subject
+more absorbing than the tracing the origin and first growth of human
+thought;--not theoretically, or in accordance with the Hegelian laws
+of thought, or the Comtian epochs; but historically, and like an
+Indian trapper, spying for every footprint, every layer, every broken
+blade that might tell and testify of the former presence of man in his
+early wanderings and searchings after light and truth.
+
+In the languages of mankind, in which everything new is old and
+everything old is new, an inexhaustible mine has been discovered for
+researches of this kind. Language still bears the impress of the
+earliest thoughts of man, obliterated, it may be, buried under new
+thoughts, yet here and there still recoverable in their sharp original
+outline. The growth of language is continuous, and by continuing our
+researches backward from the most modern to the most ancient strata,
+the very elements and roots of human speech have been reached, and
+with them the elements and roots of human thought. What lies beyond
+the beginnings of language, however interesting it may be to the
+physiologist, does not yet belong to the history of man, in the true
+and original sense of that word. Man means the thinker, and the first
+manifestation of thought is speech.
+
+But more surprising than the continuity in the growth of language, is
+the continuity in the growth of religion. Of religion, too, as of
+language, it may be said that in it everything new is old, and
+everything old is new, and that there has been no entirely new
+religion since the beginning of the world. The elements and roots of
+religion were there, as far back as we can trace the history of man;
+and the history of religion, like the history of language, shows us
+throughout a succession of new combinations of the same radical
+elements. An intuition of God, a sense of human weakness and
+dependence, a belief in a Divine government of the world, a
+distinction between good and evil, and a hope of a better life, these
+are some of the radical elements of all religions. Though sometimes
+hidden, they rise again and again to the surface. Though frequently
+distorted, they tend again and again to their perfect form. Unless
+they had formed part of the original dowry of the human soul, religion
+itself would have remained an impossibility, and the tongues of
+angels would have been to human ears but as sounding brass or a
+tinkling cymbal. If we once understand this clearly, the words of St.
+Augustine which have seemed startling to many of his admirers, become
+perfectly clear and intelligible, when he says:[1] 'What is now called
+the Christian religion, has existed among the ancients, and was not
+absent from the beginning of the human race, until Christ came in the
+flesh: from which time the true religion, which existed already, began
+to be called Christian.' From this point of view the words of Christ
+too, which startled the Jews, assume their true meaning, when He said
+to the centurion of Capernaum: 'Many shall come from the east and the
+west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the
+kingdom of heaven.'
+
+[Footnote 1: August. Retr. 1, 13. 'Res ipsa, qu� nunc religio
+Christiana nuncupatur, erat apud antiquos, nec defuit ab initio
+generis humani, quousque Christus veniret in carnem, unde vera
+religio, qu� jam erat, coepit appellari Christiana.']
+
+During the last fifty years the accumulation of new and authentic
+materials for the study of the religions of the world, has been most
+extraordinary; but such are the difficulties in mastering these
+materials that I doubt whether the time has yet come for attempting to
+trace, after the model of the Science of Language, the definite
+outlines of the Science of Religion. By a succession of the most
+fortunate circumstances, the canonical books of three of the
+principal religions of the ancient world have lately been recovered,
+the Veda, the Zend-Avesta, and the Tripi_t_aka. But not only have we
+thus gained access to the most authentic documents from which to study
+the ancient religion of the Brahmans, the Zoroastrians, and the
+Buddhists, but by discovering the real origin of Greek, Roman, and
+likewise of Teutonic, Slavonic, and Celtic mythology, it has become
+possible to separate the truly religious elements in the sacred
+traditions of these nations from the mythological crust by which they
+are surrounded, and thus to gain a clearer insight into the real faith
+of the ancient Aryan world.
+
+If we turn to the Semitic world, we find that although no new
+materials have been discovered from which to study the ancient
+religion of the Jews, yet a new spirit of inquiry has brought new life
+into the study of the sacred records of Abraham, Moses, and the
+Prophets; and the recent researches of Biblical scholars, though
+starting from the most opposite points, have all helped to bring out
+the historical interest of the Old Testament, in a manner not dreamt
+of by former theologians. The same may be said of another Semitic
+religion, the religion of Mohammed, since the Koran and the literature
+connected with it were submitted to the searching criticism of real
+scholars and historians. Some new materials for the study of the
+Semitic religions have come from the monuments of Babylon and
+Nineveh. The very images of Bel and Nisroch now stand before our
+eyes, and the inscriptions on the tablets may hereafter tell us even
+more of the thoughts of those who bowed their knees before them. The
+religious worship of the Phenicians and Carthaginians has been
+illustrated by Movers from the ruins of their ancient temples, and
+from scattered notices in classical writers; nay, even the religious
+ideas of the Nomads of the Arabian peninsula, previous to the rise of
+Mohammedanism, have been brought to light by the patient researches of
+Oriental scholars.
+
+There is no lack of idols among the ruined and buried temples of Egypt
+with which to reconstruct the pantheon of that primeval country: nor
+need we despair of recovering more and more of the thoughts buried
+under the hieroglyphics of the inscriptions, or preserved in hieratic
+and demotic MSS., if we watch the brilliant discoveries that have
+rewarded the patient researches of the disciples of Champollion.
+
+Besides the Aryan and Semitic families of religion, we have in China
+three recognised forms of public worship, the religion of Confucius,
+that of Lao-tse, and that of Fo (Buddha); and here, too, recent
+publications have shed new light, and have rendered an access to the
+canonical works of these religions, and an understanding of their
+various purports, more easy, even to those who have not mastered the
+intricacies of the Chinese language.
+
+Among the Turanian nations, a few only, such as the Finns, and the
+Mongolians, have preserved some remnants of their ancient worship and
+mythology, and these too have lately been more carefully collected and
+explained by d'Ohson, Castr�n, and others.
+
+In America the religions of Mexico and Peru had long attracted the
+attention of theologians; and of late years the impulse imparted to
+ethnological researches has induced travellers and missionaries to
+record any traces of religious life that could be discovered among the
+savage inhabitants of Africa, America, and the Polynesian islands.
+
+It will be seen from these few indications, that there is no lack of
+materials for the student of religion; but we shall also perceive how
+difficult it is to master such vast materials. To gain a full
+knowledge of the Veda, or the Zend-Avesta, or the Tripi_t_aka, of the
+Old Testament, the Koran, or the sacred books of China, is the work of
+a whole life. How then is one man to survey the whole field of
+religious thought, to classify the religions of the world according to
+definite and permanent criteria, and to describe their characteristic
+features with a sure and discriminating hand?
+
+Nothing is more difficult to seize than the salient features, the
+traits that constitute the permanent expression and real character of
+a religion. Religion seems to be the common property of a large
+community, and yet it not only varies in numerous sects, as language
+does in its dialects, but it really escapes our firm grasp till we can
+trace it to its real habitat, the heart of one true believer. We speak
+glibly of Buddhism and Brahmanism, forgetting that we are generalizing
+on the most intimate convictions of millions and millions of human
+souls, divided by half the world and by thousands of years.
+
+It may be said that at all events where a religion possesses canonical
+books, or a definite number of articles, the task of the student of
+religion becomes easier, and this, no doubt, is true to a certain
+extent. But even then we know that the interpretation of these
+canonical books varies, so much so that sects appealing to the same
+revealed authorities, as, for instance, the founders of the Ved�nta
+and the S�nkhya systems, accuse each other of error, if not of wilful
+error or heresy. Articles too, though drawn up with a view to define
+the principal doctrines of a religion, lose much of their historical
+value by the treatment they receive from subsequent schools; and they
+are frequently silent on the very points which make religion what it
+is.
+
+A few instances may serve to show what difficulties the student of
+religion has to contend with, before he can hope firmly to grasp the
+facts on which his theories are to be based.
+
+Roman Catholic missionaries who had spent their lives in China, who
+had every opportunity, while staying at the court of Pekin, of
+studying in the original the canonical works of Confucius and their
+commentaries, who could consult the greatest theologians then living,
+and converse with the crowds that thronged the temples of the capital,
+differed diametrically in their opinions as to the most vital points
+in the state religion of China. Lecomte, Fouquet, Pr�mare, and Bouvet
+thought it undeniable that Confucius, his predecessors and his
+disciples, had entertained the noblest ideas on the constitution of
+the universe, and had sacrificed to the true God in the most ancient
+temple of the earth. According to Maigrot, Navarette, on the contrary,
+and even according to the Jesuit Longobardi, the adoration of the
+Chinese was addressed to inanimate tablets, meaningless inscriptions,
+or, in the best case, to coarse ancestral spirits and beings without
+intelligence.[2] If we believe the former, the ancient deism of China
+approached the purity of the Christian religion; if we listen to the
+latter, the absurd fetichism of the multitude degenerated amongst the
+educated, into systematic materialism and atheism. In answer to the
+peremptory texts quoted by one party, the other adduced the glosses of
+accredited interpreters, and the dispute of the missionaries who had
+lived in China and knew Chinese, had to be settled in the last
+instance by a decision of the see of Rome.
+
+[Footnote 2: Abel R�musat, 'M�langes,' p. 162.]
+
+There is hardly any religion that has been studied in its sacred
+literature, and watched in its external worship with greater care
+than the modern religion of the Hindus, and yet it would be extremely
+hard to give a faithful and intelligible description of it. Most
+people who have lived in India would maintain that the Indian
+religion, as believed in and practised at present by the mass of the
+people, is idol worship and nothing else. But let us hear one of the
+mass of the people, a Hindu of Benares, who in a lecture delivered
+before an English and native audience defends his faith and the faith
+of his forefathers against such sweeping accusations. 'If by
+idolatry,' he says, "is meant a system of worship which confines our
+ideas of the Deity to a mere image of clay or stone, which prevents
+our hearts from being expanded and elevated with lofty notions of the
+attributes of God, if this is what is meant by idolatry, we disclaim
+idolatry, we abhor idolatry, and deplore the ignorance or
+uncharitableness of those that charge us with this grovelling system
+of worship.... But if, firmly believing, as we do, in the omnipresence
+of God, we behold, by the aid of our imagination, in the form of an
+image any of his glorious manifestations, ought we to be charged with
+identifying them with the matter of the image, whilst during those
+moments of sincere and fervent devotion, we do not even think of
+matter? If at the sight of a portrait of a beloved and venerated
+friend no longer existing in this world, our heart is filled with
+sentiments of love and reverence; if we fancy him present in the
+picture, still looking upon us with his wonted tenderness and
+affection, and then indulge our feelings of love and gratitude, should
+we be charged with offering the grossest insult to him--that of
+fancying him to be no other than a piece of painted paper?... We
+really lament the ignorance or uncharitableness of those who confound
+our representative worship with the Phenician, Grecian, or Roman
+idolatry as represented by European writers, and then charge us with
+polytheism in the teeth of thousands of texts in the Pur�_n_as
+declaring in clear and unmistakable terms that there is but one God
+who manifests Himself as Brahma, Vish_n_u, and Rudra (Siva), in His
+functions of creation, preservation, and destruction."[3]
+
+[Footnote 3: The modern pandit's reply to the missionary who accuses
+him of polytheism is: "O, these are only various manifestations of the
+one God; the same as, though the sun be one in the heavens, yet he
+appears in multi-form reflections upon the lake. The various sects are
+only different entrances to the one city." See W. W. Hunter, _Annals
+of Rural Bengal_, p. 116.]
+
+In support of these statements, this eloquent advocate quotes numerous
+passages from the sacred literature of the Brahmans, and he sums up
+his view of the three manifestations of the Deity in the words of
+their great poet Kalid�sa, as translated by Mr. Griffith:--
+
+    "In those Three Persons the One God was shown:
+    Each First in place, each Last,--not one alone;
+    Of Siva, Vish_n_u, Brahma, each may be
+    First, second, third, among the Blessed Three."
+
+If such contradictory views can be held and defended with regard to
+religious systems still prevalent amongst us, where we can
+cross-examine living witnesses, and appeal to chapter and verse in
+their sacred writings, what must the difficulty be when we have to
+deal with the religions of the past? I do not wish to disguise these
+difficulties which are inherent in a comparative study of the
+religions of the world. I rather dwell on them strongly, in order to
+show how much care and caution is required in so difficult a subject,
+and how much indulgence should be shown in judging of the shortcomings
+and errors that are unavoidable in so comprehensive a study. It was
+supposed at one time that a comparative analysis of the languages of
+mankind must transcend the powers of man: and yet by the combined and
+well directed efforts of many scholars, great results have here been
+obtained, and the principles that must guide the student of the
+Science of Language are now firmly established. It will be the same
+with the Science of Religion. By a proper division of labor, the
+materials that are still wanting will be collected and published and
+translated, and when that is done, surely man will never rest till he
+has discovered the purpose that runs through the religions of mankind,
+and till he has reconstructed the true _Civitas Dei_ on foundations as
+wide as the ends of the world. The Science of Religion may be the last
+of the sciences which man is destined to elaborate; but when it is
+elaborated, it will change the aspect of the world, and give a new
+life to Christianity itself.
+
+The Fathers of the Church, though living in much more dangerous
+proximity to the ancient religions of the Gentiles, admitted freely
+that a comparison of Christianity and other religions was useful. "If
+there is any agreement," Basilius remarked, "between their (the
+Greeks') doctrines and our own, it may benefit us to know them: if
+not, then to compare them and to learn how they differ, will help not
+a little towards confirming that which is the better of the two."[4]
+
+[Footnote 4: Basilius, _De legendis Gr�c._ libris, c. v. [Greek: Ei men oun
+esti tis oikeiot�s pros all�lous tois logois, prourgou an h�min aut�n h�
+gn�sis genoito. ei de m�, alla to ge parall�la thentas katamathein to
+diaphoron, ou mikron eis bebai�sis beltionos.]]
+
+But this is not the only advantage of a comparative study of
+religions. The Science of Religion will for the first time assign to
+Christianity its right place among the religions of the world; it will
+show for the first time fully what was meant by the fulness of time;
+it will restore to the whole history of the world, in its unconscious
+progress towards Christianity, its true and sacred character.
+
+Not many years ago great offence was given by an eminent writer who
+remarked that the time had come when the history of Christianity
+should be treated in a truly historical spirit, in the same spirit in
+which we treat the history of other religions, such as Brahmanism,
+Buddhism, or Mohammedanism. And yet what can be truer? He must be a
+man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the
+same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other
+religions. We need not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment
+for that faith which we hold to be the only true one. We should rather
+challenge for it the severest tests and trials, as the sailor would
+for the good ship to which he entrusts his own life, and the lives of
+those who are most dear to him. In the Science of Religion, we can
+decline no comparisons, nor claim any immunities for Christianity, as
+little as the missionary can, when wrestling with the subtle Brahman,
+or the fanatical Mussulman, or the plain speaking Zulu. And if we send
+out our missionaries to every part of the world to face every kind of
+religion, to shrink from no contest, to be appalled by no objections,
+we must not give way at home or within our own hearts to any
+misgivings, that a comparative study of the religions of the world
+could shake the firm foundations on which we must stand or fall.
+
+To the missionary more particularly a comparative study of the
+religions of mankind will be, I believe, of the greatest assistance.
+Missionaries are apt to look upon all other religions as something
+totally distinct from their own, as formerly they used to describe the
+languages of barbarous nations as something more like the twittering
+of birds than the articulate speech of men. The Science of Language
+has taught us that there is order and wisdom in all languages, and
+that even the most degraded jargons contain the ruins of former
+greatness and beauty. The Science of Religion, I hope, will produce a
+similar change in our views of barbarous forms of faith and worship;
+and missionaries, instead of looking only for points of difference,
+will look out more anxiously for any common ground, any spark of the
+true light that may still be revived, any altar that may be dedicated
+afresh to the true God.
+
+And even to us at home, a wider view of the religious life of the
+world may teach many a useful lesson. Immense as is the difference
+between our own and all other religions of the world--and few can know
+that difference who have not honestly examined the foundations of
+their own as well as of other religions--the position which believers
+and unbelievers occupy with regard to their various forms of faith is
+very much the same all over the world. The difficulties which trouble
+us, have troubled the hearts and minds of men as far back as we can
+trace the beginnings of religious life. The great problems touching
+the relation of the Finite to the Infinite, of the human mind as the
+recipient, and of the Divine Spirit as the source of truth, are old
+problems indeed; and while watching their appearance in different
+countries, and their treatment under varying circumstances, we shall
+be able, I believe, to profit ourselves, both by the errors which
+others committed before us, and by the truth which they discovered. We
+shall know the rocks that threaten every religion in this changing and
+shifting world of ours, and having watched many a storm of religious
+controversy and many a shipwreck in distant seas, we shall face with
+greater calmness and prudence the troubled waters at home.
+
+If there is one thing which a comparative study of religions places in
+the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion
+is exposed. It may seem almost like a truism, that no religion can
+continue to be what it was during the lifetime of its founder and its
+first apostles. Yet it is but seldom borne in mind that without
+constant reformation, i. e. without a constant return to its
+fountain-head, every religion, even the most perfect, nay the most
+perfect on account of its very perfection, more even than others,
+suffers from its contact with the world, as the purest air suffers
+from the mere fact of its being breathed.
+
+Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first beginnings, we find
+it free from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases.
+The founders of the ancient religions of the world, as far as we can
+judge, were minds of a high stamp, full of noble aspirations, yearning
+for truth, devoted to the welfare of their neighbours, examples of
+purity and unselfishness. What they desired to found upon earth was
+but seldom realised, and their sayings, if preserved in their original
+form, offer often a strange contrast to the practice of those who
+profess to be their disciples. As soon as a religion is established,
+and more particularly when it has become the religion of a powerful
+state, the foreign and worldly elements encroach more and more on the
+original foundation, and human interests mar the simplicity and purity
+of the plan which the founder had conceived in his own heart, and
+matured in his communings with his God. Even those who lived with
+Buddha, misunderstood his words, and at the Great Council which had to
+settle the Buddhist canon, Asoka, the Indian Constantine, had to
+remind the assembled priests that 'what had been said by Buddha, that
+alone was well said;' and that certain works ascribed to Buddha, as,
+for instance, the instruction given to his son, R�hula, were
+apocryphal, if not heretical.[5] With every century, Buddhism, when it
+was accepted by nations, differing as widely as Mongols and Hindus,
+when its sacred writings were translated into languages as wide apart
+as Sanskrit and Chinese, assumed widely different aspects, till at
+last the Buddhism of the Shamans in the steppes of Tatary is as
+different from the teaching of the original _S_ama_n_a, as the
+Christianity of the leader of the Chinese rebels is from the teaching
+of Christ. If missionaries could show to the Brahmans, the Buddhists,
+the Zoroastrians, nay, even to the Mohammedans, how much their present
+faith differs from the faith of their forefathers and founders, if
+they could place into their hands and read with them in a kindly
+spirit the original documents in which these various religions
+profess to be founded, and enable them to distinguish between the
+doctrines of their own sacred books and the additions of later ages,
+an important advantage would be gained, and the choice between Christ
+and other Masters would be rendered far more easy to many a
+truth-seeking soul. But for that purpose it is necessary that we too
+should see the beam in our own eyes, and learn to distinguish between
+the Christianity of the nineteenth century and the religion of Christ.
+If we find that the Christianity of the nineteenth century does not
+win as many hearts in India and China as it ought, let us remember
+that it was the Christianity of the first century in all its dogmatic
+simplicity, but with its overpowering love of God and man, that
+conquered the world and superseded religions and philosophies, more
+difficult to conquer than the religious and philosophical systems of
+Hindus and Buddhists. If we can teach something to the Brahmans in
+reading with them their sacred hymns, they too can teach us something
+when reading with us the Gospel of Christ. Never shall I forget the
+deep despondency of a Hindu convert, a real martyr to his faith, who
+had pictured to himself from the pages of the New Testament what a
+Christian country must be, and who when he came to Europe found
+everything so different from what he had imagined in his lonely
+meditations at Benares! It was the Bible only that saved him from
+returning to his old religion, and helped him to discern beneath
+theological futilities, accumulated during nearly two thousand years,
+beneath pharisaical hypocrisy, infidelity, and want of charity, the
+buried, but still living seed, committed to the earth by Christ and
+his Apostles. How can a missionary in such circumstances meet the
+surprise and questions of his pupils, unless he may point to that
+seed, and tell them what Christianity was meant to be; unless he may
+show that like all other religions, Christianity, too, has had its
+history; that the Christianity of the nineteenth century is not the
+Christianity of the Middle Ages, that the Christianity of the Middle
+Ages was not that of the early Councils, that the Christianity of the
+early Councils was not that of the Apostles, and 'that what has been
+said by Christ that alone was well said?'
+
+[Footnote 5: See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' Appendice, No. x. �
+4.]
+
+The advantages, however, which missionaries and other defenders of the
+faith will gain from a comparative study of religions, though
+important hereafter, are not at present the chief object of these
+researches. In order to maintain their scientific character, they must
+be independent of all extraneous considerations: they must aim at
+truth, trusting that even unpalatable truths, like unpalatable
+medicine, will reinvigorate the system into which they enter. To
+those, no doubt, who value the tenets of their religion as the miser
+values his pearls and precious stones, thinking their value lessened
+if pearls and stones of the same kind are found in other parts of the
+world, the Science of Religion will bring many a rude shock; but to
+the true believer, truth, wherever it appears, is welcome, nor will
+any doctrine seem to be less true or less precious, because it was
+seen, not only by Moses or Christ, but likewise by Buddha or Lao-tse.
+Nor should it be forgotten that while a comparison of ancient
+religions will certainly show that some of the most vital articles of
+faith are the common property of the whole of mankind, at least of all
+who seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him,
+the same comparison alone can possibly teach us what is peculiar to
+Christianity, and what has secured to it that pre-eminent position
+which now it holds in spite of all obloquy. The gain will be greater
+than the loss, if loss there be, which I, at least, shall never admit.
+
+There is a strong feeling, I know, in the minds of all people against
+any attempt to treat their own religion as a member of a class, and,
+in one sense, that feeling is perfectly justified. To each individual,
+his own religion, if he really believes in it, is something quite
+inseparable from himself, something unique, that cannot be compared to
+anything else, or replaced by anything else. Our own religion is, in
+that respect, something like our own language. In its form it may be
+like other languages; in its essence and in its relation to ourselves,
+it stands alone and admits of no peer or rival.
+
+But in the history of the world, our religion, like our own language,
+is but one out of many; and in order to understand fully the position
+of Christianity in the history of the world, and its true place among
+the religions of mankind, we must compare it, not with Jud�ism only,
+but with the religious aspirations of the whole world, with all, in
+fact, that Christianity came either to destroy or to fulfil. From this
+point of view Christianity forms part, no doubt, of what people call
+profane history, but by that very fact, profane history ceases to be
+profane, and regains throughout that sacred character of which it had
+been deprived by a false distinction. The ancient Fathers of the
+Church spoke on these subjects with far greater freedom than we
+venture to use in these days. Justin Martyr, in his 'Apology' (A.D
+139), has this memorable passage ('Apol.' i. 46): 'One article of our
+faith then is, that Christ is the first begotten of God, and we have
+already proved Him to be the very Logos (or universal Reason), of
+which mankind are all partakers; and therefore those who live
+according to the Logos are Christians, notwithstanding they may pass
+with you for Atheists; such among the Greeks were Sokrates and
+Herakleitos and the like; and such among the Barbarians were Abraham,
+and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, and Elias, and many others,
+whose actions, nay whose very names, I know, would be tedious to
+relate, and therefore shall pass them over. So, on the other side,
+those who have lived in former times in defiance of the Logos or
+Reason, were evil, and enemies to Christ and murderers of such as
+lived according to the Logos; but _they who have made or make the
+Logos or Reason the rule of their actions are Christians_, and men
+without fear and trembling.'[5_1]
+
+[Footnote 5_1:
+[Greek: Ton christon pr�thotokon tou Theou einai edidhachth�men, kai
+proem�nhysamen Lhogon onta, ou pan ghenos anthrh�p�n methesche kai oi
+meta Lhogou bih�santes christianohi eisi, kan atheoi enomhisth�san,
+oion en Ell�si men S�krhat�s kai �rhakleitos kai oi homoioi autois, en
+barbarois de Abraam kai Ananias kai Asarias kai Misa�l kai �lhias kai
+alloi polloi, �n tas praxets � ta onomata katalegein makron einai
+epistamenoi, tanyn paraitoymetha. �ste kai oi progenomenoi aneu Ldgou
+bih�santes, acr�stoi ka.]]
+
+'God,' says Clement,[6] 'is the cause of all that is good: only of
+some good gifts He is the primary cause, as of the Old and New
+Testaments, of others the secondary, as of (Greek) philosophy. But
+even philosophy may have been given primarily by Him to the Greeks,
+before the Lord had called the Greeks also. For that philosophy, like
+a teacher, has guided the Greeks also, as the Law did the Hebrews,
+towards Christ. Philosophy, therefore, prepares and opens the way to
+those who are made perfect by Christ.'
+
+[Footnote 6: Clem. Alex. Strom, lib. I, cap. v, � 28.
+[Greek: Pant�n
+men gar aitios t�n kal�n d theos, alla t�n men kata pro�goumenon, h�s
+t�s te diath�k�s t�s palaias kai t�s neas, t�n de kat epakolouth�ma, h�s
+t�s philosophias tacha de kai pro�goumen�s tois Ell�sin edoth� tote
+prin � ton kurion kalesai kai tous Ell�uas. Epaidag�gei gar kai aut�
+to Ell�nikon h�s o nomos tous Ebraious eis Christon. proparaskeuixei
+toinun � philosophia proodopoiousa ton hupo Christou teleioumenon.]]
+
+And again: 'It is clear that the same God to whom we owe the Old and
+New Testaments, gave also to the Greeks their Greek philosophy by
+which the Almighty is glorified among the Greeks.'[7]
+
+[Footnote 7: Strom, lib. VI, cap. V, � 42.
+[Greek: �ros de kai oti o
+autos theos amphoin tain diath�kain chor�gos, o kai t�s Ell�nik�s
+philosophias dot�r tois Ell�sin, di �s o pantokrat�r par Ell�si
+doxazetai, parest�sen, d�lon de kanthede.]]
+
+And Clement was by no means the only one who spoke thus freely and
+fearlessly, though, no doubt, his knowledge of Greek philosophy
+qualified him better than many of his contemporaries to speak with
+authority on such subjects.
+
+St. Augustine writes: 'If the Gentiles also had possibly something
+divine and true in their doctrines, our Saints did not find fault with
+it, although for their superstition, idolatry, and pride, and other
+evil habits, they had to be detested, and, unless they improved, to be
+punished by divine judgment. For the apostle Paul, when he said
+something about God among the Athenians, quoted the testimony of some
+of the Greeks who had said something of the same kind: and this, if
+they came to Christ, would be acknowledged in them, and not blamed.
+Saint Cyprian, too, uses such witnesses against the Gentiles. For when
+he speaks of the Magians, he says that the chief among them, Hostanes,
+maintains that the true God is invisible, and that true angels sit at
+His throne; and that Plato agrees with this, and believes in One God,
+considering the others to be angels or demons; and that Hermes
+Trismegistus also speaks of One God, and confesses that He is
+incomprehensible.' (Augustinus, 'De Baptismo contra Donatistas,' lib.
+VI, cap. xliv.)
+
+Every religion, even the most imperfect and degraded, has something
+that ought to be sacred to us, for there is in all religions a secret
+yearning after the true, though unknown, God. Whether we see the Papua
+squatting in dumb meditation before his fetish, or whether we listen
+to Firdusi exclaiming: 'The heighth and the depth of the whole world
+have their centre in Thee, O my God! I do not know Thee what Thou art:
+but I know that Thou art what Thou alone canst be,'--we ought to feel
+that the place whereon we stand is holy ground. There are
+philosophers, no doubt, to whom both Christianity and all other
+religions are exploded errors, things belonging to the past, and to be
+replaced by more positive knowledge. To them the study of the
+religions of the world could only have a pathological interest, and
+their hearts could never warm at the sparks of truth that light up,
+like stars, the dark yet glorious night of the ancient world. They
+tell us that the world has passed through the phases of religious and
+metaphysical errors, in order to arrive at the safe haven of positive
+knowledge of facts. But if they would but study positive facts, if
+they would but read, patiently and thoughtfully, the history of the
+world, as it is, not as it might have been: they would see that, as in
+geology, so in the history of human thought, theoretic uniformity does
+not exist, and that the past is never altogether lost. The oldest
+formations of thought crop out everywhere, and if we dig but deep
+enough, we shall find that even the sandy desert in which we are asked
+to live, rests everywhere on the firm foundation of that primeval, yet
+indestructible granite of the human soul,--religious faith.
+
+There are other philosophers again who would fain narrow the limits of
+the Divine government of the world to the history of the Jewish and of
+the Christian nations, who would grudge the very name of religion to
+the ancient creeds of the world, and to whom the name of natural
+religion has almost become a term of reproach. To them, too, I should
+like to say that if they would but study positive facts, if they would
+but read their own Bible, they would find that the greatness of Divine
+Love cannot be measured by human standards, and that God has never
+forsaken a single human soul that has not first forsaken Him. 'He hath
+made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of
+the earth; and hath determined the times before appointed, and the
+bounds of their habitation: that they should seek the Lord, if haply
+they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from
+every one of us,' If they would but dig deep enough, they too would
+find that what they contemptuously call natural religion, is in
+reality the greatest gift that God has bestowed on the children of
+man, and that without it, revealed religion itself would have no firm
+foundation, no living roots in the heart of man.
+
+If by the essays here collected I should succeed in attracting more
+general attention towards an independent, yet reverent study of the
+ancient religions of the world, and in dispelling some of the
+prejudices with which so many have regarded the yearnings after truth
+embodied in the sacred writings of the Brahmans, the Zoroastrians, and
+the Buddhists, in the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, nay, even in
+the wild traditions and degraded customs of Polynesian savages, I
+shall consider myself amply rewarded for the labour which they have
+cost me. That they are not free from errors, in spite of a careful
+revision to which they have been submitted before I published them in
+this collection, I am fully aware, and I shall be grateful to any one
+who will point them out, little concerned whether it is done in a
+seemly or unseemly manner, as long as some new truth is elicited, or
+some old error effectually exploded. Though I have thought it right in
+preparing these essays for publication, to alter what I could no
+longer defend as true, and also, though rarely, to add some new facts
+that seemed essential for the purpose of establishing what I wished to
+prove, yet in the main they have been left as they were originally
+published. I have added to each the dates when they were written,
+these dates ranging over the last fifteen years, and I must beg my
+readers to bear these dates in mind when judging both of the form and
+the matter of these contributions towards a better knowledge of the
+creeds and prayers, the legends and customs of the ancient world.
+
+M. M.
+
+PARKS END, OXFORD:
+
+_October_, 1867.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF FIRST VOLUME.
+
+
+
+I.      LECTURE ON THE VEDAS OR THE SACRED BOOKS OF THE BRAHMANS,
+          DELIVERED AT LEEDS, 1865
+
+II.     CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS, 1858
+
+III.    THE VEDA AND ZEND-AVESTA, 1853
+
+IV.     THE AITAREYA-BR�HMANA, 1864
+
+V.      ON THE STUDY OF THE ZEND-AVESTA IN INDIA, 1862
+
+VI.     PROGRESS OF ZEND SCHOLARSHIP, 1865
+
+VII.    GENESIS AND THE ZEND-AVESTA, 1864
+
+VIII.   THE MODERN PARSIS, 1862
+
+IX.     BUDDHISM, 1862
+
+X.      BUDDHIST PILGRIMS, 1857
+
+XI.     THE MEANING OF NIRV�NA, 1857
+
+XII.    CHINESE TRANSLATIONS OF SANSKRIT TEXTS, 1861
+
+XIII.   THE WORKS OF CONFUCIUS, 1861
+
+XIV.    POPOL VUH, 1862
+
+XV.     SEMITIC MONOTHEISM, 1860
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+LECTURE ON THE VEDAS
+
+OR THE
+
+SACRED BOOKS OF THE BRAHMANS,[8]
+
+DELIVERED AT THE
+
+PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION, LEEDS, MARCH, 1865.
+
+
+I have brought with me one volume of my edition of the Veda, and I
+should not wonder if it were the first copy of the work which has ever
+reached this busy town of Leeds. Nay, I confess I have some misgivings
+whether I have not undertaken a hopeless task, and I begin to doubt
+whether I shall succeed in explaining to you the interest which I feel
+for this ancient collection of sacred hymns, an interest which has
+never failed me while devoting to the publication of this voluminous
+work the best twenty years of my life. Many times have I been asked,
+But what is the Veda? Why should it be published? What are we likely
+to learn from a book composed nearly four thousand years ago, and
+intended from the beginning for an uncultivated race of mere heathens
+and savages,--a book which the natives of India have never published
+themselves, although, to the present day, they profess to regard it as
+the highest authority for their religion, morals, and philosophy? Are
+we, the people of England or of Europe, in the nineteenth century,
+likely to gain any new light on religious, moral, or philosophical
+questions from the old songs of the Brahmans? And is it so very
+certain that the whole book is not a modern forgery, without any
+substantial claims to that high antiquity which is ascribed to it by
+the Hindus, so that all the labour bestowed upon it would not only be
+labour lost, but throw discredit on our powers of discrimination, and
+make us a laughing-stock among the shrewd natives of India? These and
+similar questions I have had to answer many times when asked by
+others, and some of them when asked by myself, before embarking on so
+hazardous an undertaking as the publication of the Rig-veda and its
+ancient commentary. And, I believe, I am not mistaken in supposing
+that many of those who to-night have honoured me with their presence
+may have entertained similar doubts and misgivings when invited to
+listen to a Lecture 'On the Vedas or the Sacred Books of the
+Brahmans.'
+
+[Footnote 8: Some of the points touched upon in this Lecture have been
+more fully treated in my 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature.' As
+the second edition of this work has been out of print for several
+years, I have here quoted a few passages from it in full.]
+
+I shall endeavour, therefore, as far as this is possible within the
+limits of one Lecture, to answer some of these questions, and to
+remove some of these doubts, by explaining to you, first, what the
+Veda really is, and, secondly, what importance it possesses, not only
+to the people of India, but to ourselves in Europe,--and here again,
+not only to the student of Oriental languages, but to every student of
+history, religion, or philosophy; to every man who has once felt the
+charm of tracing that mighty stream of human thought on which we
+ourselves are floating onward, back to its distant mountain-sources;
+to every one who has a heart for whatever has once filled the hearts
+of millions of human beings with their noblest hopes, and fears, and
+aspirations;--to every student of mankind in the fullest sense of that
+full and weighty word. Whoever claims that noble title must not
+forget, whether he examines the highest achievements of mankind in our
+own age, or the miserable failures of former ages, what man is, and in
+whose image and after whose likeness man was made. Whether listening
+to the shrieks of the Shaman sorcerers of Tatary, or to the odes of
+Pindar, or to the sacred songs of Paul Gerhard: whether looking at the
+pagodas of China, or the Parthenon of Athens, or the cathedral of
+Cologne: whether reading the sacred books of the Buddhists, of the
+Jews, or of those who worship God in spirit and in truth, we ought to
+be able to say, like the Emperor Maximilian, 'Homo sum, humani nihil a
+me alienum puto,' or, translating his words somewhat freely, 'I am a
+man, nothing pertaining to man I deem foreign to myself.' Yes, we must
+learn to read in the history of the whole human race something of our
+own history; and as in looking back on the story of our own life, we
+all dwell with a peculiar delight on the earliest chapters of our
+childhood, and try to find there the key to many of the riddles of our
+later life, it is but natural that the historian, too, should ponder
+with most intense interest over the few relics that have been
+preserved to him of the childhood of the human race. These relics are
+few indeed, and therefore very precious, and this I may venture to
+say, at the outset and without fear of contradiction, that there
+exists no literary relic that carries us back to a more primitive, or,
+if you like, more child-like state in the history of man[9] than the
+Veda. As the language of the Veda, the Sanskrit, is the most ancient
+type of the English of the present day, (Sanskrit and English are but
+varieties of one and the same language,) so its thoughts and feelings
+contain in reality the first roots and germs of that intellectual
+growth which by an unbroken chain connects our own generation with the
+ancestors of the Aryan race,--with those very people who at the rising
+and setting of the sun listened with trembling hearts to the songs of
+the Veda, that told them of bright powers above, and of a life to come
+after the sun of their own lives had set in the clouds of the evening.
+Those men were the true ancestors of our race; and the Veda is the
+oldest book we have in which to study the first beginnings of our
+language, and of all that is embodied in language. We are by nature
+Aryan, Indo-European, not Semitic: our spiritual kith and kin are to
+be found in India, Persia, Greece, Italy, Germany; not in Mesopotamia,
+Egypt, or Palestine. This is a fact that ought to be clearly
+perceived, and constantly kept in view, in order to understand the
+importance which the Veda has for us, after the lapse of more than
+three thousand years, and after ever so many changes in our language,
+thought, and religion.
+
+[Footnote 9: 'In the sciences of law and society, old means not old in
+chronology, but in structure: that is most archaic which lies nearest
+to the beginning of human progress considered as a development, and
+that is most modern which is farthest removed from that
+beginning.'--J. F. McLennan, 'Primitive Marriage,' p. 8.]
+
+Whatever the intrinsic value of the Veda, if it simply contained the
+names of kings, the description of battles, the dates of famines, it
+would still be, by its age alone, the most venerable of books. Do we
+ever find much beyond such matters in Egyptian hieroglyphics, or in
+Cuneiform inscriptions? In fact, what does the ancient history of the
+world before Cyrus, before 500 B.C., consist of, but meagre lists of
+Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian dynasties? What do the tablets of
+Karnak, the palaces of Nineveh, and the cylinders of Babylon tell us
+about the thoughts of men? All is dead and barren, nowhere a sigh,
+nowhere a jest, nowhere a glimpse of humanity. There has been but one
+oasis in that vast desert of ancient Asiatic history, the history of
+the Jews. Another such oasis is the Veda. Here, too, we come to a
+stratum of ancient thought, of ancient feelings, hopes, joys, and
+fears,--of ancient religion. There is perhaps too little of kings and
+battles in the Veda, and scarcely anything of the chronological
+framework of history. But poets surely are better than kings, hymns
+and prayers are more worth listening to than the agonies of butchered
+armies, and guesses at truth more valuable than unmeaning titles of
+Egyptian or Babylonian despots. It will be difficult to settle whether
+the Veda is 'the oldest of books,' and whether some of the portions of
+the Old Testament may not be traced back to the same or even an
+earlier date than the oldest hymns of the Veda. But, in the Aryan
+world, the Veda is certainly the oldest book, and its preservation
+amounts almost to a marvel.
+
+It is nearly twenty years ago that my attention was first drawn to
+the Veda, while attending, in the years 1846 and 1847, the lectures of
+Eug�ne Burnouf at the Coll�ge de France. I was then looking out, like
+most young men at that time of life, for some great work, and without
+weighing long the difficulties which had hitherto prevented the
+publication of the Veda, I determined to devote all my time to the
+collection of the materials necessary for such an undertaking. I had
+read the principal works of the later Sanskrit literature, but had
+found little there that seemed to be more than curious. But to publish
+the Veda, a work that had never before been published in India or in
+Europe, that occupied in the history of Sanskrit literature the same
+position which the Old Testament occupies in the history of the Jews,
+the New Testament in the history of modern Europe, the Koran in the
+history of Mohammedanism,--a work which fills a gap in the history of
+the human mind, and promises to bring us nearer than any other work to
+the first beginnings of Aryan language and Aryan thought,--this seemed
+to me an undertaking not altogether unworthy a man's life. What added
+to the charm of it was that it had once before been undertaken by
+Frederick Rosen, a young German scholar, who died in England before he
+had finished the first book, and that after his death no one seemed
+willing to carry on his work. What I had to do, first of all, was to
+copy not only the text, but the commentary of the Rig-veda, a work
+which when finished will fill six of these large volumes. The author
+or rather the compiler of this commentary, S�ya_n_a �_k_�rya, lived
+about 1400 after Christ, that is to say, about as many centuries
+after, as the poets of the Veda lived before, the beginning of our
+era. Yet through the 3000 years which separate the original poetry of
+the Veda from the latest commentary, there runs an almost continuous
+stream of tradition, and it is from it, rather than from his own
+brain, that S�ya_n_a draws his explanations of the sacred texts.
+Numerous MSS., more or less complete, more or less inaccurate, of
+S�ya_n_a's classical work, existed in the then Royal Library at Paris,
+in the Library of the East-India House, then in Leadenhall Street, and
+in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. But to copy and collate these MSS.
+was by no means all. A number of other works were constantly quoted in
+S�ya_n_a's commentary, and these quotations had all to be verified. It
+was necessary first to copy these works, and to make indexes to all of
+them, in order to be able to find any passage that might be referred
+to in the larger commentary. Many of these works have since been
+published in Germany and France, but they were not to be procured
+twenty years ago. The work, of course, proceeded but slowly, and many
+times I doubted whether I should be able to carry it through. Lastly
+came the difficulty,--and by no means the smallest,--who was to
+publish a work that would occupy about six thousand pages in quarto,
+all in Sanskrit, and of which probably not a hundred copies would ever
+be sold. Well, I came to England in order to collect more materials at
+the East-India House and at the Bodleian Library, and thanks to the
+exertions of my generous friend Baron Bunsen, and of the late
+Professor Wilson, the Board of Directors of the East-India Company
+decided to defray the expenses of a work which, as they stated in
+their letter, 'is in a peculiar manner deserving of the patronage of
+the East-India Company, connected as it is with the early religion,
+history, and language of the great body of their Indian subjects.' It
+thus became necessary for me to take up my abode in England, which has
+since become my second home. The first volume was published in 1849,
+the second in 1853, the third in 1856, the fourth in 1862. The
+materials for the remaining volumes are ready, so that, if I can but
+make leisure, there is little doubt that before long the whole work
+will be complete.
+
+Now, first, as to the name. Veda means originally knowing or
+knowledge, and this name is given by the Brahmans not to one work, but
+to the whole body of their most ancient sacred literature. Veda is the
+same word which appears in the Greek [Greek: oida], I know, and in the
+English wise, wisdom, to wit.[10] The name of Veda is commonly given
+to four collections of hymns, which are respectively known by the
+names of Rig-veda, Ya_g_ur-veda, S�ma-veda, and Atharva-veda; but for
+our own purposes, namely for tracing the earliest growth of religious
+ideas in India, the only important, the only real Veda, is the
+Rig-veda.
+
+[Footnote 10:
+
+Sanskrit      Greek           Gothic     Anglo-Saxon     German
+
+v�da          [Greek: oida]     vait       w�t           ich weiss
+v�ttha        [Greek: oistha]   vaist      w�st          du weisst
+v�da          [Greek: oide]     vait       w�t           er weiss
+vidv�         --                vitu       --            --
+vid�thu_h_    [Greek: iston]    vituts     --            --
+vid�tu_h_     [Greek: iston]    --         --            --
+vidm�         [Greek: ismen]    vitum      witon         wir wissen
+vid�          [Greek: iste]     vituth     wite          ihr wisset
+vid�_h_       [Greek: isasi]    vitun      witan         sie wissen.
+]
+
+The other so-called Vedas, which deserve the name of Veda no more than
+the Talmud deserves the name of Bible, contain chiefly extracts from
+the Rig-veda, together with sacrificial formulas, charms, and
+incantations, many of them, no doubt, extremely curious, but never
+likely to interest any one except the Sanskrit scholar by profession.
+
+The Ya_g_ur-veda and S�ma-veda may be described as prayer-books,
+arranged according to the order of certain sacrifices, and intended to
+be used by certain classes of priests.
+
+Four classes of priests were required in India at the most solemn
+sacrifices:
+
+     1. The officiating priests, manual labourers, and acolytes;
+     who have chiefly to prepare the sacrificial ground, to dress
+     the altar, slay the victims, and pour out the libations.
+
+     2. The choristers, who chant the sacred hymns.
+
+     3. The reciters or readers, who repeat certain hymns.
+
+     4. The overseers or bishops, who watch and superintend the
+     proceedings of the other priests, and ought to be familiar
+     with all the Vedas.
+
+The formulas and verses to be muttered by the first class are
+contained in the Ya_g_ur-veda-sanhit�. The hymns to be sung by the
+second class are in the S�ma-veda-sanhit�.
+
+The Atharva-veda is said to be intended for the Brahman or overseer,
+who is to watch the proceedings of the sacrifice, and to remedy any
+mistake that may occur.[11]
+
+[Footnote 11: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. 449.]
+
+Fortunately, the hymns to be recited by the third class were not
+arranged in a sacrificial prayer-book, but were preserved in an old
+collection of hymns, containing all that had been saved of ancient,
+sacred, and popular poetry, more like the Psalms than like a ritual; a
+collection made for its own sake, and not for the sake of any
+sacrificial performances.
+
+I shall, therefore, confine my remarks to the Rig-veda, which in the
+eyes of the historical student is the Veda _par excellence_. Now
+Rig-veda means the Veda of hymns of praise, for _R_ich, which before
+the initial soft letter of Veda is changed to _R_ig, is derived from a
+root which in Sanskrit means to celebrate.
+
+In the Rig-veda we must distinguish again between the original collection
+of the hymns or Mantras, called the Sanhit� or the collection, being
+entirely metrical and poetical, and a number of prose works, called
+Br�hma_n_as and S�tras, written in prose, and giving information on the
+proper use of the hymns at sacrifices, on their sacred meaning, on their
+supposed authors, and similar topics. These works, too, go by the name of
+Rig-veda: but though very curious in themselves, they are evidently of a
+much later period, and of little help to us in tracing the beginnings of
+religious life in India. For that purpose we must depend entirely on the
+hymns, such as we find them in the Sanhit� or the collection of the
+Rig-veda.
+
+Now this collection consists of ten books, and contains altogether
+1028 hymns. As early as about 600 B.C. we find that in the theological
+schools of India every verse, every word, every syllable of the Veda
+had been carefully counted. The number of verses as computed in
+treatises of that date, varies from 10,402 to 10,622; that of the
+words is 153,826, that of the syllables 432,000.[12] With these
+numbers, and with the description given in these early treatises of
+each hymn, of its metre, its deity, its number of verses, our modern
+MSS. of the Veda correspond as closely as could be expected.
+
+[Footnote 12: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' second
+edition, p. 219 seq.]
+
+I say, our modern MSS., for all our MSS. are modern, and very modern.
+Few Sanskrit MSS. are more than four or five hundred years old, the
+fact being that in the damp climate of India no paper will last for
+more than a few centuries. How then, you will naturally ask, can it be
+proved that the original hymns were composed between 1200 and 1500
+before the Christian era, if our MSS. only carry us back to about the
+same date after the Christian era? It is not very easy to bridge over
+this gulf of nearly three thousand years, but all I can say is that,
+after carefully examining every possible objection that can be made
+against the date of the Vedic hymns, their claim to that high
+antiquity which is ascribed to them, has not, as far as I can judge,
+been shaken. I shall try to explain on what kind of evidence these
+claims rest.
+
+You know that we possess no MS. of the Old Testament in Hebrew older
+than about the tenth century after the Christian era; yet the
+Septuagint translation by itself would be sufficient to prove that the
+Old Testament, such as we now read it, existed in MS. previous, at
+least, to the third century before our era. By a similar train of
+argument, the works to which I referred before, in which we find every
+hymn, every verse, every word and syllable of the Veda accurately
+counted by native scholars about five or six hundred years before
+Christ, guarantee the existence of the Veda, such as we now read it,
+as far back at least as five or six hundred years before Christ. Now
+in the works of that period, the Veda is already considered, not only
+as an ancient, but as a sacred book; and, more than this, its language
+had ceased to be generally intelligible. The language of India had
+changed since the Veda was composed, and learned commentaries were
+necessary in order to explain to the people, then living, the true
+purport, nay, the proper pronunciation, of their sacred hymns. But
+more than this. In certain exegetical compositions, which are
+generally comprised under the name of S�tras, and which are
+contemporary with, or even anterior to, the treatises on the
+theological statistics just mentioned, not only are the ancient hymns
+represented as invested with sacred authority, but that other class of
+writings, the Br�hma_n_as, standing half-way between the hymns and the
+S�tras, have likewise been raised to the dignity of a revealed
+literature. These Br�hma_n_as, you will remember, are prose treatises,
+written in illustration of the ancient sacrifices and of the hymns
+employed at them. Such treatises would only spring up when some kind
+of explanation began to be wanted both for the ceremonial and for the
+hymns to be recited at certain sacrifices, and we find, in
+consequence, that in many cases the authors of the Br�hma_n_as had
+already lost the power of understanding the text of the ancient hymns
+in its natural and grammatical meaning, and that they suggested the
+most absurd explanations of the various sacrificial acts, most of
+which, we may charitably suppose, had originally some rational
+purpose. Thus it becomes evident that the period during which the
+hymns were composed must have been separated by some centuries, at
+least, from the period that gave birth to the Br�hma_n_as, in order to
+allow time for the hymns growing unintelligible and becoming invested
+with a sacred character. Secondly, the period during which the
+Br�hma_n_as were composed must be separated by some centuries from the
+authors of the S�tras, in order to allow time for further changes in
+the language, and more particularly for the growth of a new theology,
+which ascribed to the Br�hma_n_as the same exceptional and revealed
+character which the Br�hma_n_as themselves ascribed to the hymns. So
+that we want previously to 600 B.C., when every syllable of the Veda
+was counted, at least two strata of intellectual and literary growth,
+of two or three centuries each; and are thus brought to 1100 or 1200
+B.C. as the earliest time when we may suppose the collection of the
+Vedic hymns to have been finished. This collection of hymns again
+contains, by its own showing, ancient and modern hymns, the hymns of
+the sons together with the hymns of their fathers and earlier
+ancestors; so that we cannot well assign a date more recent than 1200
+to 1500 before our era, for the original composition of those simple
+hymns which up to the present day are regarded by the Brahmans with
+the same feelings with which a Mohammedan regards the Koran, a Jew the
+Old Testament, a Christian his Gospel.
+
+That the Veda is not quite a modern forgery can be proved, however, by more
+tangible evidence. Hiouen-thsang, a Buddhist pilgrim, who travelled from
+China to India in the years 629-645, and who, in his diary translated from
+Chinese into French by M. Stanislas Julien, gives the names of the four
+Vedas, mentions some grammatical forms peculiar to the Vedic Sanskrit, and
+states that at his time young Brahmans spent all their time, from the
+seventh to the thirtieth year of their age, in learning these sacred texts.
+At the time when Hiouen-thsang was travelling in India, Buddhism was
+clearly on the decline. But Buddhism was originally a reaction against
+Brahmanism, and chiefly against the exclusive privileges which the Brahmans
+claimed, and which from the beginning were represented by them as based on
+their revealed writings, the Vedas, and hence beyond the reach of human
+attacks. Buddhism, whatever the date of its founder, became the state
+religion of India under A_s_oka, the Constantine of India, in the middle of
+the third century B.C. This A_s_oka was the third king of a new dynasty
+founded by _K_andragupta, the well-known contemporary of Alexander and
+Seleucus, about 315 B.C. The preceding dynasty was that of the Nandas, and
+it is under this dynasty that the traditions of the Brahmans place a number
+of distinguished scholars whose treatises on the Veda we still possess,
+such as _S_aunaka, K�ty�yana, �_s_val�yana, and others. Their works, and
+others written with a similar object and in the same style, carry us back
+to about 600 B.C. This period of literature, which is called the S�tra
+period, was preceded, as we saw, by another class of writings, the
+Br�hma_n_as, composed in a very prolix and tedious style, and containing
+lengthy lucubrations on the sacrifices and on the duties of the different
+classes of priests. Each of the three or four Vedas, or each of the three
+or four classes of priests, has its own Br�hma_n_as and its own S�tras;
+and as the Br�hma_n_as are presupposed by the S�tras, while no S�tra is
+ever quoted by the Br�hma_n_as, it is clear that the period of the
+Br�hma_n_a literature must have preceded the period of the S�tra
+literature. There are, however, old and new Br�hma_n_as, and there are in
+the Br�hma_n_as themselves long lists of teachers who handed down old
+Br�hma_n_as or composed new ones, so that it seems impossible to
+accommodate the whole of that literature in less than two centuries, from
+about 800 to 600 B.C. Before, however, a single Br�hma_n_a could have been
+composed, it was not only necessary that there should have been one
+collection of ancient hymns, like that contained in the ten books of the
+Rig-veda, but the three or four classes of priests must have been
+established, the officiating priests and the choristers must have had their
+special prayer-books, nay, these prayer-books must have undergone certain
+changes, because the Br�hma_n_as presuppose different texts, called s�kh�s,
+of each of these prayer-books, which are called the Ya_g_ur-veda-sanhit�,
+the S�ma-veda-sanhit�, and the Atharva-veda-sanhit�. The work of collecting
+the prayers for the different classes of priests, and of adding new hymns
+and formulas for purely sacrificial purposes, belonged probably to the
+tenth century B.C., and three generations more would, at least, be required
+to account for the various readings adopted in the prayer-books by
+different sects, and invested with a kind of sacred authority, long before
+the composition of even the earliest among the Br�hma_n_as. If, therefore,
+the years from about 1000 to 800 B.C. are assigned to this collecting age,
+the time before 1000 B.C. must be set apart for the free and natural
+growth of what was then national and religious, but not yet sacred and
+sacrificial poetry. How far back this period extends it is impossible to
+tell; it is enough if the hymns of the Rig-veda can be traced to a period
+anterior to 1000 B.C.
+
+Much in the chronological arrangement of the three periods of Vedic
+literature that are supposed to have followed the period of the
+original growth of the hymns, must of necessity be hypothetical, and
+has been put forward rather to invite than to silence criticism. In
+order to discover truth, we must be truthful ourselves, and must
+welcome those who point out our errors as heartily as those who
+approve and confirm our discoveries. What seems, however, to speak
+strongly in favour of the historical character of the three periods of
+Vedic literature is the uniformity of style which marks the
+productions of each. In modern literature we find, at one and the same
+time, different styles of prose and poetry cultivated by one and the
+same author. A Goethe writes tragedy, comedy, satire, lyrical poetry,
+and scientific prose; but we find nothing like this in primitive
+literature. The individual is there much less prominent, and the
+poet's character disappears in the general character of the layer of
+literature to which he belongs. It is the discovery of such large
+layers of literature following each other in regular succession which
+inspires the critical historian with confidence in the truly
+historical character of the successive literary productions of ancient
+India. As in Greece there is an epic age of literature, where we
+should look in vain for prose or dramatic poetry; as in that country
+we never meet with real elegiac poetry before the end of the eighth
+century, nor with iambics before the same date; as even in more
+modern times rhymed heroic poetry appears in England with the Norman
+conquest, and in Germany the Minnes�nger rise and set with the Swabian
+dynasty--so, only in a much more decided manner, we see in the ancient
+and spontaneous literature of India, an age of poets followed by an
+age of collectors and imitators, that age to be succeeded by an age of
+theological prose writers, and this last by an age of writers of
+scientific manuals. New wants produced new supplies, and nothing
+sprang up or was allowed to live, in prose or poetry, except what was
+really wanted. If the works of poets, collectors, imitators,
+theologians, and teachers were all mixed up together--if the
+Br�hma_n_as quoted the S�tras, and the hymns alluded to the
+Br�hma_n_as--an historical restoration of the Vedic literature of
+India would be almost an impossibility. We should suspect artificial
+influences, and look with small confidence on the historical character
+of such a literary agglomerate. But he who would question the
+antiquity of the Veda must explain how the layers of literature were
+formed that are super-imposed over the original stratum of the poetry
+of the Rishis; he who would suspect a literary forgery must show how,
+when, and for what purpose the 1000 hymns of the Rig-veda could have
+been forged, and have become the basis of the religious, moral,
+political, and literary life of the ancient inhabitants of India.
+
+The idea of revelation, and I mean more particularly book-revelation,
+is not a modern idea, nor is it an idea peculiar to Christianity.
+Though we look for it in vain in the literature of Greece and Rome, we
+find the literature of India saturated with this idea from beginning
+to end. In no country, I believe, has the theory of revelation been
+so minutely elaborated as in India. The name for revelation in
+Sanskrit is _S_ruti, which means hearing; and this title distinguishes
+the Vedic hymns and, at a later time, the Br�hma_n_as also, from all
+other works, which, however sacred, and authoritative to the Hindu
+mind, are admitted to have been composed by human authors. The Laws of
+Manu, for instance, according to the Brahmanic theology, are not
+revelation; they are not _S_ruti, but only Sm_r_iti, which means
+recollection or tradition. If these laws or any other work of
+authority can be proved on any point to be at variance with a single
+passage of the Veda, their authority is at once overruled. According
+to the orthodox views of Indian theologians, not a single line of the
+Veda was the work of human authors. The whole Veda is in some way or
+other the work of the Deity; and even those who received the
+revelation, or, as they express it, those who saw it, were not
+supposed to be ordinary mortals, but beings raised above the level of
+common humanity, and less liable therefore to error in the reception
+of revealed truth. The views entertained of revelation by the orthodox
+theologians of India are far more minute and elaborate than those of
+the most extreme advocates of verbal inspiration in Europe. The human
+element, called paurusheyatva in Sanskrit, is driven out of every
+corner or hiding-place, and as the Veda is held to have existed in the
+mind of the Deity before the beginning of time, every allusion to
+historical events, of which there are not a few, is explained away
+with a zeal and ingenuity worthy of a better cause.
+
+But let me state at once that there is nothing in the hymns themselves
+to warrant such extravagant theories. In many a hymn the author says
+plainly that he or his friends made it to please the gods; that he
+made it, as a carpenter makes a chariot (Rv. I. 130, 6; V. 2, 11), or
+like a beautiful vesture (Rv. V. 29, 15); that he fashioned it in his
+heart and kept it in his mind (Rv. I. 171, 2); that he expects, as his
+reward, the favour of the god whom he celebrates (Rv. IV. 6, 21). But
+though the poets of the Veda know nothing of the artificial theories
+of verbal inspiration, they were not altogether unconscious of higher
+influences: nay, they speak of their hymns as god-given ('devattam,'
+Rv. III. 37, 4). One poets says (Rv. VI. 47, 10): 'O god (Indra) have
+mercy, give me my daily bread! Sharpen my mind, like the edge of iron.
+Whatever I now may utter, longing for thee, do thou accept it; make me
+possessed of God!' Another utters for the first time the famous hymn,
+the G�yatr�, which now for more than three thousand years has been the
+daily prayer of every Brahman, and is still repeated every morning by
+millions of pious worshippers: 'Let us meditate on the adorable light
+of the divine Creator: may he rouse our minds.'[13] This consciousness
+of higher influences, or of divine help in those who uttered for the
+first time the simple words of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, is
+very different, however, from the artificial theories of verbal
+inspiration which we find in the later theological writings; it is
+indeed but another expression of that deepfelt dependence on the
+Deity, of that surrender and denial of all that seems to be self,
+which was felt more or less by every nation, but by none, I believe,
+more strongly, more constantly, than by the Indian. "It is He that has
+made it,"--namely, the prayer in which the soul of the poet has thrown
+off her burden,--is but a variation of, "It is He that has made us,"
+which is the key-note of all religion, whether ancient or modern,
+whether natural or revealed.
+
+I must say no more to-night of what the Veda is, for I am very anxious
+to explain to you, as far as it is possible, what I consider to be the
+real importance of the Veda to the student of history, to the student
+of religion, to the student of mankind.
+
+[Footnote 13: 'Tat Savitur vare_n_yam bhargo devasya dh�mahi, dhiyo yo
+na_h_ pra_k_oday�t.'--Colebrooke, 'Miscellaneous Essays,' i. 30. Many
+passages bearing on this subject have been collected by Dr. Muir in
+the third volume of his 'Sanskrit Texts,' p. 114 seq.]
+
+In the study of mankind there can hardly be a subject more deeply
+interesting than the study of the different forms of religion; and
+much as I value the Science of Language for the aid which it lends us
+in unraveling some of the most complicated tissues of the human
+intellect, I confess that to my mind there is no study more absorbing
+than that of the Religions of the World,--the study, if I may so call
+it, of the various languages in which man has spoken to his Maker, and
+of that language in which his Maker "at sundry times and in divers
+manners" spake to man.
+
+To my mind the great epochs in the world's history are marked not by
+the foundation or the destruction of empires, by the migrations of
+races, or by French revolutions. All this is outward history, made up
+of events that seem gigantic and overpowering to those only who cannot
+see beyond and beneath. The real history of man is the history of
+religion--the wonderful ways by which the different families of the
+human race advanced towards a truer knowledge and a deeper love of
+God. This is the foundation that underlies all profane history: it is
+the light, the soul, and life of history, and without it all history
+would indeed be profane.
+
+On this subject there are some excellent works in English, such as Mr.
+Maurice's "Lectures on the Religions of the World," or Mr. Hardwick's
+"Christ and other Masters;" in German, I need only mention Hegel's
+"Philosophy of Religion," out of many other learned treatises on the
+different systems of religion in the East and the West. But in all
+these works religions are treated very much as languages were treated
+during the last century. They are rudely classed, either according to
+the different localities in which they prevailed, just as in Adelung's
+"Mithridates" you find the languages of the world classified as
+European, African, American, Asiatic, etc.; or according to their age,
+as formerly languages used to be divided into ancient and modern; or
+according to their respective dignity, as languages used to be treated
+as sacred or profane, as classical or illiterate. Now you know that
+the Science of Language has sanctioned a totally different system of
+classification; and that the Comparative Philologist ignores
+altogether the division of languages according to their locality, or
+according to their age, or according to their classical or illiterate
+character. Languages are now classified genealogically, _i. e._
+according to their real relationship; and the most important languages
+of Asia, Europe, and Africa,--that is to say, of that part of the
+world on which what we call the history of man has been acted,--have
+been grouped together into three great divisions, the Aryan or
+Indo-European Family, the Semitic Family, and the Turanian Class.
+According to that division you are aware that English, together with
+all the Teutonic languages of the Continent, Celtic, Slavonic, Greek,
+Latin with its modern offshoots, such as French and Italian, Persian,
+and Sanskrit, are so many varieties of one common type of speech: that
+Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Veda, is no more distinct from
+the Greek of Homer, or from the Gothic of Ulfilas, or from the
+Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, than French is from Italian. All these
+languages together form one family, one whole, in which every member
+shares certain features in common with all the rest, and is at the
+same time distinguished from the rest by certain features peculiarly
+its own. The the world on which what we call the history of man has
+been acted, have been grouped together into three great divisions, the
+Aryan or Indo-European Family, the Semitic Family, and the Turanian
+Class. According to that division you are aware that English together
+with all the Teutonic languages of the Continent, Celtic, Slavonic,
+Greek, Latin with its modern offshoots, such as French and Italian,
+Persian, and Sanskrit, are so many varieties of one common type of
+speech: that Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Veda, is no more
+distinct from the Greek of Homer, or from the Gothic of Ulfilas, or
+from the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, than French is from Italian. All these
+languages together form one family, one whole, in which every member
+shares certain features in common with all the rest, and is at the
+same time distinguished from the rest by certain features peculiarly
+its own. The same applies to the Semitic Family, which comprises, as
+its most important members, the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the
+Arabic of the Koran, and the ancient languages on the monuments of
+Phenicia and Carthage, of Babylon and Assyria. These languages, again,
+form a compact family, and differ entirely from the other family,
+which we called Aryan or Indo-European. The third group of languages,
+for we can hardly call it a family, comprises most of the remaining
+languages of Asia, and counts among its principal members the
+Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, Samoyedic, and Finnic, together with the
+languages of Siam, the Malay islands, Tibet, and Southern India.
+Lastly, the Chinese language stands by itself, as monosyllabic, the
+only remnant of the earliest formation of human speech.
+
+Now I believe that the same division which has introduced a new and
+natural order into the history of languages, and has enabled us to
+understand the growth of human speech in a manner never dreamt of in
+former days, will be found applicable to a scientific study of
+religions. I shall say nothing to-night of the Semitic or Turanian or
+Chinese religions, but confine my remarks to the religions of the
+Aryan family. These religions, though more important in the ancient
+history of the world, as the religions of the Greeks and Romans, of
+our own Teutonic ancestors, and of the Celtic and Slavonic races, are
+nevertheless of great importance even at the present day. For although
+there are no longer any worshippers of Zeus, or Jupiter, of Wodan,
+Esus,[14] or Perkunas,[15] the two religions of Aryan origin which
+still survive, Brahmanism and Buddhism, claim together a decided
+majority among the inhabitants of the globe. Out of the whole
+population of the world,
+
+31.2 per cent are Buddhists,
+13.4 per cent are Brahmanists,
+----
+44.6
+
+which together gives us 44 per cent for what may be called living
+Aryan religions. Of the remaining 56 per cent, 15.7 are Mohammedans,
+8.7 per cent non-descript Heathens, 30.7 per cent Christians, and only
+O.3 per cent Jews.
+
+[Footnote 14: Mommsen, 'Inscriptiones Helveticae,' 40. Becker, 'Die
+inschriftlichen �berreste der Keltischen Sprache,' in 'Beitr�ge zur
+Vergleichenden Sprachforschung,' vol. iii. p. 341. Lucau, Phars. 1,
+445, 'horrensque feris altaribus Hesus.']
+
+[Footnote 15: Cf. G. B�hler, '�ber Parjanya,' in Benfey's 'Orient und
+Occident,' vol. i. p. 214.]
+
+Now, as a scientific study of the Aryan languages became possible only
+after the discovery of Sanskrit, a scientific study of the Aryan
+religion dates really from the discovery of the Veda. The study of
+Sanskrit brought to light the original documents of three religions,
+the Sacred Books of the Brahmans, the Sacred Books of the Magians, the
+followers of Zoroaster, and the Sacred Books of the Buddhists. Fifty
+years ago, these three collections of sacred writings were all but
+unknown, their very existence was doubted, and there was not a single
+scholar who could have translated a line of the Veda, a line of the
+Zend-Avesta, or a line of the Buddhist Tripi_t_aka. At present large
+portions of these, the canonical writings of the most ancient and most
+important religions of the Aryan race, are published and deciphered,
+and we begin to see a natural progress, and almost a logical
+necessity, in the growth of these three systems of worship. The
+oldest, most primitive, most simple form of Aryan faith finds its
+expression in the Veda. The Zend-Avesta represents in its language, as
+well as in its thoughts, a branching off from that more primitive
+stem; a more or less conscious opposition to the worship of the gods
+of nature, as adored in the Veda, and a striving after a more
+spiritual, supreme, moral deity, such as Zoroaster proclaimed under
+the name of Ahura mazda, or Ormuzd. Buddhism, lastly, marks a decided
+schism, a decided antagonism against the established religion of the
+Brahmans, a denial of the true divinity of the Vedic gods, and a
+proclamation of new philosophical and social doctrines.
+
+Without the Veda, therefore, neither the reforms of Zoroaster nor the
+new teaching of Buddha would have been intelligible: we should not
+know what was behind them, or what forces impelled Zoroaster and
+Buddha to the founding of new religions; how much they received, how
+much they destroyed, how much they created. Take but one word in the
+religious phraseology of these three systems. In the Veda the gods are
+called Deva. This word in Sanskrit means bright,--brightness or light
+being one of the most general attributes shared by the various
+manifestations of the Deity, invoked in the Veda, as Sun, or Sky, or
+Fire, or Dawn, or Storm. We can see, in fact, how in the minds of the
+poets of the Veda, deva from meaning bright, came gradually to mean
+divine. In the Zend-Avesta the same word da�va means evil spirit. Many
+of the Vedic gods, with Indra at their head, have been degraded to the
+position of da�vas, in order to make room for Ahura mazda, the Wise
+Spirit, as the supreme deity of the Zoroastrians. In his confession of
+faith the follower of Zoroaster declares: 'I cease to be a worshipper
+of the da�vas.' In Buddhism, again, we find these ancient Devas, Indra
+and the rest, as merely legendary beings, carried about at shows, as
+servants of Buddha, as goblins or fabulous heroes; but no longer
+either worshipped or even feared by those with whom the name of Deva
+had lost every trace of its original meaning. Thus this one word Deva
+marks the mutual relations of these three religions. But more than
+this. The same word deva is the Latin deus, thus pointing to that
+common source of language and religion, far beyond the heights of the
+Vedic Olympus, from which the Romans, as well as the Hindus, draw the
+names of their deities, and the elements of their language as well as
+of their religion.
+
+The Veda, by its language and its thoughts, supplies that distant
+background in the history of all the religions of the Aryan race,
+which was missed indeed by every careful observer, but which formerly
+could be supplied by guess-work only. How the Persians came to worship
+Ormuzd, how the Buddhists came to protest against temples and
+sacrifices, how Zeus and the Olympian gods came to be what they are in
+the mind of Homer, or how such beings as Jupiter and Mars came to be
+worshipped by the Italian peasant:--all these questions, which used to
+yield material for endless and baseless speculations, can now be
+answered by a simple reference to the hymns of the Veda. The religion
+of the Veda is not the source of all the other religions of the Aryan
+world, nor is Sanskrit the mother of all the Aryan languages.
+Sanskrit, as compared to Greek and Latin, is an elder sister, not a
+parent: Sanskrit is the earliest deposit of Aryan speech, as the Veda
+is the earliest deposit of Aryan faith. But the religion and incipient
+mythology of the Veda possess the same simplicity and transparency
+which distinguish the grammar of Sanskrit from Greek, Latin, or German
+grammar. We can watch in the Veda ideas and their names growing, which
+in Persia, Greece, and Rome we meet with only as full-grown or as fast
+decaying. We get one step nearer to that distant source of religious
+thought and language which has fed the different national streams of
+Persia, Greece, Rome, and Germany; and we begin to see clearly, what
+ought never to have been doubted, that there is no religion without
+God, or, as St. Augustine expressed, that 'there is no false religion
+which does not contain some elements of truth.'
+
+I do not wish by what I have said to raise any exaggerated
+expectations as to the worth of these ancient hymns of the Veda, and
+the character of that religion which they indicate rather than fully
+describe. The historical importance of the Veda can hardly be
+exaggerated, but its intrinsic merit, and particularly the beauty or
+elevation of its sentiments, have by many been rated far too high.
+Large numbers of the Vedic hymns are childish in the extreme: tedious,
+low, common-place. The gods are constantly invoked to protect their
+worshippers, to grant them food, large flocks, large families, and a
+long life; for all which benefits they are to be rewarded by the
+praises and sacrifices offered day after day, or at certain seasons of
+the year. But hidden in this rubbish there are precious stones. Only
+in order to appreciate them justly, we must try to divest ourselves of
+the common notions about Polytheism, so repugnant not only to our
+feelings, but to our understanding. No doubt, if we must employ
+technical terms, the religion of the Veda is Polytheism, not
+Monotheism. Deities are invoked by different names, some clear and
+intelligible, such as Agni, fire; S�rya, the sun; Ushas, dawn; Maruts,
+the storms; P_r_ithiv�, the earth; �p, the waters; Nad�, the rivers;
+others such as Varu_n_a, Mitra, Indra, which have become proper names,
+and disclose but dimly their original application to the great aspects
+of nature, the sky, the sun, the day. But whenever one of these
+individual gods is invoked, they are not conceived as limited by the
+powers of others, as superior or inferior in rank. Each god is to the
+mind of the supplicant as good as all gods. He is felt, at the time,
+as a real divinity,--as supreme and absolute,--without a suspicion of
+those limitations which, to our mind, a plurality of gods _must_
+entail on every single god. All the rest disappear for a moment from
+the vision of the poet, and he only who is to fulfill their desires
+stands in full light before the eyes of the worshippers. In one hymn,
+ascribed to Manu, the poet says: "Among you, O gods, there is none
+that is small, none that is young; you are all great indeed." And this
+is indeed the key-note of the ancient Aryan worship. Yet it would be
+easy to find in the numerous hymns of the Veda, passages in which
+almost every important deity is represented as supreme and absolute.
+Thus in one hymn, Agni (fire) is called "the ruler of the universe,"
+"the lord of men," "the wise king, the father, the brother, the son,
+the friend of man;" nay, all the powers and names of the other gods
+are distinctly ascribed to Agni. But though Agni is thus highly
+exalted, nothing is said to disparage the divine character of the
+other gods. In another hymn another god, Indra, is said to be greater
+than all: "The gods," it is said, "do not reach thee, Indra, nor men;
+thou overcomest all creatures in strength." Another god, Soma, is
+called the king of the world, the king of heaven and earth, the
+conqueror of all. And what more could human language achieve, in
+trying to express the idea of a divine and supreme power, than what
+another poet says of another god, Varu_n_a: "Thou art lord of all, of
+heaven and earth; thou art the king of all, of those who are gods, and
+of those who are men!"
+
+This surely is not what is commonly understood by Polytheism. Yet it
+would be equally wrong to call it Monotheism. If we must have a name
+for it, I should call it Kathenotheism. The consciousness that all the
+deities are but different names of one and the same godhead, breaks
+forth indeed here and there in the Veda. But it is far from being
+general. One poet, for instance, says (Rv. I. 164, 46): "They call him
+Indra, Mitra, Varu_n_a, Agni; then he is the beautiful-winged heavenly
+Garutmat: that which is One the wise call it in divers manners: they
+call it Agni, Yama, M�tari_s_van." And again (Rv. X. 114, 5): "Wise
+poets make the beautiful-winged, though he is one, manifold by words."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I shall read you a few Vedic verses, in which the religious sentiment
+predominates, and in which we perceive a yearning after truth, and
+after the true God, untrammeled as yet by any names or any
+traditions[16] (Rv. X. 121):--
+
+[Footnote 16: _History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature_, p. 569.]
+
+     1. In the beginning there arose the golden Child--He was the
+     one born lord of all that is. He stablished the earth, and
+     this sky;--Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
+     sacrifice?
+
+     2. He who gives life, He who gives strength; whose command
+     all the bright gods revere; whose shadow is immortality,
+     whose shadow is death;--Who is the God to whom we shall
+     offer our sacrifice?
+
+     3. He who through His power is the one king of the breathing
+     and awakening world--He who governs all, man and beast;--Who
+     is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
+
+     4. He whose greatness these snowy mountains, whose greatness
+     the sea proclaims, with the distant river--He whose these
+     regions are, as it were His two arms;--Who is the God to
+     whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
+
+     5. He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm--He
+     through whom the heaven was stablished,--nay, the highest
+     heaven,--He who measured out the light in the air;--Who is
+     the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
+
+     6. He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His will,
+     look up, trembling inwardly--He over whom the rising sun
+     shines forth;--Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
+     sacrifice?
+
+     7. Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they placed
+     the seed and lit the fire, thence arose He who is the sole
+     life of the bright gods;--Who is the God to whom we shall
+     offer our sacrifice?
+
+     8. He who by His might looked even over the water-clouds,
+     the clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice; He who
+     alone is God above all gods;--
+
+     9. May He not destroy us--He the creator of the earth; or
+     He, the righteous, who created the heaven; He also created
+     the bright and mighty waters;--Who is the God to whom we
+     shall offer our sacrifice?[17]
+
+The following may serve as specimens of hymns addressed to individual
+deities whose names have become the centres of religious thought and
+legendary traditions; deities, in fact, like Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, or
+Minerva, no longer mere germs, but fully developed forms of early
+thought and language:
+
+[Footnote 17: A last verse is added, which entirely spoils the
+poetical beauty and the whole character of the hymn. Its later origin
+seems to have struck even native critics, for the author of the Pada
+text did not receive it. 'O Pra_g_�pati, no other than thou hast
+embraced all these created things; may what we desired when we called
+on thee, be granted to us, may we be lords of riches.']
+
+     HYMN TO INDRA (Rv. I. 53).[18]
+
+     1. Keep silence well![19] we offer praises to the great
+     Indra in the house of the sacrificer. Does he find treasure
+     for those who are like sleepers? Mean praise is not valued
+     among the munificent.
+
+     2. Thou art the giver of horses, Indra, thou art the giver
+     of cows, the giver of corn, the strong lord of wealth: the
+     old guide of man, disappointing no desires, a friend to
+     friends:--to him we address this song.
+
+     3. O powerful Indra, achiever of many works, most brilliant
+     god--all this wealth around here is known to be thine alone:
+     take from it, conqueror! bring it hither! Do not stint the
+     desire of the worshipper who longs for thee!
+
+     4. On these days thou art gracious, and on these
+     nights,[20] keeping off the enemy from our cows and from
+     our stud. Tearing[21] the fiend night after night with the
+     help of Indra, let us rejoice in food, freed from haters.
+
+     5. Let us rejoice, Indra, in treasure and food, in wealth of
+     manifold delight and splendour. Let us rejoice in the
+     blessing of the gods, which gives us the strength of
+     offspring, gives us cows first and horses.
+
+     6. These draughts inspired thee, O lord of the brave! these
+     were vigour, these libations, in battles, when for the sake
+     of the poet, the sacrificer, thou struckest down
+     irresistibly ten thousands of enemies.
+
+     7. From battle to battle thou advancest bravely, from town
+     to town thou destroyest all this with might, when thou,
+     Indra, with N�m� as thy friend, struckest down from afar the
+     deceiver Namu_k_i.
+
+     8. Thou hast slain Karanga and Par_n_aya with the
+     brightest spear of Atithigva. Without a helper thou didst
+     demolish the hundred cities of Vang_r_ida, which were
+     besieged by _R_i_g_i_s_van.
+
+     9. Thou hast felled down with the chariot-wheel these twenty
+     kings of men, who had attacked the friendless
+     Su_s_ravas,[22] and gloriously the sixty thousand and
+     ninety-nine forts.
+
+     10. Thou, Indra, hast succoured Su_s_ravas with thy
+     succours, T�rvay�_n_a with thy protections. Thou hast made
+     Kutsa, Atithigva, and �yu subject to this mighty youthful
+     king.
+
+     11. We who in future, protected by the gods, wish to be thy
+     most blessed friends, we shall praise thee, blessed by thee
+     with offspring, and enjoying henceforth a longer life.
+
+[Footnote 18: I subjoin for some of the hymns here translated, the
+translation of the late Professor Wilson, in order to show what kind
+of difference there is between the traditional rendering of the Vedic
+hymns, as adopted by him, and their interpretation according to the
+rules of modern scholarship:
+
+1. We ever offer fitting praise to the mighty Indra, in the dwelling
+of the worshipper, by which he (the deity) has quickly acquired
+riches, as (a thief) hastily carries (off the property) of the
+sleeping. Praise ill expressed is not valued among the munificent.
+
+2. Thou, Indra, art the giver of horses, of cattle, of barley, the
+master and protector of wealth, the foremost in liberality, (the
+being) of many days; thou disappointest not desires (addressed to
+thee); thou art a friend to our friends: such an Indra we praise.
+
+3. Wise and resplendent Indra, the achiever of great deeds, the riches
+that are spread around are known to be thine: having collected them,
+victor (over thy enemies), bring them to us: disappoint not the
+expectation of the worshipper who trusts in thee.
+
+4. Propitiated by these offerings, by these libations, dispel poverty
+with cattle and horses: may we, subduing our adversary, and relieved
+from enemies by Indra, (pleased) by our libations, enjoy together
+abundant food.
+
+5. Indra, may we become possessed of riches, and of food; and with
+energies agreeable to many, and shining around, may we prosper through
+thy divine favour, the source of prowess, of cattle, and of horses.
+
+6. Those who were thy allies, (the Maruts,) brought thee joy:
+protector of the pious, those libations and oblations (that were
+offered thee on slaying V_r_itra), yielded thee delight, when thou,
+unimpeded by foes, didst destroy the ten thousand obstacles opposed to
+him who praised thee and offered thee libations.
+
+7. Humiliator (of adversaries), thou goest from battle to battle, and
+destroyest by thy might city after city: with thy foe-prostrating
+associate, (the thunderbolt,) thou, Indra, didst slay afar off the
+deceiver named Namu_k_i.
+
+8. Thou hast slain Karanga and Par_n_aya with thy bright gleaming
+spear, in the cause of Atithigva: unaided, thou didst demolish the
+hundred cities of Vang_r_ida, when besieged by _R_i_g_i_s_van.
+
+9. Thou, renowned Indra, overthrewest by thy not-to-be-overtaken
+chariot-wheel, the twenty kings of men, who had come against
+Su_s_ravas, unaided, and their sixty thousand and ninety and nine
+followers.
+
+10. Thou, Indra, hast preserved Su_s_ravas by thy succour,
+T�rvay�_n_a, by thy assistance: thou hast made Kutsa, Atithigva, and
+�yu subject to the mighty though youthful Su_s_ravas.
+
+11. Protected by the gods, we remain, Indra, at the close of the
+sacrifice, thy most fortunate friends: we praise thee, as enjoying
+through thee excellent offspring, and a long and prosperous life.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Favete linguis.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Cf. Rv. I. 112, 25, 'dy�bhir akt�bhi_h_,' by day and by
+night; also Rv. III. 31, 16. M. M., 'Todtenbestattung,' p. v.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Professor Benfey reads durayanta_h_, but all MSS. that I
+know, without exception, read darayanta_h_.]
+
+The next hymn is one of many addressed to Agni as the god of fire, not
+only the fire as a powerful element, but likewise the fire of the
+hearth and the altar, the guardian of the house, the minister of the
+sacrifice, the messenger between gods and men:
+
+[Footnote 22: See Spiegel, 'Er�n,' p. 269, on Khai Khosru =
+Su_s_ravas.]
+
+     HYMN TO AGNI (Rv. II. 6).
+
+     1. Agni, accept this log which I offer to thee, accept this
+     my service; listen well to these my songs.
+
+     2. With this log, O Agni, may we worship thee, thou son of
+     strength, conqueror of horses! and with this hymn, thou
+     high-born!
+
+     3. May we thy servants serve thee with songs, O granter of
+     riches, thou who lovest songs and delightest in riches.
+
+     4. Thou lord of wealth and giver of wealth, be thou wise and
+     powerful; drive away from us the enemies!
+
+     5. He gives us rain from heaven, he gives us inviolable
+     strength, he gives us food a thousandfold.
+
+     6. Youngest of the gods, their messenger, their invoker,
+     most deserving of worship, come, at our praise, to him who
+     worships thee and longs for thy help.
+
+     7. For thou, O sage, goest wisely between these two
+     creations (heaven and earth, gods and men), like a friendly
+     messenger between two hamlets.
+
+     8. Thou art wise, and thou hast been pleased; perform thou,
+     intelligent Agni, the sacrifice without interruption, sit
+     down on this sacred grass!
+
+The following hymn, partly laudatory, partly deprecatory, is addressed
+to the Maruts or Rudras, the Storm-gods:
+
+     HYMN TO THE MARUTS (Rv. I. 39).[23]
+
+     1. When you thus from afar cast forward your measure, like a
+     blast of fire, through whose wisdom is it, through whose
+     design? To whom do you go, to whom, ye shakers (of the
+     earth)?
+
+     2. May your weapons be firm to attack, strong also to
+     withstand! May yours be the more glorious strength, not that
+     of the deceitful mortal!
+
+     3. When you overthrow what is firm, O ye men, and whirl
+     about what is heavy, ye pass through the trees of the earth,
+     through the clefts of the rocks.
+
+     4. No real foe of yours is known in heaven, nor in earth, ye
+     devourers of enemies! May strength be yours, together with
+     your race, O Rudras, to defy even now.
+
+     5. They make the rocks to tremble, they tear asunder the
+     kings of the forest. Come on, Maruts, like madmen, ye gods,
+     with your whole tribe.
+
+     6. You have harnessed the spotted deer to your chariots, a
+     red deer draws as leader. Even the earth listened at your
+     approach, and men were frightened.
+
+     7. O Rudras, we quickly desire your help for our race. Come
+     now to us with help, as of yore, thus for the sake of the
+     frightened Ka_n_va.
+
+     8. Whatever fiend, roused by you or roused by mortals,
+     attacks us, tear him from us by your power, by your
+     strength, by your aid.
+
+     9. For you, worshipful and wise, have wholly protected
+     Ka_n_va. Come to us, Maruts, with your whole help, as
+     quickly as lightnings come after the rain.
+
+     10. Bounteous givers, ye possess whole strength, whole
+     power, ye shakers (of the earth). Send, O Maruts, against
+     the proud enemy of the poets, an enemy, like an arrow.
+
+[Footnote 23: Professor Wilson translates as follows:
+
+     1. When, Maruts, who make (all things) tremble, you direct
+     your awful (vigour) downwards from afar, as light (descends
+     from heaven), by whose worship, by whose praise (are you
+     attracted)? To what (place of sacrifice), to whom, indeed,
+     do you repair?
+
+     2. Strong be your weapons for driving away (your) foes, firm
+     in resisting them: yours be the strength that merits praise,
+     not (the strength) of a treacherous mortal.
+
+     3. Directing Maruts, when you demolish what is stable, when
+     you scatter what is ponderous, then you make your way
+     through the forest (trees) of earth and the defiles of the
+     mountains.
+
+     4. Destroyers of foes, no adversary of yours is known above
+     the heavens, nor (is any) upon earth: may your collective
+     strength be quickly exerted, sons of Rudra, to humble (your
+     enemies).
+
+     5. They make the mountains tremble, they drive apart the
+     forest trees. Go, divine Maruts, whither you will, with all
+     your progeny, like those intoxicated.
+
+     6. You have harnessed the spotted deer to your chariot; the
+     red deer yoked between them, (aids to) drag the car: the
+     firmament listens for your coming, and men are alarmed.
+
+     7. Rudras, we have recourse to your assistance for the sake
+     of our progeny: come quickly to the timid Ka_n_va, as you
+     formerly came, for our protection.
+
+     8. Should any adversary, instigated by you, or by man,
+     assail us, withhold from him food and strength and your
+     assistance.
+
+     9. Pra_k_etasas, who are to be unreservedly worshipped,
+     uphold (the sacrificer) Ka_n_va: come to us, Maruts, with
+     undivided protective assistances, as the lightnings (bring)
+     the rain.
+
+     10. Bounteous givers, you enjoy unimpaired vigour: shakers
+     (of the earth), you possess undiminished strength: Maruts,
+     let loose your anger, like an arrow, upon the wrathful enemy
+     of the Rishis.
+]
+
+The following is a simple prayer addressed to the Dawn:
+
+     HYMN TO USHAS (Rv. VII. 77).
+
+     1. She shines upon us, like a young wife, rousing every
+     living being to go to his work. When the fire had to be
+     kindled by men, she made the light by striking down
+     darkness.
+
+     2. She rose up, spreading far and wide, and moving
+     everywhere. She grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant
+     garment. The mother of the cows, (the mornings) the leader
+     of the days, she shone gold-coloured, lovely to behold.
+
+     3. She, the fortunate, who brings the eye of the gods, who
+     leads the white and lovely steed (of the sun), the Dawn was
+     seen revealed by her rays, with brilliant treasures,
+     following every one.
+
+     4. Thou who art a blessing where thou art near, drive far
+     away the unfriendly; make the pasture wide, give us safety!
+     Scatter the enemy, bring riches! Raise up wealth to the
+     worshipper, thou mighty Dawn.
+
+     5. Shine for us with thy best rays, thou bright Dawn, thou
+     who lengthenest our life, thou the love of all, who givest
+     us food, who givest us wealth in cows, horses, and chariots.
+
+     6. Thou, daughter of the sky, thou high-born Dawn, whom the
+     Vasish_t_has magnify with songs, give us riches high and
+     wide: all ye gods, protect us always with your blessings.
+
+I must confine myself to shorter extracts, in order to be able to show
+to you that all the principal elements of real religion are present in
+the Veda. I remind you again that the Veda contains a great deal of
+what is childish and foolish, though very little of what is bad and
+objectionable. Some of its poets ascribe to the gods sentiments and
+passions unworthy of the deity, such as anger, revenge, delight in
+material sacrifices; they likewise represent human nature on a low
+level of selfishness and worldliness. Many hymns are utterly unmeaning
+and insipid, and we must search patiently before we meet, here and
+there, with sentiments that come from the depth of the soul, and with
+prayers in which we could join ourselves. Yet there are such
+passages, and they are the really important passages, as marking the
+highest points to which the religious life of the ancient poets of
+India had reached; and it is to these that I shall now call your
+attention.
+
+First of all, the religion of the Veda knows of no idols. The worship
+of idols in India is a secondary formation, a later degradation of the
+more primitive worship of ideal gods.
+
+The gods of the Veda are conceived as immortal: passages in which the
+birth of certain gods is mentioned have a physical meaning: they refer
+to the birth of the day, the rising of the sun, the return of the
+year.
+
+The gods are supposed to dwell in heaven, though several of them, as,
+for instance, Agni, the god of fire, are represented as living among
+men, or as approaching the sacrifice, and listening to the praises of
+their worshippers.
+
+Heaven and earth are believed to have been made or to have been
+established by certain gods. Elaborate theories of creation, which
+abound in the later works, the Br�hma_n_as, are not to be found in the
+hymns. What we find are such passages as:
+
+'Agni held the earth, he stablished the heaven by truthful words' (Rv.
+I. 67, 3).
+
+'Varu_n_a stemmed asunder the wide firmaments; he lifted on high the
+bright and glorious heaven; he stretched out apart the starry sky and
+the earth' (Rv. VII. 86, 1).
+
+More frequently, however, the poets confess their ignorance of the
+beginning of all things, and one of them exclaims:
+
+'Who has seen the first-born? Where was the life, the blood, the soul
+of the world? Who went to ask this from any that knew it? (Rv. I. 164,
+4).[24]
+
+Or again, Rv. X. 81, 4: 'What was the forest, what was the tree out of
+which they shaped heaven and earth? Wise men, ask this indeed in your
+mind, on what he stood when he held the worlds?'
+
+I now come to a more important subject. We find in the Veda, what few
+would have expected to find there, the two ideas, so contradictory to
+the human understanding, and yet so easily reconciled in every human
+heart: God has established the eternal laws of right and wrong, he
+punishes sin and rewards virtue, and yet the same God is willing to
+forgive; just, yet merciful; a judge, and yet a father. Consider, for
+instance, the following lines, Rv. I. 41, 4: 'His path is easy and
+without thorns, who does what is right.'
+
+And again, Rv. I. 41, 9: 'Let man fear Him who holds the four (dice),
+before he throws them down (i. e. God who holds the destinies of men
+in his hand); let no man delight in evil words!'
+
+And then consider the following hymns, and imagine the feelings which
+alone could have prompted them:
+
+     HYMN TO VARU_N_A (Rv. VII. 89).
+
+     1. Let me not yet, O Varu_n_a, enter into the house of clay;
+     have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
+
+     2. If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind;
+     have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
+
+     3. Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god,
+     have I gone wrong; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
+
+     4. Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in the
+     midst of the waters; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
+
+     5. Whenever we men, O Varu_n_a, commit an offence before the
+     heavenly host, whenever we break the law through
+     thoughtlessness; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
+
+[Footnote 24: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. 20 note.]
+
+And again, Rv. VII. 86:
+
+     1. Wise and mighty are the works of him who stemmed asunder
+     the wide firmaments (heaven and earth). He lifted on high
+     the bright and glorious heaven; he stretched out apart the
+     starry sky and the earth.
+
+     2. Do I say this to my own self? How can I get unto
+     Varu_n_a? Will he accept my offering without displeasure?
+     When shall I, with a quiet mind, see him propitiated?
+
+     3. I ask, O Varu_n_a, wishing to know this my sin. I go to
+     ask the wise. The sages all tell me the same: Varu_n_a it is
+     who is angry with thee.
+
+     4. Was it an old sin, O Varu_n_a, that thou wishest to
+     destroy thy friend, who always praises thee? Tell me, thou
+     unconquerable lord, and I will quickly turn to thee with
+     praise, freed from sin.
+
+     5. Absolve us from the sins of our fathers, and from those
+     which we committed with our own bodies. Release Vasish_t_ha,
+     O king, like a thief who has feasted on stolen oxen; release
+     him like a calf from the rope.
+
+     6. It was not our own doing, O Varu_n_a, it was necessity
+     (or temptation), an intoxicating draught, passion, dice,
+     thoughtlessness. The old is there to mislead the young; even
+     sleep brings unrighteousness.
+
+     7. Let me without sin give satisfaction to the angry god,
+     like a slave to the bounteous lord. The lord god enlightened
+     the foolish; he, the wisest, leads his worshipper to wealth.
+
+     8. O lord Varu_n_a, may this song go well to thy heart! May
+     we prosper in keeping and acquiring! Protect us, O gods,
+     always with your blessings!
+
+The consciousness of sin is a prominent feature in the religion of the
+Veda, so is likewise the belief that the gods are able to take away
+from man the heavy burden of his sins. And when we read such passages
+as 'Varu_n_a is merciful even to him who has committed sin' (Rv. VII.
+87, 7), we should surely not allow the strange name of Varu_n_a to jar
+on our ears, but should remember that it is but one of the many names
+which men invented in their helplessness to express their ideas of the
+Deity, however partial and imperfect.
+
+The next hymn, which is taken from the Atharva-veda (IV. 16), will
+show how near the language of the ancient poets of India may approach
+to the language of the Bible:[25]
+
+     1. The great lord of these worlds sees as if he were near.
+     If a man thinks he is walking by stealth, the gods know it
+     all.
+
+     2. If a man stands or walks or hides, if he goes to lie down
+     or to get up, what two people sitting together whisper, king
+     Varu_n_a knows it, he is there as the third.
+
+     3. This earth, too, belongs to Varu_n_a, the king, and this
+     wide sky with its ends far apart. The two seas (the sky and
+     the ocean) are Varu_n_a's loins; he is also contained in
+     this small drop of water.
+
+     4. He who should flee far beyond the sky, even he would not
+     be rid of Varu_n_a, the king. His spies proceed from heaven
+     towards this world; with thousand eyes they overlook this
+     earth.
+
+     5. King Varu_n_a sees all this, what is between heaven and
+     earth, and what is beyond. He has counted the twinklings of
+     the eyes of men. As a player throws the dice, he settles all
+     things.
+
+     6. May all thy fatal nooses, which stand spread out seven by
+     seven and threefold, catch the man who tells a lie, may they
+     pass by him who tells the truth.
+
+[Footnote 25: This hymn was first pointed out by Professor Roth in a
+dissertation on the Atharva-veda (T�bingen, 1856), and it has since
+been translated and annotated by Dr. Muir, in his article on the
+'Vedic Theogony and Cosmogony,' p. 31.]
+
+Another idea which we find in the Veda is that of faith: not only in
+the sense of trust in the gods, in their power, their protection,
+their kindness, but in that of belief in their existence. The Latin
+word credo, I believe, is the same as the Sanskrit _s_raddh�, and this
+_s_raddh� occurs in the Veda:
+
+Rv. I. 102, 2. 'Sun and moon go on in regular succession, that we may
+see, Indra, and believe.'
+
+Rv. I. 104, 6. 'Destroy not our future offspring, O Indra, for we have
+believed in thy great power.'
+
+Rv. I. 55, 5. 'When Indra hurls again and again his thunderbolt, then
+they believe in the brilliant god.'[26]
+
+[Footnote 26: During violent thunderstorms the natives of New Holland
+are so afraid of War-ru-gu-ra, the evil spirit, that they seek shelter
+even in caves haunted by Ingnas, subordinate demons, which at other
+times they would enter on no account. There, in silent terror, they
+prostrate themselves with their faces to the ground, waiting until the
+spirit, having expended his fury, shall retire to Uta (hell) without
+having discovered their hiding-place.--'Transactions of Ethnological
+Society,' vol. iii. p. 229. Oldfield, 'The Aborigines of Australia.']
+
+A similar sentiment, namely, that men only believe in the gods when
+they see their signs and wonders in the sky, is expressed by another
+poet (Rv. VIII. 21, 14):
+
+     'Thou, Indra, never findest a rich man to be thy friend;
+     wine-swillers despise thee. But when thou thunderest, when
+     thou gatherest (the clouds), then thou art called, like a
+     father.'
+
+And with this belief in god, there is also coupled that doubt, that
+true scepticism, if we may so call it, which is meant to give to faith
+its real strength. We find passages even in these early hymns where
+the poet asks himself, whether there is really such a god as Indra,--a
+question immediately succeeded by an answer, as if given to the poet
+by Indra himself. Thus we read Rv. VIII. 89, 3:
+
+     'If you wish for strength, offer to Indra a hymn of praise:
+     a true hymn, if Indra truly exist; for some one says, Indra
+     does not exist! Who has seen him? Whom shall we praise?'
+
+Then Indra answers through the poet:
+
+     'Here I am, O worshipper, behold me here! in might I surpass
+     all things.'
+
+Similar visions occur elsewhere, where the poet, after inviting a god
+to a sacrifice, or imploring his pardon for his offences, suddenly
+exclaims that he has seen the god, and that he feels that his prayer
+is granted. For instance:
+
+     HYMN TO VARU_N_A (Rv. I. 25).
+
+     1. However we break thy laws from day to day, men as we are,
+     O god, Varu_n_a,
+
+     2. Do not deliver us unto death, nor to the blow of the
+     furious; nor to the wrath of the spiteful!
+
+     3. To propitiate thee, O Varu_n_a, we unbend thy mind with
+     songs, as the charioteer a weary steed.
+
+     4. Away from me they flee dispirited, intent only on gaining
+     wealth; as birds to their nests.
+
+     5. When shall we bring hither the man, who is victory to the
+     warriors; when shall we bring Varu_n_a, the wide-seeing, to
+     be propitiated?
+
+     [6. This they (Mitra and Varu_n_a) take in common; gracious,
+     they never fail the faithful giver.]
+
+     7. He who knows the place of the birds that fly through the
+     sky, who on the waters knows the ships;--
+
+     8. He, the upholder of order, who knows the twelve months
+     with the offspring of each, and knows the month that is
+     engendered afterwards;--
+
+     9. He who knows the track of the wind, of the wide, the
+     bright, the mighty; and knows those who reside on high;--
+
+     10. He, the upholder of order, Varu_n_a, sits down among his
+     people; he, the wise, sits there to govern.
+
+     11. From thence perceiving all wondrous things, he sees what
+     has been and what will be done.
+
+     12. May he, the wise �ditya, make our paths straight all our
+     days; may he prolong our lives!
+
+     13. Varu_n_a, wearing golden mail, has put on his shining
+     cloak; the spies sat down around him.
+
+     14. The god whom the scoffers do not provoke, nor the
+     tormentors of men, nor the plotters of mischief;--
+
+     15. He, who gives to men glory, and not half glory, who
+     gives it even to our own selves;--
+
+     16. Yearning for him, the far-seeing, my thoughts move
+     onwards, as kine move to their pastures.
+
+     17. Let us speak together again, because my honey has been
+     brought: that thou mayst eat what thou likest, like a
+     friend.
+
+     18. Did I see the god who is to be seen by all, did I see
+     the chariot above the earth? He must have accepted my
+     prayers.
+
+     19. O hear this my calling, Varu_n_a, be gracious now;
+     longing for help, I have called upon thee.
+
+     20. Thou, O wise god, art lord of all, of heaven and earth:
+     listen on thy way.
+
+     21. That I may live, take from me the upper rope, loose the
+     middle, and remove the lowest!
+
+In conclusion, let me tell you that there is in the Veda no trace of
+metempsychosis or that transmigration of souls from human to animal
+bodies which is generally supposed to be a distinguishing feature of
+Indian religion. Instead of this, we find what is really the sine qu�
+non of all real religion, a belief in immortality, and in personal
+immortality. Without a belief in personal immortality, religion surely
+is like an arch resting on one pillar, like a bridge ending in an
+abyss. We cannot wonder at the great difficulties felt and expressed
+by bishop Warburton and other eminent divines, with regard to the
+supposed total absence of the doctrine of immortality or personal
+immortality in the Old Testament; and it is equally startling that the
+Sadducees who sat in the same council with the high-priest, openly
+denied the resurrection.[27] However, though not expressly asserted
+anywhere, a belief in personal immortality is taken for granted in
+several passages of the Old Testament, and we can hardly think of
+Abraham or Moses as without a belief in life and immortality. But
+while this difficulty, so keenly felt with regard to the Jewish
+religion, ought to make us careful in the judgments which we form of
+other religions, and teach us the wisdom of charitable interpretation,
+it is all the more important to mark that in the Veda passages occur
+where immortality of the soul, personal immortality and personal
+responsibility after death, are clearly proclaimed. Thus we read:
+
+[Footnote 27: Acts xxii. 30, xxiii. 6.]
+
+     'He who gives alms goes to the highest place in heaven; he
+     goes to the gods' (Rv. I. 125, 56).
+
+Another poet, after rebuking those who are rich and do not
+communicate, says:
+
+     'The kind mortal is greater than the great in heaven!'
+
+Even the idea, so frequent in the later literature of the Brahmans,
+that immortality is secured by a son, seems implied, unless our
+translation deceives us, in one passage of the Veda (VII. 56, 24):
+'Asm� (�ti) vira_h_ maruta_h_ sushm� astu _g_�n�n�m y�_h_ �sura_h_ vi
+dhart�, ap�_h_ y�na su-kshit�ye t�rema, �dha sv�m �ka_h_ abh� vah
+sy�ma.' 'O Maruts, may there be to us a strong son, who is a living
+ruler of men: through whom we may cross the waters on our way to the
+happy abode; then may we come to your own house!'
+
+One poet prays that he may see again his father and mother after death
+(Rv. I. 24, 1); and the fathers (Pit_r_is) are invoked almost like
+gods, oblations are offered to them, and they are believed to enjoy,
+in company with the gods, a life of never ending felicity (Rv. X. 15,
+16).
+
+We find this prayer addressed to Soma (Rv. IX. 113, 7):
+
+     'Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is
+     placed, in that immortal imperishable world place me, O
+     Soma!'
+
+     'Where king Vaivasvata reigns, where the secret place of
+     heaven is, where these mighty waters are, there make me
+     immortal!
+
+     'Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, where
+     the worlds are radiant, there make me immortal!'
+
+     'Where wishes and desires are, where the place of the bright
+     sun is, where there is freedom and delight, there make me
+     immortal!
+
+     'Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and
+     pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire are
+     attained, there make me immortal!'[28]
+
+Whether the old Rishis believed likewise in a place of punishment for
+the wicked, is more doubtful, though vague allusions to it occur in
+the Rig-veda, and more distinct descriptions are found in the
+Atharva-veda. In one verse it is said that the dead is rewarded for
+his good deeds, that he leaves or casts off all evil, and glorified
+takes his body (Rv. X. 14, 8).[29] The dogs of Yama, the king of the
+departed, present some terrible aspects, and Yama is asked to protect
+the departed from them (Rv. X. 14, 11). Again, a pit (karta) is
+mentioned into which the lawless are said to be hurled down (Rv. IX.
+73, 8), and into which Indra casts those who offer no sacrifices (Rv.
+I. 121, 13). One poet prays that the �dityas may preserve him from the
+destroying wolf, and from falling into the pit (Rv. II. 29, 6). In one
+passage we read that 'those who break the commandments of Varu_n_a and
+who speak lies are born for that deep place' (Rv. IV. 5, 5).[30]
+
+[Footnote 28: Professor Roth, after quoting several passages from the
+Veda in which a belief in immortality is expressed, remarks with great
+truth: 'We here find, not without astonishment, beautiful conceptions
+on immortality expressed in unadorned language with child-like
+conviction. If it were necessary, we might here find the most powerful
+weapons against the view which has lately been revived, and proclaimed
+as new, that Persia was the only birthplace of the idea of
+immortality, and that even the nations of Europe had derived it from
+that quarter. As if the religious spirit of every gifted race was not
+able to arrive at it by its own strength.'--('Journal of the German
+Oriental Society,' vol. iv. p. 427.) See Dr. Muir's article on Yama,
+in the 'Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,' p. 10.]
+
+[Footnote 29: M. M., Die Todtenbestattung bei den Brahmanen
+'Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenl�ndischen Gesellschaft,' vol. ix. p.
+xii.]
+
+[Footnote 30: Dr. Muir, article on Yama, p. 18.]
+
+Surely the discovery of a religion like this, as unexpected as the
+discovery of the jaw-bone of Abbeville, deserves to arrest our
+thoughts for a moment, even in the haste and hurry of this busy life.
+No doubt for the daily wants of life, the old division of religions
+into true and false is quite sufficient; as for practical purposes we
+distinguish only between our own mother-tongue on the one side, and
+all other foreign languages on the other. But, from a higher point of
+view, it would not be right to ignore the new evidence that has come
+to light; and as the study of geology has given us a truer insight
+into the stratification of the earth, it is but natural to expect that
+a thoughtful study of the original works of three of the most
+important religions of the world, Brahmanism, Magism, and Buddhism,
+will modify our views as to the growth or history of religion, as to
+the hidden layers of religious thought beneath the soil on which we
+stand. Such inquires should be undertaken without prejudice and
+without fear: the evidence is placed before us; our duty is to sift it
+critically, to weigh it honestly, and to wait for the results.
+
+Three of these results, to which, I believe, a comparative study of
+religions is sure to lead, I may state before I conclude this Lecture:
+
+     1. We shall learn that religions in their most ancient form,
+     or in the minds of their authors, are generally free from
+     many of the blemishes that attach to them in later times.
+
+     2. We shall learn that there is hardly one religion which
+     does not contain some truth, some important truth; truth
+     sufficient to enable those who seek the Lord and feel after
+     Him, to find Him in their hour of need.
+
+     3. We shall learn to appreciate better than ever what we
+     have in our own religion. No one who has not examined
+     patiently and honestly the other religions of the world, can
+     know what Christianity really is, or can join with such
+     truth and sincerity in the words of St. Paul: 'I am not
+     ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.'
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS.[31]
+
+
+In so comprehensive a work as Mr. Hardwick's 'Christ and other
+Masters,' the number of facts stated, of topics discussed, of
+questions raised, is so considerable that in reviewing it we can
+select only one or two points for special consideration. Mr. Hardwick
+intends to give in his work, of which the third volume has just been
+published, a complete panorama of ancient religion. After having
+discussed in the first volume what he calls the religious tendencies
+of our age, he enters upon an examination of the difficult problem of
+the unity of the human race, and proceeds to draw, in a separate
+chapter, the characteristic features of religion under the Old
+Testament. Having thus cleared his way, and established some of the
+principles according to which the religions of the world should be
+judged, Mr. Hardwick devotes the whole of the second volume to the
+religions of India. We find there, first of all, a short but very
+clear account of the religion of the Veda, as far as it is known at
+present. We then come to a more matter-of-fact representation of
+Brahmanism, or the religion of the Hindus, as represented in the
+so-called Laws of Manu, and in the ancient portions of the two epic
+poems, the R�m�ya_n_a and Mah�bh�rata. The next chapter is devoted to
+the various systems of Indian philosophy, which all partake more or
+less of a religious character, and form a natural transition to the
+first subjective system of faith in India, the religion of Buddha. Mr.
+Hardwick afterwards discusses, in two separate chapters, the apparent
+and the real correspondences between Hinduism and revealed religion,
+and throws out some hints how we may best account for the partial
+glimpses of truth which exist in the Vedas, the canonical books of
+Buddhism, and the later Pur�_n_as. All these questions are handled
+with such ability, and discussed with so much elegance and eloquence,
+that the reader becomes hardly aware of the great difficulties of the
+subject, and carries away, if not quite a complete and correct, at
+least a very lucid, picture of the religious life of ancient India.
+The third volume, which was published in the beginning of this year,
+is again extremely interesting, and full of the most varied
+descriptions. The religions of China are given first, beginning with
+an account of the national traditions, as collected and fixed by
+Confucius. Then follows the religious system of Lao-tse, or the
+Tao-ism of China, and lastly Buddhism again, only under that modified
+form which it assumed when introduced from India into China. After
+this sketch of the religious life of China, the most ancient centre of
+Eastern civilisation, Mr. Hardwick suddenly transports us to the New
+World, and introduces us to the worship of the wild tribes of America,
+and to the ruins of the ancient temples in which the civilised races
+of that continent, especially the Mexicans, once bowed themselves down
+before their god or gods. Lastly, we have to embark on the South Sea,
+and to visit the various islands which form a chain between the west
+coast of America and the east coast of Africa, stretching over half of
+the globe, and inhabited by the descendants of the once united race of
+the Malayo-Polynesians.
+
+[Footnote 31: 'Christ and other Masters.' An Historical Inquiry into
+some of the chief Parallelisms and Contrasts between Christianity and
+the Religious Systems of the Ancient World, with special reference to
+prevailing Difficulties and Objections. By Charles Hardwick, M.A.,
+Christian Advocate in the University of Cambridge. Parts I, II, III.
+Cambridge, 1858.]
+
+The account which Mr. Hardwick can afford to give of the various
+systems of religion in so short a compass as he has fixed for himself,
+must necessarily be very general; and his remarks on the merits and
+defects peculiar to each, which were more ample in the second volume,
+have dwindled down to much smaller dimensions in the third. He
+declares distinctly that he does not write for missionaries. 'It is
+not my leading object,' he says, 'to conciliate the more thoughtful
+minds of heathendom in favour of the Christian faith. However laudable
+that task may be, however fitly it may occupy the highest and the
+keenest intellect of persons who desire to further the advance of
+truth and holiness among our heathen fellow-subjects, there are
+difficulties nearer home which may in fairness be regarded as
+possessing prior claims on the attention of a Christian Advocate.'
+
+We confess that we regret that Mr. Hardwick should have taken this
+line. If, in writing his criticism on the ancient or modern systems of
+Pagan religion, he had placed himself face to face with a poor
+helpless creature, such as the missionaries have to deal with--a man
+brought up in the faith of his fathers, accustomed to call his god or
+gods by names sacred to him from his first childhood--a man who had
+derived much real help and consolation from his belief in these
+gods--who had abstained from committing crime, because he was afraid
+of the anger of a Divine Being--who had performed severe penance,
+because he hoped to appease the anger of the gods--who had given, not
+only the tenth part of all he valued most, but the half, nay, the
+whole of his property, as a free offering to his priests, that they
+might pray for him or absolve him from his sin--if, in discussing any
+of the ancient or modern systems of Pagan religion, Mr. Hardwick had
+tried to address his arguments to such a person, we believe he would
+himself have felt a more human, real, and hearty interest in his
+subject. He would more earnestly have endeavoured to find out the good
+elements in every form of religious belief. No sensible missionary
+could bring himself to tell a man who has done all that he could do,
+and more than many who have received the true light of the Gospel,
+that he was excluded from all hope of salvation, and by his very birth
+and colour handed over irretrievably to eternal damnation. It is
+possible to put a charitable interpretation on many doctrines of
+ancient heathenism, and the practical missionary is constantly obliged
+to do so. Let us only consider what these doctrines are. They are not
+theories devised by men who wish to keep out the truth of
+Christianity, but sacred traditions which millions of human beings are
+born and brought up to believe in, as we are born and brought up to
+believe in Christianity. It is the only spiritual food which God in
+his wisdom has placed within their reach. But if we once begin to
+think of modern heathenism, and how certain tenets of Lao-tse resemble
+the doctrines of Comte or Spinoza, our equanimity, our historical
+justice, our Christian charity, are gone. We become advocates
+wrangling for victory--we are no longer tranquil observers,
+compassionate friends and teachers. Mr. Hardwick sometimes addresses
+himself to men like Lao-tse or Buddha, who are now dead and gone more
+than two thousand years, in a tone of offended orthodoxy, which may or
+may not be right in modern controversy, but which entirely disregards
+the fact that it has pleased God to let these men and millions of
+human beings be born on earth without a chance of ever hearing of the
+existence of the Gospel. We cannot penetrate into the secrets of the
+Divine wisdom, but we are bound to believe that God has His purpose in
+all things, and that He will know how to judge those to whom so little
+has been given. Christianity does not require of us that we should
+criticise, with our own small wisdom, that Divine policy which has
+governed the whole world from the very beginning. We pity a man who is
+born blind--we are not angry with him; and Mr. Hardwick, in his
+arguments against the tenets of Buddha or Lao-tse, seems to us to
+treat these men too much in the spirit of a policeman who tells a poor
+blind beggar that he is only shamming blindness. However, if, as a
+Christian Advocate, Mr. Hardwick found it impossible to entertain, or
+at least express, any sympathy with the Pagan world, even the cold
+judgment of the historian would have been better than the excited
+pleading of a partisan. Surely it is not necessary, in order to prove
+that our religion is the only true religion, that we should insist on
+the utter falseness of all other forms of belief. We need not be
+frightened if we discover traces of truth, traces even of Christian
+truth, among the sages and lawgivers of other nations. St. Augustine
+was not frightened by this discovery, and every thoughtful Christian
+will feel cheered by the words of that pious philosopher, when he
+boldly declares, that there is no religion which, among its many
+errors, does not contain some real and divine truth. It shows a want
+of faith in God, and in His inscrutable wisdom in the government of
+the world, if we think we ought to condemn all ancient forms of faith,
+except the religion of the Jews. A true spirit of Christianity will
+rather lead us to shut our eyes against many things which are
+revolting to us in the religion of the Chinese, or the wild Americans,
+or the civilised Hindus, and to try to discover, as well as we can,
+how even in these degraded forms of worship a spark of light lies
+hidden somewhere--a spark which may lighten and warm the heart of the
+Gentiles, 'who by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory,
+and honour, and immortality.' There is an undercurrent of thought in
+Mr. Hardwick's book which breaks out again and again, and which has
+certainly prevented him from discovering many a deep lesson which may
+be learnt in the study of ancient religions. He uses harsh language,
+because he is thinking, not of the helpless Chinese, or the dreaming
+Hindu whose tenets he controverts, but of modern philosophers; and he
+is evidently glad of every opportunity where he can show to the latter
+that their systems are mere _rechauff�s_ of ancient heathenism. Thus
+he says, in his introduction to the third volume:
+
+     'I may also be allowed to add, that, in the present
+     chapters, the more thoughtful reader will not fail to
+     recognise the proper tendency of certain current
+     speculations, which are recommended to us on the ground that
+     they accord entirely with the last discoveries of science,
+     and embody the deliberate verdicts of the oracle within us.
+     Notwithstanding all that has been urged in their behalf,
+     those theories are little more than a return to
+     long-exploded errors, a resuscitation of extinct volcanoes;
+     or at best, they merely offer to introduce among us an array
+     of civilising agencies, which, after trial in other
+     countries, have been all found wanting. The governing class
+     of China, for example, have long been familiar with the
+     metaphysics of Spinoza. They have also carried out the
+     social principles of M. Comte upon the largest possible
+     scale. For ages they have been what people of the present
+     day are wishing to become in Europe, with this difference
+     only, that the heathen legislator who had lost all faith in
+     God attempted to redress the wrongs and elevate the moral
+     status of his subjects by the study of political science, or
+     devising some new scheme of general sociology; while the
+     positive philosopher of the present day, who has relapsed
+     into the same positions, is in every case rejecting a
+     religious system which has proved itself the mightiest of
+     all civilisers, and the constant champion of the rights and
+     dignity of men. He offers in the stead of Christianity a
+     specious phase of paganism, by which the nineteenth century
+     after Christ may be assimilated to the golden age of Mencius
+     and Confucius; or, in other words, may consummate its
+     religious freedom, and attain the highest pinnacle of human
+     progress, by reverting to a state of childhood and of moral
+     imbecility.'
+
+Few serious-minded persons will like the temper of this paragraph. The
+history of ancient religion is too important, too sacred a subject to
+be used as a masked battery against modern infidelity. Nor should a
+Christian Advocate ever condescend to defend his cause by arguments
+such as a pleader who is somewhat sceptical as to the merits of his
+case, may be allowed to use, but which produce on the mind of the
+Judge the very opposite effect of that which they are intended to
+produce. If we want to understand the religions of antiquity, we must
+try, as well as we can, to enter into the religious, moral, and
+political atmosphere of the ancient world. We must do what the
+historian does. We must become ancients ourselves, otherwise we shall
+never understand the motives and meaning of their faith. Take one
+instance. There are some nations who have always regarded death with
+the utmost horror. Their whole religion may be said to be a fight
+against death, and the chief object of their prayers seems to be a
+long life on earth. The Persian clings to life with intense tenacity,
+and the same feeling exists among the Jews. Other nations, on the
+contrary, regard death in a different light. Death is to them a
+passage from one life to another. No misgiving has ever entered their
+minds as to a possible extinction of existence, and at the first call
+of the priest--nay, sometimes from a mere selfish yearning after a
+better life--they are ready to put an end to their existence on earth.
+Feelings of this kind can hardly be called convictions arrived at by
+the individual. They are national peculiarities, and they exercise an
+irresistible sway over all who belong to the same nation. The loyal
+devotion which the Slavonic nations feel for their sovereign will
+make the most brutalized Russian peasant step into the place where
+his comrade has just been struck down, without a thought of his wife,
+or his mother, or his children, whom he is never to see again. He does
+not do this because, by his own reflection, he has arrived at the
+conclusion that he is bound to sacrifice himself for his emperor or
+for his country--he does it because he knows that every one would do
+the same; and the only feeling of satisfaction in which he would allow
+himself to indulge is, that he was doing his duty. If, then, we wish
+to understand the religions of the ancient nations of the world, we
+must take into account their national character. Nations who value
+life so little as the Hindus, and some of the American and Malay
+nations, could not feel the same horror of human sacrifices, for
+instance, which would be felt by a Jew; and the voluntary death of the
+widow would inspire her nearest relations with no other feeling but
+that of compassion and regret at seeing a young bride follow her
+husband into a distant land. She herself would feel that, in following
+her husband into death, she was only doing what every other widow
+would do--she was only doing her duty. In India, where men in the
+prime of life throw themselves under the car of Jaggern�th, to be
+crushed to death by the idol they believe in--where the plaintiff who
+cannot get redress starves himself to death at the door of his
+judge--where the philosopher who thinks he has learnt all which this
+world can teach him, and who longs for absorption into the Deity,
+quietly steps into the Ganges, in order to arrive at the other shore
+of existence--in such a country, however much we may condemn these
+practices, we must be on our guard and not judge the strange religions
+of such strange creatures according to our own more sober code of
+morality. Let a man once be impressed with a belief that this life is
+but a prison, and that he has but to break through its walls in order
+to breathe the fresh and pure air of a higher life--let him once
+consider it cowardice to shrink from this act, and a proof of courage
+and of a firm faith in God to rush back to that eternal source from
+whence he came--and let these views be countenanced by a whole nation,
+sanctioned by priests, and hallowed by poets, and however we may blame
+and loathe the custom of human sacrifices and religious suicides, we
+shall be bound to confess that to such a man, and to a whole nation of
+such men, the most cruel rites will have a very different meaning from
+what they would have to us. They are not mere cruelty and brutality.
+They contain a religious element, and presuppose a belief in
+immortality, and an indifference with regard to worldly pleasures,
+which, if directed in a different channel, might produce martyrs and
+heroes. Here, at least, there is no danger of modern heresy aping
+ancient paganism; and we feel at liberty to express our sympathy and
+compassion, even with the most degraded of our brethren. The Fijians,
+for instance, commit almost every species of atrocity; but we can
+still discover, as Wilkes remarked in his 'Exploring Expedition,' that
+the source of many of their abhorrent practices is a belief in a
+future state, guided by no just notions of religious or moral
+obligations. They immolate themselves; they think it right to destroy
+their best friends, to free them from the miseries of this life; they
+actually consider it a duty, and perhaps a painful duty, that the son
+should strangle his parents, if requested to do so. Some of the
+Fijians, when interrupted by Europeans in the act of strangling their
+mother, simply replied that she was their mother, and they were her
+children, and they ought to put her to death. On reaching the grave
+the mother sat down, when they all, including children, grandchildren,
+relations, and friends, took an affectionate leave of her. A rope,
+made of twisted tapa, was then passed twice around her neck by her
+sons, who took hold of it and strangled her--after which she was put
+into her grave, with the usual ceremonies. They returned to feast and
+mourn, after which she was entirely forgotten, as though she had not
+existed. No doubt these are revolting rites; but the phase of human
+thought which they disclose is far from being simply revolting. There
+is in these immolations, even in their most degraded form, a grain of
+that superhuman faith which we admire in the temptation of Abraham;
+and we feel that the time will come, nay, that it is coming, when the
+voice of the Angel of the Lord will reach those distant islands, and
+give a higher and better purpose to the wild ravings of their
+religion.
+
+It is among these tribes that the missionary, if he can speak a
+language which they understand, gains the most rapid influence. But he
+must first learn himself to understand the nature of these savages,
+and to translate the wild yells of their devotion into articulate
+language. There is, perhaps, no race of men so low and degraded as the
+Papuas. It has frequently been asserted they had no religion at all.
+And yet these same Papuas, if they want to know whether what they are
+going to undertake is right or wrong, squat before their karwar, clasp
+the hands over the forehead, and bow repeatedly, at the same time
+stating their intentions. If they are seized with any nervous feeling
+during this process, it is considered as a bad sign, and the project
+is abandoned for a time--if otherwise, the idol is supposed to
+approve. Here we have but to translate what they in their helpless
+language call 'nervous feeling' by our word 'conscience,' and we shall
+not only understand what they really mean, but confess, perhaps, that
+it would be well for us if in our own hearts the karwar occupied the
+same prominent place which it occupies in the cottage of every Papua.
+
+_March, 1858._
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THE VEDA AND ZEND-AVESTA.
+
+
+THE VEDA.
+
+
+The main stream of the Aryan nations has always flowed towards the
+north-west. No historian can tell us by what impulse these adventurous
+Nomads were driven on through Asia towards the isles and shores of
+Europe. The first start of this world-wide migration belongs to a
+period far beyond the reach of documentary history; to times when the
+soil of Europe had not been trodden by either Celts, Germans,
+Slavonians, Romans, or Greeks. But whatever it was, the impulse was as
+irresistible as the spell which, in our own times, sends the Celtic
+tribes towards the prairies or the regions of gold across the
+Atlantic. It requires a strong will, or a great amount of inertness,
+to be able to withstand the impetus of such national, or rather
+ethnical, movements. Few will stay behind when all are going. But to
+let one's friends depart, and then to set out ourselves--to take a
+road which, lead where it may, can never lead us to join those again
+who speak our language and worship our gods--is a course which only
+men of strong individuality and great self-dependence are capable of
+pursuing. It was the course adopted by the southern branch of the
+Aryan family, the Brahmanic Aryas of India and the Zoroastrians of
+Iran.
+
+At the first dawn of traditional history we see these Aryan tribes
+migrating across the snow of the Him�laya southward towards the 'Seven
+Rivers' (the Indus, the five rivers of the Penj�b, and the Sarasvat�),
+and ever since India has been called their home. That before this time
+they had been living in more northern regions, within the same
+precincts with the ancestors of the Greeks, the Italians, Slavonians,
+Germans, and Celts, is a fact as firmly established as that the
+Normans of William the Conqueror were the Northmen of Scandinavia. The
+evidence of language is irrefragable, and it is the only evidence
+worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods. It would
+have been next to impossible to discover any traces of relationship
+between the swarthy natives of India and their conquerors whether
+Alexander or Clive, but for the testimony borne by language. What
+other evidence could have reached back to times when Greece was not
+yet peopled by Greeks, nor India by Hindus? Yet these are the times of
+which we are speaking. What authority would have been strong enough to
+persuade the Grecian army, that their gods and their hero ancestors
+were the same as those of king Porus, or to convince the English
+soldier that the same blood might be running in his veins and in the
+veins of the dark Bengalese? And yet there is not an English jury
+now-a-days, which, after examining the hoary documents of language,
+would reject the claim of a common descent and a spiritual
+relationship between Hindu, Greek, and Teuton. Many words still live
+in India and in England that have witnessed the first separation of
+the northern and southern Aryans, and these are witnesses not to be
+shaken by any cross-examination. The terms for God, for house, for
+father, mother, son, daughter, for dog and cow, for heart and tears,
+for axe and tree, identical in all the Indo-European idioms, are like
+the watchwords of soldiers. We challenge the seeming stranger; and
+whether he answer with the lips of a Greek, a German, or an Indian, we
+recognise him as one of ourselves. Though the historian may shake his
+head, though the physiologist may doubt, and the poet scorn the idea,
+all must yield before the facts furnished by language. There was a
+time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Slavonians, the
+Greeks and Italians, the Persians and Hindus, were living together
+beneath the same roof, separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and
+Turanian races.
+
+It is more difficult to prove that the Hindu was the last to leave
+this common home, that he saw his brothers all depart towards the
+setting sun, and that then, turning towards the south and the east, he
+started alone in search of a new world. But as in his language and in
+his grammar he has preserved something of what seems peculiar to each
+of the northern dialects singly, as he agrees with the Greek and the
+German where the Greek and the German differ from all the rest, and as
+no other language has carried off so large a share of the common Aryan
+heirloom--whether roots, grammar, words, mythes, or legends--it is
+natural to suppose that, though perhaps the eldest brother, the Hindu
+was the last to leave the central home of the Aryan family.
+
+The Aryan nations who pursued a north-westerly direction, stand before
+us in history as the principal nations of north-western Asia and
+Europe. They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of
+history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of
+active life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected
+society and morals, and we learn from their literature and works of
+art the elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of
+philosophy. In continual struggle with each other and with Semitic and
+Turanian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history,
+and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world
+together by the chains of civilisation, commerce, and religion. In a
+word, they represent the Aryan man in his historical character.
+
+But while most of the members of the Aryan family followed this
+glorious path, the southern tribes were slowly migrating towards the
+mountains which gird the north of India. After crossing the narrow
+passes of the Hindukush or the Him�laya, they conquered or drove
+before them, as it seems without much effort, the aboriginal
+inhabitants of the Trans-Himalayan countries. They took for their
+guides the principal rivers of Northern India, and were led by them to
+new homes in their beautiful and fertile valleys. It seems as if the
+great mountains in the north had afterwards closed for centuries their
+Cyclopean gates against new immigrations, while, at the same time, the
+waves of the Indian Ocean kept watch over the southern borders of the
+peninsula. None of the great conquerors of antiquity,--Sesostris,
+Semiramis, Nebuchadnezzar, or Cyrus,--disturbed the peaceful seats of
+these Aryan settlers. Left to themselves in a world of their own,
+without a past, and without a future before them, they had nothing but
+themselves to ponder on. Struggles there must have been in India also.
+Old dynasties were destroyed, whole families annihilated, and new
+empires founded. Yet the inward life of the Hindu was not changed by
+these convulsions. His mind was like the lotus leaf after a shower of
+rain has passed over it; his character remained the same, passive,
+meditative, quiet, and thoughtful. A people of this peculiar stamp was
+never destined to act a prominent part in the history of the world;
+nay, the exhausting atmosphere of transcendental ideas in which they
+lived could not but exercise a detrimental influence on the active and
+moral character of the Indians. Social and political virtues were
+little cultivated, and the ideas of the useful and the beautiful
+hardly known to them. With all this, however, they had, what the Greek
+was as little capable of imagining, as they were of realising the
+elements of Grecian life. They shut their eyes to this world of
+outward seeming and activity, to open them full on the world of
+thought and rest. The ancient Hindus were a nation of philosophers,
+such as could nowhere have existed except in India, and even there in
+early times alone. It is with the Hindu mind as if a seed were placed
+in a hothouse. It will grow rapidly, its colours will be gorgeous, its
+perfume rich, its fruits precocious and abundant. But never will it be
+like the oak growing in wind and weather, and striking its roots into
+real earth, and stretching its branches into real air beneath the
+stars and the sun of heaven. Both are experiments, the hothouse flower
+and the Hindu mind; and as experiments, whether physiological or
+psychological, both deserve to be studied.
+
+We may divide the whole Aryan family into two branches, the northern
+and the southern. The northern nations, Celts, Greeks, Romans,
+Germans, and Slavonians, have each one act allotted to them on the
+stage of history. They have each a national character to support. Not
+so the southern tribes. They are absorbed in the struggles of thought,
+their past is the problem of creation, their future the problem of
+existence; and the present, which ought to be the solution of both,
+seems never to have attracted their attention, or called forth their
+energies. There never was a nation believing so firmly in another
+world, and so little concerned about this. Their condition on earth is
+to them a problem; their real and eternal life a simple fact. Though
+this is said chiefly with reference to them before they were brought
+in contact with foreign conquerors, traces of this character are still
+visible in the Hindus, as described by the companions of Alexander,
+nay, even in the Hindus of the present day. The only sphere in which
+the Indian mind finds itself at liberty to act, to create, and to
+worship, is the sphere of religion and philosophy; and nowhere have
+religious and metaphysical ideas struck root so deep in the mind of a
+nation as in India. The shape which these ideas took amongst the
+different classes of society, and at different periods of
+civilisation, naturally varies from coarse superstition to sublime
+spiritualism. But, taken as a whole, history supplies no second
+instance where the inward life of the soul has so completely absorbed
+all the other faculties of a people.
+
+It was natural, therefore, that the literary works of such a nation,
+when first discovered in Sanskrit MSS. by Wilkins, Sir W. Jones, and
+others, should have attracted the attention of all interested in the
+history of the human race. A new page in man's biography was laid
+open, and a literature as large as that of Greece or Rome was to be
+studied. The Laws of Manu, the two epic poems, the R�m�ya_n_a and
+Mah�bh�rata, the six complete systems of philosophy, works on
+astronomy and medicine, plays, stories, fables, elegies, and lyrical
+effusions, were read with intense interest, on account of their age
+not less than their novelty.
+
+Still this interest was confined to a small number of students, and in
+a few cases only could Indian literature attract the eyes of men who,
+from the summit of universal history, survey the highest peaks of
+human excellence. Herder, Schlegel, Humboldt, and Goethe, discovered
+what was really important in Sanskrit literature. They saw what was
+genuine and original, in spite of much that seemed artificial. For the
+artificial, no doubt, has a wide place in Sanskrit literature.
+Everywhere we find systems, rules and models, castes and schools, but
+nowhere individuality, no natural growth, and but few signs of strong
+originality and genius.
+
+There is, however, one period of Sanskrit literature which forms an
+exception, and which will maintain its place in the history of
+mankind, when the name of Kalid�sa and _S_akuntal� will have been long
+forgotten. It is the most ancient period, the period of the Veda.
+There is, perhaps, a higher degree of interest attaching to works of
+higher antiquity; but in the Veda we have more than mere antiquity. We
+have ancient thought expressed in ancient language. Without insisting
+on the fact that even chronologically the Veda is the first book of
+the Aryan nations, we have in it, at all events, a period in the
+intellectual life of man to which there is no parallel in any other
+part of the world. In the hymns of the Veda we see man left to himself
+to solve the riddle of this world. We see him crawling on like a
+creature of the earth with all the desires and weaknesses of his
+animal nature. Food, wealth, and power, a large family and a long
+life, are the theme of his daily prayers. But he begins to lift up his
+eyes. He stares at the tent of heaven, and asks who supports it? He
+opens his ears to the winds, and asks them whence and whither? He is
+awakened from darkness and slumber by the light of the sun, and him
+whom his eyes cannot behold, and who seems to grant him the daily
+pittance of his existence, he calls 'his life, his breath, his
+brilliant Lord and Protector.' He gives names to all the powers of
+nature, and after he has called the fire Agni, the sun-light Indra,
+the storms Maruts, and the dawn Ushas, they all seem to grow naturally
+into beings like himself, nay, greater than himself. He invokes them,
+he praises them, he worships them. But still with all these gods
+around him, beneath him, and above him, the early poet seems ill at
+rest within himself. There too, in his own breast, he has discovered a
+power that wants a name, a power nearer to him than all the gods of
+nature, a power that is never mute when he prays, never absent when he
+fears and trembles. It seems to inspire his prayers, and yet to
+listen to them; it seems to live in him, and yet to support him and
+all around him. The only name he can find for this mysterious power is
+Br�hman; for br�hman meant originally force, will, wish, and the
+propulsive power of creation. But this impersonal br�hman, too, as
+soon as it is named, grows into something strange and divine. It ends
+by being one of many gods, one of the great triad, worshipped to the
+present day. And still the thought within him has no real name; that
+power which is nothing but itself, which supports the gods, the
+heavens, and every living being, floats before his mind, conceived but
+not expressed. At last he calls it �tman; for �tman, originally breath
+or spirit, comes to mean Self and Self alone--Self whether divine or
+human, Self whether creating or suffering, Self whether one or all,
+but always Self, independent and free. 'Who has seen the first-born,'
+says the poet, 'when he who has no bones (i. e. form) bore him that
+had bones? Where was the life, the blood, the Self of the world? Who
+went to ask this from any that knew it?' (Rv.I. 164, 4). This idea of
+a divine Self once expressed, everything else must acknowledge its
+supremacy, 'Self is the Lord of all things, Self is the King of all
+things. As all the spokes of a wheel are contained in the nave and the
+circumference, all things are contained in this Self; all selves are
+contained in this Self.[32] Br�hman itself is but Self.'[33]
+
+[Footnote 32: B_r_ihad-�ra_n_yaka, IV. 5, 15 ed. Roer, p. 487.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Ibid. p. 478. _K_h�ndogya-upanishad, VIII. 3, 3-4.]
+
+This �tman also grew; but it grew, as it were, without attributes. The
+sun is called the Self of all that moves and rests (Rv. I. 115, 1),
+and still more frequently self becomes a mere pronoun. But �tman
+remained always free from mythe and worship, differing in this from
+the Br�hman (neuter), who has his temples in India even now, and is
+worshipped as Br�hman (masculine), together with Vish_n_u and _S_iva,
+and other popular gods. The idea of the �tman or Self, like a pure
+crystal, was too transparent for poetry, and therefore was handed over
+to philosophy, which afterwards polished, and turned, and watched it
+as the medium through which all is seen, and in which all is reflected
+and known. But philosophy is later than the Veda, and it is of the
+Vaidik period only I have here to speak.[34]
+
+[Footnote 34: In writing the above, I was thinking rather of the
+mental process that was necessary for the production of such words as
+br�hman, �tman, and others, than of their idiomatic use in the ancient
+literature of India. It might be objected, for instance, that br�hman,
+neut. in the sense of creative power or the principal cause of all
+things, does not occur in the Rig-veda. This is true. But it occurs in
+that sense in the Atharva-veda, and in several of the Br�hma_n_as.
+There we read of 'the oldest or greatest Br�hman which rules
+everything that has been or will be.' Heaven is said to belong to
+Br�hman alone (Atharva-veda X. 8, 1). In the Br�hma_n_as, this Br�hman
+is called the first-born, the self-existing, the best of the gods, and
+heaven and earth are said to have been established by it. Even the
+vital spirits are identified with it (_S_atapatha-br�hma_n_a VIII. 4,
+9, 3).
+
+In other passages, again, this same Brahman is represented as existing
+in man (Atharva-veda X. 7, 17), and in this very passage we can watch
+the transition from the neutral Br�hman into Br�hman, conceived of as
+a masculine:
+
+    Ye purushe br�hma vidus te vidu_h_ paramesh_t_hina_m_,
+    Yo veda paramesh_t_hina_m_, ya_s_ _k_a veda pra_g_�patim,
+    _G_yesh_t_ha_m_ ye br�hma_n_a_m_ vidus, te skambham anu sa_m_vidu_h_.
+
+    'They who know Br�hman in man, they know the Highest,
+    He who knows the Highest, and he who knows Pra_g_�pati (the lord of
+        creatures),
+    And they who know the oldest Br�hma_n_a, they know the Ground.'
+
+The word Br�hma_n_a which is here used, is a derivative form of
+Br�hman; but what is most important in these lines is the mixing of
+neuter and masculine words, of impersonal and personal deities. This
+process is brought to perfection by changing Br�hman, the neuter, even
+grammatically into Br�hman, a masculine,--a change which has taken
+place in the �ra_n_yakas, where we find Br�hman used as the name of a
+male deity. It is this Br�hman, with the accent on the first, not, as
+has been supposed, brahm�n, the priest, that appears again in the
+later literature as one of the divine triad, Br�hman, Vish_n_u,
+_S_iva.
+
+The word br�hman, as a neuter, is used in the Rig-veda in the sense of
+prayer also, originally what bursts forth from the soul, and, in one
+sense, what is revealed. Hence in later times br�hman is used
+collectively for the Veda, the sacred word.
+
+Another word, with the accent on the last syllable, is brahm�n, the
+man who prays, who utters prayers, the priest, and gradually the
+Brahman by profession. In this sense it is frequently used in the
+Rig-veda (I. 108, 7), but not yet in the sense of Brahman by birth or
+caste.]
+
+In the Veda, then, we can study a theogony of which that of Hesiod is
+but the last chapter. We can study man's natural growth, and the
+results to which it may lead under the most favourable conditions. All
+was given him that nature can bestow. We see him blest with the
+choicest gifts of the earth, under a glowing and transparent sky,
+surrounded by all the grandeur and all the riches of nature, with a
+language 'capable of giving soul to the objects of sense, and body to
+the abstractions of metaphysics.' We have a right to expect much from
+him, only we must not expect in his youthful poems the philosophy of
+the nineteenth century, or the beauties of Pindar, or, with some
+again, the truths of Christianity. Few understand children, still
+fewer understand antiquity. If we look in the Veda for high poetical
+diction, for striking comparisons, for bold combinations, we shall be
+disappointed. These early poets thought more for themselves than for
+others. They sought rather, in their language, to be true to their own
+thought than to please the imagination of their hearers. With them it
+was a great work achieved for the first time to bind thoughts and
+words together, to find expressions or to form new names. As to
+similes, we must look to the words themselves, which, if we compare
+their radical and their nominal meaning, will be found full of bold
+metaphors. No translation in any modern language can do them justice.
+As to beauty, we must discover it in the absence of all effort, and in
+the simplicity of their hearts. Prose was, at that time, unknown, as
+well as the distinction between prose and poetry. It was the attempted
+imitation of those ancient natural strains of thought which in later
+times gave rise to poetry in our sense of the word, that is to say, to
+poetry as an art, with its counted syllables, its numerous epithets,
+its rhyme and rhythm, and all the conventional attributes of 'measured
+thought.'
+
+In the Veda itself, however--even if by Veda we mean the Rig-veda only
+(the other three, the S�man, Ya_g_ush, and �tharva_n_a, having solely
+a liturgical interest, and belonging to an entirely different
+sphere)--in the Rig-veda also, we find much that is artificial,
+imitated, and therefore modern, if compared with other hymns. It is
+true that all the 1017 hymns of the Rig-veda were comprised in a
+collection which existed as such before one of those elaborate
+theological commentaries, known under the name of Br�hma_n_a, was
+written, that is to say, about 800 B.C. But before the date of their
+collection these must have existed for centuries. In different songs
+the names of different kings occur, and we see several generations of
+royal families pass away before us with different generations of
+poets. Old songs are mentioned, and new songs. Poets whose
+compositions we possess are spoken of as the seers of olden times;
+their names in other hymns are surrounded by a legendary halo. In some
+cases, whole books or chapters may be pointed out as more modern and
+secondary, in thought and language. But on the whole the Rig-veda is a
+genuine document, even in its most modern portions not later than the
+time of Lycurgus; and it exhibits one of the earliest and rudest
+phases in the history of mankind; disclosing in its full reality a
+period of which in Greece we have but traditions and names, such as
+Orpheus and Linus, and bringing us as near the beginnings in language,
+thought, and mythology as literary documents can ever bring us in the
+Aryan world.
+
+Though much time and labour have been spent on the Veda, in England
+and in Germany, the time is not yet come for translating it as a
+whole. It is possible and interesting to translate it literally, or in
+accordance with scholastic commentaries, such as we find in India from
+Y�ska in the fifth century B.C. down to S�ya_n_a in the fourteenth
+century of the Christian era. This is what Professor Wilson has done
+in his translation of the first book of the Rig-veda; and by strictly
+adhering to this principle and excluding conjectural renderings even
+where they offered themselves most naturally, he has imparted to his
+work a definite character and a lasting value. The grammar of the
+Veda, though irregular, and still in a rather floating state, has
+almost been mastered; the etymology and the meaning of many words,
+unknown in the later Sanskrit, have been discovered. Many hymns, which
+are mere prayers for food, for cattle, or for a long life, have been
+translated, and can leave no doubt as to their real intention. But
+with the exception of these simple petitions, the whole world of Vedic
+ideas is so entirely beyond our own intellectual horizon, that instead
+of translating we can as yet only guess and combine. Here it is no
+longer a mere question of skilful deciphering. We may collect all the
+passages where an obscure word occurs, we may compare them and look
+for a meaning which would be appropriate to all; but the difficulty
+lies in finding a sense which we can appropriate, and transfer by
+analogy into our own language and thought. We must be able to
+translate our feelings and ideas into their language at the same time
+that we translate their poems and prayers into our language. We must
+not despair even where their words seem meaningless and their ideas
+barren or wild. What seems at first childish may at a happier moment
+disclose a sublime simplicity, and even in helpless expressions we may
+recognise aspirations after some high and noble idea. When the scholar
+has done his work, the poet and philosopher must take it up and finish
+it. Let the scholar collect, collate, sift, and reject--let him say
+what is possible or not according to the laws of the Vaidik
+language--let him study the commentaries, the S�tras, the Br�hma_n_as,
+and even later works, in order to exhaust all the sources from which
+information can be derived. He must not despise the tradition of the
+Brahmans, even where their misconceptions and the causes of their
+misconceptions are palpable. To know what a passage cannot mean is
+frequently the key to its real meaning; and whatever reasons may be
+pleaded for declining a careful perusal of the traditional
+interpretations of Y�ska or S�ya_n_a, they can all be traced back to
+an ill-concealed argumentum paupertatis. Not a corner in the
+Br�hma_n_as, the S�tras, Y�ska, and S�ya_n_a should be left unexplored
+before we venture to propose a rendering of our own. S�ya_n_a, though
+the most modern, is on the whole the most sober interpreter. Most of
+his etymological absurdities must be placed to Y�ska's account, and
+the optional renderings which he allows for metaphysical, theological,
+or ceremonial purposes, are mostly due to his regard for the
+Br�hma_n_as. The Br�hma_n_as, though nearest in time to the hymns of
+the Rig-veda, indulge in the most frivolous and ill-judged
+interpretations. When the ancient Rishi exclaims with a troubled
+heart, 'Who is the greatest of the gods? Who shall first be praised by
+our songs?'--the author of the Brahma_n_a sees in the interrogative
+pronoun 'Who' some divine name, a place is allotted in the sacrificial
+invocations to a god 'Who,' and hymns addressed to him are called
+'Whoish' hymns. To make such misunderstandings possible, we must
+assume a considerable interval between the composition of the hymns
+and the Br�hma_n_as. As the authors of the Br�hma_n_as were blinded by
+theology, the authors of the still later Niruktas were deceived by
+etymological fictions, and both conspired to mislead by their
+authority later and more sensible commentators, such as S�ya_n_a.
+Where S�ya_n_a has no authority to mislead him, his commentary is at
+all events rational; but still his scholastic notions would never
+allow him to accept the free interpretation which a comparative study
+of these venerable documents forces upon the unprejudiced scholar. We
+must therefore discover ourselves the real vestiges of these ancient
+poets; and if we follow them cautiously, we shall find that with some
+effort we are still able to walk in their footsteps. We shall feel
+that we are brought face to face and mind to mind with men yet
+intelligible to us, after we have freed ourselves from our modern
+conceits. We shall not succeed always: words, verses, nay, whole hymns
+in the Rig-veda, will and must remain to us a dead letter. But where
+we can inspire those early relics of thought and devotion with new
+life, we shall have before us more real antiquity than in all the
+inscriptions of Egypt or Nineveh; not only old names and dates, and
+kingdoms and battles, but old thoughts, old hopes, old faith, and old
+errors, the old Man altogether--old now, but then young and fresh, and
+simple and real in his prayers and in his praises.
+
+The thoughtful bent of the Hindu mind is visible in the Veda also, but
+his mystic tendencies are not yet so fully developed. Of philosophy we
+find but little, and what we find is still in its germ. The active
+side of life is more prominent, and we meet occasionally with wars of
+kings, with rivalries of ministers, with triumphs and defeats, with
+war-songs and imprecations. Moral sentiments and worldly wisdom are
+not yet absorbed by phantastic intuitions. Still the child betrays the
+passions of the man, and there are hymns, though few in number, in the
+Veda, so full of thought and speculation that at this early period no
+poet in any other nation could have conceived them. I give but one
+specimen, the 129th hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-veda. It is a
+hymn which long ago attracted the attention of that eminent scholar H.
+T. Colebrooke, and of which, by the kind assistance of a friend, I am
+enabled to offer a metrical translation. In judging it we should bear
+in mind that it was not written by a gnostic or by a pantheistic
+philosopher, but by a poet who felt all these doubts and problems as
+his own, without any wish to convince or to startle, only uttering
+what had been weighing on his mind, just as later poets would sing the
+doubts and sorrows of their heart.
+
+    Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky
+    Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above.
+    What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed?
+    Was it the water's fathomless abyss?
+    There was not death--yet was there nought immortal,
+    There was no confine betwixt day and night;
+    The only One breathed breathless by itself,
+    Other than It there nothing since has been.
+    Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
+    In gloom profound--an ocean without light--
+    The germ that still lay covered in the husk
+    Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
+    Then first came love upon it, the new spring
+    Of mind--yea, poets in their hearts discerned,
+    Pondering, this bond between created things
+    And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth
+    Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven?
+    Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose--
+    Nature below, and power and will above--
+    Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here,
+    Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?
+    The Gods themselves came later into being--
+    Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
+    He from whom all this great creation came,
+    Whether his will created or was mute,
+    The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,
+    He knows it--or perchance even He knows not.
+
+The grammar of the Veda (to turn from the contents to the structure of
+the work) is important in many respects. The difference between it and
+the grammar of the epic poems would be sufficient of itself to fix the
+distance between these two periods of language and literature. Many
+words have preserved in these early hymns a more primitive form, and
+therefore agree more closely with cognate words in Greek or Latin.
+Night, for instance, in the later Sanskrit is ni_s_�, which is a form
+peculiarly Sanskritic, and agrees in its derivation neither with nox
+nor with [Greek: nyx]. The Vaidik na_s_ or nak, night, is as near to
+Latin as can be. Thus mouse in the common Sanskrit is m�shas or
+m�shik�, both derivative forms if compared with the Latin mus, muris.
+The Vaidik Sanskrit has preserved the same primitive noun in the
+plural m�sh-as = Lat. mures. There are other words in the Veda which
+were lost altogether in the later Sanskrit, while they were preserved
+in Greek and Latin. Dyaus, sky, does not occur as a masculine in the
+ordinary Sanskrit; it occurs in the Veda, and thus bears witness to
+the early Aryan worship of Dyaus, the Greek Ze�s. Ushas, dawn, again
+in the later Sanskrit is neuter. In the Veda it is feminine; and even
+the secondary Vaidik form Ush�s� is proved to be of high antiquity by
+the nearly corresponding Latin form Aurora. Declension and conjugation
+are richer in forms and more unsettled in their usage. It was a
+curious fact, for instance, that no subjunctive mood existed in the
+common Sanskrit. The Greeks and Romans had it, and even the language
+of the Avesta showed clear traces of it. There could be no doubt that
+the Sanskrit also once possessed this mood, and at last it was
+discovered in the hymns of the Rig-veda. Discoveries of this kind may
+seem trifling, but they are as delightful to the grammarian as the
+appearance of a star, long expected and calculated, is to the
+astronomer. They prove that there is natural order in language, and
+that by a careful induction laws can be established which enable us to
+guess with great probability either at the form or meaning of words
+where but scanty fragments of the tongue itself have come down to us.
+
+_October, 1853._
+
+
+THE ZEND-AVESTA.
+
+
+By means of laws like that of the Correspondence of Letters,
+discovered by Rask and Grimm, it has been possible to determine the
+exact form of words in Gothic, in cases where no trace of them
+occurred in the literary documents of the Gothic nation. Single words
+which were not to be found in Ulfilas have been recovered by applying
+certain laws to their corresponding forms in Latin or Old High-German,
+and thus retranslating them into Gothic. But a much greater conquest
+was achieved in Persia. Here comparative philology has actually had to
+create and reanimate all the materials of language on which it was
+afterwards to work. Little was known of the language of Persia and
+Media previous to the Shahnameh of Firdusi, composed about 1000 A.D.,
+and it is due entirely to the inductive method of comparative
+philology that we have now before us contemporaneous documents of
+three periods of Persian language, deciphered, translated, and
+explained. We have the language of the Zoroastrians, the language of
+the Ach�menians, and the language of the Sassanians, which represent
+the history of the Persian tongue in three successive periods--all now
+rendered intelligible by the aid of comparative philology, while but
+fifty years ago their very name and existence were questioned.
+
+The labours of Anquetil Duperron, who first translated the
+Zend-Avesta, were those of a bold adventurer--not of a scholar. Rask
+was the first who, with the materials collected by Duperron and
+himself, analysed the language of the Avesta scientifically. He
+proved--
+
+     1. That Zend was not a corrupted Sanskrit, as supposed by W.
+     Erskine, but that it differed from it as Greek, Latin, or
+     Lithuanian differed from one another and from Sanskrit.
+
+     2. That the modern Persian was really derived from Zend as
+     Italian was from Latin; and
+
+     3. That the Avesta, or the works of Zoroaster, must have
+     been reduced to writing at least previously to Alexander's
+     conquest. The opinion that Zend was an artificial language
+     (an opinion held by men of great eminence in Oriental
+     philology, beginning with Sir W. Jones) is passed over by
+     Rask as not deserving of refutation.
+
+The first edition of the Zend texts, the critical restitution of the
+MSS., the outlines of a Zend grammar, with the translation and
+philological anatomy of considerable portions of the Zoroastrian
+writings, were the work of the late Eug�ne Burnouf. He was the real
+founder of Zend philology. It is clear from his works, and from Bopp's
+valuable remarks in his 'Comparative Grammar,' that Zend in its
+grammar and dictionary is nearer to Sanskrit than any other
+Indo-European language. Many Zend words can be retranslated into
+Sanskrit simply by changing the Zend letters into their corresponding
+forms in Sanskrit. With regard to the Correspondence of Letters in
+Grimm's sense of the word, Zend ranges with Sanskrit and the classical
+languages. It differs from Sanskrit principally in its sibilants,
+nasals, and aspirates. The Sanskrit s, for instance, is represented by
+the Zend h, a change analogous to that of an original s into the
+Greek aspirate, only that in Greek this change is not general. Thus
+the geographical name hapta hendu, which occurs in the Avesta, becomes
+intelligible if we retranslate the Zend h into the Sanskrit s. For
+sapta sindhu, or the Seven Rivers, is the old Vaidik name of India
+itself, derived from the five rivers of the Penj�b, together with the
+Indus, and the Sarasvat�.
+
+Where Sanskrit differs in words or grammatical peculiarities from the
+northern members of the Aryan family, it frequently coincides with
+Zend. The numerals are the same in all these languages up to 100. The
+name for thousand, however, sahasra, is peculiar to Sanskrit, and does
+not occur in any of the Indo-European dialects except in Zend, where
+it becomes haza_n_ra. In the same manner the German and Slavonic
+languages have a word for thousand peculiar to themselves; as also in
+Greek and Latin we find many common words which we look for in vain in
+any of the other Indo-European dialects. These facts are full of
+historical meaning; and with regard to Zend and Sanskrit, they prove
+that these two languages continued together long after they were
+separated from the common Indo-European stock.
+
+Still more striking is the similarity between Persia and India in
+religion and mythology. Gods unknown to any Indo-European nation are
+worshipped under the same names in Sanskrit and Zend; and the change
+of some of the most sacred expressions in Sanskrit into names of evil
+spirits in Zend, only serves to strengthen the conviction that we have
+here the usual traces of a schism which separated a community that had
+once been united.
+
+Burnouf, who compared the language and religion of the Avesta
+principally with the later classical Sanskrit, inclined at first to
+the opinion that this schism took place in Persia, and that the
+dissenting Brahmans immigrated afterwards into India. This is still
+the prevailing opinion, but it requires to be modified in accordance
+with new facts elicited from the Veda. Zend, if compared with
+classical Sanskrit, exhibits in many points of grammar, features of a
+more primitive character than Sanskrit. But it can now be shown, and
+Burnouf himself admitted it, that when this is the case, the Vaidik
+differs on the very same points from the later Sanskrit, and has
+preserved the same primitive and irregular form as the Zend. I still
+hold, that the name of Zend was originally a corruption of the
+Sanskrit word _k_handas (i. e. metrical language, cf. scandere),[35]
+which is the name given to the language of the Veda by P�_n_ini and
+others. When we read in P�_n_ini's grammar that certain forms occur in
+_k_handas, but not in the classical language, we may almost always
+translate the word _k_handas by Zend, for nearly all these rules apply
+equally to the language of the Avesta.
+
+[Footnote 35: The derivation of _k_handas, metre, from the same root
+which yielded the Latin scandere, seems to me still the most
+plausible. An account of the various explanations of this word,
+proposed by Eastern and Western scholars, is to be found in Spiegel's
+'Grammar of the Parsi Language' (preface, and p. 205), and in his
+translation of the Vendidad (pp. 44 and 293). That initial _k_h in
+Sanskrit may represent an original sk, has never, as far as I am
+aware, been denied. (Curtius, 'Grundz�ge,' p. 60.) The fact that the
+root _k_hand, in the sense of stepping or striding, has not been fixed
+in Sanskrit as a verbal, but only as a nominal base, is no real
+objection either. The same thing has happened over and over again, and
+has been remarked as the necessary result of the dialectic growth of
+language by so ancient a scholar as Y�ska. ('Zeitschrift der Deutschen
+Morgenl�ndischen Gesellschaft, vol. viii. p. 373 seq.) That scandere
+in Latin, in the sense of scanning is a late word, does not affect the
+question at all. What is of real importance is simply this, that the
+principal Aryan nations agree in representing metre as a kind of
+stepping or striding. Whether this arose from the fact that ancient
+poetry was accompanied by dancing or rhythmic choral movements, is a
+question which does not concern us here. (Carmen descindentes
+tripodaverunt in verba h�c: Enos Lases, etc. Orelli, 'Inscript.' No.
+2271.) The fact remains that the people of India, Greece, and Italy
+agree in calling the component elements of their verses feet or steps
+([Greek: pous], pes, Sanskrit pad or p�da; padapankti, a row of
+feet, and _g_agat�, i. e. andante, are names of Sanskrit metres). It
+is not too much, therefore, to say that they may have considered metre
+as a kind of stepping or striding, and that they may accordingly have
+called it 'stride.' If then we find the name for metre in Sanskrit
+_k_handas, i. e. skandas, and if we find that scando in Latin (from
+which sca(d)la), as we may gather from ascendo and descendo, meant
+originally striding, and that skand in Sanskrit means the same as
+scando in Latin, surely there can be little doubt as to the original
+intention of the Sanskrit name for metre, viz. _k_handas. Hindu
+grammarians derive _k_handas either from _k_had, to cover, or from
+_k_had, to please. Both derivations are possible, as far as the
+letters are concerned. But are we to accept the dogmatic
+interpretation of the theologians of the _K_handogas, who tell us that
+the metres were called _k_handas because the gods, when afraid of
+death, covered themselves with the metres? Or of the V�_g_asaneyins,
+who tell us that the _k_handas were so called because they pleased
+Pra_g_�pati? Such artificial interpretations only show that the
+Brahmans had no traditional feeling as to the etymological meaning of
+that word, and that we are at liberty to discover by the ordinary
+means its original intention. I shall only mention from among much
+that has been written on the etymology of _k_handas, a most happy
+remark of Professor Kuhn, who traces the Northern skald, poet, back to
+the same root as the Sanskrit _k_handas, metre. (Kuhn's 'Zeitschrift,'
+vol. iii. p. 428.)]
+
+In mythology also, the 'nomina and numina' of the Avesta appear at
+first sight more primitive than in Manu or the Mah�bh�rata. But if
+regarded from a Vaidik point of view, this relation shifts at once,
+and many of the gods of the Zoroastrians come out once more as mere
+reflections and deflections of the primitive and authentic gods of the
+Veda. It can now be proved, even by geographical evidence, that the
+Zoroastrians had been settled in India before they immigrated into
+Persia. I say the Zoroastrians, for we have no evidence to bear us out
+in making the same assertion of the nations of Persia and Media in
+general. That the Zoroastrians and their ancestors started from India
+during the Vaidik period can be proved as distinctly as that the
+inhabitants of Massilia started from Greece. The geographical
+traditions in the first Fargard of the Vendidad do not interfere with
+this opinion. If ancient and genuine, they would embody a remembrance
+preserved by the Zoroastrians, but forgotten by the Vaidik poets--a
+remembrance of times previous to their first common descent into the
+country of the Seven Rivers. If of later origin, and this is more
+likely, they may represent a geographical conception of the
+Zoroastrians after they had become acquainted with a larger sphere of
+countries and nations, subsequent to their emigration from the land of
+the Seven Rivers.[36]
+
+[Footnote 36: The purely mythological character of this geographical
+chapter has been proved by M. Michel Br�al, 'Journal Asiatique,'
+1862.]
+
+These and similar questions of the highest importance for the early
+history of the Aryan language and mythology, however, must await their
+final decision, until the whole of the Veda and the Avesta shall have
+been published. Of this Burnouf was fully aware, and this was the
+reason why he postponed the publication of his researches into the
+antiquities of the Iranian nation. The same conviction is shared by
+Westergaard and Spiegel, who are each engaged in an edition of the
+Avesta, and who, though they differ on many points, agree in
+considering the Veda as the safest key to an understanding of the
+Avesta. Professor Roth, of T�bingen, has well expressed the mutual
+relation of the Veda and Zend-Avesta under the following simile: 'The
+Veda,' he writes, 'and the Zend-Avesta are two rivers flowing from one
+fountain-head: the stream of the Veda is the fuller and purer, and has
+remained truer to its original character; that of the Zend-Avesta has
+been in various ways polluted, has altered its course, and cannot,
+with certainty, be traced back to its source.'
+
+As to the language of the Ach�menians, presented to us in the Persian
+text of the cuneiform inscriptions, there was no room for doubt, as
+soon as it became legible at all, that it was the same tongue as that
+of the Avesta, only in a second stage of its continuous growth. The
+process of deciphering these bundles of arrows by means of Zend and
+Sanskrit has been very much like deciphering an Italian inscription
+without a knowledge of Italian, simply by means of classical and
+medi�val Latin. It would have been impossible, even with the quick
+perception and patient combination of a Grotefend, to read more than
+the proper names and a few titles on the walls of the Persian palaces,
+without the aid of Zend and Sanskrit; and it seems almost
+providential, as Lassen remarked, that these inscriptions, which at
+any previous period would have been, in the eyes of either classical
+or oriental scholars, nothing but a quaint conglomerate of nails,
+wedges, or arrows, should have been rescued from the dust of centuries
+at the very moment when the discovery and study of Sanskrit and Zend
+had enabled the scholars of Europe to grapple successfully with their
+difficulties.
+
+Upon a closer inspection of the language and grammar of these mountain
+records of the Ach�menian dynasty, a curious fact came to light which
+seemed to disturb the historical relation between the language of
+Zoroaster and the language of Darius. At first, historians were
+satisfied with knowing that the edicts of Darius could be explained by
+the language of the Avesta, and that the difference between the two,
+which could be proved to imply a considerable interval of time, was
+such as to exclude for ever the supposed historical identity of Darius
+Hystaspes and Gushtasp, the mythical pupil of Zoroaster. The language
+of the Avesta, though certainly not the language of Zarathustra,[37]
+displayed a grammar so much more luxuriant, and forms so much more
+primitive than the inscriptions, that centuries must have elapsed
+between the two periods represented by these two strata of language.
+When, however, the forms of these languages were subjected to a more
+searching analysis, it became evident that the phonetic system of the
+cuneiform inscriptions was more primitive and regular than even that
+of the earlier portions of the Avesta. This difficulty, however,
+admits of a solution; and, like many difficulties of the kind, it
+tends to confirm, if rightly explained, the very facts and views which
+at first it seemed to overthrow. The confusion in the phonetic system
+of the Zend grammar is no doubt owing to the influence of oral
+tradition. Oral tradition, particularly if confided to the safeguard
+of a learned priesthood, is able to preserve, during centuries of
+growth and change, the sacred accents of a dead language; but it is
+liable at least to the slow and imperceptible influences of a corrupt
+pronunciation. Nowhere can we see this more clearly than in the Veda,
+where grammatical forms that had ceased to be intelligible, were
+carefully preserved, while the original pronunciation of vowels was
+lost, and the simple structure of the ancient metres destroyed by the
+adoption of a more modern pronunciation. The loss of the Digamma in
+Homer is another case in point. There are no facts to prove that the
+text of the Avesta, in the shape in which the Parsis of Bombay and
+Yezd now possess it, was committed to writing previous to the
+Sassanian dynasty (226 A.D.). After that time it can indeed be traced,
+and to a great extent be controlled and checked by the Huzvaresh
+translations made under that dynasty. Additions to it were made, as it
+seems, even after these Huzvaresh translations; but their number is
+small, and we have no reason to doubt that the text of the Avesta, in
+the days of Arda Viraf, was on the whole exactly the same as at
+present. At the time when these translations were made, it is clear
+from their own evidence that the language of Zarathustra had already
+suffered, and that the ideas of the Avesta were no longer fully
+understood even by the learned. Before that time we may infer, indeed,
+that the doctrine of Zoroaster had been committed to writing, for
+Alexander is said to have destroyed the books of the Zoroastrians,
+Hermippus of Alexandria is said to have read them.[38] But whether on
+the revival of the Persian religion and literature, that is to say 500
+years after Alexander, the works of Zoroaster were collected and
+restored from extant MSS., or from oral tradition, must remain
+uncertain, and the disturbed state of the phonetic system would rather
+lead us to suppose a long-continued influence of oral tradition. What
+the Zend language might become, if entrusted to the guardianship of
+memory alone, unassisted by grammatical study and arch�ological
+research, may be seen at the present day, when some of the Parsis, who
+are unable either to read or write, still mutter hymns and prayers in
+their temples, which, though to them mere sound, disclose to the
+experienced ear of an European scholar the time-hallowed accents of
+Zarathustra's speech.
+
+[Footnote 37: Spiegel states the results of his last researches into
+the language of the different parts of the Avesta in the following
+words:
+
+'We are now prepared to attempt an arrangement of the different
+portions of the Zend-Avesta in the order of their antiquity. First, we
+place the second part of the Ya_s_na, as separated in respect to the
+language of the Zend-Avesta, yet not composed by Zoroaster himself,
+since he is named in the third person; and indeed everything intimates
+that neither he nor his disciple Gushtasp was alive. The second place
+must unquestionably be assigned to the Vendidad. I do not believe that
+the book was originally composed as it now stands: it has suffered
+both earlier and later interpolations; still, its present form may be
+traced to a considerable antiquity. The antiquity of the work is
+proved by its contents, which distinctly show that the sacred
+literature was not yet completed.
+
+'The case is different with the writings of the last period, among
+which I reckon the first part of the Ya_s_na, and the whole of the
+Yeshts. Among these a theological character is unmistakeable, the
+separate divinities having their attributes and titles dogmatically
+fixed.
+
+'Altogether, it is interesting to trace the progress of religion in
+Parsi writings. It is a significant fact, that in the oldest, that is
+to say, the second part of the Ya_s_na, nothing is fixed in the
+doctrine regarding God. In the writings of the second period, that is
+in the Vendidad, we trace the advance to a theological, and, in its
+way, mild and scientific system. Out of this, in the last place, there
+springs the stern and intolerant religion of the Sassanian
+epoch.'--From the Rev. J. Murray Mitchell's Translation.]
+
+[Footnote 38: 'Lectures on the Science of Language,' First Series, p.
+95.]
+
+Thus far the history of the Persian language had been reconstructed by
+the genius and perseverance of Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and last,
+not least, by the comprehensive labours of Rawlinson, from the
+ante-historical epoch of Zoroaster down to the age of Darius and
+Artaxerxes II. It might have been expected that, after that time, the
+contemporaneous historians of Greece would have supplied the sequel.
+Unfortunately the Greeks cared nothing for any language except their
+own; and little for any other history except as bearing on themselves.
+The history of the Persian language after the Macedonian conquest and
+during the Parthian occupation is indeed but a blank page. The next
+glimpse of an authentic contemporaneous document is the inscription of
+Ardeshir, the founder of the new national dynasty of the Sassanians.
+It is written, though, it may be, with dialectic difference, in what
+was once called 'Pehlevi,' and is now more commonly known as
+'Huzvaresh,' this being the proper title of the language of the
+translations of the Avesta. The legends of Sassanian coins, the
+bilingual inscriptions of Sassanian emperors, and the translation of
+the Avesta by Sassanian reformers, represent the Persian language in
+its third phase. To judge from the specimens given by Anquetil
+Duperron, it was not to be wondered at that this dialect, then called
+Pehlevi, should have been pronounced an artificial jargon. Even when
+more genuine specimens of it became known, the language seemed so
+overgrown with Semitic and barbarous words, that it was expelled from
+the Iranian family. Sir W. Jones pronounced it to be a dialect of
+Chaldaic. Spiegel, however, who is now publishing the text of these
+translations, has established the fact that the language is truly
+Aryan, neither Semitic nor barbarous, but Persian in roots and
+grammar. He accounts for the large infusion of foreign terms by
+pointing to the mixed elements in the intellectual and religious life
+of Persia during and before that period. There was the Semitic
+influence of Babylonia, clearly discernible even in the characters of
+the Ach�menian inscriptions; there was the slow infiltration of Jewish
+ideas, customs, and expressions, working sometimes in the palaces of
+Persian kings, and always in the bazars of Persian cities, on high
+roads and in villages; there was the irresistible power of the Greek
+genius, which even under its rude Macedonian garb emboldened oriental
+thinkers to a flight into regions undreamed of in their philosophy;
+there were the academies, the libraries, the works of art of the
+Seleucid�; there was Edessa on the Euphrates, a city where Plato and
+Aristotle were studied, where Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist tenets
+were discussed, where Ephraem Syrus taught, and Syriac translations
+were circulated which have preserved to us the lost originals of Greek
+and Christian writers. The title of the Avesta under its Semitic form
+Apestako, was known in Syria as well as in Persia, and the true name
+of its author, Zarathustra, is not yet changed in Syriac into the
+modern Zerdusht. While this intellectual stream, principally flowing
+through Semitic channels, was irrigating and inundating the west of
+Asia, the Persian language had been left without literary cultivation.
+Need we wonder, then, that the men, who at the rising of a new
+national dynasty (226) became the reformers, teachers, and prophets of
+Persia, should have formed their language and the whole train of
+their ideas on a Semitic model. Motley as their language may appear to
+a Persian scholar fresh from the Avesta or from Firdusi, there is
+hardly a language of modern Europe which, if closely sifted, would not
+produce the same impression on a scholar accustomed only to the pure
+idiom of Homer, Cicero, Ulfilas, or C�dmon. Moreover; the soul of the
+Sassanian language--I mean its grammar--is Persian and nothing but
+Persian; and though meagre when compared with the grammar of the
+Avesta, it is richer in forms than the later Parsi, the Deri, or the
+language of Firdusi. The supposition (once maintained) that Pehlevi
+was the dialect of the western provinces of Persia is no longer
+necessary. As well might we imagine, (it is Spiegel's apposite
+remark,) that a Turkish work, because it is full of Arabic words,
+could only have been written on the frontiers of Arabia. We may safely
+consider the Huzvaresh of the translations of the Avesta as the
+language of the Sassanian court and hierarchy. Works also like the
+Bundehesh and Minokhired belong by language and thought to the same
+period of mystic incubation, when India and Egypt, Babylonia and
+Greece, were sitting together and gossiping like crazy old women,
+chattering with toothless gums and silly brains about the dreams and
+joys of their youth, yet unable to recall one single thought or
+feeling with that vigour which once gave it life and truth. It was a
+period of religious and metaphysical delirium, when everything became
+everything, when M�y� and Sophia, Mitra and Christ, Viraf and Isaiah,
+Belus, Zarvan, and Kronos were mixed up in one jumbled system of inane
+speculation, from which at last the East was delivered by the
+positive doctrines of Mohammed, the West by the pure Christianity of
+the Teutonic nations.
+
+In order to judge fairly of the merits of the Huzvaresh as a language,
+it must be remembered that we know it only from these speculative
+works, and from translations made by men whose very language had
+become technical and artificial in the schools. The idiom spoken by
+the nation was probably much less infected by this Semitic fashion.
+Even the translators sometimes give the Semitic terms only as a
+paraphrase or more distinct expression side by side with the Persian.
+And, if Spiegel's opinion be right that Parsi, and not Huzvaresh, was
+the language of the later Sassanian empire, it furnishes a clear proof
+that Persian had recovered itself, had thrown off the Semitic
+ingredients, and again become a pure and national speech. This dialect
+(the Parsi) also, exists in translations only; and we owe our
+knowledge of it to Spiegel, the author of the first Parsi grammar.
+
+This third period in the history of the Persian language,
+comprehending the Huzvaresh and Parsi, ends with the downfall of the
+Sassanians. The Arab conquest quenched the last sparks of Persian
+nationality; and the fire-altars of the Zoroastrians were never to be
+lighted again, except in the oasis of Yezd and on the soil of that
+country which the Zoroastrians had quitted as the disinherited sons of
+Manu. Still the change did not take place at once. Mohl, in his
+magnificent edition of the Shahnameh, has treated this period
+admirably, and it is from him that I derive the following facts. For a
+time, Persian religion, customs, traditions, and songs survived in the
+hands of the Persian nobility and landed gentry (the Dihkans) who
+lived among the people, particularly in, the eastern provinces, remote
+from the capital and the seats of foreign dominion, Baghdad, Kufah,
+and Mosul. Where should Firdusi have collected the national strains of
+ancient epic poetry which he revived in the Shahnameh (1000 A.D.), if
+the Persian peasant and the Persian knight had not preserved the
+memory of their old heathen heroes, even under the vigilant oppression
+of Mohammedan zealots? True, the first collection of epic traditions
+was made under the Sassanians. But this work, commenced under
+Nushirvan, and finished under Yezdegird, the last of the Sassanians,
+was destroyed by Omar's command. Firdusi himself tells us how this
+first collection was made by the Dihkan Danishver. 'There was a
+Pehlevan,' he says, 'of the family of the Dihkans, brave and powerful,
+wise and illustrious, who loved to study the ancient times, and to
+collect the stories of past ages. He summoned from all the provinces
+old men who possessed portions of (i. e. who knew) an ancient work in
+which many stories were written. He asked them about the origin of
+kings and illustrious heroes, and how they governed the world which
+they left to us in this wretched state. These old men recited before
+him, one after the other, the traditions of the kings and the changes
+in the empire. The Dihkan listened, and composed a book worthy of his
+fame. This is the monument he left to mankind, and great and small
+have celebrated his name.'
+
+The collector of this first epic poem, under Yezdegird, is called a
+Dihkan by Firdusi. Dihkan, according to the Persian dictionaries,
+means (1) farmer, (2) historian; and the reason commonly assigned for
+this double meaning is, that the Persian farmers happened to be well
+read in history. Quatrem�re, however, has proved that the Dihkans were
+the landed nobility of Persia; that they kept up a certain
+independence, even under the sway of the Mohammedan Khalifs, and
+exercised in the country a sort of jurisdiction in spite of the
+commissioners sent from Baghdad, the seat of the government. Thus
+Danishver even is called a Dihkan, although he lived previous to the
+Arab conquest. With him, the title was only intended to show that it
+was in the country and among the peasants that he picked up the
+traditions and songs about Jemshid, Feridun, and Rustem. Of his work,
+however, we know nothing. It was destroyed by Omar; and, though it
+survived in an Arabic translation, even this was lost in later times.
+The work, therefore, had to be recommenced when in the eastern
+provinces of Persia a national, though no longer a Zoroastrian,
+feeling began to revive. The governors of these provinces became
+independent as soon as the power of the Khalifs, after its rapid rise,
+began to show signs of weakness. Though the Mohammedan religion had
+taken root, even among the national party, yet Arabic was no longer
+countenanced by the governors of the eastern provinces. Persian was
+spoken again at their courts, Persian poets were encouraged, and
+ancient national traditions, stripped of their religious garb, began
+to be collected anew. It is said that Jacob, the son of Leis (870),
+the first prince of Persian blood who declared himself independent of
+the Khalifs, procured fragments of Danishver's epic, and had it
+rearranged and continued. Then followed the dynasty of the Samanians,
+who claimed descent from the Sassanian kings. They, as well as the
+later dynasty of the Gaznevides, pursued the same popular policy. They
+were strong because they rested on the support of a national Persian
+spirit. The national epic poet of the Samanians was Dakiki, by birth a
+Zoroastrian. Firdusi possessed fragments of his work, and has given a
+specimen of it in the story of Gushtasp. The final accomplishment,
+however, of an idea, first cherished by Nushirvan, was reserved for
+Mahmud the Great, the second king of the Gaznevide dynasty. By his
+command collections of old books were made all over the empire. Men
+who knew ancient poems were summoned to the court. One of them was
+Ader Berzin, who had spent his whole life in collecting popular
+accounts of the ancient kings of Persia. Another was Serv Azad, from
+Merv, who claimed descent from Neriman, and knew all the tales
+concerning Sam, Zal, and Rustem, which had been preserved in his
+family. It was from these materials that Firdusi composed his great
+epic, the Shahnameh. He himself declares, in many passages of his
+poem, that he always followed tradition. 'Traditions,' he says, 'have
+been given by me; nothing of what is worth knowing has been forgotten.
+All that I shall say, others have said before me: they plucked before
+me the fruits in the garden of knowledge.' He speaks in detail of his
+predecessors: he even indicates the sources from which he derives
+different episodes, and it is his constant endeavour to convince his
+readers that what he relates are not poetical inventions of his own.
+Thus only can we account for the fact, first pointed out by Burnouf,
+that many of the heroes in the Shahnameh still exhibit the traits,
+sadly distorted, it is true, but still unmistakeable, of Vaidik
+deities, which had passed through the Zoroastrian schism, the
+Ach�menian reign, the Macedonian occupation, the Parthian wars, the
+Sassanian revival, and the Mohammedan conquest, and of which the
+Dihkans could still sing and tell, when Firdusi's poem impressed the
+last stamp on the language of Zarathustra. Bopp had discovered
+already, in his edition of Nalas (1832), that the Zend Viva_n_hvat was
+the same as the Sanskrit Vivasvat; and Burnouf, in his 'Observations
+sur la Grammaire Compar�e de M. Bopp,' had identified a second
+personage, the Zend Kere_s_�_s_pa with the Sanskrit K_r_i_s_�_s_va.
+But the similarity between the Zend Kere_s_�_s_pa and the Garshasp of
+the Shahnameh opened a new and wide prospect to Burnouf, and
+afterwards led him on to the most striking and valuable results. Some
+of these were published in his last work on Zend, '�tudes sur la
+Langue et les Textes Zends.' This is a collection of articles
+published originally in the 'Journal Asiatique' between 1840 and 1846;
+and it is particularly the fourth essay, 'Le Dieu Homa,' which has
+opened an entirely new mine for researches into the ancient state of
+religion and tradition common to the Aryans before their schism.
+Burnouf showed that three of the most famous names in the Shahnameh,
+Jemshid, Feridun, and Garshasp, can be traced back to three heroes
+mentioned in the Zend-Avesta as the representatives of the three
+earliest generations of mankind, Yima Ksha�ta, Thra�taona, and
+Kere_s_�_s_pa; and that the prototypes of these Zoroastrian heroes
+could be found again in the Yama, Trita, and K_r_i_s_�_s_va of the
+Veda. He went even beyond this. He showed that, as in Sanskrit, the
+father of Yama is Vivasvat, the father of Yima in the Avesta is
+Viva_n_hvat. He showed that as Thra�taona in Persia is the son of
+�thwya, the patronymic of Trita in the Veda is �ptya. He explained the
+transition of Thra�taona into Feridun by pointing to the Pehlevi form
+of the name, as given by Neriosengh, Fredun. This change of an
+aspirated dental into an aspirated labial, which by many is considered
+a flaw in this argument, is of frequent occurrence. We have only to
+think of [Greek: ph�r] and [Greek: th�r], of dh�ma and fumus, of
+modern Greek [Greek: phel�] and [Greek: thel�]--nay, Menenius's 'first
+complaint' would suffice to explain it. Burnouf again identified
+Zoh�k, the king of Persia, slain by Feridun, whom even Firdusi still
+knows by the name of Ash dah�k, with the Azhi dah�ka, the biting
+serpent, as he translates it, destroyed by Thra�taona in the Avesta;
+and with regard to the changes which these names, and the ideas
+originally expressed by them, had to undergo on the intellectual stage
+of the Aryan nation, he says: 'Il est sans contredit fort curieux de
+voir une des Divinit�s indiennes les plus v�n�r�es, donner son nom au
+premier souverain de la dynastie ariopersanne; c'est un des faits qui
+attestent le plus �videmment l'intime union des deux branches de la
+grande famille qui s'est �tendue, bien de si�cles avant notre �re,
+depuis le Gange jusqu'� l'Euphrate.'
+
+The great achievements of Burnouf in this field of research have been
+so often ignored, and what by right belongs to him has been so
+confidently ascribed to others, that a faithful representation of the
+real state of the case, as here given, will not appear superfluous.
+There is no intention, while giving his due to Burnouf, to detract
+from the merits of other scholars. Some more minute coincidences,
+particularly in the story of Feridun, have subsequently been added by
+Roth, Benfey, and Weber. The first, particularly, has devoted two most
+interesting articles to the identification of Yama-Yima-Jemshid and
+Trita-Thra�taona-Feridun. Trita, who has generally been fixed upon as
+the Vaidik original of Feridun, because Traitana, whose name
+corresponds more accurately, occurs but once in the Rig-veda, is
+represented in India as one of the many divine powers ruling the
+firmament, destroying darkness, and sending rain, or, as the poets of
+the Veda are fond of expressing it, rescuing the cows and slaying the
+demons that had carried them off. These cows always move along the
+sky, some dark, some bright-coloured. They low over their pasture;
+they are gathered by the winds; and milked by the bright rays of the
+sun, they drop from their heavy udders a fertilising milk upon the
+parched and thirsty earth. But sometimes, the poet says, they are
+carried off by robbers and kept in dark caves near the uttermost ends
+of the sky. Then the earth is without rain; the pious worshipper
+offers up his prayer to Indra, and Indra rises to conquer the cows for
+him. He sends his dog to find the scent of the cattle, and after she
+has heard their lowing, she returns, and the battle commences. Indra
+hurls his thunderbolt; the Maruts ride at his side; the Rudras roar;
+till at last the rock is cleft asunder, the demon destroyed, and the
+cows brought back to their pasture. This is one of the oldest mythes
+or sayings current among the Aryan nations. It appears again in the
+mythology of Italy, in Greece, in Germany. In the Avesta, the battle
+is fought between Thra�taona and Azhi dah�ka, the destroying serpent.
+Traitana takes the place of Indra in this battle in one song of the
+Veda; more frequently it is Trita, but other gods also share in the
+same honour. The demon, again, who fights against the gods is
+likewise called Ahi, or the serpent, in the Veda. But the
+characteristic change that has taken place between the Veda and Avesta
+is that the battle is no longer a conflict of gods and demons for
+cows, nor of light and darkness for rain. It is the battle of a pious
+man against the power of evil. 'Le Zoroastrisme,' as Burnouf says, 'en
+se d�tachant plus franchement de Dieu et de la nature, a certainement
+tenu plus de compte de l'homme que n'a fait le Brahmanisme, et on peut
+dire qu'il a regagn� en profondeur ce qu'il perdait en �tendue. Il ne
+m'appartient pas d'indiquer ici ce qu'un syst�me qui tend � d�velopper
+les instincts les plus nobles de notre nature, et qui impose �
+l'homme, comme le plus important de ses devoirs, celui de lutter
+constamment contre le principe du mal, a pu exercer d'influence sur
+les destin�es des peuples de l'Asie, chez lesquels il a �t� adopt� �
+diverses �poques. On peut cependant d�j� dire que le caract�re
+religieux et martial tout � la fois, qui para�t avec des traits si
+h�ro�ques dans la plupart des Jeshts, n'a pas d� �tre sans action sur
+la m�le discipline sous laquelle ont grandi les commencements de la
+monarchie de Cyrus.'
+
+A thousand years after Cyrus (for Zoh�k is mentioned by Moses of
+Khorene in the fifth century) we find all this forgotten once more,
+and the vague rumours about Thra�taona and Azhi Dah�ka are gathered at
+last, and arranged and interpreted into something intelligible to
+later ages. Zoh�k is a three-headed tyrant on the throne of
+Persia--three-headed, because the Vaidik Ahi was three-headed, only
+that one of Zoh�k's heads has now become human. Zoh�k has killed
+Jemshid of the Peshdadian dynasty: Feridun now conquers Zoh�k on the
+banks of the Tigris. He then strikes him down with his cow-headed
+mace, and is on the point of killing him, when, as Firdusi says, a
+supernatural voice whispered in his ear--[39]
+
+    Slay him not now, his time is not yet come,
+    His punishment must be prolonged awhile;
+    And as he cannot now survive the wound,
+    Bind him with heavy chains--convey him straight
+    Upon the mountain, there within a cave,
+    Deep, dark, and horrible--with none to soothe
+    His sufferings, let the murderer lingering die.
+    The work of heaven performing, Feridun
+    First purified the world from sin and crime.
+    Yet Feridun was not an angel, nor
+    Composed of musk and ambergris. By justice
+    And generosity he gained his fame.
+    Do thou but exercise these princely virtues,
+    And thou wilt be renowned as Feridun.
+
+[Footnote 39: Cf. Atkinson's Shahnameh, p. 48.]
+
+As a last stage in the mythe of the Vaidik Traitana we may mention
+versions like those given by Sir John Malcolm and others, who see in
+Zoh�k the representative of an Assyrian invasion lasting during the
+thousand years of Zoh�k's reign, and who change Feridun into Arbaces
+the Mede, the conqueror of Sardanapalus. We may then look at the whole
+with the new light which Burnouf's genius has shed over it, and watch
+the retrograde changes of Arbaces into Feridun, of Feridun into
+Phred�n, of Phred�n into Thra�taona, of Thra�taona into
+Traitana,--each a separate phase in the dissolving view of mythology.
+
+As to the language of Persia, its biography is at an end with the
+Shahnameh. What follows exhibits hardly any signs of either growth or
+decay. The language becomes more and more encumbered with foreign
+words; but the grammar seems to have arrived at its lowest ebb, and
+withstands further change. From this state of grammatical numbness,
+languages recover by a secondary formation, which grows up slowly and
+imperceptibly at first in the speech of the people; till at last the
+reviving spirit rises upwards, and sweeps away, like the waters in
+spring, the frozen surface of an effete government, priesthood,
+literature, and grammar.
+
+_October, 1853._
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE AITAREYA-BR�HMANA.[40]
+
+
+The Sanskrit text, with an English translation of the
+Aitareya-br�hma_n_a, just published at Bombay by Dr. Martin Haug, the
+Superintendent of Sanskrit Studies in the Poona College, constitutes
+one of the most important additions lately made to our knowledge of
+the ancient literature of India. The work is published by the Director
+of Public Instruction, in behalf of Government, and furnishes a new
+instance of the liberal and judicious spirit in which Mr. Howard
+bestows his patronage on works of real and permanent utility. The
+Aitareya-br�hma_n_a, containing the earliest speculations of the
+Brahmans on the meaning of their sacrificial prayers, and the purport
+of their ancient religious rites, is a work which could be properly
+edited nowhere but in India. It is only a small work of about two
+hundred pages, but it presupposes so thorough a familiarity with all
+the externals of the religion of the Brahmans, the various offices of
+their priests, the times and seasons of their sacred rites, the form
+of their innumerable sacrificial utensils, and the preparation of
+their offerings, that no amount of Sanskrit scholarship, such as can
+be gained in England, would have been sufficient to unravel the
+intricate speculations concerning the matters which form the bulk of
+the Aitareya-br�hma_n_a. The difficulty was not to translate the text
+word for word, but to gain a clear, accurate, and living conception of
+the subjects there treated. The work was composed by persons, and for
+persons, who, in a general way, knew the performance of the Vedic
+sacrifices as well as we know the performance of our own sacred rites.
+If we placed the English Prayer-book in the hands of a stranger who
+had never assisted at an English service, we should find that, in
+spite of the simplicity and plainness of its language, it failed to
+convey to the uninitiated a clear idea of what he ought and what he
+ought not to do in church. The ancient Indian ceremonial, however, is
+one of the most artificial and complicated forms of worship that can
+well be imagined; and though its details are, no doubt, most minutely
+described in the Br�hma_n_as and the S�tras, yet, without having seen
+the actual site on which the sacrifices are offered, the altars
+constructed for the occasion, the instruments employed by different
+priests--the _tout-ensemble_, in fact, of the sacred rites--the reader
+seems to deal with words, but with words only, and is unable to
+reproduce in his imagination the acts and facts which were intended to
+be conveyed by them. Various attempts were made to induce some of the
+more learned Brahmans to edit and translate some of their own rituals,
+and thus enable European scholars to gain an idea of the actual
+performance of their ancient sacrifices, and to enter more easily into
+the spirit of the speculations on the mysterious meaning of these
+rituals, which are embodied in the so-called Br�hma_n_as, or 'the
+sayings of the Brahmans.' But although, thanks to the enlightened
+exertions of Dr. Ballantyne and his associates in the Sanskrit College
+of Benares, Brahmans might have been found knowing English quite
+sufficiently for the purpose of a rough and ready translation from
+Sanskrit into English, such was their prejudice against divulging the
+secrets of their craft that none could be persuaded to undertake the
+ungrateful task. Dr. Haug tells us of another difficulty, which we had
+hardly suspected,--the great scarcity of Brahmans familiar with the
+ancient Vedic ritual:
+
+     'Seeing the great difficulties, nay, impossibility of
+     attaining to anything like a real understanding of the
+     sacrificial art from all the numerous books I had collected,
+     I made the greatest efforts to obtain oral information from
+     some of those few Brahmans who are known by the name of
+     _S_rotriyas or _S_rautis, and who alone are the possessors
+     of the sacrificial mysteries as they descended from the
+     remotest times. The task was no easy one, and no European
+     scholar in this country before me ever succeeded in it. This
+     is not to be wondered at; for the proper knowledge of the
+     ritual is everywhere in India now rapidly dying out, and in
+     many parts, chiefly in those under British rule, it has
+     already died out.'
+
+[Footnote 40: 'The Aitareya-br�hma_n_am of the Rig-veda,' edited and
+translated by Martin Haug, Ph.D., Superintendent of Sanskrit Studies
+in the Poona College. Bombay, 1863. London: Tr�bner & Co.]
+
+Dr. Haug succeeded, however, at last in procuring the assistance of a
+real Doctor of Divinity, who had not only performed the minor Vedic
+sacrifices, such as the full and new-moon offerings, but had
+officiated at some of the great Soma sacrifices, now very rarely to be
+seen in any part of India. He was induced, we are sorry to say by very
+mercenary considerations, to perform the principal ceremonies in a
+secluded part of Dr. Haug's premises. This lasted five days, and the
+same assistance was afterwards rendered by the same worthy and some of
+his brethren whenever Dr. Haug was in any doubt as to the proper
+meaning of the ceremonial treatises which give the outlines of the
+Vedic sacrifices. Dr. Haug was actually allowed to taste that sacred
+beverage, the Soma, which gives health, wealth, wisdom, inspiration,
+nay immortality, to those who receive it from the hands of a
+twice-born priest. Yet, after describing its preparation, all that Dr.
+Haug has to say of it is:
+
+     'The sap of the plant now used at Poona appears whitish, has
+     a very stringent taste, is bitter, but not sour; it is a
+     very nasty drink, and has some intoxicating effect. I tasted
+     it several times, but it was impossible for me to drink more
+     than some teaspoonfuls.'
+
+After having gone through all these ordeals, Dr. Haug may well say
+that his explanations of sacrificial terms, as given in the notes, can
+be relied upon as certain; that they proceed from what he himself
+witnessed, and what he was able to learn from men who had inherited
+the knowledge from the most ancient times. He speaks with some
+severity of those scholars in Europe who have attempted to explain the
+technical terms of the Vedic sacrifices without the assistance of
+native priests, and without even availing themselves carefully of the
+information they might have gained from native commentaries.
+
+In the preface to his edition of the Aitareya-br�hma_n_a, Dr. Haug has
+thrown out some new ideas on the chronology of Vedic literature which
+deserve careful consideration. Beginning with the hymns of the
+Rig-veda, he admits, indeed, that there are in that collection ancient
+and modern hymns, but he doubts whether it will be possible to draw a
+sharp line between what has been called the _K_handas period,
+representing the free growth of sacred poetry, and the Mantra period,
+during which the ancient hymns were supposed to have been collected
+and new ones added, chiefly intended for sacrificial purposes. Dr.
+Haug maintains that some hymns of a decidedly sacrificial character
+should be ascribed to the earliest period of Vedic poetry. He takes,
+for instance, the hymn describing the horse sacrifice, and he
+concludes from the fact that seven priests only are mentioned in it by
+name, and that none of them belongs to the class of the Udg�tars
+(singers) and Brahmans (superintendents), that this hymn was written
+before the establishment of these two classes of priests. As these
+priests are mentioned in other Vedic hymns, he concludes that the hymn
+describing the horse sacrifice is of a very early date. Dr. Haug
+strengthens his case by a reference to the Zoroastrian ceremonial, in
+which, as he says, the chanters and superintendents are entirely
+unknown, whereas the other two classes, the Hotars (reciters) and
+Adhvaryus (assistants) are mentioned by the same names as Zaotar and
+Rathwiskare. The establishment of the two new classes of priests
+would, therefore, seem to have taken place in India after the
+Zoroastrians had separated from the Brahmans; and Dr. Haug would
+ascribe the Vedic hymns in which no more than two classes of priests
+are mentioned to a period preceding, others in which the other two
+classes of priests are mentioned to a period succeeding, that ancient
+schism. We must confess, though doing full justice to Dr. Haug's
+argument, that he seems to us to stretch what is merely negative
+evidence beyond its proper limits. Surely a poet, though acquainted
+with all the details of a sacrifice and the titles of all the priests
+employed in it, might speak of it in a more general manner than the
+author of a manual, and it would be most dangerous to conclude that
+whatever was passed over by him in silence did not exist at the time
+when he wrote. Secondly, if there were more ancient titles of priests,
+the poet would most likely use them in preference to others that had
+been but lately introduced. Thirdly, even the ancient priestly titles
+had originally a more general meaning before they were restricted to
+their technical significance, just as in Europe bishop meant
+originally an overseer, priest an elder, deacon a minister. In several
+hymns, some of these titles--for instance, that of hotar, invoker--are
+clearly used as appellatives, and not as titles. Lastly, one of the
+priests mentioned in the hymn on the horse sacrifice, the Agnimindha,
+is admitted by Dr. Haug himself to be the same as the �gn�dhra; and if
+we take this name, like all the others, in its technical sense, we
+have to recognise in him one of the four Brahman priests.[41] We
+should thus lose the ground on which Dr. Haug's argument is chiefly
+based, and should have to admit the existence of Brahman priests as
+early at least as the time in which the hymn on the horse sacrifice
+was composed. But, even admitting that allusions to a more or less
+complete ceremonial[42] could be pointed out in certain hymns, this
+might help us no doubt in subdividing and arranging the poetry of the
+second or Mantra period, but it would leave the question, whether
+allusions to ceremonial technicalities are to be considered as
+characteristics of later hymns, entirely unaffected. Dr. Haug, who
+holds that, in the development of the human race, sacrifice comes
+earlier than religious poetry, formulas earlier than prayers,
+Leviticus earlier than the Psalms, applies this view to the
+chronological arrangement of Vedic literature; and he is, therefore,
+naturally inclined to look upon hymns composed for sacrificial
+purposes, more particularly upon the invocations and formulas of the
+Ya_g_ur-veda, and upon the Nivids preserved in the Br�hma_n_as and
+S�tras, as relics of greater antiquity than the free poetical
+effusions of the Rishis, which defy ceremonial rules, ignore the
+settled rank of priests and deities, and occasionally allude to
+subjects more appropriate for profane than for sacred poetry:
+
+     'The first sacrifices [he writes] were no doubt simple
+     offerings performed without much ceremonial. A few
+     appropriate solemn words, indicating the giver, the nature
+     of the offering, the deity to which, as well as the purpose
+     for which it was offered, were sufficient. All this would be
+     embodied in the sacrificial formulas known in later times
+     principally by the name of Ya_g_ush, whilst the older one
+     appears to have been Y�_g_y�. The invocation of the deity by
+     different names, and its invitation to enjoy the meal
+     prepared, may be equally old. It was justly regarded as a
+     kind of Ya_g_ush, and called Nigada or Nivid.'
+
+[Footnote 41: By an accident two lines containing the names of the
+sixteen priests in my 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature' (p.
+469) have been misplaced. �gn�dhra and Pot_r_i ought to range with the
+Brahmans, Pratihart_r_i and Subrahma_n_ya with the Udg�t_r_is. See
+�_s_val. S�tras IV. 1 (p. 286, 'Bibliotheca Indica'); and M. M.,
+Todtenbestattung, p. xlvi. It might be said, however, that the
+Agnimindha was meant as one of the Hotr�_s_a_m_sins, or one of the
+Seven Priests, the Sapta Hotars. See Haug, Aitareya-br�hma_n_a, vol.
+i. p. 58.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Many such allusions were collected in my 'History of
+Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. 486 seq.; some of them have lately
+been independently discovered by others.]
+
+In comparing these sacrificial formulas with the bulk of the Rig-veda
+hymns, Dr. Haug comes to the conclusion that the former are more
+ancient. He shows that certain of these formulas and Nivids were known
+to the poets of the hymns, as they undoubtedly were; but this would
+only prove that these poets were acquainted with these as well as with
+other portions of the ceremonial. It would only confirm the view
+advocated by others, that certain hymns were clearly written for
+ceremonial purposes, though the ceremonial presupposed by these hymns
+may in many cases prove more simple and primitive than the ceremonial
+laid down in the Br�hma_n_as and S�tras. But if Dr. Haug tells us that
+the Rishis tried their poetical talent first in the composition of
+Y�_g_y�s, or verses to be recited while an offering was thrown into
+the fire, and that the Y�_g_y�s were afterwards extended into little
+songs, we must ask, is this fact or theory? And if we are told that
+'there can be hardly any doubt that the hymns which we possess are
+purely sacrificial, and made only for sacrificial purposes, and that
+those which express more general ideas, or philosophical thoughts, or
+confessions of sins, are comparatively late,' we can only repeat our
+former question. Dr. Haug, when proceeding to give his proofs, that
+the purely sacrificial poetry is more ancient than either profane
+songs or hymns of a more general religious character, only produces
+such collateral evidence as may be found in the literary history of
+the Jews and the Chinese--evidence which is curious, but not
+convincing. Among the Aryan nations, it has hitherto been considered
+as a general rule that poetry precedes prose. Now the Y�_g_y�s and
+Nivids are prose, and though Dr. Haug calls it rhythmical prose, yet,
+as compared with the hymns, they are prose; and though such an
+argument by itself could by no means be considered as sufficient to
+upset any solid evidence to the contrary, yet it is stronger than the
+argument derived from the literature of nations who are neither of
+them Aryan in language or thought.
+
+But though we have tried to show the insufficiency of the arguments
+advanced by Dr. Haug in support of his theory, we are by no means
+prepared to deny the great antiquity of some of the sacrificial
+formulas and invocations, and more particularly of the Nivids to which
+he for the first time has called attention. There probably existed
+very ancient Nivids or invocations, but are the Nivids which we
+possess the identical Nivids alluded to in the hymns? If so, why have
+they no accents, why do they not form part of the Sanhit�s, why were
+they not preserved, discussed, and analysed with the same religious
+care as the metrical hymns? The Nivids which we now possess may, as
+Dr. Haug supposes, have inspired the Rishis with the burden of their
+hymns; but they may equally well have been put together by later
+compilers from the very hymns of the Rishis. There is many a hymn in
+the Sanhit� of the Rig-veda which may be called a Nivid, i. e. an
+invitation addressed to the gods to come to the sacrifices, and an
+enumeration of the principal names of each deity. Those who believe,
+on more general grounds, that all religion began with sacrifice and
+sacrificial formulas will naturally look on such hymns and on the
+Nivids as relics of a more primitive age; while others who look upon
+prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, and the unfettered expression of
+devotion and wonderment as the first germs of a religious worship,
+will treat the same Nivids as productions of a later age. We doubt
+whether this problem can be argued on general grounds. Admitting that
+the Jews began with sacrifice and ended with psalms, it would by no
+means follow that the Aryan nations did the same, nor would the
+chronological arrangement of the ancient literature of China help us
+much in forming an opinion of the growth of the Indian mind. We must
+take each nation by itself, and try to find out what they themselves
+hold as to the relative antiquity of their literary documents. On
+general grounds, the problem whether sacrifice or prayer comes first,
+may be argued ad infinitum, just like the problem whether the hen
+comes first or the egg. In the special case of the sacred literature
+of the Brahmans, we must be guided by their own tradition, which
+invariably places the poetical hymns of the Rig-veda before the
+ceremonial hymns and formulas of the Ya_g_ur-veda and S�ma-veda. The
+strongest argument that has as yet been brought forward against this
+view is, that the formulas of the Ya_g_ur-veda and the sacrificial
+texts of the S�ma-veda contain occasionally more archaic forms of
+language than the hymns of the Rig-veda. It was supposed, therefore,
+that, although the hymns of the Rig-veda might have been composed at
+an earlier time, the sacrificial hymns and formulas were the first to
+be collected and to be preserved in the schools by means of a strict
+mnemonic discipline. The hymns of the Rig-veda, some of which have no
+reference whatever to the Vedic ceremonial, being collected at a later
+time, might have been stripped, while being handed down by oral
+tradition, of those grammatical forms which in the course of time had
+become obsolete, but which, if once recognised and sanctioned in
+theological seminaries, would have been preserved there with the most
+religious care.
+
+According to Dr. Haug, the period during which the Vedic hymns were
+composed extends from 1400 to 2000 B.C. The oldest hymns, however, and
+the sacrificial formulas he would place between 2000 and 2400 B.C.
+This period, corresponding to what has been called the _K_handas and
+Mantra periods, would be succeeded by the Br�hma_n_a period, and Dr.
+Haug would place the bulk of the Br�hma_n_as, all written in prose,
+between 1400 and 1200 B.C. He does not attribute much weight to the
+distinction made by the Brahmans themselves between revealed and
+profane literature, and would place the S�tras almost contemporaneous
+with the Br�hma_n_as. The only fixed point from which he starts in his
+chronological arrangement is the date implied by the position of the
+solstitial points mentioned in a little treatise, the _G_yotisha, a
+date which has been accurately fixed by the Rev. E. Main at 1186
+B.C.[43] Dr. Haug fully admits that such an observation was an
+absolute necessity for the Brahmans in regulating their calendar:
+
+     'The proper time [he writes] of commencing and ending their
+     sacrifices, principally the so-called Sattras or sacrificial
+     sessions, could not be known without an accurate knowledge
+     of the time of the sun's northern and southern progress. The
+     knowledge of the calendar forms such an essential part of
+     the ritual, that many important conditions of the latter
+     cannot be carried out without the former. The sacrifices are
+     allowed to commence only at certain lucky constellations,
+     and in certain months. So, for instance, as a rule, no great
+     sacrifice can commence during the sun's southern progress;
+     for this is regarded up to the present day as an unlucky
+     period by the Brahmans, in which even to die is believed to
+     be a misfortune. The great sacrifices generally take place
+     in spring in the months of _K_aitra and Vai_s_�kha (April
+     and May). The Sattras, which lasted for one year, were, as
+     one may learn from a careful perusal of the fourth book of
+     the Aitareya-br�hma_n_a, nothing but an imitation of the
+     sun's yearly course. They were divided into two distinct
+     parts, each consisting of six months of thirty days each; in
+     the midst of both was the Vishuvat, i. e. equator or central
+     day, cutting the whole Sattra into two halves. The
+     ceremonies were in both halves exactly the same, but they
+     were in the latter half performed in an inverted order.'
+
+[Footnote 43: See preface to the fourth volume of my edition of the
+Rig-veda.]
+
+This argument of Dr. Haug's seems correct as far as the date of the
+establishment of the ceremonial is concerned, and it is curious that
+several scholars who have lately written on the origin of the Vedic
+calendar, and the possibility of its foreign origin, should not have
+perceived the intimate relation between that calendar and the whole
+ceremonial system of the Brahmans. Dr. Haug is, no doubt, perfectly
+right when he claims the invention of the Nakshatras, or the Lunar
+Zodiac of the Brahmans, if we may so call it, for India; he may be
+right also when he assigns the twelfth century as the earliest date
+for the origin of that simple astronomical system on which the
+calendar of the Vedic festivals is founded. He calls the theories of
+others, who have lately tried to claim the first discovery of the
+Nakshatras for China, Babylon, or some other Asiatic country, absurd,
+and takes no notice of the sanguine expectations of certain scholars,
+who imagine they will soon have discovered the very names of the
+Indian Nakshatras in Babylonian inscriptions. But does it follow that,
+because the ceremonial presupposes an observation of the solstitial
+points in about the twelfth century, therefore the theological works
+in which that ceremonial is explained, commented upon, and furnished
+with all kinds of mysterious meanings, were composed at that early
+date? We see no stringency whatever in this argument of Dr. Haug's,
+and we think it will be necessary to look for other anchors by which
+to fix the drifting wrecks of Vedic literature.
+
+Dr. Haug's two volumes, containing the text of the
+Aitareya-br�hma_n_a, translation, and notes, would probably never have
+been published, if they had not received the patronage of the Bombay
+Government. However interesting the Br�hma_n_as may be to students of
+Indian literature, they are of small interest to the general reader.
+The greater portion of them is simply twaddle, and what is worse,
+theological twaddle. No person who is not acquainted beforehand with
+the place which the Br�hma_n_as fill in the history of the Indian
+mind, could read more than ten pages without being disgusted. To the
+historian, however, and to the philosopher they are of infinite
+importance--to the former as a real link between the ancient and
+modern literature of India; to the latter as a most important phase
+in the growth of the human mind, in its passage from health to
+disease. Such books, which no circulating library would touch, are
+just the books which Governments, if possible, or Universities and
+learned societies, should patronise; and if we congratulate Dr. Haug
+on having secured the enlightened patronage of the Bombay Government,
+we may congratulate Mr. Howard and the Bombay Government on having, in
+this instance, secured the services of a bon� fide scholar like Dr.
+Haug.[44]
+
+_March, 1864._
+
+[Footnote 44: A few paragraphs in this review, in which allusion was
+made to certain charges of what might be called 'literary rattening,'
+brought by Dr. Haug against some Sanskrit scholars, and more
+particularly against the editor of the 'Indische Studien' at Berlin,
+have here been omitted, as no longer of any interest. They may be
+seen, however, in the ninth volume of that periodical, where my review
+has been reprinted, though, as usual, very incorrectly. It was not I
+who first brought these accusations, nor should I have felt justified
+in alluding to them, if the evidence placed before me had not
+convinced me that there was some foundation for them. I am willing to
+admit that the language of Dr. Haug and others may have been too
+severe, but few will think that a very loud and boisterous denial is
+the best way to show that the strictures were quite undeserved. If, by
+alluding to these matters and frankly expressing my disapproval of
+them, I have given unnecessary pain, I sincerely regret it. So much
+for the past. As to the future, care, I trust, will be taken,--for the
+sake of the good fame of German scholarship, which, though living in
+England, I have quite as much at heart as if living in Germany,--not
+to give even the faintest countenance to similar suspicions. If my
+remarks should help in producing that result, I shall be glad to bow
+my head in silence under the vials of wrath that have been poured upon
+it.]
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+ON THE STUDY
+
+OF THE
+
+ZEND-AVESTA IN INDIA.[45]
+
+
+Sanskrit scholars resident in India enjoy considerable advantages over
+those who devote themselves to the study of the ancient literature of
+the Brahmans in this country, or in France and Germany. Although
+Sanskrit is no longer spoken by the great mass of the people, there
+are few large towns in which we do not meet with some more or less
+learned natives--the pandits, or, as they used to be called,
+pundits--men who have passed through a regular apprenticeship in
+Sanskrit grammar, and who generally devote themselves to the study of
+some special branch of Sanskrit literature, whether law, or logic, or
+rhetoric, or astronomy, or anything else. These men, who formerly
+lived on the liberality of the Rajahs and on the superstition of the
+people, find it more and more difficult to make a living among their
+own countrymen, and are glad to be employed by any civilian or
+officer who takes an interest in their ancient lore. Though not
+scholars in our sense of the word, and therefore of little use as
+teachers of the language, they are extremely useful to more advanced
+students, who are able to set them to do that kind of work for which
+they are fit, and to check their labours by judicious supervision. All
+our great Sanskrit scholars, from Sir William Jones to H.H. Wilson,
+have fully acknowledged their obligations to their native assistants.
+They used to work in Calcutta, Benares, and Bombay with a pandit at
+each elbow, instead of the grammar and the dictionary which European
+scholars have to consult at every difficult passage. Whenever an
+English Sahib undertook to edit or translate a Sanskrit text, these
+pandits had to copy and to collate MSS., to make a verbal index, to
+produce parallel passages from other writers, and, in many cases, to
+supply a translation into Hindustani, Bengali, or into their own
+peculiar English. In fact, if it had not been for the assistance thus
+fully and freely rendered by native scholars, Sanskrit scholarship
+would never have made the rapid progress which, during less than a
+century, it has made, not only in India, but in almost every country
+of Europe.
+
+[Footnote 45: 'Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion
+of the Parsees.' By Martin Haug, Dr. Phil. Bombay, 1862.]
+
+With this example to follow, it is curious that hardly any attempt
+should have been made by English residents, particularly in the Bombay
+Presidency, to avail themselves of the assistance of the Parsis for
+the purpose of mastering the ancient language and literature of the
+worshippers of Ormuzd. If it is remembered that, next to Sanskrit,
+there is no more ancient language than Zend--and that, next to the
+Veda, there is, among the Aryan nations, no more primitive religious
+code than the Zend-Avesta, it is surprising that so little should have
+been done by the members of the Indian Civil Service in this important
+branch of study. It is well known that such was the enthusiasm kindled
+in the heart of Anquetil Duperron by the sight of a facsimile of a
+page of the Zend-Avesta, that in order to secure a passage to India,
+he enlisted as a private soldier, and spent six years (1754-1761) in
+different parts of Western India, trying to collect MSS. of the sacred
+writings of Zoroaster, and to acquire from the Dustoors a knowledge of
+their contents. His example was followed, though in a less adventurous
+spirit, by Rask, a learned Dane, who after collecting at Bombay many
+valuable MSS. for the Danish Government, wrote in 1826 his essay 'On
+the Age and Genuineness of the Zend Language.' Another Dane, at
+present one of the most learned Zend scholars in Europe, Westergaard,
+likewise proceeded to India (1841-1843), before he undertook to
+publish his edition of the religious books of the Zoroastrians.
+(Copenhagen, 1852.) During all this time, while French and German
+scholars, such as Burnouf, Bopp, and Spiegel, were hard at work in
+deciphering the curious remains of the Magian religion, hardly
+anything was contributed by English students living in the very heart
+of Parsiism at Bombay and Poona.
+
+We are all the more pleased, therefore, that a young German scholar,
+Dr. Haug--who through the judicious recommendation of Mr. Howard,
+Director of Public Instruction in the Bombay Presidency, was appointed
+to a Professorship of Sanskrit in the Poona College--should have
+grasped the opportunity, and devoted himself to a thorough study of
+the sacred literature of the Parsis. He went to India well prepared
+for his task, and he has not disappointed the hopes which those who
+knew him entertained of him on his departure from Germany. Unless he
+had been master of his subject before he went to Poona, the assistance
+of the Dustoors would have been of little avail to him. But knowing
+all that could be known in Europe of the Zend language and literature,
+he knew what questions to ask, he could check every answer, and he
+could learn with his eyes what it is almost impossible to learn from
+books--namely, the religious ceremonial and the ritual observances
+which form so considerable an element in the Vendidad and Vispered.
+The result of his studies is now before us in a volume of 'Essays on
+the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsees,' published
+at Bombay, 1862. It is a volume of only three hundred and sixty-eight
+pages, and sells in England for one guinea. Nevertheless, to the
+student of Zend it is one of the cheapest books ever published. It
+contains four Essays: 1. History of the Researches into the Sacred
+Writings and Religion of the Parsees from the earliest times down to
+the present; 2. Outline of a Grammar of the Zend Language; 3. The
+Zend-Avesta, or the Scripture of the Parsees; 4. Origin and
+Development of the Zoroastrian Religion. The most important portion is
+the Outline of the Zend Grammar; for, though a mere outline, it is the
+first systematic grammatical analysis of that curious language. In
+other languages, we generally begin by learning the grammar, and then
+make our way gradually through the literature. In Zend, the
+grammatical terminations had first to be discovered by a careful
+anatomy of the literature. The Parsis themselves possessed no such
+work. Even their most learned priests are satisfied with learning the
+Zend-Avesta by heart, and with acquiring some idea of its import by
+means of a Pehlevi translation, which dates from the Sassanian period,
+or of a Sanskrit translation of still later date. Hence the
+translation of the Zend-Avesta published by Anquetil Duperron, with
+the assistance of Dustoor D�r�b, was by no means trustworthy. It was,
+in fact, a French translation of a Persian rendering of a Pehlevi
+version of the Zend original. It was Burnouf who, aided by his
+knowledge of Sanskrit, and his familiarity with the principles of
+comparative grammar, approached, for the first time, the very words of
+the Zend original. He had to conquer every inch of ground for himself,
+and his 'Commentaire sur le Yasna' is, in fact, like the deciphering
+of one long inscription, only surpassed in difficulty by his later
+decipherments of the cuneiform inscriptions of the Ach�menian monarchs
+of Persia. Aided by the labours of Burnouf and others, Dr. Haug has at
+last succeeded in putting together the disjecta membra poet�, and we
+have now in his Outline, not indeed a grammar like that of P�_n_ini
+for Sanskrit, yet a sufficient skeleton of what was once a living
+language, not inferior, in richness and delicacy, even to the idiom of
+the Vedas.
+
+There are, at present, five editions, more or less complete, of the
+Zend-Avesta. The first was lithographed under Burnouf's direction, and
+published at Paris 1829-1843. The second edition of the text,
+transcribed into Roman characters, appeared at Leipzig 1850, published
+by Professor Brockhaus. The third edition, in Zend characters, was
+given to the world by Professor Spiegel, 1851; and about the same
+time a fourth edition was undertaken by Professor Westergaard, at
+Copenhagen, 1852 to 1854. There are one or two editions of the
+Zend-Avesta, published in India, with Guzerati translations, which we
+have not seen, but which are frequently quoted by native scholars. A
+German translation of the Zend-Avesta was undertaken by Professor
+Spiegel, far superior in accuracy to that of Anquetil Duperron, yet in
+the main based on the Pehlevi version. Portions of the ancient text
+had been minutely analysed and translated by Dr. Haug, even before his
+departure for the East.
+
+The Zend-Avesta is not a voluminous work. We still call it the
+Zend-Avesta, though we are told that its proper title is Avesta Zend,
+nor does it seem at all likely that the now familiar name will ever be
+surrendered for the more correct one. Who speaks of Cassius Dio,
+though we are told that Dio Cassius is wrong? Nor do we feel at all
+convinced that the name of Avesta Zend is the original and only
+correct name. According to the Parsis, Avesta means sacred text, Zend
+its Pehlevi translation. But in the Pehlevi translations themselves,
+the original work of Zoroaster is spoken of as Avesta Zend. Why it is
+so called by the Pehlevi translators, we are nowhere told by
+themselves, and many conjectures have, in consequence, been started by
+almost every Zend scholar. Dr. Haug supposes that the earliest
+portions of the Zend-Avesta ought to be called Avesta, the later
+portions Zend--Zend meaning, according to him, commentary,
+explanation, gloss. Neither the word Avesta nor Zend, however, occurs
+in the original Zend texts, and though Avesta seems to be the Sanskrit
+avasth�, the Pehlevi apestak, in the sense of 'authorised text,' the
+etymology of Zend, as derived from a supposed zanti, Sanskrit _gn_�ti,
+knowledge, is not free from serious objections. Avesta Zend was most
+likely a traditional name, hardly understood even at the time of the
+Pehlevi translators, who retained it in their writings. It was
+possibly misinterpreted by them, as many other Zend words have been at
+their hands, and may have been originally the Sanskrit word
+_k_handas,[46] which is applied by the Brahmans to the sacred hymns of
+the Veda. Certainty on such a point is impossible; but as it is but
+fair to give a preference to the conjectures of those who are most
+familiar with the subject, we quote the following explanation of Dr.
+Haug:
+
+     'The meaning of the term "Zend" varied at different periods.
+     Originally it meant the interpretation of the sacred texts
+     descended from Zarathustra and his disciples by the
+     successors of the prophet. In the course of time, these
+     interpretations being regarded as equally sacred with the
+     original texts, both were then called Avesta. Both having
+     become unintelligible to the majority of the Zoroastrians,
+     in consequence of their language having died out, they
+     required a Zend or explanation again. This new Zend was
+     furnished by the most learned priests of the Sassanian
+     period in the shape of a translation into the vernacular
+     language of Persia (Pehlevi) in those days, which
+     translation being the only source to the priests of the
+     present time whence to derive any knowledge of the old
+     texts, is therefore the only Zend or explanation they know
+     of.... The name Pazend, to be met with frequently in
+     connection with Avesta and Zend, denotes the further
+     explanation of the Zend doctrine..... The Pazend language is
+     the same as the so-called Parsi, i. e. the ancient Persian,
+     as written till about the time of Firdusi, 1000 A.D.'
+
+[Footnote 46: See page 84.]
+
+Whatever we may think of the nomenclature thus advocated by Dr. Haug,
+we must acknowledge in the fullest manner his great merit in
+separating for the first time the more ancient from the more modern
+parts of the Zend-Avesta. Though the existence of different dialects
+in the ancient texts was pointed out by Spiegel, and although the
+metrical portions of the Ya_s_na had been clearly marked by
+Westergaard, it is nevertheless Haug's great achievement to have
+extracted these early relics, to have collected them, and to have
+attempted a complete translation of them, as far as such an attempt
+could be carried out at the present moment. His edition of the
+G�th�s--for this is the name of the ancient metrical portions--marks
+an epoch in the history of Zend scholarship, and the importance of the
+recovery of these genuine relics of Zoroaster's religion has been well
+brought out by Bunsen in the least known of his books, 'Gott in der
+Geschichte.' We by no means think that the translations here offered
+by Dr. Haug are final. We hope, on the contrary, that he will go on
+with the work he has so well begun, and that he will not rest till he
+has removed every dark speck that still covers the image of
+Zoroaster's primitive faith. Many of the passages as translated by him
+are as clear as daylight, and carry conviction by their very
+clearness. Others, however, are obscure, hazy, meaningless. We feel
+that they must have been intended for something else, something more
+definite and forcible, though we cannot tell what to do with the
+words as they stand. Sense, after all, is the great test of
+translation. We must feel convinced that there was good sense in these
+ancient poems, otherwise mankind would not have taken the trouble to
+preserve them; and if we cannot discover good sense in them, it must
+be either our fault, or the words as we now read them were not the
+words uttered by the ancient prophets of the world. The following are
+a few specimens of Dr. Haug's translations, in which the reader will
+easily discover the different hues of certainty and uncertainty, of
+sense and mere verbiage:
+
+     1. That I will ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God!
+     whether your friend (Sraosha) be willing to recite his own
+     hymn as prayer to my friend (Frashaostra or Vist�spa), thou
+     Wise! and whether he should come to us with the good mind,
+     to perform for us true actions of friendship.
+
+     2. That I will ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God!
+     How arose the best present life (this world)? By what means
+     are the present things (the world) to be supported? That
+     spirit, the holy (Vohu mano), O true wise spirit! is the
+     guardian of the beings to ward off from them every evil; He
+     is the promoter of all life.
+
+     3. That I will ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God!
+     Who was in the beginning the Father and Creator of truth?
+     Who made the sun and stars? Who causes the moon to increase
+     and wane if not Thou? This I wish to know, except what I
+     already know.
+
+     4. That I will ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God!
+     Who is holding the earth and the skies above it? Who made
+     the waters and the trees of the field? Who is in the winds
+     and storms that they so quickly run? Who is the Creator of
+     the good-minded beings, thou Wise?
+
+This is a short specimen of the earliest portion of the Zend-Avesta.
+The following is an account of one of the latest, the so-called Ormuzd
+Yasht:
+
+     'Zarathustra asked Ahuramazda after the most effectual spell
+     to guard against the influence of evil spirits. He was
+     answered by the Supreme Spirit, that the utterance of the
+     different names of Ahuramazda protects best from evil.
+     Thereupon Zarathustra begged Ahuramazda to communicate to
+     him these names. He then enumerates twenty. The first is
+     Ahmi, i. e. "I am;" the fourth, Asha-vahista, i. e. "the
+     best purity;" the sixth, "I am wisdom;" the eighth, "I am
+     knowledge;" the twelfth, Ahura, i. e. "living;" the
+     twentieth, "I am who I am, Mazdao."'
+
+Ahuramazda says then further:
+
+     '"If you call me at day or at night by these names, I shall
+     come to assist and help you; the angel Serosh will then
+     come, the genii of the waters and the trees." For the utter
+     defeat of the evil spirits, bad men, witches, Peris, a
+     series of other names are suggested to Zarathustra, such as
+     protector, guardian, spirit, the holiest, the best
+     fire-priest, etc.'
+
+Whether the striking coincidence between one of the suggested names of
+Ahuramazda, namely, 'I am who I am,' and the explanation of the name
+Jehova, Exodus iii. 14, 'I am that I am,' is accidental or not, must
+depend on the age that can be assigned to the Ormuzd Yasht. The
+chronological arrangement, however, of the various portions of the
+Zend-Avesta is as yet merely tentative, and these questions must
+remain for future consideration. Dr. Haug points out other
+similarities between the doctrines of Zoroaster and the Old and New
+Testaments. 'The Zoroastrian religion,' he writes, 'exhibits a very
+close affinity to, or rather identity with, several important
+doctrines of the Mosaic religion and Christianity, such as the
+personality and attributes of the devil, and the resurrection of the
+dead.' Neither of these doctrines, however, would seem to be
+characteristic of the Old or New Testament, and the resurrection of
+the dead is certainly to be found by implication only, and is nowhere
+distinctly asserted, in the religious books of Moses.
+
+There are other points on which we should join issue with Dr.
+Haug--as, for instance, when, on page 17, he calls the Zend the elder
+sister of Sanskrit. This seems to us in the very teeth of the evidence
+so carefully brought together by himself in his Zend grammar. If he
+means the modern Sanskrit, as distinguished from the Vedic, his
+statement would be right to some extent; but even thus, it would be
+easy to show many grammatical forms in the later Sanskrit more
+primitive than their corresponding forms in Zend. These, however, are
+minor points compared with the great results of his labours which Dr.
+Haug has brought together in these four Essays; and we feel certain
+that all who are interested in the study of ancient language and
+ancient religion will look forward with the greatest expectations to
+Dr. Haug's continued investigations of the language, the literature,
+the ceremonial, and the religion of the descendants of Zoroaster.
+
+_December, 1862._
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+PROGRESS OF ZEND SCHOLARSHIP.[47]
+
+
+There are certain branches of philological research which seem to be
+constantly changing, shifting, and, we hope, progressing. After the
+key to the interpretation of ancient inscriptions has been found, it
+by no means follows that every word can at once be definitely
+explained, or every sentence correctly construed. Thus it happens that
+the same hieroglyphic or cuneiform text is rendered differently by
+different scholars; nay, that the same scholar proposes a new
+rendering not many years after his first attempt at a translation has
+been published. And what applies to the decipherment of inscriptions
+applies with equal force to the translation of ancient texts. A
+translation of the hymns of the Veda, or of the Zend-Avesta, and, we
+may add, of the Old Testament too, requires exactly the same process
+as the deciphering of an inscription. The only safe way of finding the
+real meaning of words in the sacred texts of the Brahmans, the
+Zoroastrians, or the Jews, is to compare every passage in which the
+same word occurs, and to look for a meaning that is equally applicable
+to all, and can at the same time be defended on grammatical and
+etymological grounds. This is no doubt a tedious process, nor can it
+be free from uncertainty; but it is an uncertainty inherent in the
+subject itself, for which it would be unfair to blame those by whose
+genius and perseverance so much light has been shed on the darkest
+pages of ancient history. To those who are not acquainted with the
+efforts by which Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and Rawlinson unravelled
+the inscriptions of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, it may seem
+inexplicable, for instance, how an inscription which at one time was
+supposed to confirm the statement, known from Herodotus, that Darius
+obtained the sovereignty of Persia by the neighing of his horse,
+should now yield so very different a meaning. Herodotus relates that
+after the assassination of Smerdis the six conspirators agreed to
+confer the royal dignity on him whose horse should neigh first at
+sunrise. The horse of Darius neighed first, and he was accordingly
+elected king of Persia. After his election, Herodotus states that
+Darius erected a stone monument containing the figure of a horseman,
+with the following inscription: 'Darius, the son of Hystaspes,
+obtained the kingdom of the Persians by the virtue of his horse
+(giving its name), and of Oibareus, his groom.' Lassen translated one
+of the cuneiform inscriptions, copied originally by Niebuhr from a
+huge slab built in the southern wall of the great platform at
+Persepolis, in the following manner: 'Auramazdis magnus est. Is
+maximus est deorum. Ipse Darium regem constituit, benevolens imperium
+obtulit. Ex voluntate Auramazdis Darius rex sum. Generosus sum Darius
+rex hujus regionis Persic�; hanc mihi Auramazdis obtulit "hoc
+pomoerio ope equi (Choaspis) clar� virtutis."' This translation was
+published in 1844, and the arguments by which Lassen supported it, in
+the sixth volume of the 'Zeitschrift f�r die Kunde des Morgenlandes,'
+may be read with interest and advantage even now when we know that
+this eminent scholar was mistaken in his analysis. The first step
+towards a more correct translation was made by Professor Holtzmann,
+who in 1845 pointed out that Smerdis was murdered at Susa, not at
+Persepolis; and that only six days later Darius was elected king of
+Persia, which happened again at Susa, and not at Persepolis. The
+monument, therefore, which Darius erected in the [Greek: proasteion],
+or suburb, in the place where the fortunate event which led to his
+elevation occurred, and the inscription recording the event in loco,
+could not well be looked for at Persepolis. But far more important was
+the evidence derived from a more careful analysis of the words of the
+inscription itself. Niba, which Lassen translated as pomoerium,
+occurs in three other places, where it certainly cannot mean suburb.
+It seems to be an adjective meaning splendid, beautiful. Besides, nib�
+is a nominative singular in the feminine, and so is the pronoun hy�
+which precedes, and the two words which follow it--uva_s_p� and
+umartiy�. Professor Holtzmann translated therefore the same sentence
+which Professor Lassen had rendered by 'hoc pomoerio ope equi
+(Choaspis) clar� virtutis,' by 'qu� nitida, herbosa, celebris est,' a
+translation which is in the main correct, and has been adopted
+afterwards both by Sir H. Rawlinson and M. Oppert. Sir H. Rawlinson
+translates the whole passage as follows: 'This province of Persia
+which Ormazd has granted to me, which is illustrious, abounding in
+good horses, producing good men.' Thus vanished the horse of Darius,
+and the curious confirmation which the cuneiform inscription was at
+one time supposed to lend to the Persian legend recorded by Herodotus.
+
+[Footnote 47: 'A Lecture on the Original Language of Zoroaster.' By
+Martin Haug. Bombay, 1865.]
+
+It would be easy to point out many passages of this kind, and to use
+them in order to throw discredit on the whole method by which these
+and other inscriptions have lately been deciphered. It would not
+require any great display of forensic or parliamentary eloquence, to
+convince the public at large, by means of such evidence, that all the
+labours of Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and Rawlinson had been in vain,
+and to lay down once for all the general principle that the original
+meaning of inscriptions written in a dead language, of which the
+tradition is once lost, can never be recovered. Fortunately, questions
+of this kind are not settled by eloquent pleading or by the votes of
+majorities, but, on the contrary, by the independent judgment of the
+few who are competent to judge. The fact that different scholars
+should differ in their interpretations, or that the same scholars
+should reject his former translation, and adopt a new one that
+possibly may have to be surrendered again as soon as new light can be
+thrown on points hitherto doubtful and obscure--all this, which in the
+hands of those who argue for victory and not for truth, constitutes so
+formidable a weapon, and appeals so strongly to the prejudices of the
+many, produces very little effect on the minds of those who understand
+the reason of these changes, and to whom each new change represents
+but a new step in advance in the discovery of truth.
+
+Nor should the fact be overlooked that, if there seems to be less
+change in the translation of the books of the Old Testament for
+instance, or of Homer, it is due in a great measure to the absence of
+that critical exactness at which the decipherers of ancient
+inscriptions and the translators of the Veda and Zend-Avesta aim in
+rendering each word that comes before them. If we compared the
+translation of the Septuagint with the authorised version of the Old
+Testament, we should occasionally find discrepancies nearly as
+startling as any that can be found in the different translations of
+the cuneiform inscriptions, or of the Veda and Zend-Avesta. In the
+Book of Job, the Vulgate translates the exhortation of Job's wife by
+'Bless God and die;' the English version by 'Curse God and die;' the
+Septuagint by 'Say some word to the Lord and die.' Though, at the time
+when the Seventy translated the Old Testament, Hebrew could hardly be
+called a dead language, yet there were then many of its words the
+original meaning of which even the most learned rabbi would have had
+great difficulty in defining with real accuracy. The meaning of words
+changes imperceptibly and irresistibly. Even where there is a
+literature, and a printed literature like that of modern Europe, four
+or five centuries work such a change that few even of the most learned
+divines in England would find it easy to read and to understand
+accurately a theological treatise written in English four hundred
+years ago. The same happened, and happened to a far greater extent, in
+ancient languages. Nor was the sacred character attributed to certain
+writings any safeguard. On the contrary, greater violence is done by
+successive interpreters to sacred writings than to any other relics
+of ancient literature. Ideas grow and change, yet each generation
+tries to find its own ideas reflected in the sacred pages of their
+early prophets, and, in addition to the ordinary influences which blur
+and obscure the sharp features of old words, artificial influences are
+here at work distorting the natural expression of words which have
+been invested with a sacred authority. Passages in the Veda or
+Zend-Avesta which do not bear on religious or philosophical doctrines
+are generally explained simply and naturally, even by the latest of
+native commentators. But as soon as any word or sentence can be so
+turned as to support a doctrine, however modern, or a precept, however
+irrational, the simplest phrases are tortured and mangled till at last
+they are made to yield their assent to ideas the most foreign to the
+minds of the authors of the Veda and Zend-Avesta.
+
+To those who take an interest in these matters we may recommend a
+small Essay lately published by the Rev. R. G. S. Browne--the 'Mosaic
+Cosmogony'--in which the author endeavours to establish a literal
+translation of the first chapter of Genesis. Touching the first verb
+that occurs in the Bible, he writes: 'What is the meaning or scope of
+the Hebrew verb, in our authorised version, rendered by "created?" To
+English ears and understandings the sound comes naturally, and by long
+use irresistibly, as the representation of an ex nihilo creation. But,
+in the teeth of all the Rabbinical and Cabbalistic fancies of Jewish
+commentators, and with reverential deference to modern criticism on
+the Hebrew Bible, it is not so. R. D. Kimchi, in his endeavour to
+ascertain the shades of difference existing between the terms used in
+the Mosaic cosmogony, has assumed that our Hebrew verb bar� has the
+full signification of ex nihilo creavit. Our own Castell, a profound
+and self-denying scholar has entertained the same groundless notion.
+And even our illustrious Bryan Walton was not inaccessible to this
+oblique ray of Rabbinical or ignis fatuus.'
+
+Mr. Browne then proceeds to quote Gesenius, who gives as the primary
+meaning of bar�, he cut, cut out, carved, planed down, polished; and
+he refers to Lee, who characterizes it as a silly theory that bar�
+meant to create ex nihilo. In Joshua xvii. 15 and 18, the same verb is
+used in the sense of cutting down trees; in Psalm civ. 30 it is
+translated by 'Thou renewest the face of the earth.' In Arabic, too,
+according to Lane, bar� means properly, though not always, to create
+out of pre-existing matter. All this shows that in the verb bar�, as
+in the Sanskrit tvaksh or taksh, there is no trace of the meaning
+assigned to it by later scholars, of a creation out of nothing. That
+idea in its definiteness was a modern idea, most likely called forth
+by the contact between Jews and Greeks at Alexandria. It was probably
+in contradistinction to the Greek notion of matter as co-eternal with
+the Creator, that the Jews, to whom Jehovah was all in all, asserted,
+for the first time deliberately, that God had made all things out of
+nothing. This became afterwards the received and orthodox view of
+Jewish and Christian divines, though the verb bar�, so far from
+lending any support to this theory, would rather show that, in the
+minds of those whom Moses addressed and whose language he spoke, it
+could only have called forth the simple conception of fashioning or
+arranging--if, indeed, it called forth any more definite conception
+than the general and vague one conveyed by the [Greek: poiein] of the
+Septuagint. To find out how the words of the Old Testament were
+understood by those to whom they were originally addressed is a task
+attempted by very few interpreters of the Bible. The great majority of
+readers transfer without hesitation the ideas which they connect with
+words as used in the nineteenth century to the mind of Moses or his
+contemporaries, forgetting altogether the distance which divides their
+language and their thoughts from the thoughts and language of the
+wandering tribes of Israel.
+
+How many words, again, there are in Homer which have indeed a
+traditional interpretation, as given by our dictionaries and
+commentaries, but the exact purport of which is completely lost, is
+best known to Greek scholars. It is easy enough to translate [Greek:
+polemoio gephyrai] by the bridges of war, but what Homer really meant
+by these [Greek: gephyrai] has never been explained. It is extremely
+doubtful whether bridges, in our sense of the word, were known at all
+at the time of Homer; and even if it could be proved that Homer used
+[Greek: gephyrai] in the sense of a dam, the etymology, i. e., the
+earliest history of the word, would still remain obscure and doubtful.
+It is easy, again, to see that [Greek: hieros] in Greek means
+something like the English sacred. But how, if it did so, the same
+adjective could likewise be applied to a fish or to a chariot, is a
+question which, if it is to be answered at all, can only be answered
+by an etymological analysis of the word.[48] To say that sacred may
+mean marvellous, and therefore big, is saying nothing, particularly as
+Homer does not speak of catching big fish, but of catching fish in
+general.
+
+[Footnote 48: On [Greek: hieros], the Sanskrit ishira, lively, see
+Kuhn's 'Zeitschrift,' vol. ii. p. 275, vol. iii. p. 134.]
+
+These considerations--which might be carried much further, but which,
+we are afraid, have carried us away too far from our original
+subject--were suggested to us while reading a lecture lately published
+by Dr. Haug, and originally delivered by him at Bombay, in 1864,
+before an almost exclusively Parsi audience. In that lecture Dr. Haug
+gives a new translation of ten short paragraphs of the Zend-Avesta,
+which he had explained and translated in his 'Essays on the Sacred
+Language of the Parsees,' published in 1862. To an ordinary reader the
+difference between the two translations, published within the space of
+two years, might certainly be perplexing, and calculated to shake his
+faith in the soundness of a method that can lead to such varying
+results. Nor can it be denied that, if scholars who are engaged in
+these researches are bent on representing their last translation as
+final and as admitting of no further improvement, the public has a
+right to remind them that 'finality' is as dangerous a thing in
+scholarship as in politics. Considering the difficulty of translating
+the pages of the Zend-Avesta, we can never hope to have every sentence
+of it rendered into clear and intelligible English. Those who for the
+first time reduced the sacred traditions of the Zoroastrians to
+writing were separated by more than a thousand years from the time of
+their original composition. After that came all the vicissitudes to
+which manuscripts are exposed during the process of being copied by
+more or less ignorant scribes. The most ancient MSS. of the
+Zend-Avesta date from the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is
+true there is an early translation of the Zend-Avesta, the Pehlevi
+translation, and a later one in Sanskrit by Neriosengh. But the
+Pehlevi translation, which was made under the auspices of the
+Sassanian kings of Persia, served only to show how completely the
+literal and grammatical meaning of the Zend-Avesta was lost even at
+that time, in the third century after Christ; while the Sanskrit
+translation was clearly made, not from the original, but from the
+Pehlevi. It is true, also, that even in more modern times the Parsis
+of Bombay were able to give to Anquetil Duperron and other Europeans
+what they considered as a translation of the Zend-Avesta in modern
+Persian. But a scholar like Burnouf, who endeavoured for the first
+time to give an account of every word in the Zend text, to explain
+each grammatical termination, to parse every sentence, and to
+establish the true meaning of each term by an etymological analysis
+and by a comparison of cognate words in Sanskrit, was able to derive
+but scant assistance from these traditional translations. Professor
+Spiegel, to whom we owe a complete edition and translation of the
+Zend-Avesta, and who has devoted the whole of his life to the
+elucidation of the Zoroastrian religion, attributes a higher value to
+the tradition of the Parsis than Dr. Haug. But he also is obliged to
+admit that he could ascribe no greater authority to these traditional
+translations and glosses than a Biblical scholar might allow to
+Rabbinical commentaries. All scholars are agreed in fact on this, that
+whether the tradition be right or wrong, it requires in either case to
+be confirmed by an independent grammatical and etymological analysis
+of the original text. Such an analysis is no doubt as liable to error
+as the traditional translation itself, but it possesses this
+advantage, that it gives reasons for every word that has to be
+translated, and for every sentence that has to be construed. It is an
+excellent discipline to the mind even where the results at which we
+arrive are doubtful or erroneous, and it has imparted to these studies
+a scientific value and general interest which they could not otherwise
+have acquired.
+
+We shall give a few specimens of the translations proposed by
+different scholars of one or two verses of the Zend-Avesta. We cannot
+here enter into the grammatical arguments by which each of these
+translations is supported. We only wish to show what is the present
+state of Zend scholarship, and though we would by no means disguise
+the fact of its somewhat chaotic character, yet we do not hesitate to
+affirm that, in spite of the conflict of the opinions of different
+scholars, and in spite of the fluctuation of systems apparently
+opposed to each other, progress may be reported, and a firm hope
+expressed that the essential doctrines of one of the earliest forms of
+religion may in time be recovered and placed before us in their
+original purity and simplicity. We begin with the Pehlevi translation
+of a passage in Ya_s_na, 45:
+
+     'Thus the religion is to be proclaimed; now give an
+     attentive hearing, and now listen, that is, keep your ear in
+     readiness, make your works and speeches gentle. Those who
+     have wished from nigh and far to study the religion, may now
+     do so. For now all is manifest, that Anhuma (Ormazd)
+     created, that Anhuma created all these beings; that at the
+     second time, at the (time of the) future body, Aharman does
+     not destroy (the life of) the worlds. Aharman made evil
+     desire and wickedness to spread through his tongue.'
+
+Professor Spiegel, in 1859, translated the same passage, of which the
+Pehlevi is a running commentary rather than a literal rendering, as
+follows:
+
+     'Now I will tell you, lend me your ear, now hear what you
+     desired, you that came from near and from afar! It is clear,
+     the wise (spirits) have created all things; evil doctrine
+     shall not for a second time destroy the world. The Evil One
+     has made a bad choice with his tongue.'
+
+Next follows the translation of the passage as published by Dr. Haug
+in 1862:
+
+     'All ye, who have come from nigh and far, listen now and
+     hearken to my speech. Now I will tell you all about that
+     pair of spirits how it is known to the wise. Neither the
+     ill-speaker (the devil) shall destroy the second (spiritual)
+     life, nor that man who, being a liar with his tongue,
+     professes the false (idolatrous) belief.'
+
+The same scholar, in 1865, translates the same passage somewhat
+differently:
+
+     'All you that have come from near and far should now listen
+     and hearken to what I shall proclaim. Now the wise have
+     manifested this universe as a duality. Let not the
+     mischief-maker destroy the second life, since he, the
+     wicked, chose with his tongue the pernicious doctrine.'
+
+The principal difficulty in this paragraph consists in the word which
+Dr. Haug translated by duality, viz. d�m, and which he identifies with
+Sanskrit dvam, i. e. dvandvam, pair. Such a word, as far as we are
+aware, does not occur again in the Zend-Avesta, and hence it is not
+likely that the uncertainty attaching to its meaning will ever be
+removed. Other interpreters take it as a verb in the second person
+plural, and hence the decided difference of interpretation.
+
+The sixth paragraph of the same passage is explained by the Pehlevi
+translator as follows:
+
+     'Thus I proclaimed that among all things the greatest is to
+     worship God. The praise of purity is (due) to him who has a
+     good knowledge, (to those) who depend on Ormazd. I hear
+     Spent�-mainyu (who is) Ormazd; listen to me, to what I shall
+     speak (unto you). Whose worship is intercourse with the Good
+     Mind; one can know (experience) the divine command to do
+     good through inquiry after what is good. That which is in
+     the intellect they teach me as the best, viz. the inborn
+     (heavenly) wisdom, (that is, that the divine wisdom is
+     superior to the human).'
+
+Professor Spiegel translates:
+
+     'Now I will tell you of all things the greatest. It is
+     praise with purity of Him who is wise from those who exist.
+     The holiest heavenly being, Ahuramazda, may hear it, He for
+     whose praise inquiry is made from the holy spirit, may He
+     teach me the best by his intelligence.'
+
+Dr. Haug in 1862:
+
+     'Thus I will tell you of the greatest of all (Sraosha), who
+     is praising the truth, and doing good, and of all who are
+     gathered round him (to assist him), by order of the holy
+     spirit (Ahuramazda). The living Wise may hear me; by means
+     of His goodness the good mind increases (in the world). He
+     may lead me with the best of his wisdom.'
+
+Dr. Haug in 1865:
+
+     'I will proclaim as the greatest of all things that one
+     should be good, praising only truth. Ahuramazda will hear
+     those who are bent on furthering (all that is good). May he
+     whose goodness is communicated by the Good Mind instruct me
+     in his best wisdom.'
+
+To those who are interested in the study of Zend, and wish to judge
+for themselves of the trustworthiness of these various translations,
+we can recommend a most useful work lately published in Germany by Dr.
+F. Justi, 'Handbuch der Zendsprache,' containing a complete
+dictionary, a grammar, and selections from the Zend-Avesta.
+
+_September, 1865._
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+GENESIS AND THE ZEND-AVESTA.[49]
+
+
+O that scholars could have the benefit of a little legal training, and
+learn at least the difference between what is probable and what is
+proven! What an advantage also, if they had occasionally to address a
+jury of respectable tradespeople, and were forced to acquire the art,
+or rather not to shrink from the effort, of putting the most intricate
+and delicate points in the simplest and clearest form of which they
+admit! What a lesson again it would be to men of independent research,
+if, after having amassed ever so many bags full of evidence, they had
+always before their eyes the fear of an impatient judge who wants to
+hear nothing but what is important and essential, and hates to listen
+to anything that is not to the point, however carefully it may have
+been worked out, and however eloquently it may be laid before him!
+There is hardly one book published now-a-days which, if everything in
+it that is not to the purpose were left out, could not be reduced to
+half its size. If authors could make up their minds to omit everything
+that is only meant to display their learning, to exhibit the
+difficulties they had to overcome, or to call attention to the
+ignorance of their predecessors, many a volume of thirty sheets would
+collapse into a pamphlet of fifty pages, though in that form it would
+probably produce a much greater effect than in its more inflated
+appearance.
+
+[Footnote 49: 'Er�n, das Land zwischen dem Indus und Tigris, Beitr�ge
+zur Kenntniss des Landes und seiner Geschichte.' Von Dr. Friedrich
+Spiegel. Berlin, 1863.]
+
+Did the writers of the Old Testament borrow anything from the
+Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, or the Indians, is a simple
+enough question. It is a question that may be treated quite apart from
+any theological theories; for the Old Testament, whatever view the
+Jews may take of its origin, may surely be regarded by the historian
+as a really historical book, written at a certain time in the history
+of the world, in a language then spoken and understood, and
+proclaiming certain facts and doctrines meant to be acceptable and
+intelligible to the Jews, such as they were at that time, an
+historical nation, holding a definite place by the side of their more
+or less distant neighbours, whether Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, or
+Indians. It is well known that we have in the language of the New
+Testament the clear vestiges of Greek and Roman influences, and if we
+knew nothing of the historical intercourse between those two nations
+and the writers of the New Testament, the very expressions used by
+them--not only their language, but their thoughts, their allusions,
+illustrations, and similes--would enable us to say that some
+historical contact had taken place between the philosophers of Greece,
+the lawgivers of Rome, and the people of Judea. Why then should not
+the same question be asked with regard to more ancient times? Why
+should there be any hesitation in pointing out in the Old Testament an
+Egyptian custom, or a Greek word, or a Persian conception? If Moses
+was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, nothing surely would
+stamp his writings as more truly historical than traces of Egyptian
+influences that might be discovered in his laws. If Daniel prospered
+in the reign of Cyrus the Persian, every Persian word that could be
+discovered in Daniel would be most valuable in the eyes of a critical
+historian. The only thing which we may fairly require in
+investigations of this kind is that the facts should be clearly
+established. The subject is surely an important one--important
+historically, quite apart from any theological consequences that may
+be supposed to follow. It is as important to find out whether the
+authors of the Old Testament had come in contact with the language and
+ideas of Babylon, Persia, or Egypt, as it is to know that the Jews, at
+the time of our Lord's appearance, had been reached by the rays of
+Greek and Roman civilisation--that in fact our Lord, his disciples,
+and many of his followers, spoke Greek as well as Hebrew (i. e.
+Chaldee), and were no strangers to that sphere of thought in which the
+world of the Gentiles, the Greeks, and Romans had been moving for
+centuries.
+
+Hints have been thrown out from time to time by various writers that
+certain ideas in the Old Testament might be ascribed to Persian
+influences, and be traced back to the Zend-Avesta, the sacred writings
+of Zoroaster. Much progress has been made in the deciphering of these
+ancient documents, since Anquetil Duperron brought the first
+instalment of MSS. from Bombay, and since the late Eug�ne Burnouf, in
+his 'Commentaire sur le Yasna,' succeeded in establishing the grammar
+and dictionary of the Zend language upon a safe basis. Several
+editions of the works of Zoroaster have been published in France,
+Denmark, and Germany; and after the labours of Spiegel, Westergaard,
+Haug, and others, it might be supposed that such a question as the
+influence of Persian ideas on the writers of the Old Testament might
+at last be answered either in the affirmative or in the negative. We
+were much pleased, therefore, on finding that Professor Spiegel, the
+learned editor and translator of the Avesta, had devoted a chapter of
+his last work, 'Er�n, das Land zwischen dem Indus und Tigris,' to the
+problem in question. We read his chapter, 'Avesta und die Genesis,
+oder die Beziehungen der Eranier zu den Semiten,' with the warmest
+interest, and when we had finished it, we put down the book with the
+very exclamation with which we began our article.
+
+We do not mean to say anything disrespectful to Professor Spiegel, a
+scholar brimfull of learning, and one of the two or three men who know
+the Avesta by heart. He is likewise a good Semitic scholar, and knows
+enough of Hebrew to form an independent opinion on the language,
+style, and general character of the different books of the Old
+Testament. He brings together in his Essay a great deal of interesting
+information, and altogether would seem to be one of the most valuable
+witnesses to give evidence on the point in question. Yet suppose him
+for a moment in a court of justice where, as in a patent case, some
+great issue depends on the question whether certain ideas had first
+been enunciated by the author of Genesis or the author of the Avesta;
+suppose him subjected to a cross-examination by a brow-beating lawyer,
+whose business it is to disbelieve and make others disbelieve every
+assertion that the witness makes, and we are afraid the learned
+Professor would break down completely. Now it may be said that this is
+not the spirit in which learned inquiries should be conducted, that
+authors have a right to a certain respect, and may reckon on a certain
+amount of willingness on the part of their readers. Such a plea may,
+perhaps, be urged when all preliminary questions in a contest have
+been disposed of, when all the evidence has been proved to lie in one
+direction, and when even the most obstinate among the gentlemen of the
+jury feel that the verdict is as good as settled. But in a question
+like this, where everything is doubtful, or, we should rather say,
+where all the prepossessions are against the view which Dr. Spiegel
+upholds, it is absolutely necessary for a new witness to be armed from
+top to toe, to lay himself open to no attack, to measure his words,
+and advance step by step in a straight line to the point that has to
+be reached. A writer like Dr. Spiegel should know that he can expect
+no mercy; nay, he should himself wish for no mercy, but invite the
+heaviest artillery against the floating battery which he has launched
+into the troubled waters of Biblical criticism. If he feels that his
+case is not strong enough, the wisest plan surely is to wait, to
+accumulate new strength if possible, or, if no new evidence is
+forthcoming, to acknowledge openly that there is no case.
+
+M. Br�al--who, in his interesting Essay 'Hercule et Cacus,' has lately
+treated the same problem, the influence of Persian ideas on the
+writers of the Old Testament--gives an excellent example of how a case
+of this kind should be argued. He begins with the apocryphal books,
+and he shows that the name of an evil spirit like Asmodeus, which
+occurs in Tobit, could be borrowed from Persia only. It is a name
+inexplicable in Hebrew, and it represents very closely the Parsi
+Eshem-dev, the Zend A�shma da�va, the spirit of concupiscence,
+mentioned several times in the Avesta (Vendidad, c. 10), as one of the
+devs, or evil spirits. Now this is the kind of evidence we want for
+the Old Testament. We can easily discover a French word in English,
+nor is it difficult to tell a Persian word in Hebrew. Are there any
+Persian words in Genesis, words of the same kind as Asmodeus in Tobit?
+No such evidence has been brought forward, and the only words we can
+think of which, if not Persian, may be considered of Aryan origin, are
+the names of such rivers as Tigris and Euphrates; and of countries
+such as Ophir and Havilah among the descendants of Shem, Javan,
+Meshech, and others among the descendants of Japhet. These names are
+probably foreign names, and as such naturally mentioned by the author
+of Genesis in their foreign form. If there are other words of Aryan or
+Iranian origin in Genesis, they ought to have occupied the most
+prominent place in Dr. Spiegel's pleading.
+
+We now proceed, and we are again quite willing to admit that, even
+without the presence of Persian words, the presence of Persian ideas
+might be detected by careful analysis. No doubt this is a much more
+delicate process, yet, as we can discover Jewish and Christian ideas
+in the Koran, there ought to be no insurmountable difficulty in
+pointing out any Persian ingredients in Genesis, however disguised and
+assimilated. Only, before we look for such ideas, it is necessary to
+show the channel through which they could possibly have flowed either
+from the Avesta into Genesis, or from Genesis into the Avesta. History
+shows us clearly how Persian words and ideas could have found their
+way into such late works as Tobit, or even into the book of Daniel,
+whether he prospered in the reign of Darius, or in the reign of Cyrus
+the Persian. But how did Persians and Jews come in contact, previously
+to the age of Cyrus? Dr. Spiegel says that Zoroaster was born in
+Arran. This name is given by medi�val Mohammedan writers to the plain
+washed by the Araxes, and was identified by Anquetil Duperron with the
+name Airyana va�_g_a, which the Zend-Avesta gives to the first created
+land of Ormuzd. The Parsis place this sacred country in the vicinity
+of Atropatene, and it is clearly meant as the northernmost country
+known to the author or authors of the Zend-Avesta. We think that Dr.
+Spiegel is right in defending the geographical position assigned by
+tradition to Airyana va�_g_a, against modern theories that would place
+it more eastward in the plain of Pamer, nor do we hesitate to admit
+that the name (Airyana va�_g_a, i. e. the seed of the Aryan) might
+have been changed into Arran. We likewise acknowledge the force of the
+arguments by which he shows that the books now called Zend-Avesta were
+composed in the Eastern, and not in the Western, provinces of the
+Persian monarchy, though we are hardly prepared to subscribe at once
+to his conclusion (p. 270) that, because Zoroaster is placed by the
+Avesta and by later traditions in Arran, or the Western provinces, he
+could not possibly be the author of the Avesta, a literary production
+which would appear to belong exclusively to the Eastern provinces.
+The very tradition to which Dr. Spiegel appeals represents Zoroaster
+as migrating from Arran to Balkh, to the court of Gustasp, the son of
+Lohrasp; and, as one tradition has as much value as another, we might
+well admit that the work of Zoroaster, as a religious teacher, began
+in Balkh, and from thence extended still further East. But admitting
+that Arran, the country washed by the Araxes, was the birthplace of
+Zoroaster, can we possibly follow Dr. Spiegel when he says, Arran
+seems to be identical with Haran, the birthplace of Abraham? Does he
+mean the names to be identical? Then how are the aspirate and the
+double r to be explained? how is it to be accounted for that the
+medi�val corruption of Airyana va�_g_a, namely Arran, should appear in
+Genesis? And if the dissimilarity of the two names is waived, is it
+possible in two lines to settle the much contested situation of Haran,
+and thus to determine the ancient watershed between the Semitic and
+Aryan nations? The Abb� Banier, more than a hundred years ago, pointed
+out that Haran, whither Abraham repaired, was the metropolis of
+Sabism, and that Magism was practised in Ur of the Chaldees
+('Mythology, explained by History,' vol. i. book iii. cap. 3). Dr.
+Spiegel having, as he believes, established the most ancient
+meeting-point between Abraham and Zoroaster, proceeds to argue that
+whatever ideas are shared in common by Genesis and the Avesta must be
+referred to that very ancient period when personal intercourse was
+still possible between Abraham and Zoroaster, the prophets of the Jews
+and the Iranians. Now, here the counsel for the defence would remind
+Dr. Spiegel that Genesis was not the work of Abraham, nor, according
+to Dr. Spiegel's view, was Zoroaster the author of the Zend-Avesta;
+and that therefore the neighbourly intercourse between Zoroaster and
+Abraham in the country of Arran had nothing to do with the ideas
+shared in common by Genesis and the Avesta. But even if we admitted,
+for argument's sake, that as Dr. Spiegel puts it, the Avesta contains
+Zoroastrian and Genesis Abrahamitic ideas, surely there was ample
+opportunity for Jewish ideas to find admission into what we call the
+Avesta, or for Iranian ideas to find admission into Genesis, after the
+date of Abraham and Zoroaster, and before the time when we find the
+first MSS. of Genesis and the Avesta. The Zend MSS. of the Avesta are
+very modern, so are the Hebrew MSS. of Genesis, which do not carry us
+beyond the tenth century after Christ. The text of the Avesta,
+however, can be checked by the Pehlevi translation, which was made
+under the Sassanian dynasty (226-651 A.D.), just as the text of
+Genesis can be checked by the Septuagint translation, which was made
+in the third century before Christ. Now, it is known that about the
+same time and in the same place--namely at Alexandria--where the Old
+Testament was rendered into Greek, the Avesta also was translated into
+the same language, so that we have at Alexandria in the third century
+B.C. a well established historical contact between the believers in
+Genesis and the believers in the Avesta, and an easy opening for that
+exchange of ideas which, according to Dr. Spiegel, could have taken
+place nowhere but in Arran, and at the time of Abraham and Zoroaster.
+It might be objected that this was wrangling for victory, and not
+arguing for truth, and that no real scholar would admit that the
+Avesta, in its original form, did not go back to a much earlier date
+than the third century before Christ. Yet, when such a general
+principle is to be laid down, that all that Genesis and Avesta share
+in common must belong to a time before Abraham had started for Canaan,
+and Zoroaster for Balkh, other possible means of later intercourse
+should surely not be entirely lost sight of.
+
+For what happens? The very first tradition that is brought forward as
+one common to both these ancient works--namely, that of the Four Ages
+of the World--is confessedly found in the later writings only of the
+Parsis, and cannot be traced back in its definite shape beyond the
+time of the Sassanians (Er�n, p. 275). Indications of it are said to
+be found in the earlier writings, but these indications are extremely
+vague. But we must advance a step further, and, after reading very
+carefully the three pages devoted to this subject by Dr. Spiegel, we
+must confess we see no similarity whatever on that point between
+Genesis and the Avesta. In Genesis, the Four Ages have never assumed
+the form of a theory, as in India, Persia, or perhaps in Greece. If we
+say that the period from Adam to Noah is the first, that from Noah to
+Abraham the second, that from Abraham to the death of Jacob the third,
+that beginning with the exile in Egypt the fourth, we are transferring
+our ideas to Genesis, but we cannot say that the writer of Genesis
+himself laid a peculiar stress on this fourfold division. The Parsis,
+on the contrary, have a definite system. According to them the world
+is to last 12,000 years. During the first period of 3,000 years the
+world was created. During the second period Gayo-maratan, the first
+man lived by himself, without suffering from the attacks of evil.
+During the third period of 3,000 years the war between good and evil,
+between Ormuzd and Ahriman, began with the utmost fierceness; and it
+will gradually abate during the fourth period of 3,000 years, which is
+still to elapse before the final victory of good. Where here is the
+similarity between Genesis and the Avesta? We are referred by Dr.
+Spiegel to Dr. Windischmann's 'Zoroastrian Studies,' and to his
+discovery that there are ten generations between Adam and Noah, as
+there are ten generations between Yima and Thra�taona; that there are
+twelve generations between Shem and Isaac, as there are twelve between
+Thra�taona and Manus_k_itra; and that there are thirteen generations
+between Isaac and David, as there are thirteen between Manus_k_itra
+and Zarathustra. What has the learned counsel for the defence to say
+to this? First, that the name of Shem is put by mistake for that of
+Noah. Secondly, that Yima, who is here identified with Adam, is never
+represented in the Avesta as the first man, but is preceded there by
+numerous ancestors, and surrounded by numerous subjects, who are not
+his offspring. Thirdly, that in order to establish in Genesis three
+periods of ten, twelve, and thirteen generations, it is necessary to
+count Isaac, who clearly belongs to the third, as a member of the
+second, so that in reality the number of generations is the same in
+one only out of the three periods, which surely proves nothing. As to
+any similarity between the Four Yugas of the Brahmans and the Four
+Ages of the Parsis, we can only say that, if it exists, no one has as
+yet brought it out. The Greeks, again, who are likewise said to share
+the primitive doctrine of the Four Ages, believe really in five, and
+not in four, and separate them in a manner which does not in the
+least remind us of Hindu Yugas, Hebrew patriarchs, or the battle
+between Ormuzd and Ahriman.
+
+We proceed to a second point--the Creation as related in Genesis and
+the Avesta. Here we certainly find some curious coincidences. The
+world is created in six days in Genesis, and in six periods in the
+Avesta, which six periods together form one year. In Genesis the
+creation ends with the creation of man, so it does in the Avesta. On
+all other points Dr. Spiegel admits the two accounts differ, but they
+are said to agree again in the temptation and the fall. As Dr. Spiegel
+has not given the details of the temptation and the fall from the
+Avesta, we cannot judge of the points which he considers to be
+borrowed by the Jews from the Persians; but if we consult M. Br�al,
+who has treated the same subject more fully in his 'Hercule et Cacus,'
+we find there no more than this, that the Dualism of the Avesta, the
+struggle between Ormuzd and Ahriman, or the principles of light and
+darkness, is to be considered as the distant reflex of the grand
+struggle between Indra, the god of the sky, and V_r_itra, the demon of
+night and darkness, which forms the constant burden of the hymns of
+the Rig-veda. In this view there is some truth, but we doubt whether
+it fully exhibits the vital principle of the Zoroastrian religion,
+which is founded on a solemn protest against the whole worship of the
+powers of nature invoked in the Vedas, and on the recognition of one
+supreme power, the God of Light, in every sense of the word--the
+spirit Ahura, who created the world and rules it, and defends it
+against the power of evil. That power of evil which in the most
+ancient portions of the Avesta has not yet received the name of
+Ahriman (i. e. angro mainyus), may afterwards have assumed some of the
+epithets which in an earlier period were bestowed on V_r_itra and
+other enemies of the bright gods, and among them, it may have assumed
+the name of serpent. But does it follow, because the principle of evil
+in the Avesta is called serpent, or azhi dah�ka, that therefore the
+serpent mentioned in the third chapter of Genesis must be borrowed
+from Persia? Neither in the Veda nor in the Avesta does the serpent
+ever assume that subtil and insinuating form as in Genesis; and the
+curse pronounced on it, 'to be cursed above all cattle, and above
+every beast of the field,' is not in keeping with the relation of
+V_r_itra to Indra, or Ahriman to Ormuzd, who face each other almost as
+equals. In later books, such as 1 Chronicles xxi. 1, where Satan is
+mentioned as provoking David to number Israel (the very same
+provocation which in 2 Samuel xxiv. 1 is ascribed to the anger of the
+Lord moving David to number Israel and Judah), and in all the passages
+of the New Testament where the power of evil is spoken of as a person,
+we may admit the influence of Persian ideas and Persian expressions,
+though even here strict proof is by no means easy. As to the serpent
+in Paradise, it is a conception that might have sprung up among the
+Jews as well as among the Brahmans; and the serpent that beguiled Eve
+seems hardly to invite comparison with the much grander conceptions of
+the terrible power of V_r_itra and Ahriman in the Veda and Avesta.
+
+Dr. Spiegel next discusses the similarity between the Garden of Eden
+and the Paradise of the Zoroastrians, and though he admits that here
+again he relies chiefly on the Bundehesh, a work of the Sassanian
+period, he maintains that that work may well be compared to Genesis,
+because it contains none but really ancient traditions. We do not for
+a moment deny that this may be so, but in a case like the present,
+where everything depends on exact dates, we decline to listen to such
+a plea. We value Dr. Spiegel's translations from the Bundehesh most
+highly, and we believe with him (p. 283) that there is little doubt as
+to the Pishon being the Indus, and the Gihon the Jaxartes. The
+identification, too, of the Persian river-name Ranha (the Vedic Ras�)
+with the Araxes, the name given by Herodotus (i. 202) to the Jaxartes,
+seems very ingenious and well established. But we should still like to
+know why and in what language the Indus was first called Pishon, and
+the Jaxartes, or, it may be, the Oxus, Gihon.
+
+We next come to the two trees in the garden of Eden, the tree of
+knowledge and the tree of life. Dr. Windischmann has shown that the
+Iranians, too, were acquainted with two trees, one called Gaokerena,
+bearing the white Haoma, the other called the Painless tree. We are
+told first that these two trees are the same as the one fig tree out
+of which the Indians believe the world to have been created. Now,
+first of all, the Indians believed no such thing, and secondly, there
+is the same difference between one and two trees as there is between
+North and South. But we confess that until we know a good deal more
+about these two trees of the Iranians, we feel no inclination whatever
+to compare the Painless tree and the tree of knowledge of good and
+evil, though perhaps the white Haoma tree might remind us of the tree
+of life, considering that Haoma, as well as the Indian Soma, was
+supposed to give immortality to those who drank its juice. We
+likewise consider the comparison of the Cherubim who keep the way of
+the tree of life and the guardians of the Soma in the Veda and Avesta,
+as deserving attention, and we should like to see the etymological
+derivation of Cherubim from [Greek: gryphes], Greifen, and of Seraphim
+from the Sanskrit sarpa, serpents, either confirmed or refuted.
+
+The Deluge is not mentioned in the sacred writings of the
+Zoroastrians, nor in the hymns of the Rig-veda. It is mentioned,
+however, in one of the latest Br�hma_n_as, and the carefully balanced
+arguments of Burnouf, who considered the tradition of the Deluge as
+borrowed by the Indians from Semitic neighbours, seem to us to be
+strengthened, rather than weakened, by the isolated appearance of the
+story of the Deluge in this one passage out of the whole of the Vedic
+literature. Nothing, however, has yet been pointed out to force us to
+admit a Semitic origin for the story of the Flood, as told in the
+_S_atapatha-br�hma_n_a, and afterwards repeated in the Mah�bh�rata and
+the Pur�_n_as: the number of days being really the only point on which
+the two accounts startle us by their agreement.
+
+That Noah's ark rested upon the mountain of Ararat, and that Ararat
+may admit of a Persian etymology, is nothing to the point. The
+etymology itself is ingenious, but no more. The same remark applies to
+all the rest of Dr. Spiegel's arguments. Thra�taona, who has before
+been compared to Noah, divided his land among his three sons, and gave
+Iran to the youngest, an injustice which exasperated his brothers, who
+murdered him. Now it is true that Noah, too, had three sons, but here
+the similarity ends; for that Terach had three sons, and that one of
+them only, Abram, took possession of the land of promise, and that of
+the two sons of Isaac, the youngest became the heir, is again of no
+consequence for our immediate purpose, though it may remind Dr.
+Spiegel and others of the history of Thra�taona. We agree with Dr.
+Spiegel, that Zoroaster's character resembles most closely the true
+Semitic notion of a prophet. He is considered worthy of personal
+intercourse with Ormuzd; he receives from Ormuzd every word, though
+not, as Dr. Spiegel says, every letter of the law. But if Zoroaster
+was a real character, so was Abraham, and their being like each other
+proves in no way that they lived in the same place, or at the same
+time, or that they borrowed aught one from the other. What Dr. Spiegel
+says of the Persian name of the Deity, Ahura, is very doubtful. Ahura,
+he says, as well as ahu, means lord, and must be traced back to the
+root ah, the Sanskrit as, which means to be, so that Ahura would
+signify the same as Jahve, he who is. The root 'as' no doubt means to
+be, but it has that meaning because it originally meant to breathe.
+From it, in its original sense of breathing, the Hindus formed asu,
+breath, and asura, the name of God, whether it meant the breathing
+one, or the giver of breath. This asura became in Zend ahura, and if
+it assumed the general meaning of Lord, this is as much a secondary
+meaning as the meaning of demon or evil spirit, which asura assumed in
+the later Sanskrit of the Br�hma_n_as.
+
+After this, Dr. Spiegel proceeds to sum up his evidence. He has no
+more to say, but he believes that he has proved the following points:
+a very early intercourse between Semitic and Aryan nations; a common
+belief shared by both in a paradise situated near the sources of the
+Oxus and Jaxartes; the dwelling together of Abraham and Zoroaster in
+Haran, Arran, or Airyana va�_g_a. Semitic and Aryan nations, he tells
+us, still live together in those parts of the world, and so it was
+from the beginning. As the form of the Jewish traditions comes nearer
+to the Persian than to the Indian traditions, we are asked to believe
+that these two races lived in the closest contact before, from this
+ancient hearth of civilisation, they started towards the West and the
+East--that is to say, before Abraham migrated to Canaan, and before
+India was peopled by the Brahmans.
+
+We have given a fair account of Dr. Spiegel's arguments, and we need
+not say that we should have hailed with equal pleasure any solid facts
+by which to establish either the dependence of Genesis on the
+Zend-Avesta, or the dependence of the Zend-Avesta on Genesis. It would
+be absurd to resist facts where facts exist; nor can we imagine any
+reason why, if Abraham came into personal contact with Zoroaster, the
+Jewish patriarch should have learnt nothing from the Iranian prophet,
+or vice vers�. If such an intercourse could be established, it would
+but serve to strengthen the historical character of the books of the
+Old Testament, and would be worth more than all the elaborate theories
+that have been started on the purely miraculous origin of these books.
+But though we by no means deny that some more tangible points of
+resemblance may yet be discovered between the Old Testament and the
+Zend-Avesta, we must protest against having so interesting and so
+important a matter handled in such an unbusinesslike manner.
+
+_April, 1864._
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+THE MODERN PARSIS.[50]
+
+I.
+
+
+It is not fair to speak of any religious sect by a name to which its
+members object. Yet the fashion of speaking of the followers of
+Zoroaster as Fire-worshippers is so firmly established that it will
+probably continue long after the last believers in Ormuzd have
+disappeared from the face of the earth. At the present moment, the
+number of the Zoroastrians has dwindled down so much that they hardly
+find a place in the religious statistics of the world. Berghaus in his
+'Physical Atlas' gives the following division of the human race
+according to religion:
+
+Buddhists          31.2 per cent.
+Christians         30.7    "
+Mohammedans        15.7    "
+Brahmanists        13.4    "
+Heathens            8.7    "
+Jews                0.3    "
+
+[Footnote 50: 'The Manners and Customs of the Parsees.' By Dadabhai
+Naoroji, Esq. Liverpool, 1861.
+
+'The Parsee Religion,' By Dadabhai Naoroji, Esq. Liverpool, 1861.]
+
+He nowhere states the number of the Fire-worshippers, nor does he tell
+us under what head they are comprised in his general computation. The
+difficulties of a religious census are very great, particularly when
+we have to deal with Eastern nations. About two hundred years ago,
+travellers estimated the Gabars (as they are called in Persia) at
+eighty thousand families, or about 400,000 souls. At present the
+Parsis in Western India amount to about 100,000, to which, if we add
+5,500 in Yazd and Kirman, we get a total of 105,500. The number of the
+Jews is commonly estimated at 3,600,000; and if they represent 0.3 per
+cent of mankind, the Fire-worshippers could not claim at present more
+than about 0.01 per cent of the whole population of the earth. Yet
+there were periods in the history of the world when the worship of
+Ormuzd threatened to rise triumphant on the ruins of the temples of
+all other gods. If the battles of Marathon and Salamis had been lost,
+and Greece had succumbed to Persia, the state religion of the empire
+of Cyrus, which was the worship of Ormuzd, might have become the
+religion of the whole civilised world. Persia had absorbed the
+Assyrian and Babylonian empires; the Jews were either in Persian
+captivity or under Persian sway at home; the sacred monuments of Egypt
+had been mutilated by the hands of Persian soldiers. The edicts of the
+great king, the king of kings, were sent to India, to Greece, to
+Scythia, and to Egypt; and if 'by the grace of Auramazda' Darius had
+crushed the liberty of Greece, the purer faith of Zoroaster might
+easily have superseded the Olympian fables. Again, under the Sassanian
+dynasty (226-651 A.D.) the revived national faith of the Zoroastrians
+assumed such vigour that Shapur II, like another Diocletian, could
+aim at the extirpation of the Christian faith. The sufferings of the
+persecuted Christians in the East were as terrible as they had ever
+been in the West; nor was it by the weapons of Roman emperors or by
+the arguments of Christian divines that the fatal blow was dealt to
+the throne of Cyrus and the altars of Ormuzd. The power of Persia was
+broken at last by the Arabs; and it is due to them that the religion
+of Ormuzd, once the terror of the world, is now, and has been for the
+last thousand years, a mere curiosity in the eyes of the historian.
+
+The sacred writings of the Zoroastrians, commonly called the
+Zend-Avesta, have for about a century occupied the attention of
+European scholars, and, thanks to the adventurous devotion of Anquetil
+Duperron, and the careful researches of Rask, Burnouf, Westergaard,
+Spiegel, and Haug, we have gradually been enabled to read and
+interpret what remains of the ancient language of the Persian
+religion. The problem was not an easy one, and had it not been for the
+new light which the science of language has shed on the laws of human
+speech, it would have been as impossible to Burnouf as it was to Hyde,
+the celebrated Professor of Hebrew and Arabic at Oxford, to interpret
+with grammatical accuracy the ancient remnants of Zoroaster's
+doctrine. How that problem was solved is well known to all who take an
+interest in the advancement of modern scholarship. It was as great an
+achievement as the deciphering of the cuneiform edicts of Darius; and
+no greater compliment could have been paid to Burnouf and his
+fellow-labourers than that scholars, without inclination to test their
+method, and without leisure to follow these indefatigable pioneers
+through all the intricate paths of their researches, should have
+pronounced the deciphering of the ancient Zend as well as of the
+ancient Persian of the Ach�menian period to be impossible, incredible,
+and next to miraculous.
+
+While the scholars of Europe are thus engaged in disinterring the
+ancient records of the religion of Zoroaster, it is of interest to
+learn what has become of that religion in those few settlements where
+it is still professed by small communities. Though every religion is
+of real and vital interest in its earliest state only, yet its later
+development too, with all its misunderstandings, faults, and
+corruptions, offers many an instructive lesson to the thoughtful
+student of history. Here is a religion, one of the most ancient of the
+world, once the state religion of the most powerful empire, driven
+away from its native soil, deprived of political influence, without
+even the prestige of a powerful or enlightened priesthood, and yet
+professed by a handful of exiles--men of wealth, intelligence, and
+moral worth in Western India--with an unhesitating fervour such as is
+seldom to be found in larger religious communities. It is well worth
+the serious consideration of the philosopher and the divine to
+discover, if possible, the spell by which this apparently effete
+religion continues to command the attachment of the enlightened Parsis
+of India, and makes them turn a deaf ear to the allurements of the
+Brahmanic worship and the earnest appeals of Christian missionaries.
+We believe that to many of our readers the two pamphlets, lately
+published by a distinguished member of the Parsi community, Mr.
+Dadabhai Naoroji, Professor of Guzerati at University College,
+London, will open many problems of a more than passing interest. One
+is a Paper read before the Liverpool Philomathic Society, 'On the
+Manners and Customs of the Parsees;' the other is a Lecture delivered
+before the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, 'On the
+Parsee Religion.'
+
+In the first of these pamphlets, we are told that the small community
+of Parsis in Western India is at the present moment divided into two
+parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals. Both are equally attached
+to the faith of their ancestors, but they differ from each other in
+their modes of life--the Conservatives clinging to all that is
+established and customary, however absurd and mischievous, the
+Liberals desiring to throw off the abuses of former ages, and to avail
+themselves, as much as is consistent with their religion and their
+Oriental character, of the advantages of European civilisation. 'If I
+say,' writes our informant, 'that the Parsees use tables, knives and
+forks, &c., for taking their dinners, it would be true with regard to
+one portion, and entirely untrue with regard to another. In one house
+you see in the dining-room the dinner table furnished with all the
+English apparatus for its agreeable purposes; next door, perhaps, you
+see the gentleman perfectly satisfied with his primitive good old mode
+of squatting on a piece of mat, with a large brass or copper plate
+(round, and of the size of an ordinary tray) before him, containing
+all the dishes of his dinner, spread on it in small heaps, and placed
+upon a stool about two or three inches high, with a small tinned
+copper cup at his side for his drinks, and his fingers for his knives
+and forks. He does this, not because he cannot afford to have a
+table, &c., but because he would not have them in preference to his
+ancestral mode of life, or, perhaps, the thought has not occurred to
+him that he need have anything of the kind.'
+
+Instead, therefore, of giving a general description of Parsi life at
+present, Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji gives us two distinct accounts--first of
+the old, secondly of the new school. He describes the incidents in the
+daily life of a Parsi of the old school, from the moment he gets out
+of bed to the time of his going to rest, and the principal ceremonies
+from the hour of his birth to the hour of his burial. Although we can
+gather from the tenour of his writings that the author himself belongs
+to the Liberals, we must give him credit for the fairness with which
+he describes the party to which he is opposed. There is no sneer, no
+expression of contempt anywhere, even when, as in the case of the
+Nirang, the temptation must have been considerable. What this Nirang
+is we may best state in the words of the writer:
+
+     'The Nirang is the urine of cow, ox, or she-goat, and the
+     rubbing of it over the face and hands is the second thing a
+     Parsee does after getting out of bed. Either before applying
+     the Nirang to the face and hands, or while it remains on the
+     hands after being applied, he should not touch anything
+     directly with his hands; but, in order to wash out the
+     Nirang, he either asks somebody else to pour water on his
+     hands, or resorts to the device of taking hold of the pot
+     through the intervention of a piece of cloth, such as a
+     handkerchief or his Sudr�, i. e. his blouse. He first pours
+     water on one hand, then takes the pot in that hand and
+     washes his other hand, face and feet.'
+
+Strange as this process of purification may appear, it becomes
+perfectly disgusting when we are told that women, after childbirth,
+have not only to undergo this sacred ablution, but have actually to
+drink a little of the Nirang, and that the same rite is imposed on
+children at the time of their investiture with the Sudr� and Kusti,
+the badges of the Zoroastrian faith. The Liberal party have completely
+surrendered this objectionable custom, but the old school still keep
+it up, though their faith, as Dadabhai Naoroji says, in the efficacy
+of Nirang to drive away Satan may be shaken. 'The Reformers,' our
+author writes, 'maintain that there is no authority whatever in the
+original books of Zurthosht for the observance of this dirty practice,
+but that it is altogether a later introduction. The old adduce the
+authority of the works of some of the priests of former days, and say
+the practice ought to be observed. They quote one passage from the
+Zend-Avesta corroborative of their opinion, which their opponents deny
+as at all bearing upon the point.' Here, whatever our own feelings may
+be about the Nirang, truth obliges us to side with the old school, and
+if our author had consulted the ninth Fasgard of the Vendidad (page
+120, line 21, in Brockhaus's edition), he would have seen that both
+the drinking and the rubbing in of the so-called Gaomaezo--i. e.
+Nirang--are clearly enjoined by Zoroaster in certain purificatory
+rights. The custom rests, therefore, not only on the authority of a
+few priests of former days, but on the ipsissima verba of the
+Zend-Avesta, the revealed word of Ormuzd; and if, as Dadabhai Naoroji
+writes, the Reformers of the day will not go beyond abolishing and
+disavowing the ceremonies and notions that have no authority in the
+original Zend-Avesta, we are afraid that the washing with Nirang, and
+even the drinking of it, will have to be maintained. A pious Parsi has
+to say his prayers sixteen times at least every day--first on getting
+out of bed, then during the Nirang operation, again when he takes his
+bath, again when he cleanses his teeth, and when he has finished his
+morning ablutions. The same prayers are repeated whenever, during the
+day, a Parsi has to wash his hands. Every meal--and there are
+three--begins and ends with prayer, besides the grace, and before
+going to bed the work of the day is closed by a prayer. The most
+extraordinary thing is that none of the Parsis--not even their
+priests--understand the ancient language in which these prayers are
+composed. We must quote the words of our author, who is himself of the
+priestly caste, and who says:
+
+     'All prayers, on every occasion, are said, or rather
+     recited, in the old original Zend language, neither the
+     reciter nor the people around intended to be edified,
+     understanding a word of it. There is no pulpit among the
+     Parsees. On several occasions, as on the occasion of the
+     Ghumbars, the bimestral holidays, the third day's ceremonies
+     for the dead, and other religious or special holidays, there
+     are assemblages in the temple; prayers are repeated, in
+     which more or less join, but there is no discourse in the
+     vernacular of the people. Ordinarily, every one goes to the
+     fire-temple whenever he likes, or, if it is convenient to
+     him, recites his prayers himself, and as long as he likes,
+     and gives, if so inclined, something to the priests to pray
+     for him.'
+
+In another passage our author says:
+
+     'Far from being the teachers of the true doctrines and
+     duties of their religion, the priests are generally the most
+     bigoted and superstitious, and exercise much injurious
+     influence over the women especially, who, until lately,
+     received no education at all. The priests have, however, now
+     begun to feel their degraded position. Many of them, if they
+     can do so, bring up their sons in any other profession but
+     their own. There are, perhaps, a dozen among the whole body
+     of professional priests who lay claim to a knowledge of the
+     Zend-Avesta: but the only respect in which they are superior
+     to their brethren is, that they have learnt the meanings of
+     the words of the books as they are taught, without knowing
+     the language, either philosophically or grammatically.'
+
+Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji proceeds to give a clear and graphic description
+of the ceremonies to be observed at the birth and the investiture of
+children, at the betrothal of children, at marriages and at funerals,
+and he finally dismisses some of the distinguishing features of the
+national character of the Parsis. The Parsis are monogamists. They do
+not eat anything cooked by a person of another religion; they object
+to beef, pork, or ham. Their priesthood is hereditary. None but the
+son of a priest can be a priest, but it is not obligatory for the son
+of a priest to take orders. The high-priest is called Dustoor, the
+others are called Mobed.
+
+The principal points for which the Liberals among the Parsis are, at
+the present moment, contending, are the abolition of the filthy
+purifications by means of Nirang; the reduction of the large number of
+obligatory prayers; the prohibition of early betrothal and marriage;
+the suppression of extravagance at weddings and funerals; the
+education of women, and their admission into general society. A
+society has been formed, called 'the Rahanumaee Mazdiashna,' i. e. the
+Guide of the Worshippers of God. Meetings are held, speeches made,
+tracts distributed. A counter society, too, has been started, called
+'the True Guides;' and we readily believe what Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji
+tells us--that, as in Europe, so in India, the Reformers have found
+themselves strengthened by the intolerant bigotry and the weakness of
+the arguments of their opponents. The Liberals have made considerable
+progress, but their work is as yet but half done, and they will never
+be able to carry out their religious and social reforms successfully,
+without first entering on a critical study of the Zend-Avesta, to
+which, as yet, they profess to appeal as the highest authority in
+matters of faith, law, and morality.
+
+We propose, in another article, to consider the state of religion
+among the Parsis of the present day.
+
+_August, 1862._
+
+
+II.
+
+The so-called Fire-worshippers certainly do not worship the fire, and
+they naturally object to a name which seems to place them on a level
+with mere idolaters. All they admit is, that in their youth they are
+taught to face some luminous object while worshipping God (p. 7), and
+that they regard the fire, like other great natural phenomena, as an
+emblem of the Divine power (p. 26). But they assure us that they
+never ask assistance or blessings from an unintelligent material
+object, nor is it even considered necessary to turn the face to any
+emblem whatever in praying to Ormuzd. The most honest, however, among
+the Parsis, and those who would most emphatically protest against the
+idea of their ever paying divine honours to the sun or the fire, admit
+the existence of some kind of national instinct--an indescribable awe
+felt by every Parsi with regard to light and fire. The fact that the
+Parsis are the only Eastern people who entirely abstain from smoking
+is very significant; and we know that most of them would rather not
+blow out a candle, if they could help it. It is difficult to analyse
+such a feeling, but it seems, in some respects, similar to that which
+many Christians have about the cross. They do not worship the cross,
+but they have peculiar feelings of reverence for it, and it is
+intimately connected with some of their most sacred rites.
+
+But although most Parsis would be very ready to tell us what they do
+not worship, there are but few who could give a straightforward answer
+if asked what they do worship and believe. Their priests, no doubt,
+would say that they worship Ormuzd and believe in Zoroaster, his
+prophet; and they would appeal to the Zend-Avesta, as containing the
+Word of God, revealed by Ormuzd to Zoroaster. If more closely pressed,
+however, they would have to admit that they cannot understand one word
+of the sacred writings in which they profess to believe, nor could
+they give any reason why they believe Zoroaster to have been a true
+prophet, and not an impostor. 'As a body,' says Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji,
+'the priests are not only ignorant of the duties and objects of their
+own profession, but are entirely uneducated, except that they are able
+to read and write, and that, also, often very imperfectly. They do not
+understand a single word of their prayers and recitations, which are
+all in the old Zend language.'
+
+What, then, do the laity know about religion? What makes the old
+teaching of Zoroaster so dear to them that, in spite of all
+differences of opinion among themselves, young and old seem equally
+determined never to join any other religious community? Incredible as
+it may sound, we are told by the best authority, by an enlightened yet
+strictly orthodox Parsi, that there is hardly a man or a woman who
+could give an account of the faith that is in them. 'The whole
+religious education of a Parsi child consists in preparing by rote a
+certain number of prayers in Zend, without understanding a word of
+them; the knowledge of the doctrines of their religion being left to
+be picked up from casual conversation.' A Parsi, in fact, hardly knows
+what his faith is. The Zend-Avesta is to him a sealed book; and though
+there is a Guzerati translation of it, that translation is not made
+from the original, but from a Pehlevi paraphrase, nor is it recognised
+by the priests as an authorised version. Till about five and twenty
+years ago, there was no book from which a Parsi of an inquiring mind
+could gather the principles of his religion. At that time, and, as it
+would seem, chiefly in order to counteract the influence of Christian
+missionaries, a small Dialogue was written in Guzerati--a kind of
+Catechism, giving, in the form of questions and answers, the most
+important tenets of Parsiism. We shall quote some passages from this
+Dialogue, as translated by Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji. The subject of it is
+thus described:
+
+     _A few Questions and Answers to acquaint the Children of the
+     holy Zarthosti Community with the Subject of the Mazdiashna
+     Religion, _i. e._ the Worship of God._
+
+     _Question._ Whom do we, of the Zarthosti community, believe
+     in?
+
+     _Answer._ We believe in only one God, and do not believe in
+     any besides Him.
+
+     _Q._ Who is that one God?
+
+     _A._ The God who created the heavens, the earth, the angels,
+     the stars, the sun, the moon, the fire, the water, or all
+     the four elements, and all things of the two worlds; that
+     God we believe in. Him we worship, him we invoke, him we
+     adore.
+
+     _Q._ Do we not believe in any other God?
+
+     _A._ Whoever believes in any other God but this, is an
+     infidel, and shall suffer the punishment of hell.
+
+     _Q._ What is the form of our God?
+
+     _A._ Our God has neither face nor form, colour nor shape,
+     nor fixed place. There is no other like him. He is himself
+     singly such a glory that we cannot, praise or describe him;
+     nor our mind comprehend him.
+
+So far, no one could object to this Catechism, and it must be clear
+that the Dualism, which is generally mentioned as the distinguishing
+feature of the Persian religion--the belief in two Gods, Ormuzd, the
+principle of good, and Ahriman, the principle of evil--is not
+countenanced by the modern Parsis. Whether it exists in the
+Zend-Avesta is another question, which, however, cannot be discussed
+at present.[51]
+
+     The Catechism continues:
+
+     _Q._ What is our religion?
+
+     _A._ Our religion is 'Worship of God.'
+
+     _Q._ Whence did we receive our religion?
+
+     _A._ God's true prophet--the true Zurthost (Zoroaster)
+     Asphantam�n Anoshirw�n--brought the religion to us from God.
+
+Here it is curious to observe that not a single question is asked as
+to the claim of Zoroaster to be considered a true prophet. He is not
+treated as a divine being, nor even as the son of Ormuzd. Plato,
+indeed, speaks of Zoroaster as the son of Oromazes (Alc. i. p. 122 a),
+but this is a mistake, not countenanced, as far as we are aware, by
+any of the Parsi writings, whether ancient or modern. With the Parsis,
+Zoroaster is simply a wise man, a prophet favoured by God, and
+admitted into God's immediate presence; but all this, on his own
+showing only, and without any supernatural credentials, except some
+few miracles recorded of him in books of doubtful authority. This
+shows, at all events, how little the Parsis have been exposed to
+controversial discussions; for, as this is so weak a point in their
+system that it would have invited the attacks of every opponent, we
+may be sure that the Dustoors would have framed some argument in
+defence, if such defence had ever been needed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next extract from the Catechism treats of the canonical books:
+
+[Footnote 51: See page 140.]
+
+     _Q._ What religion has our prophet brought us from God?
+
+     _A._ The disciples of our prophet have recorded in several
+     books that religion. Many of these books were destroyed
+     during Alexander's conquest; the remainder of the books were
+     preserved with great care and respect by the Sassanian
+     kings. Of these again, the greater portion were destroyed at
+     the Mohammedan conquest by Khalif Omar, so that we have now
+     very few books remaining; viz. the Vandidad, the Yazashn�,
+     the Visparad, the Khordeh Avesta, the Vistasp Nusk, and a
+     few Pehlevi books. Resting our faith upon these few books,
+     we now remain devoted to our good Mazdiashna religion. We
+     consider these books as heavenly books, because God sent the
+     tidings of these books to us through the holy Zurthost.
+
+Here, again, we see theological science in its infancy. 'We consider
+these books as heavenly books because God sent the tidings of these
+books to us through the holy Zurthost,' is not very powerful logic. It
+would have been more simple to say, 'We consider them heavenly books
+because we consider them heavenly books.' However, whether heavenly or
+not, these few books exist. They form the only basis of the
+Zoroastrian religion, and the principal source from which it is
+possible to derive any authentic information as to its origin, its
+history, and its real character.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That the Parsis are of a tolerant character with regard to such of
+their doctrines as are not of vital importance, may be seen from the
+following extract:
+
+     _Q._ Whose descendants are we?
+
+     _A._ Of Gayomars. By his progeny was Persia populated.
+
+     _Q._ Was Gayomars the first man?
+
+     _A._ According to our religion he was so, but the wise men
+     of our community, of the Chinese, the Hindus, and several
+     other nations, dispute the assertion, and say that there was
+     human population on the earth before Gayomars.
+
+The moral precepts which are embodied in this Catechism do the highest
+credit to the Parsis:
+
+     _Q._ What commands has God sent us through his prophet, the
+     exalted Zurthost?
+
+     _A._ To know God as one; to know the prophet, the exalted
+     Zurthost, as the true prophet; to believe the religion and
+     the Avesta brought by him as true beyond all manner of
+     doubt; to believe in the goodness of God; not to disobey any
+     of the commands of the Mazdiashna religion; to avoid evil
+     deeds; to exert for good deeds; to pray five times in the
+     day; to believe on the reckoning and justice on the fourth
+     morning after death; to hope for heaven and to fear hell; to
+     consider doubtless the day of general destruction and
+     resurrection; to remember always that God has done what he
+     willed, and shall do what he wills; to face some luminous
+     object while worshipping God.
+
+Then follow several paragraphs which are clearly directed against
+Christian missionaries, and more particularly against the doctrine of
+vicarious sacrifice and prayer:
+
+     'Some deceivers, [the Catechism says,] with the view of
+     acquiring exaltation in this world, have set themselves up
+     as prophets, and, going among the labouring and ignorant
+     people, have persuaded them that, "if you commit sin, I
+     shall intercede for you, I shall plead for you, I shall save
+     you," and thus deceive them; but the wise among the people
+     know the deceit.'
+
+This clearly refers to Christian missionaries, but whether Roman
+Catholic or Protestant is difficult to say. The answer given by the
+Parsis is curious and significant:
+
+     'If any one commit sin,' they reply, 'under the belief that
+     he shall be saved by somebody, both the deceiver as well as
+     the deceived shall be damned to the day of Rast� Khez....
+     There is no saviour. In the other world you shall receive
+     the return according to your actions.... Your saviour is
+     your deeds, and God himself. He is the pardoner and the
+     giver. If you repent your sins and reform, and if the Great
+     Judge consider you worthy of pardon, or would be merciful to
+     you, He alone can and will save you.'
+
+It would be a mistake to suppose that the whole doctrine of the Parsis
+is contained in the short Guzerati Catechism, translated by Mr.
+Dadabhai Naoroji, still less in the fragmentary extracts here given.
+Their sacred writings, the Ya_s_na, Vispered, and Vendidad, the
+productions of much earlier ages, contain many ideas, both religious
+and mythological, which belong to the past, to the childhood of our
+race, and which no educated Parsi could honestly profess to believe in
+now. This difficulty of reconciling the more enlightened faith of the
+present generation with the mythological phraseology of their old
+sacred writings is solved by the Parsis in a very simple manner. They
+do not, like Roman Catholics, prohibit the reading of the Zend-Avesta;
+nor do they, like Protestants, encourage a critical study of their
+sacred texts. They simply ignore the originals of their sacred
+writings. They repeat them in their prayers without attempting to
+understand them, and they acknowledge the insufficiency of every
+translation of the Zend-Avesta that has yet been made, either in
+Pehlevi, Sanskrit, Guzerati, French, or German. Each Parsi has to pick
+up his religion as best he may. Till lately, even the Catechism did
+not form a necessary part of a child's religious education. Thus the
+religious belief of the present Parsi communities is reduced to two or
+three fundamental doctrines; and these, though professedly resting on
+the teaching of Zoroaster, receive their real sanction from a much
+higher authority. A Parsi believes in one God, to whom he addresses
+his prayers. His morality is comprised in these words--pure thoughts,
+pure words, pure deeds. Believing in the punishment of vice and the
+reward of virtue, he trusts for pardon to the mercy of God. There is a
+charm, no doubt, in so short a creed; and if the whole of Zoroaster's
+teaching were confined to this, there would be some truth in what his
+followers say of their religion--namely, that 'it is for all, and not
+for any particular nation.'
+
+If now we ask again, how it is that neither Christians, nor Hindus,
+nor Mohammedans have had any considerable success in converting the
+Parsis, and why even the more enlightened members of that small
+community, though fully aware of the many weak points of their own
+theology, and deeply impressed with the excellence of the Christian
+religion, morals, and general civilisation, scorn the idea of ever
+migrating from the sacred ruins of their ancient faith, we are able to
+discover some reasons; though they are hardly sufficient to account
+for so extraordinary a fact?
+
+First, the very compactness of the modern Parsi creed accounts for the
+tenacity with which the exiles of Western India cling to it. A Parsi
+is not troubled with many theological problems or difficulties. Though
+he professes a general belief in the sacred writings of Zoroaster, he
+is not asked to profess any belief in the stories incidentally
+mentioned in the Zend-Avesta. If it is said in the Yasna that
+Zoroaster was once visited by Homa, who appeared before him in a
+brilliant supernatural body, no doctrine is laid down as to the exact
+nature of Homa. It is said that Homa was worshipped by certain ancient
+sages, Viva_n_hvat, �thwya, and Thrita, and that, as a reward for
+their worship, great heroes were born as their sons. The fourth who
+worshipped Homa was Pourusha_s_pa, and he was rewarded by the birth of
+his son Zoroaster. Now the truth is, that Homa is the same as the
+Sanskrit Soma, well known from the Veda as an intoxicating beverage
+used at the great sacrifices, and afterwards raised to the rank of a
+deity. The Parsis are fully aware of this, but they do not seem in the
+least disturbed by the occurrence of such 'fables and endless
+genealogies.' They would not be shocked if they were told, what is a
+fact, that most of these old wives' fables have their origin in the
+religion which they most detest, the religion of the Veda, and that
+the heroes of the Zend-Avesta are the same who, with slightly changed
+names, appear again as Jemshid, Feridun, Gersh�sp, &c., in the epic
+poetry of Firdusi.
+
+Another fact which accounts for the attachment of the Parsis to their
+religion is its remote antiquity and its former glory. Though age has
+little to do with truth, the length of time for which any system has
+lasted seems to offer a vague argument in favour of its strength. It
+is a feeling which the Parsi shares in common with the Jew and the
+Brahman, and which even the Christian missionary appeals to when
+confronting the systems of later prophets.
+
+Thirdly, it is felt by the Parsis that in changing their religion,
+they would not only relinquish the heirloom of their remote
+forefathers, but of their own fathers; and it is felt as a dereliction
+of filial piety to give up what was most precious to those whose
+memory is most precious and almost sacred to themselves.
+
+If in spite of all this, many people, most competent to judge, look
+forward with confidence to the conversion of the Parsis, it is
+because, in the most essential points, they have already, though
+unconsciously, approached as near as possible to the pure doctrines of
+Christianity. Let them but read the Zend-Avesta, in which they profess
+to believe, and they will find that their faith is no longer the faith
+of the Ya_s_na, the Vendidad, and the Vispered. As historical relics,
+these works, if critically interpreted, will always retain a prominent
+place in the great library of the ancient world. As oracles of
+religious faith, they are defunct, and a mere anachronism in the age
+in which we live.
+
+On the other hand, let missionaries read their Bible, and let them
+preach that Christianity which once conquered the world--the genuine
+and unshackled Gospel of Christ and the Apostles. Let them respect
+native prejudices, and be tolerant with regard to all that can be
+tolerated in a Christian community. Let them consider that
+Christianity is not a gift to be pressed on unwilling minds, but the
+highest of all privileges which natives can receive at the hands of
+their present rulers. Natives of independent and honest character
+cannot afford at present to join the ranks of converts without losing
+that true caste which no man ought to lose--namely, self-respect. They
+are driven to prop up their tottering religions, rather than profess a
+faith which seems dictated to them by their conquerors. Such feelings
+ought to be respected. Finally, let missionaries study the sacred
+writings on which the faith of the Parsis is professedly founded. Let
+them examine the bulwarks which they mean to overthrow. They will find
+them less formidable from within than from without. But they will also
+discover that they rest on a foundation which ought never to be
+touched--a faith in one God, the Creator, the Ruler, and the Judge of
+the world.
+
+_August, 1862._
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+BUDDHISM.[52]
+
+
+If the command of St. Paul, 'Prove all things, hold fast that which is
+good,' may be supposed to refer to spiritual things, and, more
+especially, to religious doctrines, it must be confessed that few
+only, whether theologians or laymen, have ever taken to heart the
+apostle's command. How many candidates for holy orders are there who
+could give a straightforward answer if asked to enumerate the
+principal religions of the world, or to state the names of their
+founders, and the titles of the works which are still considered by
+millions of human beings as the sacred authorities for their religious
+belief? To study such books as the Koran of the Mohammedans, the
+Zend-Avesta of the Parsis, the King's of the Confucians, the
+Tao-te-King of the Taoists, the Vedas of the Brahmans, the Tripi_t_aka
+of the Buddhists, the S�tras of the Jains, or the Granth of the Sikhs,
+would be considered by many mere waste of time. Yet St. Paul's command
+is very clear and simple; and to maintain that it referred to the
+heresies of his own time only, or to the philosophical systems of the
+Greeks and Romans, would be to narrow the horizon of the apostle's
+mind, and to destroy the general applicability of his teaching to all
+times and to all countries. Many will ask what possible good could be
+derived from the works of men who must have been either deceived or
+deceivers, nor would it be difficult to quote some passages in order
+to show the utter absurdity and worthlessness of the religious books
+of the Hindus and Chinese. But this was not the spirit in which the
+apostle of the Gentiles addressed himself to the Epicureans and
+Stoics, nor is this the feeling with which a thoughtful Christian and
+a sincere believer in the divine government of the world is likely to
+rise from a perusal of any of the books which he knows to be or to
+have been the only source of spiritual light and comfort to thousands
+and thousands among the dwellers on earth.
+
+[Footnote 52: 'Le Bouddha et sa Religion.' Par J. Barth�lemy
+Saint-Hilaire, Membre de l'Institut. Paris, 1860.]
+
+Many are the advantages to be derived from a careful study of other
+religions, but the greatest of all is that it teaches us to appreciate
+more truly what we possess in our own. When do we feel the blessings
+of our own country more warmly and truly than when we return from
+abroad? It is the same with regard to religion. Let us see what other
+nations have had and still have in the place of religion; let us
+examine the prayers, the worship, the theology even of the most highly
+civilised races,--the Greeks, the Romans, the Hindus, the
+Persians,--and we shall then understand more thoroughly what blessings
+are vouchsafed to us in being allowed to breathe from the first breath
+of life the pure air of a land of Christian light and knowledge. We
+are too apt to take the greatest blessings as matters of course, and
+even religion forms no exception. We have done so little to gain our
+religion, we have suffered so little in the cause of truth, that
+however highly we prize our own Christianity, we never prize it highly
+enough until we have compared it with the religions of the rest of the
+world.
+
+This, however, is not the only advantage; and we think that M.
+Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire has formed too low an estimate of the
+benefits to be derived from a thoughtful study of the religions of
+mankind when he writes of Buddhism: 'Le seul, mais immense service que
+le Bouddhisme puisse nous rendre, c'est par son triste contraste de
+nous faire appr�cier mieux encore la valeur inestimable de nos
+croyances, en nous montrant tout ce qu'il en co�te � l'humanit� qui ne
+les partage point.' This is not all. If a knowledge of other countries
+and a study of the manners and customs of foreign nations teach us to
+appreciate what we have at home, they likewise form the best cure of
+that national conceit and want of sympathy with which we are too apt
+to look on all that is strange and foreign. The feeling which led the
+Hellenic races to divide the whole world into Greeks and Barbarians is
+so deeply engrained in human nature that not even Christianity has
+been able altogether to remove it. Thus when we cast our first glance
+into the labyrinth of the religions of the world, all seems to us
+darkness, self-deceit, and vanity. It sounds like a degradation of the
+very name of religion to apply it to the wild ravings of Hindu Yogins
+or the blank blasphemies of Chinese Buddhists. But as we slowly and
+patiently wend our way through the dreary prisons, our own eyes seem
+to expand, and we perceive a glimmer of light where all was darkness
+at first. We learn to understand the saying of one who more than
+anybody had a right to speak with authority on this subject, that
+'there is no religion which does not contain a spark of truth.' Those
+who would limit the riches of God's goodness and forbearance and long
+suffering, and would hand over the largest portion of the human race
+to inevitable perdition, have never adduced a tittle of evidence from
+the Gospel or from any other trustworthy source in support of so
+unhallowed a belief. They have generally appealed to the devilries and
+orgies of heathen worship; they have quoted the blasphemies of
+Oriental Sufis and the immoralities sanctioned by the successors of
+Mohammed; but they have seldom, if ever, endeavoured to discover the
+true and original character of the strange forms of faith and worship
+which they call the work of the devil. If the Indians had formed their
+notions of Christianity from the soldiers of Cortez and Pizarro, or if
+the Hindus had studied the principles of Christian morality in the
+lives of Clive and Warren Hastings; or, to take a less extreme case,
+if a Mohammedan, settled in England, were to test the practical
+working of Christian charity by the spirit displayed in the journals
+of our religious parties, their notions of Christianity would be about
+as correct as the ideas which thousands of educated Christians
+entertain of the diabolical character of heathen religion. Even
+Christianity has been depraved into Jesuitism and Mormonism, and if
+we, as Protestants, claim the right to appeal to the Gospel as the
+only test by which our faith is to be judged, we must grant a similar
+privilege to Mohammedans and Buddhists, and to all who possess a
+written, and, as they believe, revealed authority for the articles of
+their faith.
+
+But though no one is likely to deny the necessity of studying each
+religion in its most ancient form and from its original documents,
+before we venture to pronounce our verdict, the difficulties of this
+task are such that in them more than in anything else, must be sought
+the cause why so few of our best thinkers and writers have devoted
+themselves to a critical and historical study of the religions of the
+world. All important religions have sprung up in the East. Their
+sacred books are written in Eastern tongues, and some of them are of
+such ancient date that those even who profess to believe in them,
+admit that they are unable to understand them without the help of
+translations and commentaries. Until very lately the sacred books of
+three of the most important religions, those of the Brahmans, the
+Buddhists, and the Parsis, were totally unknown in Europe. It was one
+of the most important results of the study of Sanskrit, or the ancient
+language of India, that through it the key, not only to the sacred
+books of the Brahmans, the Vedas, but likewise to those of the
+Buddhists and Zoroastrians, was recovered. And nothing shows more
+strikingly the rapid progress of Sanskrit scholarship than that even
+Sir William Jones, whose name has still, with many, a more familiar
+sound than the names of Colebrooke, Burnouf, and Lassen, should have
+known nothing of the Vedas; that he should never have read a line of
+the canonical books of the Buddhists, and that he actually expressed
+his belief that Buddha was the same as the Teutonic deity Wodan or
+Odin, and _S_�kya, another name of Buddha, the same as Shishac, king
+of Egypt. The same distinguished scholar never perceived the intimate
+relationship between the language of the Zend-Avesta and Sanskrit, and
+he declared the whole of the Zoroastrian writings to be modern
+forgeries.
+
+Even at present we are not yet in possession of a complete edition,
+much less of any trustworthy translation, of the Vedas; we only
+possess the originals of a few books of the Buddhist canon; and though
+the text of the Zend-Avesta has been edited in its entirety, its
+interpretation is beset with greater difficulties than that of the
+Vedas or the Tripi_t_aka. A study of the ancient religions of China,
+those of Confucius and Lao-tse, presupposes an acquaintance with
+Chinese, a language which it takes a life to learn thoroughly; and
+even the religion of Mohammed, though more accessible than any other
+Eastern religion, cannot be fully examined except by a master of
+Arabic. It is less surprising, therefore, than it might at first
+appear, that a comprehensive and scholarlike treatment of the
+religions of the world should still be a desideratum. Scholars who
+have gained a knowledge of the language, and thereby free access to
+original documents, find so much work at hand which none but
+themselves can do, that they grudge the time for collecting and
+arranging, for the benefit of the public at large, the results which
+they have obtained. Nor need we wonder that critical historians should
+rather abstain from the study of the religions of antiquity than trust
+to mere translations and second-hand authorities.
+
+Under these circumstances we feel all the more thankful if we meet
+with a writer like M. Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire, who has acquired a
+knowledge of Eastern languages sufficient to enable him to consult
+original texts and to control the researches of other scholars, and
+who at the same time commands that wide view of the history of human
+thought which enables him to assign to each system its proper place,
+to perceive its most salient features, and to distinguish between what
+is really important and what is not, in the lengthy lucubrations of
+ancient poets and prophets. M. Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire is one of the
+most accomplished scholars of France; and his reputation as the
+translator of Aristotle has made us almost forget that the Professor
+of Greek Philosophy at the Coll�ge de France[53] is the same as the
+active writer in the 'Globe' of 1827, and the 'National' of 1830; the
+same who signed the protest against the July ordinances, and who in
+1848 was Chief Secretary of the Provisional Government. If such a man
+takes the trouble to acquire a knowledge of Sanskrit, and to attend in
+the same College where he was professor, the lectures of his own
+colleague, the late Eug�ne Burnouf, his publications on Hindu
+philosophy and religion will naturally attract a large amount of
+public interest. The Sanskrit scholar by profession works and
+publishes chiefly for the benefit of other Sanskrit scholars. He is
+satisfied with bringing to light the ore which he has extracted by
+patient labour from among the dusty MSS. of the East-India House. He
+seldom takes the trouble to separate the metal from the ore, to purify
+or to strike it into current coin. He is but too often apt to forget
+that no lasting addition is ever made to the treasury of human
+knowledge unless the results of special research are translated into
+the universal language of science, and rendered available to every
+person of intellect and education. A division of labour seems most
+conducive to this end. We want a class of interpreters, men such as M.
+Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire, who are fully competent to follow and to
+control the researches of professional students, and who at the same
+time have not forgotten the language of the world.
+
+[Footnote 53: M. de St. Hilaire resigned the chair of Greek literature
+at the Coll�ge de France after the _coup d'�tat_ of 1851, declining to
+take the oath of allegiance to the existing government.]
+
+In his work on Buddhism, of which a second edition has just appeared,
+M. Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire has undertaken to give to the world at
+large the really trustworthy and important results which have been
+obtained by the laborious researches of Oriental scholars, from the
+original documents of that interesting and still mysterious religion.
+It was a task of no ordinary difficulty, for although these researches
+are of very recent date, and belong to a period of Sanskrit
+scholarship posterior to Sir W. Jones and Colebrooke, yet such is the
+amount of evidence brought together by the combined industry of
+Hodgson, Turnour, Csoma de K�r�s, Stanislas Julien, Foucaux, Fausb�ll,
+Spence Hardy, but above all, of the late Eug�ne Burnouf, that it
+required no common patience and discrimination in order to compose
+from such materials so accurate, and at the same time so lucid and
+readable a book on Buddhism as that which we owe to M. Barth�lemy
+Saint-Hilaire. The greater part of it appeared originally in the
+'Journal des Savants,' the time-honoured organ of the French Academy,
+which counts on its staff the names of Cousin, Flourens, Villemain,
+Biot, Mignet, Littr�, &c, and admits as contributors sixteen only of
+the most illustrious members of that illustrious body, _la cr�me de la
+cr�me_.
+
+Though much had been said and written about Buddhism,--enough to
+frighten priests by seeing themselves anticipated in auricular
+confession, beads, and tonsure by the Lamas of Tibet,[54] and to
+disconcert philosophers by finding themselves outbid in positivism and
+nihilism by the inmates of Chinese monasteries,--the real beginning of
+an historical and critical study of the doctrines of Buddha dates from
+the year 1824. In that year Mr. Hodgson announced the fact that the
+original documents of the Buddhist canon had been preserved in
+Sanskrit in the monasteries of Nepal. Before that time our information
+on Buddhism had been derived at random from China, Japan, Burmah,
+Tibet, Mongolia, and Tartary; and though it was known that the
+Buddhist literature in all these countries professed itself to be
+derived, directly or indirectly, from India, and that the technical
+terms of that religion, not excepting the very name of Buddha, had
+their etymology in Sanskrit only, no hope was entertained that the
+originals of these various translations could ever be recovered. Mr.
+Hodgson, who settled in Nepal in 1821, as political resident of the
+East-India Company, and whose eyes were always open, not only to the
+natural history of that little-explored country, but likewise to its
+antiquities, its languages, and traditions, was not long before he
+discovered that his friends, the priests of Nepal, possessed a
+complete literature of their own. That literature was not written in
+the spoken dialects of the country, but in Sanskrit. Mr. Hodgson
+procured a catalogue of all the works, still in existence, which
+formed the Buddhist canon. He afterwards succeeded in procuring copies
+of these works, and he was able in 1824 to send about sixty volumes to
+the Asiatic Society of Bengal. As no member of that society seemed
+inclined to devote himself to the study of these MSS., Mr. Hodgson
+sent two complete collections of the same MSS. to the Asiatic Society
+of London and the Soci�t� Asiatique of Paris. Before alluding to the
+brilliant results which the last-named collection produced in the
+hands of Eug�ne Burnouf, we must mention the labours of other
+students, which preceded the publication of Burnouf's researches.
+
+[Footnote 54: The late Abb� Huc pointed out the similarities between
+the Buddhist and Roman Catholic ceremonials with such _na�vet�_, that,
+to his surprise, he found his delightful 'Travels in Tibet' placed on
+the 'Index.' 'On ne peut s'emp�cher d'�tre frapp�,' he writes, 'de
+leur rapport avec le Catholicisme. La crosse, la mitre, la dalmatique,
+la chape ou pluvial, que les grands Lamas portent en voyage, ou
+lorsqu'ils font quelque c�r�monie hors du temple; l'office � deux
+choeurs, la psalmodie, les exorcismes, l'encensoir soutenu par cinq
+chaines, et pouvant s'ouvrir et se fermer � volont�; les b�n�dictions
+donn�es par les Lamas en �tendant la main droite sur la t�te des
+fid�les; le chapelet, le c�libat eccl�siastique, les retraites
+spirituelles, le culte des saints, les je�nes, les processions, les
+litanies, l'eau b�nite; voil� autant de rapports que les Bouddhistes
+ont avec nous.' He might have added tonsure, relics, and the
+confessional.]
+
+Mr. Hodgson himself gave to the world a number of valuable essays written
+on the spot, and afterwards collected under the title of 'Illustrations of
+the Literature and Religion of the Buddhists,' Serampore, 1841. He
+established the important fact, in accordance with the traditions of the
+priests of Nepal, that some of the Sanskrit documents which he recovered
+had existed in the monasteries of Nepal ever since the second century of
+our era, and that the whole of that collection had, five or six hundred
+years later, when Buddhism became definitely established in Tibet, been
+translated into the language of that country. As the art of printing had
+been introduced from China into Tibet, there was less difficulty in
+procuring complete copies of the Tibetan translation of the Buddhist canon.
+The real difficulty was to find a person acquainted with the language. By a
+fortunate concurrence of circumstances, however, it so happened that about
+the same time when Mr. Hodgson's discoveries began to attract the attention
+of Oriental scholars at Calcutta, a Hungarian, of the name of Alexander
+Csoma de K�r�s, arrived there. He had made his way from Hungary to Tibet on
+foot, without any means of his own, and with the sole object of discovering
+somewhere in Central Asia the native home of the Hungarians. Arrived in
+Tibet, his enthusiasm found a new vent in acquiring a language which no
+European before his time had mastered, and in exploring the vast collection
+of the canonical books of the Buddhists, preserved in that language. Though
+he arrived at Calcutta almost without a penny, he met with a hearty welcome
+from the members of the Asiatic Society, and was enabled with their
+assistance to publish the results of his extraordinary researches. People
+have complained of the length of the sacred books of other nations, but
+there are none that approach in bulk to the sacred canon of the Tibetans.
+It consists of two collections, commonly called the Kanjur and Tanjur. The
+proper spelling of their names is Bkah-hgyur, pronounced Kah-gyur, and
+Bstan-hgyur, pronounced Tan-gyur. The Kanjur consists, in its different
+editions, of 100, 102, or 108 volumes folio. It comprises 1083 distinct
+works. The Tanjur consists of 225 volumes folio, each weighing from four to
+five pounds in the edition of Peking. Editions of this colossal code were
+printed at Peking, Lhassa, and other places. The edition of the Kanjur
+published at Peking, by command of the Emperor Khian-Lung, sold for �600. A
+copy of the Kanjur was bartered for 7000 oxen by the Buriates, and the same
+tribe paid 1200 silver roubles for a complete copy of the Kanjur and Tanjur
+together.[55] Such a jungle of religious literature--the most excellent
+hiding-place, we should think, for Lamas and Dalai-Lamas--was too much even
+for a man who could travel on foot from Hungary to Tibet. The Hungarian
+enthusiast, however, though he did not translate the whole, gave a most
+valuable analysis of this immense bible, in the twentieth volume of the
+'Asiatic Researches,' sufficient to establish the fact that the principal
+portion of it was a translation from the same Sanskrit originals which had
+been discovered in Nepal by Mr. Hodgson. Csoma de K�r�s died soon after he
+had given to the world the first fruits of his labours,--a victim to his
+heroic devotion to the study of ancient languages and religions.
+
+[Footnote 55: 'Die Religion des Buddha,' von K�ppen, vol. ii. p.
+282.]
+
+It was another fortunate coincidence that, contemporaneously with the
+discoveries of Hodgson and Csoma de K�r�s, another scholar, Schmidt of
+St. Petersburg, had so far advanced in the study of the Mongolian
+language, as to be able to translate portions of the Mongolian version
+of the Buddhist canon, and thus forward the elucidation of some of the
+problems connected with the religion of Buddha.
+
+It never rains but it pours. Whereas for years, nay, for centuries,
+not a single original document of the Buddhist religion had been
+accessible to the scholars of Europe, we witness, in the small space
+of ten years, the recovery of four complete Buddhist literatures. In
+addition to the discoveries of Hodgson in Nepal, of Csoma de K�r�s in
+Tibet, and of Schmidt in Mongolia, the Honourable George Turnour
+suddenly presented to the world the Buddhist literature of Ceylon,
+composed in the sacred language of that island, the ancient P�li. The
+existence of that literature had been known before. Since 1826 Sir
+Alexander Johnston had been engaged in collecting authentic copies of
+the Mah�vansa, the R�_g_�val�, and the R�_g_aratn�kar�. These copies
+were translated at his suggestion from P�li into modern Singhalese and
+thence into English. The publication was entrusted to Mr. Edward
+Upham, and the work appeared in 1833, under the title of 'Sacred and
+Historical Works of Ceylon,' dedicated to William IV. Unfortunately,
+whether through fraud or through misunderstanding, the priests who
+were to have procured an authentic copy of the P�li originals and
+translated them into the vernacular language, appear to have formed a
+compilation of their own from various sources. The official
+translators by whom this mutilated Singhalese abridgment was to have
+been rendered into English, took still greater liberties; and the
+'Sacred and Historical Books of Ceylon' had hardly been published
+before Burnouf, then a mere beginner in the study of P�li, was able to
+prove the utter uselessness of that translation. Mr. Turnour, however,
+soon made up for this disappointment. He set to work in a more
+scholarlike spirit, and after acquiring himself a knowledge of the
+P�li language, he published several important essays on the Buddhist
+canon, as preserved in Ceylon. These were followed by an edition and
+translation of the Mah�vansa, or the history of Ceylon, written in the
+fifth century after Christ, and giving an account of the island from
+the earliest times to the beginning of the fourth century A.D. Several
+continuations of that history are in existence, but Mr. Turnour was
+prevented by an early death from continuing his edition beyond the
+original portion of that chronicle. The exploration of the Ceylonese
+literature has since been taken up again by the Rev. D. J. Gogerly
+(Clough), whose essays are unfortunately scattered about in Singhalese
+periodicals and little known in Europe; and by the Rev. Spence Hardy,
+for twenty years Wesleyan Missionary in Ceylon. His two works,
+'Eastern Monachism' and 'Manual of Buddhism,' are full of interesting
+matter, but as they are chiefly derived from Singhalese, and even more
+modern sources, they require to be used with caution.[56]
+
+[Footnote 56: The same author has lately published another valuable
+work, 'The Legends and Theories of the Buddhists.' London, 1866.]
+
+In the same manner as the Sanskrit originals of Nepal were translated
+by Buddhist missionaries into Tibetan, Mongolian, and, as we shall
+soon see, into Chinese and Mandshu,[57] the P�li originals of Ceylon
+were carried to Burmah and Siam, and translated there into the
+languages of those countries. Hardly anything has as yet been done for
+exploring the literature of these two countries, which open a
+promising field for any one ambitious to follow in the footsteps of
+Hodgson, Csoma, and Turnour.
+
+[Footnote 57: 'M�langes Asiatiques,' vol. ii. p. 373.]
+
+A very important collection of Buddhist MSS. has lately been brought
+from Ceylon to Europe by M. Grimblot, and is now deposited in the
+Imperial Library at Paris. This collection, to judge from a report
+published in 1866 in the 'Journal des Savants' by M. Barth�lemy
+Saint-Hilaire, consists of no less than eighty-seven works; and, as
+some of them are represented by more than one copy, the total number
+of MSS. amounts to one hundred and twenty-one. They fill altogether
+14,000 palm leaves, and are written partly in Singhalese, partly in
+Burmese characters. Next to Ceylon, Burmah and Siam would seem to be
+the two countries most likely to yield large collections of P�li MSS.,
+and the MSS. which now exist in Ceylon may, to a considerable extent,
+be traced back to these two countries. At the beginning of the
+sixteenth century, the Tamil conquerors of Ceylon are reported to have
+burnt every Buddhist book they could discover, in the hope of thus
+destroying the vitality of that detested religion. Buddhism, however,
+though persecuted--or, more probably, because persecuted--remained
+the national religion of the island, and in the eighteenth century it
+had recovered its former ascendency. Missions were then sent to Siam
+to procure authentic copies of the sacred documents; priests properly
+ordained were imported from Burmah; and several libraries, which
+contain both the canonical and the profane literature of Buddhism,
+were founded at Dadala, Ambagapitya, and other places.
+
+The sacred canon of the Buddhists is called the Tripi_t_aka, i. e. the
+three baskets. The first basket contains all that has reference to
+morality, or Vinaya; the second contains the S�tras, i. e. the
+discourses of Buddha; the third includes all works treating of
+dogmatic philosophy or metaphysics. The second and third baskets are
+sometimes comprehended under the general name of Dharma, or law, and
+it has become usual to apply to the third basket the name of
+Abhidharma, or by-law. The first and second pi_t_akas contain each
+five separate works; the third contains seven. M. Grimblot has secured
+MSS. of nearly every one of these works, and he has likewise brought
+home copies of the famous commentaries of Buddhaghosha. These
+commentaries are of great importance; for although Buddhaghosha lived
+as late as 430 A.D., he is supposed to have been the translator of
+more ancient commentaries, brought in 316 B.C. to Ceylon from Magadha
+by Mahinda, the son of A_s_oka, translated by him from P�li into
+Singhalese, and retranslated by Buddhaghosha into P�li, the original
+language both of the canonical books and of their commentaries.
+Whether historical criticism will allow to the commentaries of
+Buddhaghosha the authority due to documents of the fourth century
+before Christ, is a question that has yet to be settled. But even as a
+collector of earlier traditions and as a writer of the fifth century
+after Christ, his authority would be considerable with regard to the
+solution of some of the most important problems of Indian history and
+chronology. Some scholars who have written on the history of Buddhism
+have clearly shown too strong an inclination to treat the statements
+contained in the commentaries of Buddhaghosha as purely historical,
+forgetting the great interval of time by which he is separated from
+the events which he relates. No doubt if it could be proved that
+Buddhaghosha's works were literal translations of the so-called
+Attakath�s or commentaries brought by Mahinda to Ceylon, this would
+considerably enhance their historical value. But the whole account of
+these translations rests on tradition, and if we consider the
+extraordinary precautions taken, according to tradition, by the LXX
+translators of the Old Testament, and then observe the discrepancies
+between the chronology of the Septuagint and that of the Hebrew text,
+we shall be better able to appreciate the risk of trusting to Oriental
+translations, even to those that pretend to be literal. The idea of a
+faithful literal translation seems altogether foreign to Oriental
+minds. Granted that Mahinda translated the original P�li commentaries
+into Singhalese, there was nothing to restrain him from inserting
+anything that he thought likely to be useful to his new converts.
+Granted that Buddhaghosha translated these translations back into
+P�li, why should he not have incorporated any facts that were then
+believed in and had been handed down by tradition from generation to
+generation? Was he not at liberty--nay, would he not have felt it his
+duty, to explain apparent difficulties, to remove contradictions, and
+to correct palpable mistakes? In our time, when even the
+contemporaneous evidence of Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, or Jornandes
+is sifted by the most uncompromising scepticism, we must not expect a
+more merciful treatment for the annals of Buddhism. Scholars engaged
+in special researches are too willing to acquiesce in evidence,
+particularly if that evidence has been discovered by their own efforts
+and comes before them with all the charms of novelty. But, in the
+broad daylight of historical criticism, the prestige of such a witness
+as Buddhaghosha soon dwindles away, and his statements as to kings and
+councils eight hundred years before his time are in truth worth no
+more than the stories told of Arthur by Geoffrey of Monmouth, or the
+accounts we read in Livy of the early history of Rome.
+
+One of the most important works of M. Grimblot's collection, and one
+that we hope will soon be published, is a history of Buddhism in
+Ceylon, called the D�pavansa. The only work of the same character
+which has hitherto been known is the Mah�vansa, published by the
+Honourable George Turnour. But this is professedly based on the
+D�pavansa, and is probably of a much later date. Mah�n�ma, the
+compiler of the Mah�vansa, lived about 500 A. D. His work was
+continued by later chroniclers to the middle of the eighteenth
+century. Though Mah�n�ma wrote towards the end of the fifth century
+after Christ, his own share of the chronicle seems to have ended with
+the year 302 A.D., and a commentary which he wrote on his own
+chronicle likewise breaks off at that period. The exact date of the
+D�pavansa is not yet known; but as it also breaks off with the death
+of Mah�sena in 302 A.D., we cannot ascribe to it, for the present, any
+higher authority than could be commanded by a writer of the fourth
+century after Christ.
+
+We now return to Mr. Hodgson. His collections of Sanskrit MSS. had
+been sent, as we saw, to the Asiatic Society of Calcutta from 1824 to
+1839, to the Royal Asiatic Society in London in 1835, and to the
+Soci�t� Asiatique of Paris in 1837. They remained dormant at Calcutta
+and in London. At Paris, however, these Buddhist MSS. fell into the
+hands of Burnouf. Unappalled by their size and tediousness, he set to
+work, and was not long before he discovered their extreme importance.
+After seven years of careful study, Burnouf published, in 1844, his
+'Introduction � l'Histoire du Buddhisme.' It is this work which laid
+the foundation for a systematic study of the religion of Buddha.
+Though acknowledging the great value of the researches made in the
+Buddhist literatures of Tibet, Mongolia, China, and Ceylon, Burnouf
+showed that Buddhism, being of Indian origin, ought to be studied
+first of all in the original Sanskrit documents, preserved in Nepal.
+Though he modestly called his work an Introduction to the History of
+Buddhism, there are few points of importance on which his industry has
+not brought together the most valuable evidence, and his genius shed a
+novel and brilliant light. The death of Burnouf in 1851, put an end to
+a work which, if finished according to the plan sketched out by the
+author in the preface, would have been the most perfect monument of
+Oriental scholarship. A volume published after his death, in 1852,
+contains a translation of one of the canonical books of Nepal, with
+notes and appendices, the latter full of the most valuable information
+on some of the more intricate questions of Buddhism. Though much
+remained to be done, and though a very small breach only had been made
+in the vast pile of Sanskrit MSS. presented by Mr. Hodgson to the
+Asiatic Societies of Paris and London, no one has been bold enough to
+continue what Burnouf left unfinished. The only important additions to
+our knowledge of Buddhism since his death are an edition of the
+Lalita-Vistara or the life of Buddha, prepared by a native, the
+learned Babu Rajendralal Mittra; an edition of the P�li original of
+the Dhammapadam, by Dr. Fausb�ll, a Dane; and last, not least, the
+excellent translation by M. Stanislas Julien, of the life and travels
+of Hiouen-Thsang. This Chinese pilgrim had visited India from 629 to
+645 A.D., for the purpose of learning Sanskrit, and translating from
+Sanskrit into Chinese some important works on the religion and
+philosophy of the Buddhists; and his account of the geography, the
+social, religious, and political state of India at the beginning of
+the seventh century, is invaluable for studying the practical working
+of that religion at a time when its influence began to decline, and
+when it was soon to be supplanted by modern Brahmanism and
+Mohammedanism.
+
+It was no easy task for M. Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire to make himself
+acquainted with all these works. The study of Buddhism would almost
+seem to be beyond the power of any single individual, if it required a
+practical acquaintance with all the languages in which the doctrines
+of Buddha have been written down. Burnouf was probably the only man
+who, in addition to his knowledge of Sanskrit, did not shrink from
+acquiring a practical knowledge of Tibetan, P�li, Singhalese, and
+Burmese, in order to prepare himself for such a task. The same scholar
+had shown, however, that though it was impossible for a Tibetan,
+Mongolian, or Chinese scholar to arrive, without a knowledge of
+Sanskrit, at a correct understanding of the doctrines of Buddha, a
+knowledge of Sanskrit was sufficient for entering into their spirit,
+for comprehending their origin and growth in India, and their
+modification in the different countries where they took root in later
+times. Assisted by his familiarity with Sanskrit, and bringing into
+the field, as a new and valuable auxiliary, his intimate acquaintance
+with nearly all the systems of philosophy and religion of both the
+ancient and modern worlds, M. Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire has succeeded
+in drawing a picture, both lively and correct, of the origin, the
+character, the strong as well as weak points, of the religion of
+Buddha. He has become the first historian of Buddhism. He has not been
+carried away by a temptation which must have been great for one who is
+able to read in the past the lessons for the present or the future. He
+has not used Buddhism either as a bugbear or as a _beau id�al_. He is
+satisfied with stating in his preface that many lessons might be
+learned by modern philosophers from a study of Buddhism, but in the
+body of the work he never perverts the chair of the historian into the
+pulpit of the preacher.
+
+'This book may offer one other advantage,' he writes, 'and I regret to
+say that at present it may seem to come opportunely. It is the
+misfortune of our times that the same doctrines which form the
+foundation of Buddhism meet at the hands of some of our philosophers
+with a favour which they ill deserve. For some years we have seen
+systems arising in which metempsychosis and transmigration are highly
+spoken of, and attempts are made to explain the world and man without
+either a God or a Providence, exactly as Buddha did. A future life is
+refused to the yearnings of mankind, and the immortality of the soul
+is replaced by the immortality of works. God is dethroned, and in His
+place they substitute man, the only being, we are told, in which the
+Infinite becomes conscious of itself. These theories are recommended
+to us sometimes in the name of science, or of history, or philology,
+or even of metaphysics; and though they are neither new nor very
+original, yet they can do much injury to feeble hearts. This is not
+the place to examine these theories, and their authors are both too
+learned and too sincere to deserve to be condemned summarily and
+without discussion. But it is well that they should know by the
+example, too little known, of Buddhism, what becomes of man if he
+depends on himself alone, and if his meditations, misled by a pride of
+which he is hardly conscious, bring him to the precipice where Buddha
+was lost. Besides, I am well aware of all the differences, and I am
+not going to insult our contemporary philosophers by confounding them
+indiscriminately with Buddha, although addressing to both the same
+reproof. I acknowledge willingly all their additional merits, which
+are considerable. But systems of philosophy must always be judged by
+the conclusions to which they lead, whatever road they may follow in
+reaching them; and their conclusions, though obtained by different
+means, are not therefore less objectionable. Buddha arrived at his
+conclusions 2400 years ago. He proclaimed and practised them with an
+energy which is not likely to be surpassed, even if it be equalled. He
+displayed a child-like intrepidity which no one can exceed, nor can it
+be supposed that any system in our days could again acquire so
+powerful an ascendency over the souls of men. It would be useful,
+however, if the authors of these modern systems would just cast a
+glance at the theories and destinies of Buddhism. It is not philosophy
+in the sense in which we understand this great name, nor is it
+religion in the sense of ancient paganism, of Christianity, or of
+Mohammedanism; but it contains elements of all worked up into a
+perfectly independent doctrine which acknowledges nothing in the
+universe but man, and obstinately refuses to recognise anything else,
+though confounding man with nature in the midst of which he lives.
+Hence all those aberrations of Buddhism which ought to be a warning to
+others. Unfortunately, if people rarely profit by their own faults,
+they profit yet more rarely by the faults of others. (Introduction, p.
+vii.)
+
+But though M. Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire does not write history merely
+for the sake of those masked batteries which French writers have used
+with so much skill at all times, but more particularly during the late
+years of Imperial sway, it is clear, from the remarks just quoted,
+that our author is not satisfied with simply chronicling the dry facts
+of Buddhism, or turning into French the tedious discourses of its
+founder. His work is an animated sketch, giving too little rather than
+too much. It is just the book which was wanted to dispel the erroneous
+notions about Buddhism, which are still current among educated men,
+and to excite an interest which may lead those who are naturally
+frightened by the appalling proportions of Buddhist literature, and
+the uncouth sounds of Buddhist terminology, to a study of the quartos
+of Burnouf, Turnour, and others. To those who may wish for more
+detailed information on Buddhism, than could be given by M. Barth�lemy
+Saint-Hilaire, consistently with the plan of his work, we can strongly
+recommend the work of a German writer, 'Die Religion des Buddha,' von
+K�ppen, Berlin, 1857. It is founded on the same materials as the
+French work, but being written by a scholar and for scholars, it
+enters on a more minute examination of all that has been said or
+written on Buddha and Buddhism. In a second volume the same learned
+and industrious student has lately published a history of Buddhism in
+Tibet.
+
+M. Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire's work is divided into three portions. The
+first contains an account of the origin of Buddhism, a life of Buddha,
+and an examination of Buddhist ethics and metaphysics. In the second,
+he describes the state of Buddhism in India in the seventh century of
+our era, from the materials supplied by the travels of Hiouen-Thsang.
+The third gives a description of Buddhism as actually existing in
+Ceylon, and as lately described by an eye-witness, the Rev. Spence
+Hardy. We shall confine ourselves chiefly to the first part, which
+treats of the life and teaching of Buddha.
+
+M. Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire, following the example of Burnouf, Lassen,
+and Wilson, accepts the date of the Ceylonese era 543 B.C. as the date
+of Buddha's death. Though we cannot enter here into long chronological
+discussions, we must remark, that this date was clearly obtained by
+the Buddhists of Ceylon by calculation, not by historical tradition,
+and that it is easy to point out in that calculation a mistake of
+about seventy years. The more plausible date of Buddha's death is 477
+B.C. For the purposes, however, which M. Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire had
+in view, this difference is of small importance. We know so little of
+the history of India during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., that
+the stage on which he represents Buddha as preaching and teaching
+would have had very much the same background, the same costume and
+accessories, for the sixth as for the fifth century B.C.
+
+In the life of Buddha, which extends from p. 1 to 79, M. Barth�lemy
+Saint-Hilaire follows almost exclusively the Lalita-Vistara. This is
+one of the most popular works of the Buddhists. It forms part of the
+Buddhist canon; and as we know of a translation into Chinese, which M.
+Stanislas Julien ascribes to the year 76 A.D., we may safely refer its
+original composition to an ante-Christian date. It has been published
+in Sanskrit by Babu Rajendralal Mittra, and we owe to M. Foucaux an
+edition of the same work in its Tibetan translation, the first Tibetan
+text printed in Europe. From specimens that we have seen, we should
+think it would be highly desirable to have an accurate translation of
+the Chinese text, such as M. Stanislas Julien alone is able to give
+us.[58] Few people, however, except scholars, would have the patience
+to read this work either in its English or French translation, as may
+be seen from the following specimen, containing the beginning of Babu
+Rajendralal Mittra's version:
+
+     'Om! Salutation to all Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, �ryas,
+     _S_r�vakas, and Pratyeka Buddhas of all times, past,
+     present, and future; who are adored throughout the farthest
+     limits of the ten quarters of the globe. Thus hath it been
+     heard by me, that once on a time Bhagavat sojourned in the
+     garden of An�thapi_nd_ada, at _G_etavana, in _S_r�vast�,
+     accompanied by a venerable body of 12,000 Bhikshukas. There
+     likewise accompanied him 32,000 Bodhisattvas, all linked
+     together by unity of caste, and perfect in the virtues of
+     p�ramit�; who had made their command over Bodhisattva
+     knowledge a pastime, were illumined with the light of
+     Bodhisattva dh�ra_n_�s, and were masters of the dh�ra_n_�s
+     themselves; who were profound in their meditations, all
+     submissive to the lord of Bodhisattvas, and possessed
+     absolute control over sam�dhi; great in self-command,
+     refulgent in Bodhisattva forbearance, and replete with the
+     Bodhisattva element of perfection. Now then, Bhagavat
+     arriving in the great city of _S_r�vast�, sojourned therein,
+     respected, venerated, revered, and adored, by the fourfold
+     congregation; by kings, princes, their counsellors, prime
+     ministers, and followers; by retinues of kshatriyas,
+     br�hma_n_as, householders, and ministers; by citizens,
+     foreigners, _s_r�ma_n_as, br�hma_n_as, recluses, and
+     ascetics; and although regaled with all sorts of edibles and
+     sauces, the best that could be prepared by purveyors, and
+     supplied with cleanly mendicant apparel, begging pots,
+     couches, and pain-assuaging medicaments, the benevolent
+     lord, on whom had been showered the prime of gifts and
+     applauses, remained unattached to them all, like water on a
+     lotus leaf; and the report of his greatness as the
+     venerable, the absolute Buddha, the learned and
+     well-behaved, the god of happy exit, the great knower of
+     worlds, the valiant, the all-controlling charioteer, the
+     teacher of gods and men, the quinocular lord Buddha fully
+     manifest, spread far and wide in the world. And Bhagavat,
+     having by his own power acquired all knowledge regarding
+     this world and the next, comprising devas, m�ras, br�hmyas
+     (followers of Brahm�), _s_r�ma_n_as, and br�hma_n_as, as
+     subjects, that is both gods and men, sojourned here,
+     imparting instructions in the true religion, and expounding
+     the principles of a brahma_k_arya, full and complete in its
+     nature, holy in its import, pure and immaculate in its
+     character, auspicious is its beginning, auspicious its
+     middle, auspicious its end.'
+
+[Footnote 58: The advantages to be derived from these Chinese
+translations have been pointed out by M. Stanislas Julien. The
+analytical structure of that language imparts to Chinese translations
+the character almost of a gloss; and though we need not follow
+implicitly the interpretations of the Sanskrit originals, adopted by
+the Chinese translators, still their antiquity would naturally impart
+to them a considerable value and interest. The following specimens
+were kindly communicated to me by M. Stanislas Julien:
+
+     'Je ne sais si je vous ai communiqu� autrefois les curieux
+     passages qui suivent: On lit dans le Lotus fran�ais, p. 271,
+     l. 14, C'est que c'est une chose difficile � rencontrer que
+     la naissance d'un bouddha, aussi difficile � rencontrer que
+     la fleur de l'Udumbara, que l'introduction du col d'une
+     tortue dans l'ouverture d'un joug form� par le grand oc�an.
+
+     'Il y a en chinois: un bouddha est difficile � rencontrer,
+     comme les fleurs Udumbara et Pal��a; et en outre comme si
+     une tortue borgne voulait rencontrer un trou dans un bois
+     flottant (litt. le trou d'un bois flottant).
+
+     'Lotus fran�ais, p. 39, l. 110 (les cr�atures), encha�n�es
+     par la concupiscence comme par la queue du Yak,
+     perp�tuellement aveugl�es en ce monde par les d�sirs, elles
+     ne cherchent pas le Buddha.
+
+     'Il y a en chinois: Profond�ment attach�es aux cinq
+     d�sirs--Elles les aiment comme le Yak aime sa queue. Par la
+     concupiscence et l'amour, elles s'aveuglent elles-m�mes,
+     etc.'
+]
+
+The whole work is written in a similar style, and where fact and
+legend, prose and poetry, sense and nonsense, are so mixed together,
+the plan adopted by M. Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire, of making two lives
+out of one, the one containing all that seems possible, the other what
+seems impossible, would naturally recommend itself. It is not a safe
+process, however, to distil history out of legend by simply straining
+the legendary through the sieve of physical possibility. Many things
+are possible, and may yet be the mere inventions of later writers, and
+many things which sound impossible have been reclaimed as historical,
+after removing from them the thin film of mythological phraseology. We
+believe that the only use which the historian can safely make of the
+Lalita-Vistara, is to employ it, not as evidence of facts which
+actually happened, but in illustration of the popular belief prevalent
+at the time when it was committed to writing. Without therefore
+adopting the division of fact and fiction in the life of Buddha, as
+attempted by M. Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire, we yet believe that in order
+to avoid a repetition of childish absurdities, we shall best consult
+the interest of our readers if we follow his example, and give a short
+and rational abstract of the life of Buddha as handed down by
+tradition, and committed to writing not later than the first century
+B.C.
+
+Buddha, or more correctly, the Buddha,--for Buddha is an appellative
+meaning Enlightened,--was born at Kapilavastu, the capital of a kingdom of
+the same name, situated at the foot of the mountains of Nepal, north of the
+present Oude. His father, the king of Kapilavastu, was of the family of the
+_S_�kyas, and belonged to the clan of the Gautamas. His mother was
+M�y�d�v�, daughter of king Suprabuddha, and need we say that she was as
+beautiful as he was powerful and just? Buddha was therefore by birth of the
+Kshatriya or warrior caste, and he took the name of _S_�kya from his
+family, and that of Gautama from his clan, claiming a kind of spiritual
+relationship with the honoured race of Gautama. The name of Buddha, or the
+Buddha, dates from a later period of his life, and so probably does the
+name Siddh�rtha (he whose objects have been accomplished), though we are
+told that it was given him in his childhood. His mother died seven days
+after his birth, and the father confided the child to the care of his
+deceased wife's sister, who, however, had been his wife even before the
+mother's death. The child grew up a most beautiful and most accomplished
+boy, who soon knew more than his masters could teach him. He refused to
+take part in the games of his playmates, and never felt so happy as when he
+could sit alone, lost in meditation in the deep shadows of the forest. It
+was there that his father found him, when he had thought him lost, and in
+order to prevent the young prince from becoming a dreamer, the king
+determined to marry him at once. When the subject was mentioned by the aged
+ministers to the future heir to the throne, he demanded seven days for
+reflection, and convinced at last that not even marriage could disturb the
+calm of his mind, he allowed the ministers to look out for a princess. The
+princess selected was the beautiful Gop�, the daughter of Da_nd_ap�_n_i.
+Though her father objected at first to her marrying a young prince who was
+represented to him as deficient in manliness and intellect, he gladly gave
+his consent when he saw the royal suitor distancing all his rivals both in
+feats of arms and power of mind. Their marriage proved one of the happiest,
+but the prince remained, as he had been before, absorbed in meditation on
+the problems of life and death. 'Nothing is stable on earth,' he used to
+say, 'nothing is real. Life is like the spark produced by the friction of
+wood. It is lighted and is extinguished--we know not whence it came or
+whither it goes. It is like the sound of a lyre, and the wise man asks in
+vain from whence it came and whither it goes. There must be some supreme
+intelligence where we could find rest. If I attained it, I could bring
+light to man; if I were free myself, I could deliver the world.' The king,
+who perceived the melancholy mood of the young prince, tried every thing to
+divert him from his speculations: but all was in vain. Three of the most
+ordinary events that could happen to any man, proved of the utmost
+importance in the career of Buddha. We quote the description of these
+occurrences from M. Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire:
+
+     'One day when the prince with a large retinue drove through
+     the eastern gate of the city on the way to one of his parks,
+     he met on the road an old man, broken and decrepit. One
+     could see the veins and muscles over the whole of his body,
+     his teeth chattered, he was covered with wrinkles, bald, and
+     hardly able to utter hollow and unmelodious sounds. He was
+     bent on his stick, and all his limbs and joints trembled.
+     "Who is that man?" said the prince to his coachman. "He is
+     small and weak, his flesh and his blood are dried up, his
+     muscles stick to his skin, his head is white, his teeth
+     chatter, his body is wasted away; leaning on his stick he is
+     hardly able to walk, stumbling at every step. Is there
+     something peculiar in his family, or is this the common lot
+     of all created beings?"
+
+     '"Sir," replied the coachman, "that man is sinking under old
+     age, his senses have become obtuse, suffering has destroyed
+     his strength, and he is despised by his relations. He is
+     without support and useless, and people have abandoned him,
+     like a dead tree in a forest. But this is not peculiar to
+     his family. In every creature youth is defeated by old age.
+     Your father, your mother, all your relations, all your
+     friends, will come to the same state; this is the appointed
+     end of all creatures."
+
+     '"Alas!" replied the prince, "are creatures so ignorant, so
+     weak and foolish, as to be proud of the youth by which they
+     are intoxicated, not seeing the old age which awaits them!
+     As for me, I go away. Coachman, turn my chariot quickly.
+     What have I, the future prey of old age,--what have I to do
+     with pleasure?" And the young prince returned to the city
+     without going to his park.
+
+     'Another time the prince drove through the southern gate to
+     his pleasure garden, when he perceived on the road a man
+     suffering from illness, parched with fever, his body wasted,
+     covered with mud, without a friend, without a home, hardly
+     able to breathe, and frightened at the sight of himself and
+     the approach of death. Having questioned his coachman, and
+     received from him the answer which he expected, the young
+     prince said, "Alas! health is but the sport of a dream, and
+     the fear of suffering must take this frightful form. Where
+     is the wise man who, after having seen what he is, could any
+     longer think of joy and pleasure?" The prince turned his
+     chariot and returned to the city.
+
+     'A third time he drove to his pleasure garden through the
+     western gate, when he saw a dead body on the road, lying on
+     a bier, and covered with a cloth. The friends stood about
+     crying, sobbing, tearing their hair, covering their heads
+     with dust, striking their breasts, and uttering wild cries.
+     The prince, again calling his coachman to witness this
+     painful scene, exclaimed, "Oh! woe to youth, which must be
+     destroyed by old age! Woe to health, which must be destroyed
+     by so many diseases! Woe to this life, where a man remains
+     so short a time! If there were no old age, no disease, no
+     death; if these could be made captive for ever!" Then
+     betraying for the first time his intentions, the young
+     prince said, "Let us turn back, I must think how to
+     accomplish deliverance."
+
+     'A last meeting put an end to his hesitation. He drove
+     through the northern gate on the way to his pleasure
+     gardens, when he saw a mendicant who appeared outwardly
+     calm, subdued, looking downwards, wearing with an air of
+     dignity his religious vestment, and carrying an alms-bowl.
+
+     '"Who is this man?" asked the prince.
+
+     '"Sir," replied the coachman, "this man is one of those who
+     are called bhikshus, or mendicants. He has renounced all
+     pleasures, all desires, and leads a life of austerity. He
+     tries to conquer himself. He has become a devotee. Without
+     passion, without envy, he walks about asking for alms."
+
+     '"This is good and well said," replied the prince. "The life
+     of a devotee has always been praised by the wise. It will be
+     my refuge, and the refuge of other creatures; it will lead
+     us to a real life, to happiness and immortality."
+
+     'With these words the young prince turned his chariot and
+     returned to the city.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After having declared to his father and his wife his intention of
+retiring from the world, Buddha left his palace one night when all the
+guards that were to have watched him, were asleep. After travelling
+the whole night, he gave his horse and his ornaments to his groom, and
+sent him back to Kapilavastu. 'A monument,' remarks the author of the
+Lalita-Vistara (p. 270), 'is still to be seen on the spot where the
+coachman turned back,' Hiouen-Thsang (II. 330) saw the same monument
+at the edge of a large forest, on his road to Ku_s_in�gara, a city now
+in ruins, and situated about fifty miles E.S.E. from Gorakpur.[59]
+
+[Footnote 59: The geography of India at the time of Buddha, and later
+at the time of Fahian and Hiouen-Thsang, has been admirably treated by
+M. L. Vivien de Saint-Martin, in his 'M�moire Analytique sur la Carte
+de l'Asie Centrale et de l'Inde,' in the third volume of M. Stanislas
+Julien's 'P�lerins Bouddhistes.']
+
+Buddha first went to Vai_s_�l�, and became the pupil of a famous
+Brahman, who had gathered round him 300 disciples. Having learnt all
+that the Brahman could teach him, Buddha went away disappointed. He
+had not found the road to salvation. He then tried another Brahman at
+R�_g_ag_r_iha, the capital of Magadha or Behar, who had 700
+disciples, and there too he looked in vain for the means of
+deliverance. He left him, followed by five of his fellow-students, and
+for six years retired into solitude, near a village named Uruvilva,
+subjecting himself to the most severe penances, previous to his
+appearing in the world as a teacher. At the end of this period,
+however, he arrived at the conviction that asceticism, far from giving
+peace of mind and preparing the way to salvation, was a snare and a
+stumbling-block in the way of truth. He gave up his exercises, and was
+at once deserted as an apostate by his five disciples. Left to himself
+he now began to elaborate his own system. He had learnt that neither
+the doctrines nor the austerities of the Brahmans were of any avail
+for accomplishing the deliverance of man, and freeing him from the
+fear of old age, disease, and death. After long meditations, and
+ecstatic visions, he at last imagined that he had arrived at that true
+knowledge which discloses the cause, and thereby destroys the fear, of
+all the changes inherent in life. It was from the moment when he
+arrived at this knowledge, that he claimed the name of Buddha, the
+Enlightened. At that moment we may truly say that the fate of millions
+of millions of human beings trembled in the balance. Buddha hesitated
+for a time whether he should keep his knowledge to himself, or
+communicate it to the world. Compassion for the sufferings of man
+prevailed, and the young prince became the founder of a religion
+which, after more than 2000 years, is still professed by 455,000,000
+of human beings.[60]
+
+[Footnote 60: Though truth is not settled by majorities, it would be
+interesting to know which religion, counts at the present moment the
+largest numbers of believers. Berghaus, in his 'Physical Atlas,' gives
+the following division of the human race according to religion:
+
+Buddhists            31.2 per cent.
+Christians           30.7    "
+Mohammedans          15.7    "
+Brahmanists          13.4    "
+Heathens              8.7    "
+Jews                  0.3    "
+
+As Berghaus does not distinguish the Buddhists in China from the
+followers of Confucius and Lao-tse, the first place on the scale
+belongs really to Christianity. It is difficult in China to say to
+what religion a man belongs, as the same person may profess two or
+three. The emperor himself, after sacrificing according to the ritual
+of Confucius, visits a Tao-ss� temple, and afterwards bows before an
+image of Fo in a Buddhist chapel. ('M�langes Asiatiques de St.
+P�tersbourg,' vol. ii. p. 374.)]
+
+The further history of the new teacher is very simple. He proceeded to
+Benares, which at all times was the principal seat of learning in
+India, and the first converts he made were the five fellow-students
+who had left him when he threw off the yoke of the Brahmanical
+observances. Many others followed; but as the Lalita-Vistara breaks
+off at Buddha's arrival at Benares, we have no further consecutive
+account of the rapid progress of his doctrine. From what we can gather
+from scattered notices in the Buddhist canon, he was invited by the
+king of Magadha, Bimbis�ra, to his capital, R�_g_ag_r_iha. Many of his
+lectures are represented as having been delivered at the monastery of
+Kalantaka, with which the king or some rich merchant had presented
+him; others on the Vulture Peak, one of the five hills that surrounded
+the ancient capital.
+
+Three of his most famous disciples, _S_�riputra, K�ty�yana, and
+Maudgaly�yana, joined him during his stay in Magadha, where he
+enjoyed for many years the friendship of the king. That king was
+afterwards assassinated by his son, A_g_�ta_s_atru, and then we hear
+of Buddha as settled for a time at _S_r�vast�, north of the Ganges,
+where An�thapi_nd_ada, a rich merchant, had offered him and his
+disciples a magnificent building for their residence. Most of Buddha's
+lectures or sermons were delivered at _S_r�vast�, the capital of
+Ko_s_ala; and the king of Ko_s_ala himself, Pras�na_g_it, became a
+convert to his doctrine. After an absence of twelve years we are told
+that Buddha visited his father at Kapilavastu, on which occasion he
+performed several miracles, and converted all the _S_�kyas to his
+faith. His own wife became one of his followers, and, with his aunt,
+offers the first instance of female Buddhist devotees in India. We
+have fuller particulars again of the last days of Buddha's life. He
+had attained the good age of three score and ten, and had been on a
+visit to R�_g_ag_r_iha, where the king, A_g_�ta_s_atru, the former
+enemy of Buddha, and the assassin of his own father, had joined the
+congregation, after making a public confession of his crimes. On his
+return he was followed by a large number of disciples, and when on the
+point of crossing the Ganges, he stood on a square stone, and turning
+his eyes back towards R�_g_ag_r_iha, he said, full of emotion, 'This
+is the last time that I see that city.' He likewise visited Vai_s_�l�,
+and after taking leave of it, he had nearly reached the city of
+Ku_s_in�gara, when his vital strength began to fail. He halted in a
+forest, and while sitting under a s�l tree, he gave up the ghost, or,
+as a Buddhist would say, entered into Nirv�_n_a.
+
+This is the simple story of Buddha's life. It reads much better in
+the eloquent pages of M. Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire, than in the turgid
+language of the Buddhists. If a critical historian, with the materials
+we possess, entered at all on the process of separating truth from
+falsehood, he would probably cut off much of what our biographer has
+left. Professor Wilson, in his Essay on Buddha and Buddhism, considers
+it doubtful whether any such person as Buddha ever actually existed.
+He dwells on the fact that there are at least twenty different dates
+assigned to his birth, varying from 2420 to 453 B.C. He points out
+that the clan of the _S_�kyas is never mentioned by early Hindu
+writers, and he lays much stress on the fact that most of the proper
+names of the persons connected with Buddha suggest an allegorical
+signification. The name of his father means, he whose food is pure;
+that of his mother signifies illusion; his own secular appellation,
+Siddh�rtha, he by whom the end is accomplished. Buddha itself means,
+the Enlightened, or, as Professor Wilson translates it less
+accurately, he by whom all is known. The same distinguished scholar
+goes even further, and maintaining that Kapilavastu, the birthplace of
+Buddha, has no place in the geography of the Hindus, suggests that it
+may be rendered, the substance of Kapila; intimating, in fact, the
+S�nkhya philosophy, the doctrine of Kapila Muni, upon which the
+fundamental elements of Buddhism, the eternity of matter, the
+principles of things, and the final extinction, are supposed to be
+planned. 'It seems not impossible,' he continues, 'that _S_�kya Muni
+is an unreal being, and that all that is related of him is as much a
+fiction, as is that of his preceding migrations, and the miracles that
+attended his birth, his life, and his departure.' This is going far
+beyond Niebuhr, far even beyond Strauss. If an allegorical name had
+been invented for the father of Buddha, one more appropriate than
+'Clean-food' might surely have been found. His wife is not the only
+queen known by the name of M�y�, M�y�d�v�, or M�y�vat�. Why, if these
+names were invented, should his wife have been allowed to keep the
+prosaic name of Gop� (cowherdess), and his father-in-law, that of
+Da_nd_ap�_n_i, 'Stick-hand?' As to his own name, Siddh�rtha, the
+Tibetans maintain that it was given him by his parent, whose wish
+(artha) had been fulfilled (siddha), as we hear of D�sir�s and
+Dieu-donn�s in French. One of the ministers of Da_s_aratha had the
+same name. It is possible also that Buddha himself assumed it in after
+life, as was the case with many of the Roman surnames. As to the name
+of Buddha, no one ever maintained that it was more than a title, the
+Enlightened, changed from an appellative into a proper name, just like
+the name of Christos, the Anointed, or Mohammed, the Expected.[61]
+Kapilavastu would be a most extraordinary compound to express 'the
+substance of the S�nkhya philosophy.' But all doubt on the subject is
+removed by the fact that both Fahian in the fifth, and Hiouen-Thsang
+in the seventh centuries, visited the real ruins of that city.
+
+[Footnote 61: See Sprenger, 'Das Leben des Mohammed,' 1861, vol. i. p.
+155.]
+
+Making every possible allowance for the accumulation of fiction which
+is sure to gather round the life of the founder of every great
+religion, we may be satisfied that Buddhism, which changed the aspect
+not only of India, but of nearly the whole of Asia, had a real
+founder; that he was not a Brahman by birth, but belonged to the
+second or royal caste; that being of a meditative turn of mind, and
+deeply impressed with the frailty of all created things, he became a
+recluse, and sought for light and comfort in the different systems of
+Br�hman philosophy and theology. Dissatisfied with the artificial
+systems of their priests and philosophers, convinced of the
+uselessness, nay of the pernicious influence, of their ceremonial
+practices and bodily penances, shocked, too, by their worldliness and
+pharisaical conceit, which made the priesthood the exclusive property
+of one caste and rendered every sincere approach of man to his Creator
+impossible without their intervention, Buddha must have produced at
+once a powerful impression on the people at large, when breaking
+through all the established rules of caste, he assumed the privileges
+of a Brahman, and throwing away the splendour of his royal position,
+travelled about as a beggar, not shrinking from the defiling contact
+of sinners and publicans. Though when we now speak of Buddhism, we
+think chiefly of its doctrines, the reform of Buddha had originally
+much more of a social than of a religious character. Buddha swept away
+the web with which the Brahmans had encircled the whole of India.
+Beginning as the destroyer of an old, he became the founder of a new
+religion. We can hardly understand how any nation could have lived
+under a system like that of the Brahmanic hierarchy, which coiled
+itself round every public and private act, and would have rendered
+life intolerable to any who had forfeited the favour of the priests.
+That system was attacked by Buddha. Buddha might have taught whatever
+philosophy he pleased, and we should hardly have heard his name. The
+people would not have minded him, and his system would only have been
+a drop in the ocean of philosophical speculation, by which India was
+deluged at all times. But when a young prince assembled round him
+people of all castes, of all ranks, when he defeated the Brahmans in
+public disputations, when he declared the sacrifices by which they
+made their living not only useless but sinful, when instead of severe
+penance or excommunications inflicted by the Brahmans sometimes for
+the most trifling offences, he only required public confession of sin
+and a promise to sin no more: when the charitable gifts hitherto
+monopolised by the Brahmans, began to flow into new channels,
+supporting hundreds and thousands of Buddhist mendicants, more had
+been achieved than probably Buddha himself had ever dreamt of; and he
+whose meditations had been how to deliver the soul of man from misery
+and the fear of death, had delivered the people of India from a
+degrading thraldom and from priestly tyranny.
+
+The most important element of the Buddhist reform has always been its
+social and moral code, not its metaphysical theories. That moral code,
+taken by itself, is one of the most perfect which the world has ever
+known. On this point all testimonies from hostile and from friendly
+quarters agree. Spence Hardy, a Wesleyan Missionary, speaking of the
+Dhamma Padam, or the 'Footsteps of the Law,' admits that a collection
+might be made from the precepts of this work, which in the purity of
+its ethics could hardly be equalled from any other heathen author. M.
+Laboulaye, one of the most distinguished members of the French
+Academy, remarks in the 'D�bats' of the 4th of April, 1853: 'It is
+difficult to comprehend how men not assisted by revelation could have
+soared so high, and approached so near to the truth.' Besides the five
+great commandments not to kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery,
+not to lie, not to get drunk, every shade of vice, hypocrisy, anger,
+pride, suspicion, greediness, gossiping, cruelty to animals, is
+guarded against by special precepts. Among the virtues recommended, we
+find not only reverence of parents, care for children, submission to
+authority, gratitude, moderation in time of prosperity, submission in
+time of trial, equanimity at all times, but virtues unknown in any
+heathen system of morality, such as the duty of forgiving insults and
+not rewarding evil with evil. All virtues, we are told, spring from
+Maitr�, and this Maitr� can only be translated by charity and love. 'I
+do not hesitate,' says Burnouf,[62] 'to translate by charity the word
+Maitr�; it does not express friendship or the feeling of particular
+affection which a man has for one or more of his fellow-creatures, but
+that universal feeling which inspires us with good-will towards all
+men and constant willingness to help them.' We add one more testimony
+from the work of M. Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire:
+
+     'Je n'h�site pas � ajouter,' he writes, 'que, sauf le Christ
+     tout seul, il n'est point, parmi les fondateurs de religion,
+     de figure plus pure ni plus touchante que celle du Bouddha.
+     Sa vie n'a point de t�che. Son constant h�roisme �gale sa
+     conviction; et si la th�orie qu'il pr�conise est fausse, les
+     exemples personnels qu'il donne sont irr�prochables. Il est
+     le mod�le achev� de toutes les vertus qu'il pr�che; son
+     abn�gation, sa charit� son inalt�rable douceur, ne se
+     d�mentent point un seul instant; il abandonne � vingt-neuf
+     ans la cour du roi son p�re pour se faire religieux et
+     mendiant; il pr�pare silencieusement sa doctrine par six
+     ann�es de retraite et de m�ditation; il la propage par la
+     seule puissance de la parole et de la persuasion, pendant
+     plus d'un demi-si�cle; et quand il meurt entre les bras de
+     ses disciples, c'est avec la s�r�nit� d'un sage qui a
+     pratiqu� le bien toute sa vie, et qui est assur� d'avoir
+     trouv� le vrai.' (Page v.)
+
+[Footnote 62: Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 300.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There still remain, no doubt, some blurred and doubtful pages in the
+history of the prince of Kapilavastu; but we have only to look at the
+works on ancient philosophy and religion published some thirty years
+ago, in order to perceive the immense progress that has been made in
+establishing the true historical character of the founder of Buddhism.
+There was a time when Buddha was identified with Christ. The
+Manich�ans were actually forced to abjure their belief that Buddha,
+Christ, and Mani were one and the same person.[63] But we are thinking
+rather of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when elaborate
+books were written, in order to prove that Buddha had been in reality
+the Thoth of the Egyptians, that he was Mercury, or Wodan, or
+Zoroaster, or Pythagoras. Even Sir W. Jones, as we saw, identified
+Buddha, first with Odin, and afterwards with Shishak, 'who either in
+person or by a colony from Egypt imported into India the mild heresy
+of the ancient Bauddhas.' At present we know that neither Egypt nor
+the Walhalla of Germany, neither Greece nor Persia, could have
+produced either the man himself or his doctrine. He is the offspring
+of India in mind and soul. His doctrine, by the very antagonism in
+which it stands to the old system of Brahmanism, shows that it could
+not have sprung up in any country except India. The ancient history of
+Brahmanism leads on to Buddhism, with the same necessity with which
+medi�val Romanism led to Protestantism. Though the date of Buddha is
+still liable to small chronological oscillations, his place in the
+intellectual annals of India is henceforth definitely marked: Buddhism
+became the state religion of India at the time of A_s_oka; and
+A_s_oka, the Buddhist Constantine, was the grandson of _K_andragupta,
+the contemporary of Seleucus Nicator. The system of the Brahmans had
+run its course. Their ascendency, at first purely intellectual and
+religious, had gradually assumed a political character. By means of
+the system of caste this influence pervaded the whole social fabric,
+not as a vivifying leaven, but as a deadly poison. Their increasing
+power and self-confidence are clearly exhibited in the successive
+periods of their ancient literature. It begins with the simple hymns
+of the Veda. These are followed by the tracts, known by the name of
+Br�hma_n_as, in which a complete system of theology is elaborated, and
+claims advanced in favour of the Brahmans, such as were seldom
+conceded to any hierarchy. The third period in the history of their
+ancient literature is marked by their S�tras or Aphorisms, curt and
+dry formularies, showing the Brahmans in secure possession of all
+their claims. Such privileges as they then enjoyed are never enjoyed
+for any length of time. It was impossible for anybody to move or to
+assert his freedom of thought and action without finding himself
+impeded on all sides by the web of the Brahmanic law; nor was there
+anything in their religion to satisfy the natural yearnings of the
+human heart after spiritual comfort. What was felt by Buddha, had been
+felt more or less intensely by thousands; and this was the secret of
+his success. That success was accelerated, however, by political
+events. _K_andragupta had conquered the throne of Magadha, and
+acquired his supremacy in India in defiance of the Brahmanic law. He
+was of low origin, a mere adventurer, and by his accession to the
+throne an important mesh had been broken in the intricate system of
+caste. Neither he nor his successors could count on the support of the
+Brahmans, and it is but natural that his grandson, A_s_oka, should
+have been driven to seek support from the sect founded by Buddha.
+Buddha, by giving up his royal station, had broken the law of caste as
+much as _K_andragupta by usurping it. His school, though it had
+probably escaped open persecution until it rose to political
+importance, could never have been on friendly terms with the Brahmans
+of the old school. The _parvenu_ on the throne saw his natural allies
+in the followers of Buddha, and the mendicants, who by their
+unostentatious behaviour had won golden opinions among the lower and
+middle classes, were suddenly raised to an importance little dreamt of
+by their founder. Those who see in Buddhism, not a social but chiefly
+a religious and philosophical reform, have been deceived by the later
+Buddhist literature, and particularly by the controversies between
+Buddhists and Brahmans, which in later times led to the total
+expulsion of the former from India, and to the political
+re-establishment of Brahmanism. These, no doubt, turn chiefly on
+philosophical problems, and are of the most abstruse and intricate
+character. But such was not the teaching of Buddha. If we may judge
+from 'the four verities,' which Buddha inculcated from the first day
+that he entered on his career as a teacher, his philosophy of life was
+very simple. He proclaims that there was nothing but sorrow in life;
+that sorrow is produced by our affections, that our affections must be
+destroyed in order to destroy the root of sorrow, and that he could
+teach mankind how to eradicate all the affections, all passions, all
+desires. Such doctrines were intelligible; and considering that Buddha
+received people of all castes, who after renouncing the world and
+assuming their yellow robes, were sure of finding a livelihood from
+the charitable gifts of the people, it is not surprising that the
+number of his followers should have grown so rapidly. If Buddha really
+taught the metaphysical doctrines which are ascribed to him by
+subsequent writers--and this is a point which it is impossible to
+settle--not one in a thousand among his followers would have been
+capable of appreciating those speculations. They must have been
+reserved for a few of his disciples, and they would never have formed
+the nucleus for a popular religion.
+
+[Footnote 63: Neander, 'History of the Church,' vol. i. p. 817:
+[Greek: Ton Zaradan kai Boudan kai ton Christon kai ton Manichaion
+hena kai ton auton einai.]]
+
+Nearly all who have written on Buddhism, and M. Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire
+among the rest, have endeavoured to show that these metaphysical doctrines
+of Buddha were borrowed from the earlier systems of Brahmanic philosophy,
+and more particularly from the S�nkhya system. The reputed founder of that
+system is Kapila, and we saw before how Professor Wilson actually changed
+the name of Kapilavastu, the birthplace of Buddha, into a mere
+allegory:--Kapilavastu meaning, according to him, the substance of Kapila
+or of the S�nkhya philosophy. This is not all. Mr. Spence Hardy (p. 132)
+quotes a legend in which it is said that Buddha was in a former existence
+the ascetic Kapila, that the _S_�kya princes came to his hermitage, and
+that he pointed out to them the proper place for founding a new city, which
+city was named after him Kapilavastu. But we have looked in vain for any
+definite similarities between the system of Kapila, as known to us in the
+S�nkhya-s�tras, and the Abhidharma, or the metaphysics of the Buddhists.
+Such similarities would be invaluable. They would probably enable us to
+decide whether Buddha borrowed from Kapila or Kapila from Buddha, and thus
+determine the real chronology of the philosophical literature of India, as
+either prior or subsequent to the Buddhist era. There are certain notions
+which Buddha shares in common not only with Kapila, but with every Hindu
+philosopher. The idea of transmigration, the belief in the continuing
+effects of our good and bad actions, extending from our former to our
+present and from our present to our future lives, the sense that life is a
+dream or a burden, the admission of the uselessness of religious
+observances after the attainment of the highest knowledge, all these
+belong, so to say, to the national philosophy of India. We meet with these
+ideas everywhere, in the poetry, the philosophy, the religion of the
+Hindus. They cannot be claimed as the exclusive property of any system in
+particular. But if we look for more special coincidences between Buddha's
+doctrines and those of Kapila or other Indian philosophers, we look in
+vain. At first it might seem as if the very first aphorism of Kapila,
+namely, 'the complete cessation of pain, which is of three kinds, is the
+highest aim of man,' was merely a philosophical paraphrase of the events
+which, as we saw, determined Buddha to renounce the world in search of the
+true road to salvation. But though the starting-point of Kapila and Buddha
+is the same, a keen sense of human misery and a yearning after a better
+state, their roads diverge so completely and their goals are so far apart,
+that it is difficult to understand how, almost by common consent, Buddha is
+supposed either to have followed in the footsteps of Kapila, or to have
+changed Kapila's philosophy into a religion. Some scholars imagine that
+there was a more simple and primitive philosophy which was taught by
+Kapila, and that the S�tras which are now ascribed to him, are of later
+date. It is impossible either to prove or to disprove such a view. At
+present we know Kapila's philosophy from his S�tras only,[64] and these
+S�tras seem to us posterior, not anterior, to Buddha. Though the name of
+Buddha is not mentioned in the S�tras, his doctrines are clearly alluded to
+and controverted in several parts of them.
+
+[Footnote 64: Of Kapila's S�tras, together with the commentary of
+Vi_g_��na Bhikshu, a new edition was published in 1856, by Dr.
+Fitz-Edward Hall, in the 'Bibliotheca Indica.' An excellent
+translation of the Aphorisms, with illustrative extracts from the
+commentaries, was printed for the use of the Benares College, by Dr.
+Ballantyne.]
+
+It has been said that Buddha and Kapila were both atheists, and that
+Buddha borrowed his atheism from Kapila. But atheism is an indefinite
+term, and may mean very different things. In one sense every Indian
+philosopher was an atheist, for they all perceived that the gods of
+the populace could not claim the attributes that belong to a Supreme
+Being. But all the important philosophical systems of the Brahmans
+admit, in some form or other, the existence of an Absolute and Supreme
+Being, the source of all that exists, or seems to exist. Kapila, when
+accused of atheism, is not accused of denying the existence of an
+Absolute Being. He is accused of denying the existence of �_s_vara,
+which in general means the Lord, but which in the passage where it
+occurs, refers to the �_s_vara of the Yogins, or mystic philosophers.
+They maintained that in an ecstatic state man possesses the power of
+seeing God face to face, and they wished to have this ecstatic
+intuition included under the head of sensuous perceptions. To this
+Kapila demurred. You have not proved the existence of your Lord, he
+says, and therefore I see no reason why I should alter my definition
+of sensuous perception in order to accommodate your ecstatic visions.
+The commentator narrates that this strong language was used by Kapila
+in order to silence the wild talk of the Mystics, and that, though he
+taunted his adversaries with having failed to prove the existence of
+their Lord, he himself did not deny the existence of a Supreme Being.
+Kapila, however, went further. He endeavoured to show that all the
+attributes which the Mystics ascribed to their Lord are inappropriate.
+He used arguments very similar to those which have lately been used
+with such ability by a distinguished Bampton Lecturer. The supreme
+lord of the Mystics, Kapila argued, is either absolute and
+unconditioned (mukta), or he is bound and conditioned (baddha). If he
+is absolute and unconditioned, he cannot enter into the condition of a
+Creator; he would have no desires which could instigate him to create.
+If, on the contrary, he is represented as active, and entering on the
+work of creation, he would no longer be the absolute and unchangeable
+Being which we are asked to believe in. Kapila, like the preacher of
+our own days, was accused of paving the road to atheism, but his
+philosophy was nevertheless admitted as orthodox, because, in addition
+to sensuous perception and inductive reasoning, Kapila professed
+emphatically his belief in revelation, i. e. in the Veda, and allowed
+to it a place among the recognised instruments of knowledge. Buddha
+refused to allow to the Vedas any independent authority whatever, and
+this constituted the fundamental difference between the two
+philosophers.
+
+Whether Kapila's philosophy was really in accordance with the spirit
+of the Veda, is quite a different question. No philosophy, at least
+nothing like a definite system, is to be found in the sacred hymns of
+the Brahmans; and though the Ved�nta philosophy does less violence to
+the passages which it quotes from the Veda, the authors of the Veda
+would have been as much surprised at the consequences deduced from
+their words by the Ved�ntin, as by the strange meaning attributed to
+them by Kapila. The Ved�nta philosopher, like Kapila, would deny the
+existence of a Creator in the usual sense of the word. He explained
+the universe as an emanation from Brahman, which is all in all. Kapila
+admitted two principles, an absolute Spirit and Nature, and he looked
+upon the universe as produced by a reflection of Nature thrown on the
+mirror of the absolute Spirit. Both systems seem to regard creation,
+or the created world, as a misfortune, as an unfortunate accident. But
+they maintain that its effects can be neutralised, and that
+emancipation from the bonds of earthly existence is possible by means
+of philosophy. The Ved�nta philosopher imagines he is free when he has
+arrived at the knowledge that nothing exists but Brahman; that all
+phenomena are merely the result of ignorance; that after the
+destruction of that ignorance, and of its effects, all is merged again
+in Brahman, the true source of being, thought, and happiness. Kapila
+taught that the spirit became free from all mundane fetters as soon as
+it perceived that all phenomena were only passing reflections produced
+by nature upon the spirit, and as soon as it was able to shut its eyes
+to those illusory visions. Both systems therefore, and the same
+applies to all the other philosophical systems of the Brahmans,
+admitted an absolute or self-existing Being as the cause of all that
+exists or seems to exist. And here lies the specific difference
+between Kapila and Buddha. Buddha, like Kapila, maintained that this
+world had no absolute reality, that it was a snare and an illusion.
+The words, 'All is perishable, all is miserable, all is void,' must
+frequently have passed his lips. But we cannot call things unreal
+unless we have a conception of something that is real. Where, then,
+did Buddha find a reality in comparison with which this world might be
+called unreal? What remedy did he propose as an emancipation from the
+sufferings of this life? Difficult as it seems to us to conceive it,
+Buddha admits of no real cause of this unreal world. He denies the
+existence not only of a Creator, but of any Absolute Being. According
+to the metaphysical tenets, if not of Buddha himself, at least of his
+sect, there is no reality anywhere, neither in the past nor in the
+future. True wisdom consists in perceiving the nothingness of all
+things, and in a desire to become nothing, to be blown out, to enter
+into Nirv�_n_a. Emancipation is obtained by total extinction, not by
+absorption in Brahman, or by a recovery of the soul's true estate. If
+to be is misery, not to be must be felicity, and this felicity is the
+highest reward which Buddha promised to his disciples. In reading the
+Aphorisms of Kapila, it is difficult not to see in his remarks on
+those who maintain that all is void, covert attacks on Buddha and his
+followers. In one place (I. 43) Kapila argues that if people believed
+in the reality of thought only, and denied the reality of external
+objects, they would soon be driven to admit that nothing at all
+exists, because we perceive our thoughts in the same manner as we
+perceive external objects. This naturally leads him to an examination
+of that extreme doctrine, according to which all that we perceive is
+void, and all is supposed to perish, because it is the nature of
+things that they should perish. Kapila remarks in reference to this
+view (I. 45), that it is a mere assertion of persons who are 'not
+enlightened,' in Sanskrit a-buddha, a sarcastic expression in which it
+is very difficult not to see an allusion to Buddha, or to those who
+claimed for him the title of the Enlightened. Kapila then proceeds to
+give the best answer that could be given to those who taught that
+complete annihilation must be the highest aim of man, as the only
+means of a complete cessation of suffering. 'It is not so,' he says,
+'for if people wish to be free from suffering, it is they themselves
+who wish to be free, just as in this life it is they themselves who
+wish to enjoy happiness. There must be a permanent soul in order to
+satisfy the yearnings of the human heart, and if you deny that soul,
+you have no right to speak of the highest aim--of man.'
+
+Whether the belief in this kind of Nirv�_n_a, i. e. in a total
+extinction of being, personality, and consciousness, was at any time
+shared by the large masses of the people, is difficult either to
+assert or deny. We know nothing in ancient times of the religious
+convictions of the millions. We only know what a few leading spirits
+believed, or professed to believe. That certain individuals should
+have spoken and written of total extinction as the highest aim of man,
+is intelligible. Job cursed the day on which he was born, and Solomon
+praised the 'dead which are already dead, more than the living which
+are yet alive,' 'Yea, better is he than both they,' he said, 'which
+hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under
+the sun,' Voltaire said in his own flippant way, 'On aime la vie, mais
+le n�ant ne laisse pas d'avoir du bon;' and a modern German
+philosopher, who has found much favour with those who profess to
+despise Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, writes, 'Considered in its
+objective value, it is more than doubtful that life is preferable to
+the Nothing. I should say even, that if experience and reflection
+could lift up their voices they would recommend to us the Nothing. We
+are what ought not to be, and we shall therefore cease to be.' Under
+peculiar circumstances, in the agonies of despair, or under the
+gathering clouds of madness, such language is intelligible; but to
+believe, as we are asked to believe, that one half of mankind had
+yearned for total annihilation, would be tantamount to a belief that
+there is a difference in kind between man and man. Buddhist
+philosophers, no doubt, held this doctrine, and it cannot be denied
+that it found a place in the Buddhist canon. But even among the
+different schools of Buddhist philosophers, very different views are
+adopted as to the true meaning of Nirv�_n_a, and with the modern
+Buddhists of Burmah, Nigban, as they call it, is defined simply as
+freedom from old age, disease, and death. We do not find fault with M.
+Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire for having so emphatically pressed the charge
+of nihilism against Buddha himself. In one portion of the Buddhist
+canon the most extreme views of nihilism are put into his mouth. All
+we can say is that that canon is later than Buddha, and that in the
+same canon[65] the founder of Buddhism, after having entered into
+Nirv�_n_a, is still spoken of as living, nay, as showing himself to
+those who believe in him. Buddha, who denied the existence, or at
+least the divine nature, of the gods worshipped by the Brahmans, was
+raised himself to the rank of a deity by some of his followers (the
+Ai_s_varikas), and we need not wonder therefore if his Nirv�_n_a too
+was gradually changed into an Elysian field. And finally, if we may
+argue from human nature, such as we find it at all times and in all
+countries, we confess that we cannot bring ourselves to believe that
+the reformer of India, the teacher of so perfect a code of morality,
+the young prince who gave up all he had in order to help those whom
+he saw afflicted in mind, body, or estate, should have cared much
+about speculations which he knew would either be misunderstood, or not
+understood at all, by those whom he wished to benefit; that he should
+have thrown away one of the most powerful weapons in the hands of
+every religious teacher, the belief in a future life, and should not
+have seen, that if this life was sooner or later to end in nothing, it
+was hardly worth the trouble which he took himself, or the sacrifices
+which he imposed on his disciples.
+
+_April, 1862._
+
+[Footnote 65: 'L'enfant �gar�,' par Ph. Ed. Foucaux, p. 19.]
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+BUDDHIST PILGRIMS.[66]
+
+
+M. Stanislas Julien has commenced the publication of a work entitled,
+'Voyages des P�lerins Bouddhistes.' The first volume, published in the
+year 1853, contains the biography of Hiouen-thsang, who, in the middle
+of the seventh century A.D., travelled from China through Central Asia
+to India. The second, which has just reached us, gives us the first
+portion of Hiouen-thsang's own diary.
+
+[Footnote 66: 'Voyages des P�lerins Bouddhistes.' Vol. I. Histoire de
+la Vie de Hiouen-thsang, et de ses Voyages dans l'Inde, depuis l'an
+629 jusqu'en 645, par Hoeili et Yen-thsong; traduite du Chinois par
+Stanislas Julien.
+
+Vol. II. M�moires sur les Contr�es Occidentales, traduits du Sanscrit
+en Chinois, en l'an 648, par Hiouen-thsang, et du Chinois en Fran�ais,
+pas Stanislas Julien. Paris, 1853-1857: B. Duprat. London and
+Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate.]
+
+There are not many books of travel which can be compared to these
+volumes. Hiouen-thsang passed through countries which few had visited
+before him. He describes parts of the world which no one has explored
+since, and where even our modern maps contain hardly more than the
+ingenious conjectures of Alexander von Humboldt. His observations are
+minute; his geographical, statistical, and historical remarks most
+accurate and trustworthy. The chief object of his travels was to study
+the religion of Buddha, the great reformer of India. Some Chinese
+pilgrims visited India before, several after, his time. Hiouen-thsang,
+however, is considered by the Chinese themselves as the most
+distinguished of these pilgrims, and M. Stanislas Julien has rightly
+assigned to him the first place in his collection.
+
+In order to understand what Hiouen-thsang was, and to appreciate his
+life and his labours, we must first cast a glance at the history of a
+religion which, however unattractive and even mischievous it may
+appear to ourselves, inspired her votary with the true spirit of
+devotion and self-sacrifice. That religion has now existed for exactly
+2,400 years. To millions and millions of human beings it has been the
+only preparation for a higher life placed within their reach. And even
+at the present day it counts among the hordes of Asia a more numerous
+array of believers than any other faith, not excluding Mohammedanism
+or Christianity. The religion of Buddha took its origin in India about
+the middle of the sixth century B.C., but it did not assume its
+political importance till about the time of Alexander's invasion. We
+know little, therefore, of its first origin and spreading, because the
+canonical works on which we must chiefly rely for information belong
+to a much later period, and are strongly tinged with a legendary
+character. The very existence of such a being as Buddha, the son of
+_S_uddhodana, king of Kapilavastu, has been doubted. But what can
+never be doubted is this, that Buddhism, such as we find it in
+Russia[67] and Sweden[68] on the very threshold of European
+civilisation, in the north of Asia, in Mongolia, Tatary, China, Tibet,
+Nepal, Siam, Burmah, and Ceylon, had its origin in India. Doctrines
+similar to those of Buddha existed in that country long before his
+time. We can trace them like meandering roots below the surface long
+before we reach the point where the roots strike up into a stem, and
+the stem branches off again into fruit-bearing branches. What was
+original and new in Buddha was his changing a philosophical system
+into a practical doctrine; his taking the wisdom of the few, and
+coining as much of it as he thought genuine for the benefit of the
+many; his breaking with the traditional formalities of the past, and
+proclaiming for the first time, in spite of castes and creeds, the
+equality of the rich and the poor, the foolish and the wise, the
+'twice-born' and the outcast. Buddhism, as a religion and as a
+political fact, was a reaction against Brahmanism, though it retained
+much of that more primitive form of faith and worship. Buddhism, in
+its historical growth, presupposes Brahmanism, and, however hostile
+the mutual relation of these two religions may have been at different
+periods of Indian history, it can be shown, without much difficulty,
+that the latter was but a natural consequence of the former.
+
+The ancient religion of the Aryan inhabitants of India had started,
+like the religion of the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans, Slaves, and
+Celts, with a simple and intelligible mythological phraseology. In the
+Veda--for there is but one real Veda--the names of all the so-called
+gods or Devas betray their original physical character and meaning
+without disguise. The fire was praised and invoked by the name of
+"Agni" (_ignis_); the earth by the name of "P_r_ithv�" (the broad);
+the sky by the name of "Dyu" (Jupiter), and afterwards of "Indra;" the
+firmament and the waters by the name of "Varu_n_a," or [Greek:
+Ovravos]. The sun was invoked by many names, such as "S�rya,"
+"Savit_r_i," "Vish_n_u," or "Mitra;" and the dawn rejoiced in such
+titles as "Ushas," "Urva_s_i," "Ahan�," and "S�ry�." Nor was the moon
+forgotten. For though it is mentioned but rarely under its usual name
+of "_K_andra," it is alluded to under the more sacred appellation of
+"Soma;" and each of its four phases had received its own denomination.
+There is hardly any part of nature, if it could impress the human mind
+in any way with the ideas of a higher power, of order, eternity, or
+beneficence,--whether the winds, or the rivers, or the trees, or the
+mountains,--without a name and representative in the early Hindu
+Pantheon. No doubt there existed in the human mind, from the very
+beginning, something, whether we call it a suspicion, an innate idea,
+an intuition, or a sense of the Divine. What distinguishes man from
+the rest of the animal creation is chiefly that ineradicable feeling
+of dependence and reliance upon some higher power, a consciousness of
+bondage, from which the very name of "religion" was derived. "It is He
+that hath made us, and not we ourselves." The presence of that power
+was felt everywhere, and nowhere more clearly and strongly than in the
+rising and setting of the sun, in the change of day and night, of
+spring and winter, of birth and death. But, although the Divine
+presence was felt everywhere, it was impossible in that early period
+of thought, and with a language incapable as yet of expressing
+anything but material objects, to conceive the idea of God in its
+purity and fullness, or to assign to it an adequate and worthy
+expression. Children cannot think the thoughts of men, and the poets
+of the Veda could not speak the language of Aristotle. It was by a
+slow process that the human mind elaborated the idea of one absolute
+and supreme Godhead; and by a still slower process that the human
+language matured a word to express that idea. A period of growth was
+inevitable, and those who, from a mere guess of their own, do not
+hesitate to speak authoritatively of a primeval revelation, which
+imparted to the Pagan world the idea of the Godhead in all its purity,
+forget that, however pure and sublime and spiritual that revelation
+might have been, there was no language capable as yet of expressing
+the high and immaterial conceptions of that Heaven-sent message. The
+real history of religion, during the earliest mythological period,
+represents to us a slow process of fermentation in thought and
+language, with its various interruptions, its overflowings, its
+coolings, its deposits, and its gradual clearing from all extraneous
+and foreign admixture. This is not only the case among the
+Indo-European or Aryan races in India, in Greece, and in Germany. In
+Peru, and wherever the primitive formations of the intellectual world
+crop out, the process is exactly the same. "The religion of the sun,"
+as it has been boldly said by the author of the "Spanish Conquest in
+America," "was inevitable." It was like a deep furrow which that
+heavenly luminary drew, in its silent procession from east to west,
+over the virgin mind of the gazing multitude; and in the impression
+left there by the first rising and setting of the sun, there lay the
+dark seed of a faith in a more than human being, the first intimation
+of a life without beginning, of a world without end. Manifold seed
+fell afterwards into the soil once broken. Something divine was
+discovered in everything that moved and lived. Names were stammered
+forth in anxious haste, and no single name could fully express what
+lay hidden in the human mind and wanted expression--the idea of an
+absolute, and perfect, and supreme, and immortal Essence. Thus a
+countless host of nominal gods was called into being, and for a time
+seemed to satisfy the wants of a thoughtless multitude. But there were
+thoughtful men at all times, and their reason protested against the
+contradictions of a mythological phraseology, though it had been
+hallowed by sacred customs and traditions. That rebellious reason had
+been at work from the very first, always ready to break the yoke of
+names and formulas which no longer expressed what they were intended
+to express. The idea which had yearned for utterance was the idea of a
+supreme and absolute Power, and that yearning was not satisfied by
+such names as "Kronos," "Zeus," and "Apollon." The very sound of such
+a word as "God," used in the plural, jarred on the ear, as if we were
+to speak of two universes, or of a single twin. There are many words,
+as Greek and Latin grammarians tell us, which, if used in the plural,
+have a different meaning from what they have in the singular. The
+Latin "�edes" means a temple; if used in the plural it means a house.
+"Deus" and [Greek: Theos] ought to be added to the same class of
+words. The idea of supreme perfection excluded limitation, and the
+idea of God excluded the possibility of many gods. This may seem
+language too abstract and metaphysical for the early times of which we
+are speaking. But the ancient poets of the Vedic hymns have expressed
+the same thought with perfect clearness and simplicity. In the
+Rig-veda (I. 164, 46) we read:--
+
+"That which is one the sages speak of in many ways--they call it
+'Agni,' 'Yama,' 'M�tari_s_van.'"
+
+[Footnote 67: See W. Spottiswoode's 'Tarantasse Journey,' p. 220,
+Visit to the Buddhist Temple.]
+
+[Footnote 68: The only trace of the influence of Buddhism among the
+_K_udic races, the Fins, Laps, &c., is found in the name of their
+priests and sorcerers, the Shamans. Shaman is supposed to be a
+corruption of _S_rama_n_a, a name applied to Buddha, and to Buddhist
+priests in general. The ancient mythological religion of the _K_udic
+races has nothing in common with Buddhism. See Castren's 'Lectures on
+Finnish Mythology,' 1853. Finland was ceded by Sweden to Russia in
+1809, See the Author's 'Survey of Languages,' second edition, p. 116.
+Shamanism found its way from India to Siberia vi� Tibet, China, and
+Mongolia. Rules on the formation of magic figures, on the treatment of
+diseases by charms, on the worship of evil spirits, on the acquisition
+of supernatural powers, on charms, incantations, and other branches of
+Shaman witchcraft, are found in the Stan-gyour, or the second part of
+the Tibetan canon, and in some of the late Tantras of the Nepalese
+collection.]
+
+Besides the plurality of gods, which was sure to lead to their
+destruction, there was a taint of mortality which they could not throw
+off. They all derived their being from the life of nature. The god who
+represented the sun was liable, in the mythological language of
+antiquity, to all the accidents which threatened the solar luminary.
+Though he might rise in immortal youth in the morning, he was
+conquered by the shadows of the night, and the powers of winter seemed
+to overthrow his heavenly throne. There is nothing in nature free from
+change, and the gods of nature fell under the thralldom of nature's
+laws. The sun must set, and the solar gods and heroes must die. There
+must be one God, there must be one unchanging Deity; this was the
+silent conviction of the human mind. There are many gods, liable to
+all the vicissitudes of life; this was everywhere the answer of
+mythological religion.
+
+It is curious to observe in how many various ways these two opposite
+principles were kept for a time from open conflict, and how long the
+heathen temples resisted the enemy which was slowly and imperceptibly
+undermining their very foundations. In Greece this mortal element,
+inherent in all gods, was eliminated to a great extent by the
+conception of heroes. Whatever was too human in the ancient legends
+told of Zeus and Apollon was transfered to so-called half-gods or
+heroes, who were represented as the sons or favorites of the gods, and
+who bore their fate under a slightly altered name. The twofold
+character of Herakles as a god and as a hero is acknowledged even by
+Herodotus, and some of his epithets would have been sufficient to
+indicate his solar and originally divine character. But, in order to
+make some of the legends told of the solar deity possible or
+conceivable, it was necessary to represent Herakles as a more human
+being, and to make him rise to the seat of the Immortals only after he
+had endured toils and sufferings incompatible with the dignity of an
+Olympian god. We find the same idea in Peru, only that there it led to
+different results. A thinking, or, as he was called, a freethinking
+Inca[69] remarked that this perpetual travelling of the sun was a sign
+of servitude,[70] and he threw doubts upon the divine nature of such
+an unquiet thing as that great luminary appeared to him to be. And
+this misgiving led to a tradition which, even should it be unfounded
+in history, had some truth in itself, that there was in Peru an
+earlier worship, that of an invisible Deity, the Creator of the world,
+Pachacamac. In Greece, also, there are signs of a similar craving
+after the "Unknown God." A supreme God was wanted, and Zeus, the
+stripling of Creta, was raised to that rank. He became God above all
+gods--[Greek: hapant�n kyrios] as Pindar calls him. Yet more was
+wanted than a mere Zeus; and thus a supreme Fate or Spell was imagined
+before which all the gods, and even Zeus, had to bow. And even this
+Fate was not allowed to remain supreme, and there was something in the
+destinies of man which was called [Greek: hypermoron], or "beyond
+Fate." The most awful solution, however, of the problem belongs to
+Teutonic mythology. Here, also, some heroes were introduced; but their
+death was only the beginning of the final catastrophe. "All gods must
+die." Such is the last word of that religion which had grown up in the
+forests of Germany, and found a last refuge among the glaciers and
+volcanoes of Iceland. The death of Sigurd, the descendant of Odin,
+could not avert the death of Balder, the son of Odin; and the death of
+Balder was soon to be followed by the death of Odin himself, and of
+all the immortal gods.
+
+All this was inevitable, and Prometheus, the man of forethought, could
+safely predict the fall of Zeus. The struggles by which reason and
+faith overthrow tradition and superstition vary in different countries
+and at different times; but the final victory is always on their side.
+In India the same antagonism manifested itself, but what there seemed
+a victory of reason threatened to become the destruction of all
+religious faith. At first there was hardly a struggle. On the
+primitive mythological stratum of thought two new formations
+arose,--the Brahmanical philosophy and the Brahmanical ceremonial; the
+one opening the widest avenues of philosophical thought, the other
+fencing all religious feeling within the narrowest barriers. Both
+derived their authority from the same source. Both professed to carry
+out the meaning and purpose of the Veda. Thus we see on the one side,
+the growth of a numerous and powerful priesthood, and the
+establishment of a ceremonial which embraced every moment of a man's
+life from his birth to his death. There was no event which might have
+moved the heart to a spontaneous outpouring of praise or thanksgiving,
+which was not regulated by priestly formulas. Every prayer was
+prescribed, every sacrifice determined. Every god had his share, and
+the claims of each deity on the adoration of the faithful were set
+down with such punctiliousness, the danger of offending their pride
+was represented in such vivid colors, that no one would venture to
+approach their presence without the assistance of a well-paid staff of
+masters of divine ceremonies. It was impossible to avoid sin without
+the help of the Brahmans. They alone knew the food that might properly
+be eaten, the air which might properly be breathed, the dress which
+might properly be worn. They alone could tell what god should be
+invoked, what sacrifice be offered; and the slightest mistake of
+pronunciation, the slightest neglect about clarified butter, or the
+length of the ladle in which it was to be offered, might bring
+destruction upon the head of the unassisted worshipper. No nation was
+ever so completely priest-ridden as the Hindus under the sway of the
+Brahmanic law. Yet, on the other side, the same people were allowed to
+indulge in the most unrestrained freedom of thought, and in the
+schools of their philosophy the very names of their gods were never
+mentioned. Their existence was neither denied nor asserted; they were
+of no greater importance in the system of the world of thought than
+trees or mountains, men or animals; and to offer sacrifices to them
+with a hope of rewards, so far from being meritorious, was considered
+as dangerous to that emancipation to which a clear perception of
+philosophical truth was to lead the patient student. There was one
+system which taught that there existed but one Being, without a
+second; that everything else which seemed to exist was but a dream and
+illusion, and that this illusion might be removed by a true knowledge
+of the one Being. There was another system which admitted two
+principles,--one a subjective and self-existent mind, the other
+matter, endowed with qualities. Here the world, with its joys and
+sorrows, was explained as the result of the subjective Self,
+reflecting itself in the mirror of matter; and final emancipation was
+obtained by turning away the eyes from the play of nature, and being
+absorbed in the knowledge of the time and absolute Self. A third
+system started with the admission of atoms, and explained every
+effect, including the elements and the mind, animals, men, and gods,
+from the concurrence of these atoms. In fact, as M. Cousin remarked
+many years ago, the history of the philosophy of India is "un abr�g�
+de l'histoire de la philosophie." The germs of all these systems are
+traced back to the Vedas, Br�hma_n_as, and the Upanishads, and the man
+who believed in any of them was considered as orthodox as the devout
+worshipper of the gods; the one was saved by knowledge and faith, the
+other by works and faith.
+
+Such was the state of the Hindu mind when Buddhism arose; or, rather,
+such was the state of the Hindu mind which gave rise to Buddhism.
+Buddha himself went through the school of the Brahmans. He performed
+their penances, he studied their philosophy, and he at last claimed
+the name of "the Buddha," or "the Enlightened," when he threw away the
+whole ceremonial, with its sacrifices, superstitions, penances, and
+castes, as worthless, and changed the complicated systems of
+philosophy into a short doctrine of salvation. This doctrine of
+salvation has been called pure Atheism and Nihilism, and it no doubt
+was liable to both charges in its metaphysical character, and in that
+form in which we chiefly know it. It was Atheistic, not because it
+denied the existence of such gods as Indra and Brahma. Buddha did not
+even condescend to deny their existence. But it was called Atheistic,
+like the Sankhya philosophy, which admitted but one subjective Self,
+and considered creation as an illusion of that Self, imaging itself
+for a while in the mirror of nature. As there was no reality in
+creation, there could be no real Creator. All that seemed to exist was
+the result of ignorance. To remove that ignorance was to remove the
+cause of all that seemed to exist. How a religion which taught the
+annihilation of all existence, of all thought, of all individuality
+and personality, as the highest object of all endeavors, could have
+laid hold of the minds of millions of human beings, and how at the
+same time, by enforcing the duties of morality, justice, kindness, and
+self-sacrifice, it could have exercised a decided beneficial
+influence, not only on the natives of India, but on the lowest
+barbarians of Central Asia, is a riddle which no one has been able to
+solve. We must distinguish, it seems, between Buddhism as a religion,
+and Buddhism as a a religion, and Buddhism as a philosophy.
+The former addressed itself to millions, the latter to a few isolated
+thinkers. It is from these isolated thinkers, however, and from their
+literary compositions, that we are apt to form our notions of what
+Buddhism was, while, as a matter of fact, not one in a thousand would
+have been capable of following these metaphysical speculations. To the
+people at large Buddhism was a moral and religious, not a
+philosophical reform. Yet even its morality has a metaphysical tinge.
+The morality which it teaches is not a morality of expediency and
+rewards. Virtue is not enjoined because it necessarily leads to
+happiness. No; virtue is to be practised, but happiness is to be
+shunned, and the only reward for virtue is that it subdues the
+passions, and thus prepares the human mind for that knowledge which is
+to end in complete annihilation. There are ten commandments which
+Buddha imposes on his disciples.[71] They are--
+
+1. Not to kill.
+2. Not to steal.
+3. Not to commit adultery.
+4. Not to lie.
+5. Not to get intoxicated.
+6. To abstain from unseasonable meals.
+7. To abstain from public spectacles.
+
+[Footnote 69: Helps, _The Spanish Conquest_, vol. iii. p. 503: "Que
+cosa tam inquieta non le parescia ser Dios."]
+
+[Footnote 70: On the servitude of the gods, see the "Essay on
+Comparative Mythology," _Oxford Essays_, 1856, p. 69.]
+
+[Footnote 71: See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 444. Barth�lemy
+Saint-Hilaire, 'Du Bouddhisme,' p. 132. Ch.F.Neumann, 'Catechism of
+the Shamans.']
+
+8. To abstain from expensive dresses.
+9. Not to have a large bed.
+10. Not to receive silver or gold.
+
+The duties of those who embraced a religious life were more severe.
+They were not allowed to wear any dress except rags collected in
+cemeteries, and these rags they had to sew together with their own
+hands. A yellow cloak was to be thrown over these rags. Their food was
+to be extremely simple, and they were not to possess anything, except
+what they could get by collecting alms from door to door in their
+wooden bowls. They had but one meal in the morning, and were not
+allowed to touch any food after midday. They were to live in forests,
+not in cities, and their only shelter was to be the shadow of a tree.
+There they were to sit, to spread their carpet, but not to lie down,
+even during sleep. They were allowed to enter the nearest city or
+village in order to beg, but they had to return to their forest before
+night, and the only change which was allowed, or rather prescribed,
+was when they had to spend some nights in the cemeteries, there to
+meditate on the vanity of all things. And what was the object of all
+this asceticism? Simply to guide each individual towards that path
+which would finally bring him to Nirv�_n_a, to utter extinction or
+annihilation. The very definition of virtue was that it helped man to
+cross over to the other shore, and that other shore was not death, but
+cessation of all being. Thus charity was considered a virtue; modesty,
+patience, courage, contemplation, and science, all were virtues, but
+they were practised only as a means of arriving at deliverance. Buddha
+himself exhibited the perfection of all these virtues. His charity
+knew no bounds. When he saw a tigress starved, and unable to feed her
+cubs, he is said to have made a charitable oblation of his body to be
+devoured by them. Hiouen-thsang visited the place on the banks of the
+Indus where this miracle was supposed to have happened, and he remarks
+that the soil is still red there from the blood of Buddha, and that
+the trees and flowers have the same colour.[72] As to the modesty of
+Buddha, nothing could exceed it. One day, king Prasena_g_it, the
+protector of Buddha, called on him to perform miracles, in order to
+silence his adversaries, the Brahmans. Buddha consented. He performed
+the required miracles; but he exclaimed, 'Great king, I do not teach
+the law to my pupils, telling them, Go, ye saints, and before the eyes
+of the Brahmans and householders perform, by means of your
+supernatural powers, miracles greater than any man can perform. I tell
+them, when I teach them the law, Live, ye saints, hiding your good
+works and showing your sins.' And yet, all this self-sacrificing
+charity, all this self-sacrificing humility, by which the life of
+Buddha was distinguished throughout, and which he preached to the
+multitudes that came to listen to him, had, we are told, but one
+object, and that object was final annihilation. It is impossible
+almost to believe it, and yet when we turn away our eyes from the
+pleasing picture of that high morality which Buddha preached for the
+first time to all classes of men, and look into the dark pages of his
+code of religious metaphysics, we can hardly find another explanation.
+Fortunately, the millions who embraced the doctrines of Buddha, and
+were saved by it from the depths of barbarism, brutality, and
+selfishness, were unable to fathom the meaning of his metaphysical
+doctrines. With them the Nirv�_n_a to which they aspired, became only
+a relative deliverance from the miseries of human life; nay, it took
+the bright colours of a paradise, to be regained by the pious
+worshipper of Buddha. But was this the meaning of Buddha himself? In
+his 'Four Verities' he does not, indeed, define Nirv�_n_a, except by
+cessation of all pain; but when he traces the cause of pain, and
+teaches the means of destroying not only pain itself, but the cause of
+pain, we shall see that his Nirv�_n_a assumes a very different
+meaning. His 'Four Verities' are very simple. The first asserts the
+existence of pain; the second asserts that the cause of pain lies in
+sin; the third asserts that pain may cease by Nirv�_n_a; the fourth
+shows the way that leads to Nirv�_n_a. This way to Nirv�_n_a consists
+in eight things--right faith (orthodoxy), right judgment (logic),
+right language (veracity), right purpose (honesty), right practice
+(religious life), right obedience (lawful life), right memory, and
+right meditation. All these precepts might be understood as part of a
+simply moral code, closing with a kind of mystic meditation on the
+highest object of thought, and with a yearning after deliverance from
+all worldly ties. Similar systems have prevailed in many parts of the
+world, without denying the existence of an absolute Being, or of a
+something towards which the human mind tends, in which it is absorbed
+or even annihilated. Awful as such a mysticism may appear, yet it
+leaves still something that exists, it acknowledges a feeling of
+dependence in man. It knows of a first cause, though it may have
+nothing to predicate of it except that it is [Greek: t� kino�n
+akin�t�n]. A return is possible from that desert. The first cause may
+be called to life again. It may take the names of Creator, Preserver,
+Ruler; and when the simplicity and helplessness of the child have
+re-entered the heart of man, the name of father will come back to the
+lips which had uttered in vain all the names of a philosophical
+despair. But from the Nirv�_n_a of the Buddhist metaphysician there is
+no return. He starts from the idea that the highest object is to
+escape pain. Life in his eyes is nothing but misery; birth the cause
+of all evil, from which even death cannot deliver him, because he
+believes in an eternal cycle of existence, or in transmigration. There
+is no deliverance from evil, except by breaking through the prison
+walls, not only of life, but of existence, and by extirpating the last
+cause of existence. What, then, is the cause of existence? The cause
+of existence, says the Buddhist metaphysician, is attachment--an
+inclination towards something; and this attachment arises from thirst
+or desire. Desire presupposes perception of the object desired;
+perception presupposes contact; contact, at least a sentient contact,
+presupposes the senses; and, as the senses can only perceive what has
+form and name, or what is distinct, distinction is the real cause of
+all the effects which end in existence, birth, and pain. Now, this
+distinction is itself the result of conceptions or ideas; but these
+ideas, so far from being, as in Greek philosophy, the true and
+everlasting forms of the Absolute, are here represented as mere
+illusions, the effects of ignorance (avidy�). Ignorance, therefore, is
+really the primary cause of all that seems to exist. To know that
+ignorance, as the root of all evil, is the same as to destroy it, and
+with it all effects that flowed from it. In order to see how this
+doctrine affects the individual, let us watch the last moments of
+Buddha as described by his disciples. He enters into the first stage
+of meditation when he feels freedom from sin, acquires a knowledge of
+the nature of all things, and has no desire except that of Nirv�_n_a.
+But he still feels pleasure; he even uses his reasoning and
+discriminating powers. The use of these powers ceases in the second
+stage of meditation, when nothing remains but a desire after
+Nirv�_n_a, and a general feeling of satisfaction, arising from his
+intellectual perfection. That satisfaction, also, is extinguished in
+the third stage. Indifference succeeds; yet there is still
+self-consciousness, and a certain amount of physical pleasure. These
+last remnants are destroyed in the fourth stage; memory fades away,
+all pleasure and pain are gone, and the doors of Nirv�_n_a now open
+before him. After having passed these four stages once, Buddha went
+through them a second time, but he died before he attained again to
+the fourth stage. We must soar still higher, and though we may feel
+giddy and disgusted, we must sit out this tragedy till the curtain
+falls. After the four stages of meditation[73] are passed, the Buddha
+(and every being is to become a Buddha) enters into the infinity of
+space; then into the infinity of intelligence; and thence he passes
+into the region of nothing. But even here there is no rest. There is
+still something left--the idea of the nothing in which he rejoices.
+That also must be destroyed, and it is destroyed in the fourth and
+last region, where there is not even the idea of a nothing left, and
+where there is complete rest, undisturbed by nothing, or what is not
+nothing.[74] There are few persons who will take the trouble of
+reasoning out such hallucinations; least of all, persons who are
+accustomed to the sober language of Greek philosophy; and it is the
+more interesting to hear the opinion which one of the best
+Aristotelean scholars of the present day, after a patient examination
+of the authentic documents of Buddhism, has formed of its system of
+metaphysics. M. Barth�lemy Saint-Hilaire, in a review on Buddhism,
+published in the 'Journal des Savants,' says:
+
+     'Buddhism has no God; it has not even the confused and vague
+     notion of a Universal Spirit in which the human soul,
+     according to the orthodox doctrine of Brahmanism, and the
+     S�nkhya philosophy, may be absorbed. Nor does it admit
+     nature, in the proper sense of the word, and it ignores that
+     profound division between spirit and matter which forms the
+     system and the glory of Kapila. It confounds man with all
+     that surrounds him, all the while preaching to him the laws
+     of virtue. Buddhism, therefore, cannot unite the human soul,
+     which it does not even mention, with a God, whom it ignores;
+     nor with nature, which it does not know better. Nothing
+     remained but to annihilate the soul; and in order to be
+     quite sure that the soul may not re-appear under some new
+     form in this world, which has been cursed as the abode of
+     illusion and misery, Buddhism destroys its very elements,
+     and never gets tired of glorying in this achievement. What
+     more is wanted?
+
+[Footnote 72: Vol. i. p. 89, vol. ii. p. 167.]
+
+[Footnote 73: These 'four stages' are described in the same manner in
+the canonical books of Ceylon and Nepal, and may therefore safely be
+ascribed to that original form of Buddhism from which the Southern and
+the Northern schools branched off at a later period. See Burnouf,
+'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 800.]
+
+[Footnote 74: See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 814.]
+
+If this is not the absolute nothing, what is Nirv�_n_a?'
+
+Such religion, we should say, was made for a mad-house. But Buddhism
+was an advance, if compared with Brahmanism; it has stood its ground
+for centuries, and if truth could be decided by majorities, the show
+of hands, even at the present day, would be in favour of Buddha. The
+metaphysics of Buddhism, like the metaphysics of most religions, not
+excluding our own Gnosticism and Mysticism, were beyond the reach of
+all except a few hardened philosophers or ecstatic dreamers. Human
+nature could not be changed. Out of the very nothing it made a new
+paradise; and he who had left no place in the whole universe for a
+Divine Being, was deified himself by the multitudes who wanted a
+person whom they could worship, a king whose help they might invoke, a
+friend before whom they could pour out their most secret griefs. And
+there remained the code of a pure morality, proclaimed by Buddha.
+There remained the spirit of charity, kindness, and universal pity
+with which he had inspired his disciples.[75] There remained the
+simplicity of the ceremonial he had taught, the equality of all men
+which he had declared, the religious toleration which he had preached
+from the beginning. There remained much, therefore, to account for the
+rapid strides which his doctrine made from the mountain peaks of
+Ceylon to the Tundras of the Samoyedes, and we shall see in the simple
+story of the life of Hiouen-thsang that Buddhism, with all its
+defects, has had its heroes, its martyrs, and its saints.
+
+[Footnote 75: See the 'Dhammapadam,' a P�li work on Buddhist ethics,
+lately edited by V. Fausb�ll, a distinguished pupil of Professor
+Westergaard, at Copenhagen. The Rev. Spence Hardy ('Eastern
+Monachism,' p. 169) writes: 'A collection might be made from the
+precepts of this work, that in the purity of its ethics could scarcely
+be equalled from any other heathen author.' Mr. Knighton, when
+speaking of the same work in his 'History of Ceylon' (p. 77), remarks:
+'In it we have exemplified a code of morality, and a list of precepts,
+which, for pureness, excellence, and wisdom, is only second to that of
+the Divine Lawgiver himself.']
+
+Hiouen-thsang, born in China more than a thousand years after the
+death of Buddha, was a believer in Buddhism. He dedicated his whole
+life to the study of that religion; travelling from his native country
+to India, visiting every place mentioned in Buddhist history or
+tradition, acquiring the ancient language in which the canonical books
+of the Buddhists were written, studying commentaries, discussing
+points of difficulty, and defending the orthodox faith at public
+councils against disbelievers and schismatics. Buddhism had grown and
+changed since the death of its founder, but it had lost nothing of its
+vitality. At a very early period a proselytizing spirit awoke among
+the disciples of the Indian reformer, an element entirely new in the
+history of ancient religions. No Jew, no Greek, no Roman, no Brahman
+ever thought of converting people to his own national form of worship.
+Religion was looked upon as private or national property. It was to be
+guarded against strangers. The most sacred names of the gods, the
+prayers by which their favour could be gained, were kept secret. No
+religion, however, was more exclusive than that of the Brahmans. A
+Brahman was born, nay, twice-born. He could not be made. Not even the
+lowest caste, that of the _S_�dras, would open its ranks to a
+stranger. Here lay the secret of Buddha's success. He addressed
+himself to castes and outcasts. He promised salvation to all; and he
+commanded his disciples to preach his doctrine in all places and to
+all men. A sense of duty, extending from the narrow limits of the
+house, the village, and the country to the widest circle of mankind, a
+feeling of sympathy and brotherhood towards all men, the idea, in
+fact, of humanity, were in India first pronounced by Buddha. In the
+third Buddhist Council, the acts of which have been preserved to us in
+the 'Mahavansa,'[76] we hear of missionaries being sent to the chief
+countries beyond India. This Council, we are told, took place 308
+B.C., 235 years after the death of Buddha, in the 17th year of the
+reign of the famous king A_s_oka, whose edicts have been preserved to
+us on rock inscriptions in various parts of India. There are sentences
+in these inscriptions of A_s_oka which might be read with advantage by
+our own missionaries, though they are now more than 2000 years old.
+Thus it is written on the rocks of Girnar, Dhauli, and Kapurdigiri--
+
+     'Piyadasi, the king beloved of the gods, desires that the
+     ascetics of all creeds might reside in all places. All these
+     ascetics profess alike the command which people should
+     exercise over themselves, and the purity of the soul. But
+     people have different opinions, and different inclinations.'
+
+And again:
+
+     'A man ought to honour his own faith only; but he should
+     never abuse the faith of others. It is thus that he will do
+     no harm to anybody. There are even circumstances where the
+     religion of others ought to be honoured. And in acting
+     thus, a man fortifies his own faith, and assists the faith
+     of others. He who acts otherwise, diminishes his own faith,
+     and hurts the faith of others.'
+
+[Footnote 76: 'Mahavanso,' ed. G. Turnour, Ceylon, 1837, p. 71.]
+
+Those who have no time to read the voluminous works of the late E.
+Burnouf on Buddhism, his 'Introduction � l'Histoire du Buddhisme,' and
+his translation of 'Le Lotus de la bonne Loi,' will find a very
+interesting and lucid account of these councils, and edicts, and
+missions, and the history of Buddhism in general, in a work lately
+published by Mrs. Speir, 'Life in Ancient India.' Buddhism spread in
+the south to Ceylon, in the north to Kashmir, the Himalayan countries,
+Tibet, and China. One Buddhist missionary is mentioned in the Chinese
+annals as early as 217 B.C.;[77] and about the year 120 B.C. a Chinese
+General, after defeating the barbarous tribes north of the Desert of
+Gobi, brought back as a trophy a golden statue, the statue of
+Buddha.[78] It was not, however, till the year 65 A.D. that Buddhism
+was officially recognised by the Emperor Ming-ti[79] as a third state
+religion in China. Ever since, it has shared equal honours with the
+doctrines of Confucius and Lao-tse, in the Celestial Empire, and it is
+but lately that these three established religions have had to fear the
+encroachments of a new rival in the creed of the Chief of the rebels.
+
+[Footnote 77: See 'Foe Koue Ki,' p. 41, and xxxviii. preface.]
+
+[Footnote 78: See 'Foe Koue Ki,' p. 41.]
+
+[Footnote 79: 'Lalita-Vistara,' ed. Foucaux, p. xvii. n.]
+
+After Buddhism had been introduced into China, the first care of its
+teachers was to translate the sacred works from Sanskrit, in which
+they were originally written, into Chinese. We read of the Emperor
+Ming-ti,[80] of the dynasty of Han, sending Tsa�-in and other high
+officials to India, in order to study there the doctrine of Buddha.
+They engaged the services of two learned Buddhists, Mat�nga and
+Tchou-fa-lan, and some of the most important Buddhist works were
+translated by them into Chinese. 'The Life of Buddha,' the
+'Lalita-Vistara,'[81] a Sanskrit work which, on account of its style
+and language, had been referred by Oriental scholars to a much more
+modern period of Indian literature, can now safely be ascribed to an
+ante-Christian era, if, as we are told by Chinese scholars, it was
+translated from Sanskrit into Chinese, as one of the canonical books
+of Buddhism, as early as the year 76 A.D. The same work was translated
+also into Tibetan; and an edition of it--the first Tibetan work
+printed in Europe--published in Paris by M.E. Foucaux, reflects high
+credit on that distinguished scholar, and on the Government which
+supports these studies in the most liberal and enlightened spirit. The
+intellectual intercourse between the Indian peninsula and the northern
+continent of Asia remained uninterrupted for many centuries. Missions
+were sent from China to India, to report on the political and
+geographical state of the country, but the chief object of interest
+which attracted public embassies and private pilgrims across the
+Himalayan mountains was the religion of Buddha. About three hundred
+years after the public recognition of Buddhism by the Emperor Ming-ti,
+the great stream of Buddhist pilgrims began to flow from China to
+India. The first account which we possess of these pilgrimages refers
+to the travels of Fahian, who visited India towards the end of the
+fourth century. His travels have been translated by R�musat, but M.
+Julien promises a new and more correct translation. After Fahian, we
+have the travels of Hoei-seng and Song-yun, who were sent to India, in
+518, by command of the Empress, with a view of collecting sacred books
+and relics. Of Hiouen-thsang, who follows next in time, we possess, at
+present, eight out of twelve books; and there is reason to hope that
+the last four books of his Journal will soon follow in M. Julien's
+translation.[82] After Hiouen-thsang, the chief works of Chinese
+pilgrims are the 'Itineraries' of the fifty-six monks, published in
+730, and the travels of Khi-nie, who visited India in 964, at the head
+of three hundred pilgrims. India was for a time the Holy Land of
+China. There lay the scene of the life and death of the great teacher;
+there were the monuments commemorating the chief events of his life;
+there the shrines where his relics might be worshipped; there the
+monasteries where tradition had preserved his sayings and his doings;
+there the books where his doctrine might be studied in its original
+purity; there the schools where the tenets of different sects which
+had sprung up in the course of time might best be acquired.
+
+[Footnote 80: 'Lalita-Vistara,' p. 17.]
+
+[Footnote 81: Two parts of the Sanskrit text have been published in
+the 'Bibliotheca Indica.']
+
+[Footnote 82: They have since been published.]
+
+Some of the pilgrims and envoys have left us accounts of their
+travels, and, in the absence of anything like an historical literature
+in India itself, these Chinese works are of the utmost importance for
+gaining an insight into the social, political, and religious history
+of that country from the beginning of our era to the time of the
+Mohammedan conquest. The importance of Mohammedan writers, so far as
+they treat on the history of India during the Middle Ages, was soon
+recognised, and in a memoir lately published by the most eminent
+Arabic scholar of France, M. Reinaud, new and valuable historical
+materials have been collected--materials doubly valuable in India,
+where no native historian has ever noted down the passing events of
+the day. But, although the existence of similar documents in Chinese
+was known, and although men of the highest literary eminence--such as
+Humboldt, Biot, and others--had repeatedly urged the necessity of
+having a translation of the early travels of the Chinese Pilgrims, it
+seemed almost as if our curiosity was never to be satisfied. France
+has been the only country where Chinese scholarship has ever
+flourished, and it was a French scholar, Abel R�musat, who undertook
+at last the translation of one of the Chinese Pilgrims. R�musat died
+before his work was published, and his translation of the travels of
+Fahian, edited by M. Landresse, remained for a long time without being
+followed up by any other. Nor did the work of that eminent scholar
+answer all expectations. Most of the proper names, the names of
+countries, towns, mountains, and rivers, the titles of books, and the
+whole Buddhistic phraseology, were so disguised in their Chinese dress
+that it was frequently impossible to discover their original form.
+
+The Chinese alphabet was never intended to represent the sound of
+words. It was in its origin a hieroglyphic system, each word having
+its own graphic representative. Nor would it have been possible to
+write Chinese in any other way. Chinese is a monosyllabic language. No
+word is allowed more than one consonant and one vowel,--the vowels
+including diphthongs and nasal vowels. Hence the possible number of
+words is extremely small, and the number of significative sounds in
+the Chinese language is said to be no more than 450. No language,
+however, could be satisfied with so small a vocabulary, and in
+Chinese, as in other monosyllabic dialects, each word, as it was
+pronounced with various accents and intonations, was made to convey a
+large number of meanings; so that the total number of words, or rather
+of ideas, expressed in Chinese, is said to amount to 43,496. Hence a
+graphic representation of the mere sound of words would have been
+perfectly useless, and it was absolutely necessary to resort to
+hieroglyphical writing, enlarged by the introduction of determinative
+signs. Nearly the whole immense dictionary of Chinese--at least
+twenty-nine thirtieths--consists of combined signs, one part
+indicating the general sound, the other determining its special
+meaning. With such a system of writing it was possible to represent
+Chinese, but impossible to convey either the sound or the meaning of
+any other language. Besides, some of the most common sounds--such as
+r, b, d, and the short a--are unknown in Chinese.
+
+How, then, were the translators to render Sanskrit names in Chinese?
+The most rational plan would have been to select as many Chinese signs
+as there were Sanskrit letters, and to express one and the same letter
+in Sanskrit always by one and the same sign in Chinese; or, if the
+conception of a consonant without a vowel, and of a vowel without a
+consonant, was too much for a Chinese understanding, to express at
+least the same syllabic sound in Sanskrit, by one and the same
+syllabic sign in Chinese. A similar system is adopted at the present
+day, when the Chinese find themselves under the necessity of writing
+the names of Lord Palmerston or Sir John Bowring; but, instead of
+adopting any definite system of transcribing, each translator seems to
+have chosen his own signs for rendering the sounds of Sanskrit words,
+and to have chosen them at random. The result is that every Sanskrit
+word as transcribed by the Chinese Buddhists is a riddle which no
+ingenuity is able to solve. Who could have guessed that 'Fo-to,' or
+more frequently 'Fo,' was meant for Buddha? 'Ko-lo-keou-lo' for
+R�hula, the son of Buddha? 'Po-lo-na�' for Benares? 'Heng-ho' for
+Ganges? 'Niepan' for Nirv_�na_? 'Chamen' for _S_rama_n_a? 'Fe�to' for
+Veda? 'Tcha-li' for Kshattriya? 'Siu-to-lo' for _S_�dra? 'Fan' or
+'Fan-lon-mo' for Brahma? Sometimes, it is true, the Chinese
+endeavoured to give, besides the sounds, a translation of the meaning
+of the Sanskrit words. But the translation of proper names is always
+very precarious, and it required an intimate knowledge of Sanskrit and
+Buddhist literature to recognise from these awkward translations the
+exact form of the proper names for which they were intended. If, in a
+Chinese translation of 'Thukydides,' we read of a person called
+'Leader of the people,' we might guess his name to have been
+Demagogos, or Laoegos, as well as Agesilaos. And when the name of the
+town of _S_ravasti was written Che-wei, which means in Chinese 'where
+one hears,' it required no ordinary power of combination to find that
+the name of _S_ravasti was derived from a Sanskrit noun, _s_ravas
+(Greek [Greek: kleos], Lat. cluo), which means 'hearing' or 'fame,'
+and that the etymological meaning of the name of _S_ravasti was
+intended by the Chinese 'Che-wei.' Besides these names of places and
+rivers, of kings and saints, there was the whole strange phraseology
+of Buddhism, of which no dictionary gives any satisfactory
+explanation. How was even the best Chinese scholar to know that the
+words which usually mean 'dark shadow' must be taken in the technical
+sense of Nirv�_n_a, or becoming absorbed in the Absolute, that
+'return-purity' had the same sense, and that a third synonymous
+expression was to be recognised in a phrase which, in ordinary
+Chinese, would have the sense of 'transport-figure-crossing-age?' A
+monastery is called 'origin-door,' instead of 'black-door.' The voice
+of Buddha is called 'the voice of the dragon;' and his doctrine goes
+by the name of 'the door of expedients.'
+
+Tedious as these details may seem, it was almost a duty to state them,
+in order to give an idea of the difficulties which M. Stanislas Julien
+had to grapple with. Oriental scholars labour under great
+disadvantages. Few people take an interest in their works, or, if they
+do, they simply accept the results, but they are unable to appreciate
+the difficulty with which these results were obtained. Many persons
+who have read the translation of the cuneiform inscriptions are glad,
+no doubt, to have the authentic and contemporaneous records of Darius
+and Xerxes. But if they followed the process by which scholars such as
+Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and Rawlinson arrived at their results,
+they would see that the discovery of the alphabet, the language, the
+grammar, and the meaning of the inscriptions of the Ach�menian dynasty
+deserves to be classed with the discoveries of a Kepler, a Newton, or
+a Faraday. In a similar manner, the mere translation of a Chinese work
+into French seems a very ordinary performance; but M. Stanislas
+Julien, who has long been acknowledged as the first Chinese scholar in
+Europe, had to spend twenty years of incessant labour in order to
+prepare himself for the task of translating the 'Travels of
+Hiouen-thsang.' He had to learn Sanskrit, no very easy language; he
+had to study the Buddhist literature written in Sanskrit, P�li,
+Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese. He had to make vast indices of every
+proper name connected with Buddhism. Thus only could he shape his own
+tools, and accomplish what at last he did accomplish. Most persons
+will remember the interest with which the travels of M.M. Huc and
+Gabet were read a few years ago, though these two adventurous
+missionaries were obliged to renounce their original intention of
+entering India by way of China and Tibet, and were not allowed to
+proceed beyond the famous capital of Lhassa. If, then, it be
+considered that there was a traveller who had made a similar journey
+twelve hundred years earlier--who had succeeded in crossing the
+deserts and mountain passes which separate China from India--who had
+visited the principal cities of the Indian Peninsula, at a time of
+which we have no information, from native or foreign sources, as to
+the state of that country--who had learned Sanskrit, and made a large
+collection of Buddhist works--who had carried on public disputations
+with the most eminent philosophers and theologians of the day--who had
+translated the most important works on Buddhism from Sanskrit into
+Chinese, and left an account of his travels, which still existed in
+the libraries of China--nay, which had been actually printed and
+published--we may well imagine the impatience with which all scholars
+interested in the ancient history of India, and in the subject of
+Buddhism, looked forward to the publication of so important a work.
+Hiouen-thsang's name had first been mentioned in Europe by Abel
+R�musat and Klaproth. They had discovered some fragments of his
+travels in a Chinese work on foreign countries and foreign nations.
+R�musat wrote to China to procure, if possible, a complete copy of
+Hiouen-thsang's works. He was informed by Morrison that they were out
+of print. Still, the few specimens which he had given at the end of
+his translation of the 'Foe Koue Ki' had whetted the appetite of
+Oriental scholars. M. Stanislas Julien succeeded in procuring a copy
+of Hiouen-thsang in 1838; and after nearly twenty years spent in
+preparing a translation of the Chinese traveller, his version is now
+before us. If there are but few who know the difficulty of a work like
+that of M. Stanislas Julien, it becomes their duty to speak out,
+though, after all, perhaps the most intelligible eulogium would be,
+that in a branch of study where there are no monopolies and no
+patents, M. Stanislas Julien is acknowledged to be the only man in
+Europe who could produce the article which he has produced in the work
+before us.
+
+We shall devote the rest of our space to a short account of the life
+and travels of Hiouen-thsang. Hiouen-thsang was born in a provincial
+town of China, at a time when the empire was in a chronic state of
+revolution. His father had left the public service, and had given most
+of his time to the education of his four children. Two of them
+distinguished themselves at a very early age--one of them was
+Hiouen-thsang, the future traveller and theologian. The boy was sent
+to school at a Buddhist monastery, and, after receiving there the
+necessary instruction, partly from his elder brother, he was himself
+admitted as a monk at the early age of thirteen. During the next seven
+years, the young monk travelled about with his brother from place to
+place, in order to follow the lectures of some of the most
+distinguished professors. The horrors of war frequently broke in upon
+his quiet studies, and forced him to seek refuge in the more distant
+provinces of the empire. At the age of twenty he took priest's orders,
+and had then already become famous by his vast knowledge. He had
+studied the chief canonical books of the Buddhist faith, the records
+of Buddha's life and teaching, the system of ethics and metaphysics;
+and he was versed in the works of Confucius and Lao-tse. But still his
+own mind was agitated by doubts. Six years he continued his studies in
+the chief places of learning in China, and where he came to learn he
+was frequently asked to teach. At last, when he saw that none, even
+the most eminent theologians, were able to give him the information he
+wanted, he formed his resolve of travelling to India. The works of
+earlier pilgrims, such as Fahian and others, were known to him. He
+knew that in India he should find the originals of the works which in
+their Chinese translation left so many things doubtful in his mind;
+and though he knew from the same sources the dangers of his journey,
+yet 'the glory,' as he says, 'of recovering the Law, which was to be a
+guide to all men and the means of their salvation, seemed to him
+worthy of imitation.' In common with several other priests, he
+addressed a memorial to the Emperor to ask leave for their journey.
+Leave was refused, and the courage of his companions failed. Not that
+of Hiouen-thsang. His own mother had told him that, soon before she
+gave birth to him, she had seen her child travelling to the Far West
+in search of the Law. He was himself haunted by similar visions, and
+having long surrendered worldly desires, he resolved to brave all
+dangers, and to risk his life for the only object for which he thought
+it worth while to live. He proceeded to the Yellow River, the
+Hoang-ho, and to the place where the caravans bound for India used to
+meet, and, though the Governor had sent strict orders not to allow any
+one to cross the frontier, the young priest, with the assistance of
+his co-religionists, succeeded in escaping the vigilance of the
+Chinese 'douaniers.' Spies were sent after him. But so frank was his
+avowal, and so firm his resolution, which he expressed in the presence
+of the authorities, that the Governor himself tore his hue and cry to
+pieces, and allowed him to proceed. Hitherto he had been accompanied
+by two friends. They now left him, and Hiouen-thsang found himself
+alone, without a friend and without a guide. He sought for strength in
+fervent prayer. The next morning a person presented himself, offering
+his services as a guide. This guide conducted him safely for some
+distance, but left him when they approached the desert. There were
+still five watch-towers to be passed, and there was nothing to
+indicate the road through the desert, except the hoof-marks of horses,
+and skeletons. The traveller followed this melancholy track, and,
+though misled by the 'mirage' of the desert, he reached the first
+tower. Here the arrows of the watchmen would have put an end to his
+existence and his cherished expedition. But the officer in command,
+himself a zealous Buddhist, allowed the courageous pilgrim to proceed,
+and gave him letters of recommendation to the officers of the next
+towers. The last tower, however, was guarded by men inaccessible to
+bribes, and deaf to reasoning. In order to escape their notice,
+Hiouen-thsang had to make a long d�tour. He passed through another
+desert, and lost his way. The bag in which he carried his water burst,
+and then even the courage of Hiouen-thsang failed. He began to retrace
+his steps. But suddenly he stopped. 'I took an oath,' he said, 'never
+to make a step backward till I had reached India. Why, then, have I
+come here? It is better I should die proceeding to the West than
+return to the East and live.' Four nights and five days he travelled
+through the desert without a drop of water. He had nothing to refresh
+himself except his prayers--and what were they? Texts from a work
+which taught that there was no God, no Creator, no creation,--nothing
+but mind, minding itself. It is incredible in how exhausted an
+atmosphere the divine spark within us will glimmer on, and even warm
+the dark chambers of the human heart. Comforted by his prayers,
+Hiouen-thsang proceeded, and arrived after some time at a large lake.
+He was in the country of the O�gour Tatars. They received him well,
+nay, too well. One of the Tatar Khans, himself a Buddhist, sent for
+the Buddhist pilgrim, and insisted on his staying with him to instruct
+his people. Remonstrances proved of no avail. But Hiouen-thsang was
+not to be conquered. 'I know,' he said, 'that the king, in spite of
+his power, has no power over my mind and my will;' and he refused all
+nourishment, in order to put an end to his life. [Greek: Thanoumai kai
+eleuther�somai.] Three days he persevered, and at last the Khan,
+afraid of the consequences, was obliged to yield to the poor monk. He
+made him promise to visit him on his return to China, and then to stay
+three years with him. At last, after a delay of one month, during
+which the Khan and his Court came daily to hear the lessons of their
+pious guest, the traveller continued his journey with a numerous
+escort, and with letters of introduction from the Khan to twenty-four
+Princes whose territories the little caravan had to pass. Their way
+lay through what is now called Dsungary, across the Musur-dabaghan
+mountains, the northern portion of the Belur-tag, the Yaxartes valley,
+Bactria, and Kabulist�n. We cannot follow them through all the places
+they passed, though the accounts which he gives of their adventures
+are most interesting, and the description of the people most
+important. Here is a description of the Musur-dabaghan mountains:
+
+     'The top of the mountain rises to the sky. Since the
+     beginning of the world the snow has been accumulating, and
+     is now transformed into vast masses of ice, which never
+     melt, either in spring or summer. Hard and brilliant sheets
+     of snow are spread out till they are lost in the infinite,
+     and mingle with the clouds. If one looks at them, the eyes
+     are dazzled by the splendour. Frozen peaks hang down over
+     both sides of the road, some hundred feet high, and twenty
+     feet or thirty feet thick. It is not without difficulty and
+     danger that the traveller can clear them or climb over them.
+     Besides, there are squalls of wind, and tornadoes of snow
+     which attack the pilgrims. Even with double shoes, and in
+     thick furs, one cannot help trembling and shivering.'
+
+During the seven days that Hiouen-thsang crossed these Alpine passes
+he lost fourteen of his companions.
+
+What is most important, however, in this early portion of the Chinese
+traveller is the account which he gives of the high degree of
+civilisation among the tribes of Central Asia. We had gradually
+accustomed ourselves to believe in an early civilisation of Egypt, of
+Babylon, of China, of India; but now that we find the hordes of Tatary
+possessing in the seventh century the chief arts and institutions of
+an advanced society, we shall soon have to drop the name of barbarians
+altogether. The theory of M. Oppert, who ascribes the original
+invention of the cuneiform letters and a civilisation anterior to that
+of Babylon and Nineveh to a Turanian or Scythian race, will lose much
+of its apparent improbability; for no new wave of civilisation had
+reached these countries between the cuneiform period of their
+literature and history and the time of Hiouen-thsang's visit. In the
+kingdom of Okini, on the western frontier of China, Hiouen-thsang
+found an active commerce, gold, silver, and copper coinage;
+monasteries, where the chief works of Buddhism were studied, and an
+alphabet, derived from Sanskrit. As he travelled on he met with mines,
+with agriculture, including pears, plums, peaches, almonds, grapes,
+pomegranates, rice, and wheat. The inhabitants were dressed in silk
+and woollen materials. There were musicians in the chief cities who
+played on the flute and the guitar. Buddhism was the prevailing
+religion, but there were traces of an earlier worship, the Bactrian
+fire-worship. The country was everywhere studded with halls,
+monasteries, monuments, and statues. Samarkand formed at that early
+time a kind of Athens, and its manners were copied by all the tribes
+in the neighbourhood. Balkh, the old capital of Bactria, was still an
+important place on the Oxus, well fortified, and full of sacred
+buildings. And the details which our traveller gives of the exact
+circumference of the cities, the number of their inhabitants, the
+products of the soil, the articles of trade, can leave no doubt in our
+minds that he relates what he had seen and heard himself. A new page
+in the history of the world is here opened, and new ruins pointed out,
+which would reward the pickaxe of a Layard.
+
+But we must not linger. Our traveller, as we said, had entered India
+by way of Kabul. Shortly before he arrived at Pou-lou-cha-pou-lo, i.
+e. the Sanskrit Purushapura, the modern Peshawer, Hiouen-thsang heard
+of an extraordinary cave, where Buddha had formerly converted a
+dragon, and had promised his new pupil to leave him his shadow, in
+order that, whenever the evil passions of his dragon-nature should
+revive, the aspect of his master's shadowy features might remind him
+of his former vows. This promise was fulfilled, and the dragon-cave
+became a famous place of pilgrimage. Our traveller was told that the
+roads leading to the cave were extremely dangerous, and infested by
+robbers--that for three years none of the pilgrims had ever returned
+from the cave. But he replied, 'It would be difficult during a hundred
+thousand Kalpas to meet one single time with the true shadow of
+Buddha; how could I, having come so near, pass on without going to
+adore it?' He left his companions behind, and after asking in vain
+for a guide, he met at last with a boy who showed him to a farm
+belonging to a convent. Here he found an old man who undertook to act
+as his guide. They had hardly proceeded a few miles when they were
+attacked by five robbers. The monk took off his cap and displayed his
+ecclesiastical robes. 'Master,' said one of the robbers, 'where are
+you going?' Hiouen-thsang replied, 'I desire to adore the shadow of
+Buddha.' 'Master,' said the robber, 'have you not heard that these
+roads are full of bandits?' 'Robbers are men,' Hiouen-thsang
+exclaimed, 'and at present, when I am going to adore the shadow of
+Buddha, even though the roads were full of wild beasts, I should walk
+on without fear. Surely, then, I ought not to fear you, as you are men
+whose heart is possessed of pity.' The robbers were moved by these
+words, and opened their hearts to the true faith. After this little
+incident, Hiouen-thsang proceeded with his guide. He passed a stream
+rushing down between two precipitous walls of rock. In the rock itself
+there was a door which opened. All was dark. But Hiouen-thsang
+entered, advanced towards the east, then moved fifty steps backwards,
+and began his devotions. He made one hundred salutations, but he saw
+nothing. He reproached himself bitterly with his former sins, he
+cried, and abandoned himself to utter despair, because the shadow of
+Buddha would not appear before him. At last, after many prayers and
+invocations, he saw on the eastern wall a dim light, of the size of a
+saucepan, such as the Buddhist monks carry in their hands. But it
+disappeared. He continued praying full of joy and pain, and again he
+saw a light, which vanished like lightning. Then he vowed, full of
+devotion and love, that he would never leave the place till he had
+seen the shadow of the 'Venerable of the age.' After two hundred
+prayers, the cave was suddenly bathed in light, and the shadow of
+Buddha, of a brilliant white colour, rose majestically on the wall, as
+when the clouds suddenly open and, all at once, display the marvellous
+image of the 'Mountain of Light.' A dazzling splendour lighted up the
+features of the divine countenance. Hiouen-thsang was lost in
+contemplation and wonder, and would not turn his eyes away from the
+sublime and incomparable object.... After he awoke from his trance, he
+called in six men, and commanded them to light a fire in the cave, in
+order to burn incense; but, as the approach of the light made the
+shadow of Buddha disappear, the fire was extinguished. Then five of
+the men saw the shadow, but the sixth saw nothing. The old man who had
+acted as guide was astounded when Hiouen-thsang told him the vision.
+'Master,' he said, 'without the sincerity of your faith, and the
+energy of your vows, you could not have seen such a miracle.'
+
+This is the account given by Hiouen-thsang's biographers. But we must
+say, to the credit of Hiouen-thsang himself, that in the 'Si-yu-ki,'
+which contains his own diary, the story is told in a different way.
+The cave is described with almost the same words. But afterwards, the
+writer continues: 'Formerly, the shadow of Buddha was seen in the
+cave, bright, like his natural appearance, and with all the marks of
+his divine beauty. One might have said, it was Buddha himself. For
+some centuries, however, it can no longer be seen completely. Though
+one does see something, it is only a feeble and doubtful resemblance.
+If a man prays with sincere faith, and if he has received from above
+a hidden impression, he sees the shadow clearly, but he cannot enjoy
+the sight for any length of time.'
+
+From Peshawer, the scene of this extraordinary miracle, Hiouen-thsang
+proceeded to Kashmir, visited the chief towns of Central India, and
+arrived at last in Magadha, the Holy Land of the Buddhists. Here he
+remained five years, devoting all his time to the study of Sanskrit
+and Buddhist literature, and inspecting every place hallowed by the
+recollections of the past. He then passed through Bengal, and
+proceeded to the south, with a view of visiting Ceylon, the chief seat
+of Buddhism. Baffled in that wish, he crossed the peninsula from east
+to west, ascended the Malabar coast, reached the Indus, and, after
+numerous excursions to the chief places of North-Western India,
+returned to Magadha, to spend there, with his old friends, some of the
+happiest years of his life. The route of his journeyings is laid down
+in a map drawn with exquisite skill by M. Vivien de Saint-Martin. At
+last he was obliged to return to China, and, passing through the
+Penjab, Kabulistan, and Bactria, he reached the Oxus, followed its
+course nearly to its sources on the plateau of Pamir, and, after
+staying some time in the three chief towns of Turkistan, Khasgar,
+Yarkand, and Khoten, he found himself again, after sixteen years of
+travels, dangers, and studies, in his own native country. His fame had
+spread far and wide, and the poor pilgrim, who had once been hunted by
+imperial spies and armed policemen, was now received with public
+honours by the Emperor himself. His entry into the capital was like a
+triumph. The streets were covered with carpets, flowers were
+scattered, and banners flying. Soldiers were drawn up, the
+magistrates went out to meet him, and all the monks of the
+neighbourhood marched along in solemn procession. The trophies that
+adorned this triumph, carried by a large number of horses, were of a
+peculiar kind. First, 150 grains of the dust of Buddha; secondly, a
+golden statue of the great Teacher; thirdly, a similar statue of
+sandal-wood; fourthly, a statue of sandal-wood, representing Buddha as
+descending from heaven; fifthly, a statue of silver; sixthly, a golden
+statue of Buddha conquering the dragons; seventhly, a statue of
+sandal-wood, representing Buddha as a preacher; lastly, a collection
+of 657 works in 520 volumes. The Emperor received the traveller in the
+Phoenix Palace, and, full of admiration for his talents and wisdom,
+invited him to accept a high office in the Government. This
+Hiouen-thsang declined. 'The soul of the administration,' he said, 'is
+still the doctrine of Confucius;' and he would dedicate the rest of
+his life to the Law of Buddha. The Emperor thereupon asked him to
+write an account of his travels, and assigned him a monastery where he
+might employ his leisure in translating the works he had brought back
+from India. His travels were soon written and published, but the
+translation of the Sanskrit MSS. occupied he whole rest of his life.
+It is said that the number of works translated by him, with the
+assistance of a large staff of monks, amounted to 740, in 1,335
+volumes. Frequently he might be seen meditating on a difficult
+passage, when suddenly it seemed as if a higher spirit had enlightened
+his mind. His soul was cheered, as when a man walking in darkness sees
+all at once the sun piercing the clouds and shining in its full
+brightness; and, unwilling to trust to his own understanding, he used
+to attribute his knowledge to a secret inspiration of Buddha and the
+Bodhisattvas. When he found that the hour of death approached, he had
+all his property divided among the poor. He invited his friends to
+come and see him, and to take a cheerful leave of that impure body of
+Hiouen-thsang. 'I desire,' he said, 'that whatever merits I may have
+gained by good works may fall upon other people. May I be born again
+with them in the heaven of the blessed, be admitted to the family of
+Mi-le, and serve the Buddha of the future, who is full of kindness and
+affection. When I descend again upon earth to pass through other forms
+of existence, I desire at every new birth to fulfil my duties towards
+Buddha, and arrive at the last at the highest and most perfect
+intelligence. He died in the year 664--about the same time that
+Mohammedanism was pursuing its bloody conquests in the East, and
+Christianity began to shed its pure light over the dark forests of
+Germany.
+
+It is impossible to do justice to the character of so extraordinary a
+man as Hiouen-thsang in so short a sketch as we have been able to
+give. If we knew only his own account of his life and travels--the
+volume which has just been published at Paris--we should be ignorant
+of the motives which guided him and of the sufferings which he
+underwent. Happily, two of his friends and pupils had left an account
+of their teacher, and M. Stanislas Julien has acted wisely in
+beginning his collection of the Buddhist Pilgrims with the translation
+of that biography. There we learn something of the man himself and of
+that silent enthusiasm which supported him in his arduous work. There
+we see him braving the dangers of the desert, scrambling along
+glaciers, crossing over torrents, and quietly submitting to the
+brutal violence of Indian Thugs. There we see him rejecting the
+tempting invitations of Khans, Kings, and Emperors, and quietly
+pursuing among strangers, within the bleak walls of the cell of a
+Buddhist college, the study of a foreign language, the key to the
+sacred literature of his faith. There we see him rising to eminence,
+acknowledged as an equal by his former teachers, as a superior by the
+most distinguished scholars of India; the champion of the orthodox
+faith, an arbiter at councils, the favourite of Indian kings. In his
+own work there is hardly a word about all this. We do not wish to
+disguise his weaknesses, such as they appear in the same biography. He
+was a credulous man, easily imposed upon by crafty priests, still more
+easily carried away by his own superstitions; but he deserved to have
+lived in better times, and we almost grudge so high and noble a
+character to a country not our own, and to a religion unworthy of such
+a man. Of selfishness we find no trace in him. His whole life belonged
+to the faith in which he was born, and the objects of his labour was
+not so much to perfect himself as to benefit others. He was an honest
+man. And strange, and stiff, and absurd, and outlandish as his outward
+appearance may seem, there is something in the face of that poor
+Chinese monk, with his yellow skin and his small oblique eyes, that
+appeals to our sympathy--something in his life, and the work of his
+life, that places him by right among the heroes of Greece, the martyrs
+of Rome, the knights of the crusades, the explorers of the Arctic
+regions--something that makes us feel it a duty to inscribe his name
+on the roll of the 'forgotten worthies' of the human race. There is a
+higher consanguinity than that of the blood which runs through our
+veins--that of the blood which makes our hearts beat with the same
+indignation and the same joy. And there is a higher nationality than
+that of being governed by the same imperial dynasty--that of our
+common allegiance to the Father and Ruler of all mankind.
+
+It is but right to state that we owe the publication, at least of the
+second volume of M. Julien's work, to the liberality of the Court of
+Directors of the East-India Company. We have had several opportunities
+of pointing out the creditable manner in which that body has
+patronized literary and scientific works connected with the East, and
+we congratulate the Chairman, Colonel Sykes, and the President of the
+Board of Control, Mr. Vernon Smith, on the excellent choice they have
+made in this instance. Nothing can be more satisfactory than that
+nearly the whole edition of a work which would have remained
+unpublished without their liberal assistance, has been sold in little
+more than a month.
+
+_April, 1857._
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+THE MEANING OF NIRV�NA.
+
+
+_To the Editor of_ THE TIMES.
+
+
+Sir,--Mr. Francis Barham, of Bath, has protested in a letter, printed
+in 'The Times' of the 24th of April, against my interpretations of
+Nirv�_n_a, or the summum bonum of the Buddhists. He maintains that the
+Nirv�_n_a in which the Buddhists believe, and which they represent as
+the highest goal of their religion and philosophy, means union and
+communion with God, or absorption of the individual soul by the divine
+essence, and not, as I tried to show in my articles on the 'Buddhist
+Pilgrims,' utter annihilation.
+
+I must not take up much more of your space with so abstruse a subject
+as Buddhist metaphysics; but at the same time I cannot allow Mr.
+Barham's protest to pass unnoticed. The authorities which he brings
+forward against my account of Buddhism, and particularly against my
+interpretation of Nirv�_n_a, seem formidable enough. There is Neander,
+the great church historian, Creuzer, the famous scholar, and Hue, the
+well-known traveller and missionary,--all interpreting, as Mr. Barham
+says, the Nirv�_n_a of the Buddhists in the sense of an apotheosis of
+the human soul, as it was taught in the Ved�nta philosophy of the
+Brahmans, the Sufiism of the Persians, and the Christian mysticism of
+Eckhart and Tauler, and not in the sense of absolute annihilation.
+
+Now, with regard to Neander and Creuzer, I must observe that their
+works were written before the canonical books of the Buddhists,
+composed in Sanskrit, had been discovered, or at least before they had
+been sent to Europe, and been analysed by European scholars. Besides,
+neither Neander nor Creuzer was an Oriental scholar, and their
+knowledge of the subject could only be second-hand. It was in 1824
+that Mr. Brian Houghton Hodgson, then resident at the Court of Nepal,
+gave the first intimation of the existence of a large religious
+literature written in Sanskrit, and preserved by the Buddhists of
+Nepal as the canonical books of their faith. It was in 1830 and 1835
+that the same eminent scholar and naturalist presented the first set
+of these books to the Royal Asiatic Society in London. In 1837 he made
+a similar gift to the Soci�t� Asiatique of Paris, and some of the most
+important works were transmitted by him to the Bodleian Library at
+Oxford. It was in 1844 that the late Eug�ne Burnouf published, after a
+careful study of these documents, his classical work, 'Introduction �
+l'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien,' and it is from this book that our
+knowledge of Buddhism may be said to date. Several works have since
+been published, which have added considerably to the stock of
+authentic information on the doctrine of the great Indian reformer.
+There is Burnouf's translation of 'Le Lotus de la bonne Loi,'
+published after the death of that lamented scholar, together with
+numerous essays, in 1852. There are two interesting works by the Rev.
+Spence Hardy--'Eastern Monachism,' London, 1850, and 'A Manual of
+Buddhism,' London, 1853; and there are the publications of M.
+Stanislas Julien, E. Foucaux, the Honourable George Turnour, Professor
+H. H. Wilson, and others, alluded to in my article on the 'Buddhist
+Pilgrims.' It is from these works alone that we can derive correct and
+authentic information on Buddhism, and not from Neander's 'History of
+the Christian Church' or from Creuzer's 'Symbolik.'
+
+If any one will consult these works, he will find that the discussions
+on the true meaning of Nirv�_n_a are not of modern date, and that, at
+a very early period, different philosophical schools among the
+Buddhists of India, and different teachers who spread the doctrine of
+Buddhism abroad, propounded every conceivable opinion as to the
+orthodox explanation of this term. Even in one and the same school we
+find different parties maintaining different views on the meaning of
+Nirv�_n_a. There is the school of the Sv�bh�vikas, which still exists
+in Nepal. The Sv�bh�vikas maintain that nothing exists but nature, or
+rather substance, and that this substance exists by itself
+(svabh�v�t), without a Creator or a Ruler. It exists, however, under
+two forms: in the state of Prav_r_itti, as active, or in the state of
+Nirv_r_itti, as passive. Human beings, who, like everything else,
+exist svabh�v�t, 'by themselves,' are supposed to be capable of
+arriving at Nirv_r_itti, or passiveness, which is nearly synonymous
+with Nirv�_n_a. But here the Sv�bh�vikas branch off into two sects.
+Some believe that Nirv_r_itti is repose, others that it is
+annihilation; and the former add, 'were it even annihilation
+(s�nyat�), it would still be good, man being otherwise doomed to an
+eternal migration through all the forms of nature; the more desirable
+of which are little to be wished for; and the less so, at any price to
+be shunned.'[83]
+
+What was the original meaning of Nirv�_n_a may perhaps best be seen
+from the etymology of this technical term. Every Sanskrit scholar
+knows that Nirv�_n_a means originally the blowing out, the extinction
+of light, and not absorption. The human soul, when it arrives at its
+perfection, is blown out,[84] if we use the phraseology of the
+Buddhists, like a lamp; it is not absorbed, as the Brahmans say, like
+a drop in the ocean. Neither in the system of Buddhist philosophy, nor
+in the philosophy from which Buddha is supposed to have borrowed, was
+there any place left for a Divine Being by which the human soul could
+be absorbed. S�nkhya philosophy, in its original form, claims the name
+of an-�_s_vara, 'lordless' or 'atheistic' as its distinctive title.
+Its final object is not absorption in God, whether personal or
+impersonal, but Moksha, deliverance of the soul from all pain and
+illusion, and recovery by the soul of its true nature. It is doubtful
+whether the term Nirv�_n_a was coined by Buddha. It occurs in the
+literature of the Brahmans as a synonyme of Moksha, deliverance;
+Nirv_r_itti, cessation; Apavarga, release; Ni_hs_reyas, summum bonum.
+It is used in this sense in the Mah�bh�rata, and it is explained in
+the Amara-Kosha as having the meaning of 'blowing out, applied to a
+fire and to a sage.'[85] Unless, however, we succeed in tracing this
+term in works anterior to Buddha, we may suppose that it was invented
+by him in order to express that meaning of the summum bonum which he
+was the first to preach, and which some of his disciples explained in
+the sense of absolute annihilation.
+
+[Footnote 83: See Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 441; Hodgson, 'Asiatic
+Researches,' vol. xvi.]
+
+[Footnote 84: 'Calm,' 'without wind,' as Nirv�_n_a is sometimes
+explained, is expressed in Sanskrit by Nirv�ta. See Amara-Kosha, sub
+voce.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Different views of the Nirv�_n_a, as conceived by the
+T�rthakas or the Brahmans, may be seen in an extract from the
+Lank�vat�ra, translated by Burnouf, p. 514.]
+
+The earliest authority to which we can go back, if we want to know the
+original character of Buddhism, is the Buddhist Canon, as settled
+after the death of Buddha at the first Council. It is called
+Tripi_t_aka, or the Three Baskets, the first containing the S�tras, or
+the discourses of Buddha; the second, the Vinaya, or his code of
+morality; the third, the Abhidharma, or the system of metaphysics. The
+first was compiled by �nanda, the second by Up�li, the third by
+K�_s_yapa--all of them the pupils and friends of Buddha. It may be
+that these collections, as we now possess them, were finally arranged,
+not at the first, but at the third Council. Yet, even then, we have no
+earlier, no more authentic, documents from which we could form an
+opinion as to the original teaching of Buddha; and the Nirv�_n_a, as
+taught in the metaphysics of K�_s_yapa, and particularly in the
+Pra_gn_�-p�ramit�, is annihilation, not absorption. Buddhism,
+therefore, if tested by its own canonical books, cannot be freed from
+the charge of Nihilism, whatever may have been its character in the
+mind of its founder, and whatever changes it may have undergone in
+later times, and among races less inured to metaphysical discussions
+than the Hindus.
+
+The ineradicable feeling of dependence on something else, which is the
+life-spring of all religion, was completely numbed in the early Buddhist
+metaphysicians, and it was only after several generations had passed away,
+and after Buddhism had become the creed of millions, that this feeling
+returned with increased warmth, changing, as I said in my article, the very
+Nothing into a paradise, and deifying the very Buddha who had denied the
+existence of a Deity. That this has been the case in China we know from the
+interesting works of the Abb� Huc, and from other sources, such as the
+'Catechism of the Shamans, or the Laws and Regulations of the Priesthood of
+Buddha in China,' translated by Ch. F. Neumann, London, 1831. In India,
+also, Buddhism, as soon as it became a popular religion, had to speak a
+more human language than that of metaphysical Pyrrhonism. But, if it did
+so, it was because it was shamed into it. This we may see from the very
+nicknames which the Brahmans apply to their opponents, the Bauddhas. They
+call them N�stikas--those who maintain that there is nothing;
+_S_�nyavadins-those who maintain that there is a universal void.
+
+The only ground, therefore, on which we may stand, if we wish to
+defend the founder of Buddhism against the charges of Nihilism and
+Atheism, is this, that, as some of the Buddhists admit, the 'Basket of
+Metaphysics' was rather the work of his pupils, not of Buddha
+himself.[86] This distinction between the authentic words of Buddha
+and the canonical books in general, is mentioned more than once. The
+priesthood of Ceylon, when the manifest errors with which their
+canonical commentaries abound, were brought to their notice, retreated
+from their former position, and now assert that it is only the express
+words of Buddha that they receive as undoubted truth.[87] There is a
+passage in a Buddhist work which reminds us somewhat of the last page
+of Dean Milman's 'History of Christianity,' and where we read:
+
+     'The words of the priesthood are good; those of the Rahats
+     (saints) are better; but those of the All-knowing are the
+     best of all.'
+
+[Footnote 86: See Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 41. 'Abuddhoktam
+abhidharma-_s_�stram.' Ibid. p. 454. According to the Tibetan
+Buddhists, however, Buddha propounded the Abhidharma when he was
+fifty-one years old. 'Asiatic Researches,' vol. xx. p. 339.]
+
+[Footnote 87: 'Eastern Monachism,' p. 171.]
+
+This is an argument which Mr. Francis Barham might have used with more
+success, and by which he might have justified, if not the first
+disciples, at least the original founder of Buddhism. Nay, there is a
+saying of Buddha's which tends to show that all metaphysical
+discussion was regarded by him as vain and useless. It is a saying
+mentioned in one of the MSS. belonging to the Bodleian Library. As it
+has never been published before, I may be allowed to quote it in the
+original: Sadasad vi_k_�ram na sahate,--'The ideas of being and not
+being do not admit of discussion,'--a tenet which, if we consider that
+it was enunciated before the time of the Eleatic philosophers of
+Greece, and long before Hegel's Logic, might certainly have saved us
+many an intricate and indigestible argument.
+
+A few passages from the Buddhist writings of Nepal and Ceylon will
+best show that the horror nihili was not felt by the metaphysicians
+of former ages in the same degree as it is felt by ourselves. The
+famous hymn which resounds in heaven when the luminous rays of the
+smile of Buddha penetrate through the clouds, is 'All is transitory,
+all is misery, all is void, all is without substance.' Again, it is
+said in the Pra_gn_�-p�ramit�,[88] that Buddha began to think that he
+ought to conduct all creatures to perfect Nirv�_n_a. But he reflected
+that there are really no creatures which ought to be conducted, nor
+creatures that conduct; and, nevertheless, he did conduct all
+creatures to perfect Nirv�_n_a. Then, continues the text, why is it
+said that there are neither creatures which arrive at complete
+Nirv�_n_a, nor creatures which conduct there? Because it is illusion
+which makes creatures what they are. It is as if a clever juggler, or
+his pupil, made an immense number of people to appear on the high
+road, and after having made them to appear, made them to disappear
+again. Would there be anybody who had killed, or murdered, or
+annihilated, or caused them to vanish? No. And it is the same with
+Buddha. He conducts an immense, innumerable, infinite number of
+creatures to complete Nirv�_n_a, and yet there are neither creatures
+which are conducted, nor creatures that conduct. If a Bodhisattva, on
+hearing this explanation of the Law, is not frightened, then it may be
+said that he has put on the great armour.[89]
+
+[Footnote 88: Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 462.]
+
+[Footnote 89: Ibid. p. 478.]
+
+Soon after, we read: 'The name of Buddha is nothing but a word. The
+name of Bodhisattva is nothing but a word. The name of Perfect Wisdom
+(Pra_gn_�-p�ramit�) is nothing but a word. The name is indefinite, as
+if one says "I," for "I" is something indefinite, because it has no
+limits.'
+
+Burnouf gives the gist of the whole Pra_gn_�-p�ramit� in the following
+words: 'The highest Wisdom, or what is to be known, has no more real
+existence than he who has to know, or the Bodhisattva; no more than he
+who does know, or the Buddha.' But Burnouf remarks that nothing of
+this kind is to be found in the S�tras, and that Gautama _S_�kya-muni,
+the son of _S_uddhodana, would never have become the founder of a
+popular religion if he had started with similar absurdities. In the
+S�tras the reality of the objective world is denied; the reality of
+form is denied; the reality of the individual, or the 'I,' is equally
+denied. But the existence of a subject, of something like the Purusha,
+the thinking substance of the S�nkhya philosophy, is spared. Something
+at least exists with respect to which everything else may be said not
+to exist. The germs of the ideas, developed in the Pra_gn_�-p�ramit�,
+may indeed be discovered here and there in the S�tras.[90] But they
+had not yet ripened into that poisonous plant which soon became an
+indispensable narcotic in the schools of the later Buddhists. Buddha
+himself, however, though, perhaps, not a Nihilist, was certainly an
+Atheist. He does not deny distinctly either the existence of gods, or
+that of God; but he ignores the former, and he is ignorant of the
+latter. Therefore, if Nirv�_n_a in his mind was not yet complete
+annihilation, still less could it have been absorption into a Divine
+essence. It was nothing but selfishness, in the metaphysical sense of
+the word--a relapse into that being which is nothing but itself. This
+is the most charitable view which we can take of the Nirv�_n_a, even
+as conceived by Buddha himself, and it is the view which Burnouf
+derived from the canonical books of the Northern Buddhists. On the
+other hand, Mr. Spence Hardy, who in his works follows exclusively the
+authority of the Southern Buddhists, the P�li and Singhalese works of
+Ceylon, arrives at the same result. We read in his work: 'The Rahat
+(Arhat), who has reached Nirv�_n_a, but is not yet a Pratyeka-buddha,
+or a Supreme Buddha, says: "I await the appointed time for the
+cessation of existence. I have no wish to live; I have no wish to die.
+Desire is extinct."'
+
+[Footnote 90: Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 520.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a very interesting dialogue between Milinda and N�gasena,
+communicated by Mr. Spence Hardy, Nirv�_n_a is represented as
+something which has no antecedent cause, no qualities, no locality. It
+is something of which the utmost we may assert is, that it is:
+
+     _N�gasena._ Can a man, by his natural strength, go from the
+     city of S�gal to the forest of Him�la?
+
+     _Milinda._ Yes.
+
+     _N�gasena._ But could any man, by his natural strength,
+     bring the forest of Him�la to this city of S�gal?
+
+     _Milinda._ No.
+
+     _N�gasena._ In like manner, though the fruition of the paths
+     may cause the accomplishment of Nirv�_n_a, no cause by which
+     Nirv�_n_a is produced can be declared. The path that leads
+     to Nirv�_n_a may be pointed out, but not any cause for its
+     production. Why? because that which constitutes Nirv�_n_a is
+     beyond all computation,--a mystery, not to be
+     understood.... It cannot be said that it is produced, nor
+     that it is not produced; that it is past or future or
+     present. Nor can it be said that it is the seeing of the
+     eye, or the hearing of the ear, or the smelling of the nose,
+     or the tasting of the tongue, or the feeling of the body.
+
+     _Milinda._ Then you speak of a thing that is not; you merely
+     say that Nirv�_n_a is Nirv�_n_a;--therefore there is no
+     Nirv�_n_a.
+
+     _N�gasena._ Great king, Nirv�_n_a is.
+
+Another question also, whether Nirv�_n_a is something different from
+the beings that enter into it, has been asked by the Buddhists
+themselves:
+
+     _Milinda._ Does the being who acquires it, attain something
+     that has previously existed?--or is it his own product, a
+     formation peculiar to himself?
+
+     _N�gasena._ Nirv�_n_a does not exist previously to its
+     reception; nor is it that which was brought into existence.
+     Still to the being who attains it, there is Nirv�_n_a.
+
+In opposition, therefore, to the more advanced views of the Nihilistic
+philosophers of the North, N�gasena maintains the existence of
+Nirv�_n_a, and of the being that has entered Nirv�_n_a. He does not
+say that Buddha is a mere word. When asked by king Milinda, whether
+the all-wise Buddha exists, he replies:
+
+     _N�gasena._ He who is the most meritorious (Bhagavat) does
+     exist.
+
+     _Milinda._ Then can you point out to me the place in which
+     he exists?
+
+     _N�gasena._ Our Bhagavat has attained Nirv�_n_a, where there
+     is no repetition of birth. We cannot say that he is here,
+     or that he is there. When a fire is extinguished, can it be
+     said that it is here, or that it is there? Even so, our
+     Buddha has attained extinction (Nirv�_n_a). He is like the
+     sun that has set behind the Astagiri mountain. It cannot be
+     said that he is here, or that he is there: but we can point
+     him out by the discourses he delivered. In them he lives.
+
+At the present moment, the great majority of Buddhists would probably
+be quite incapable of understanding the abstract speculation of their
+ancient masters. The view taken of Nirv�_n_a in China, Mongolia, and
+Tatary may probably be as gross as that which most of the Mohammedans
+form of their paradise. But, in the history of religion, the historian
+must go back to the earliest and most original documents that are to
+be obtained. Thus only may he hope to understand the later
+developments which, whether for good or evil, every form of faith has
+had to undergo.
+
+_April, 1857._
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+CHINESE TRANSLATIONS
+
+OF
+
+SANSKRIT TEXTS.[91]
+
+
+Well might M. Stanislas Julien put [Greek: heur�ka] on the title-page
+of his last work, in which he explains his method of deciphering the
+Sanskrit words which occur in the Chinese translations of the Buddhist
+literature of India. We endeavoured to explain the laborious character
+and the important results of his researches on this subject on a
+former occasion, when reviewing his translation of the 'Life and
+Travels of the Buddhist Pilgrim Hiouen-thsang.' At that time, however,
+M. Julien kept the key of his discoveries to himself. He gave us the
+results of his labours without giving us more than a general idea of
+the process by which those results had been obtained. He has now
+published his 'M�thode pour d�chiffrer et transcrire les noms
+sanscrits qui se rencontrent dans les livres chinois,' and he has
+given to the public his Chinese-Sanskrit dictionary, the work of
+sixteen years of arduous labour, containing all the Chinese characters
+which are used for representing phonetically the technical terms and
+proper names of the Buddhist literature of India.
+
+[Footnote 91: 'M�thode pour d�chiffrer et transcrire les noms
+sanscrits qui se rencontrent dans les livres chinois.' Par M.
+Stanislas Julien, Membre de l'Institut. Paris, 1861.]
+
+In order fully to appreciate the labours and discoveries of M. Julien
+in this remote field of Oriental literature, we must bear in mind that
+the doctrine of Buddha arose in India about two centuries before
+Alexander's invasion. It became the state religion of India soon after
+Alexander's conquest, and it produced a vast literature, which was
+collected into a canon at a council held about 246 B.C. Very soon
+after that council, Buddhism assumed a proselytizing character. It
+spread in the south to Ceylon, in the north to Kashmir, the Himalayan
+countries, Tibet, and China. In the historical annals of China, on
+which, in the absence of anything like historical literature in
+Sanskrit, we must mainly depend for information on the spreading of
+Buddhism, one Buddhist missionary is mentioned as early as 217 B.C.;
+and about the year 120 B.C. a Chinese general, after defeating the
+barbarous tribes north of the desert of Gobi, brought back as a trophy
+a golden statue--the statue of Buddha. It was not, however, till the
+year 65 A.D. that Buddhism was officially recognised by the Chinese
+Emperor as a third state religion. Ever since, it has shared equal
+honours with the doctrines of Confucius and Lao-tse in the Celestial
+Empire; and it is but lately that these three established religions
+have had to fear the encroachments of a new rival in the creed of the
+Chief of the rebels.
+
+Once established in China, and well provided with monasteries and
+benefices, the Buddhist priesthood seems to have been most active in
+its literary labours. Immense as was the Buddhist literature of India,
+the Chinese swelled it to still more appalling proportions. The first
+thing to be done was to translate the canonical books. This seems to
+have been the joint work of Chinese who had acquired a knowledge of
+Sanskrit during their travels in India, and of Hindus who settled in
+Chinese monasteries in order to assist the native translators. The
+translation of books which profess to contain a new religious doctrine
+is under all circumstances a task of great difficulty. It was so
+particularly when the subtle abstractions of the Buddhist religion had
+to be clothed in the solid, matter-of-fact idiom of the Chinese. But
+there was another difficulty which it seemed almost impossible to
+overcome. Many words, not only proper names, but the technical terms
+also of the Buddhist creed, had to be preserved in Chinese. They were
+not to be translated, but to be transliterated. But how was this to be
+effected with a language which, like Chinese, had no phonetic
+alphabet? Every Chinese character is a word; it has both sound and
+meaning; and it is unfit, therefore, for the representation of the
+sound of foreign words. In modern times, certain characters have been
+set apart for the purpose of writing the proper names and titles of
+foreigners; but such is the peculiar nature of the Chinese system of
+writing, that even with this alphabet it is only possible to represent
+approximatively the pronunciation of foreign words. In the absence,
+however, of even such an alphabet, the translators of the Buddhist
+literature seem to have used their own discretion--or rather
+indiscretion--in appropriating, without any system, whatever Chinese
+characters seemed to them to come nearest to the sound of Sanskrit
+words. Now the whole Chinese language consists in reality of about
+four hundred words, or significative sounds, all monosyllabic. Each of
+these monosyllabic sounds embraces a large number of various meanings,
+and each of these various meanings is represented by its own sign.
+Thus it has happened that the Chinese Dictionary contains 43,496
+signs, whereas the Chinese language commands only four hundred
+distinct utterances. Instead of being restricted, therefore, to one
+character which always expresses the same sound, the Buddhist
+translators were at liberty to express one and the same sound in a
+hundred different ways. Of this freedom they availed themselves to the
+fullest extent. Each translator, each monastery, fixed on its own
+characters for representing the pronunciation of Sanskrit words. There
+are more than twelve hundred Chinese characters employed by various
+writers in order to represent the forty-two simple letters of the
+Sanskrit alphabet. The result has been that even the Chinese were
+after a time unable to read--i. e. to pronounce--these random
+transliterations. What, then, was to be expected from Chinese scholars
+in Europe? Fortunately, the Chinese, to save themselves from their own
+perplexities, had some lists drawn up, exhibiting the principles
+followed by the various translators in representing the proper names,
+the names of places, and the technical terms of philosophy and
+religion which they had borrowed from the Sanskrit. With the help of
+these lists, and after sixteen years consecrated to the study of the
+Chinese translations of Sanskrit works and of other original
+compositions of Buddhist authors, M. Julien at last caught up the
+thread that was to lead him through this labyrinth; and by means of
+his knowledge of Sanskrit, which he acquired solely for that purpose,
+he is now able to do what not even the most learned among the
+Buddhists in China could accomplish--he is able to restore the exact
+form and meaning of every word transferred from Sanskrit into the
+Buddhist literature of China.
+
+Without this laborious process, which would have tired out the
+patience and deadened the enthusiasm of most scholars, the treasures
+of the Buddhist literature preserved in Chinese were really useless.
+Abel R�musat, who during his lifetime was considered the first Chinese
+scholar in Europe, attempted indeed a translation of the travels of
+Fahian, a Buddhist pilgrim, who visited India about the end of the
+fourth century after Christ. It was in many respects a most valuable
+work, but the hopelessness of reducing the uncouth Chinese terms to
+their Sanskrit originals made it most tantalising to look through its
+pages. Who was to guess that Ho-kia-lo was meant for the Sanskrit
+Vy�kara_n_a, in the sense of sermons; Po-to for the Sanskrit Avad�na,
+parables; Kia-ye-i for the Sanskrit K�_s_yap�yas, the followers of
+K�_s_yapa? In some instances, Abel R�musat, assisted by Ch�zy, guessed
+rightly; and later Sanskrit scholars, such as Burnouf, Lassen, and
+Wilson, succeeded in re-establishing, with more or less certainty, the
+original form of a number of Sanskrit words, in spite of their Chinese
+disguises. Still there was no system, and therefore no certainty, in
+these guesses, and many erroneous conclusions were drawn from
+fragmentary translations of Chinese writers on Buddhism, which even
+now are not yet entirely eliminated from the works of Oriental
+scholars. With M. Julien's method, mathematical certainty seems to
+have taken the place of learned conjectures; and whatever is to be
+learnt from the Chinese on the origin, the history, and the true
+character of Buddha's doctrine may now be had in an authentic and
+unambiguous form.
+
+But even after the principal difficulties have been cleared away
+through the perseverance of M. Stanislas Julien, and after we have
+been allowed to reap the fruits of his labours in his masterly
+translation of the 'Voyages des P�lerins Bouddhistes,' there still
+remains one point that requires some elucidation. How was it that the
+Chinese, whose ears no doubt are of the same construction as our own,
+should have made such sad work of the Sanskrit names which they
+transcribed with their own alphabet? Much may be explained by the
+defects of their language. Such common sounds as v, g, r, b, d, and
+short a, are unknown in Chinese as initials; no compound consonants
+are allowed, every consonant being followed by a vowel; and the final
+letters are limited to a very small number. This, no doubt, explains,
+to a great extent, the distorted appearance of many Sanskrit words
+when written in Chinese. Thus, Buddha could only be written Fo to.
+There was no sign for an initial b, nor was it possible to represent a
+double consonant, such as ddh. Fo to was the nearest approach to
+Buddha of which Chinese, when written, was capable. But was it so in
+speaking? Was it really impossible for Fahian and Hiouen-thsang, who
+had spent so many years in India, and who were acquainted with all the
+intricacies of Sanskrit grammar, to distinguish between the sounds of
+Buddha and Fo to? We cannot believe this. We are convinced that
+Hiouen-thsang, though he wrote, and could not but write, Fo to with
+the Chinese characters, pronounced Buddha just as we pronounce it, and
+that it was only among the unlearned that Fo to became at last the
+recognised name of the founder of Buddhism, abbreviated even to the
+monosyllabic Fo, which is now the most current appellation of 'the
+Enlightened.' In the same manner the Chinese pilgrims wrote Niepan,
+but they pronounced Nirv�_n_a; they wrote Fan-lon-mo, and pronounced
+Brahma.
+
+Nor is it necessary that we should throw all the blame of these
+distortions on the Chinese. On the contrary, it is almost certain that
+some of the discrepancies between the Sanskrit of their translations
+and the classical Sanskrit of P�_n_ini were due to the corruption
+which, at the time when Buddhism arose, and still more at the time
+when Buddhism spread to China, had crept into the spoken language of
+India. Sanskrit had ceased to be the spoken language of the people
+previous to the time of A_s_oka. The edicts which are still preserved
+on the rocks of Dhauli, Girnar, and Kapurdigiri are written in a
+dialect which stands to Sanskrit in the same relation as Italian to
+Latin. Now it is true, no doubt, that the canonical books of the
+Buddhists are written in a tolerably correct Sanskrit, very different
+from the Italianized dialect of A_s_oka. But that Sanskrit was, like
+the Greek of Alexandria, like the Latin of Hungary, a learned idiom,
+written by the learned for the learned; it was no longer the living
+speech of India. Now it is curious that in many of the canonical
+Buddhist works which we still possess, the text which is written in
+Sanskrit prose is from time to time interrupted by poetical portions,
+called G�th�s or ballads, in which the same things are told in verse
+which had before been related in prose. The dialect of these songs or
+ballads is full of what grammarians would call irregularities, that is
+to say, full of those changes which every language undergoes in the
+mouths of the people. In character these corruptions are the same as
+those which have been observed in the inscriptions of A_s_oka, and
+which afterwards appear in P�li and the modern Pr�krit dialects of
+India. Various conjectures have been started to explain the
+amalgamation of the correct prose text and the free and easy poetical
+version of the same events, as embodied in the sacred literature of
+the Buddhists. Burnouf, the first who instituted a critical inquiry
+into the history and literature of Buddhism, supposed that there was,
+besides the canon fixed by the three convocations, another digest of
+Buddhist doctrines composed in the popular style, which may have
+developed itself, as he says, subsequently to the preaching of
+_S_�kya, and which would thus be intermediate between the regular
+Sanskrit and the P�li. He afterwards, however, inclines to another
+view--namely, that these G�th�s were written out of India by men to
+whom Sanskrit was no longer familiar, and who endeavoured to write in
+the learned language, which they ill understood, with the freedom
+which is imparted by the habitual use of a popular but imperfectly
+determined dialect. Other Sanskrit scholars have proposed other
+solutions of this strange mixture of correct prose and incorrect
+poetry in the Buddhist literature; but none of them was satisfactory.
+The problem seems to have been solved at last by a native scholar,
+Babu Rajendralal, a curious instance of the reaction of European
+antiquarian research on the native mind of India. Babu Rajendralal
+reads Sanskrit of course with the greatest ease. He is a pandit by
+profession, but he is at the same time a scholar and critic in our
+sense of the word. He has edited Sanskrit texts after a careful
+collation of MSS., and in his various contributions to the 'Journal of
+the Asiatic Society of Bengal,' he has proved himself completely above
+the prejudices of his class, freed from the erroneous views on the
+history and literature of India in which every Brahman is brought up,
+and thoroughly imbued with those principles of criticism which men
+like Colebrooke, Lassen, and Burnouf have followed in their researches
+into the literary treasures of his country. His English is remarkably
+clear and simple, and his arguments would do credit to any Sanskrit
+scholar in England. We quote from his remarks on Burnouf's account of
+the G�th�s, as given in that scholar's 'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien:'
+
+     'Burnouf's opinion on the origin of the G�th�s, we venture
+     to think, is founded on a mistaken estimate of Sanskrit
+     style. The poetry of the G�th� has much artistic elegance
+     which at once indicates that it is not the composition of
+     men who were ignorant of the first principles of grammar.
+     The authors display a great deal of learning, and discuss
+     the subtlest questions of logic and metaphysics with much
+     tact and ability, and it is difficult to conceive that men
+     who were perfectly familiar with the most intricate forms of
+     Sanskrit logic, who have expressed the most abstruse
+     metaphysical ideas in precise and often in beautiful
+     language, who composed with ease and elegance in �rya,
+     To_t_aka, and other difficult measures, were unacquainted
+     with the rudiments of the language in which they wrote, and
+     were unable to conjugate the verb to be in all its forms....
+     The more reasonable conjecture appears to be that the G�th�
+     is the production of bards who were contemporaries or
+     immediate successors of _S_�kya, who recounted to the devout
+     congregations of the prophet of Magadha, the sayings and
+     doings of their great teacher in popular and easy-flowing
+     verses, which in course of time came to be regarded as the
+     most authentic source of all information connected with the
+     founder of Buddhism. The high estimation in which the
+     ballads and improvisations of bards are held in India and
+     particularly in the Buddhist writings, favours this
+     supposition; and the circumstance that the poetical portions
+     are generally introduced in corroboration of the narration
+     of the prose, with the words "Thereof this may be said,"
+     affords a strong presumptive evidence.'
+
+Now this, from the pen of a native scholar, is truly remarkable. The
+spirit of Niebuhr seems to have reached the shores of India, and this
+ballad theory comes out more successfully in the history of Buddha
+than in the history of Romulus. The absence of anything like cant in
+the mouth of a Brahman speaking of Buddhism, the _b�te noire_ of all
+orthodox Brahmans, is highly satisfactory, and our Sanskrit scholars
+in Europe will have to pull hard if, with such men as Babu Rajendralal
+in the field, they are not to be distanced in the race of scholarship.
+
+We believe, then, that Babu Rajendralal is right, and we look upon the
+dialect of the G�th�s as a specimen of the Sanskrit spoken by the
+followers of Buddha about the time of A_s_oka and later. And this will
+help us to understand some of the peculiar changes which the Sanskrit
+of the Chinese Buddhists must have undergone, even before it was
+disguised in the strange dress of the Chinese alphabet. The Chinese
+pilgrims did not hear the Sanskrit pronounced as it was pronounced in
+the Parishads according to the strict rules of their _S_iksh� or
+phonetics. They heard it as it was spoken in Buddhist monasteries, as
+it was sung in the G�th�s of Buddhist minstrels, as it was preached in
+the Vy�kara_n_as or sermons of Buddhist friars. For instance. In the
+G�th�s a short a is frequently lengthened. We find n� instead of na,
+'no.' The same occurs in the Sanskrit of the Chinese Buddhists. (See
+Julien, 'M�thode,' p. 18; p. 21.) We find there also vist�ra instead
+of vistara, &c. In the dialect of the G�th�s nouns ending in
+consonants, and therefore irregular, are transferred to the easier
+declension in a. The same process takes place in modern Greek and in
+the transition of Latin into Italian; it is, in fact, a general
+tendency of all languages which are carried on by the stream of living
+speech. Now this transition from one declension to another had taken
+place before the Chinese had appropriated the Sanskrit of the Buddhist
+books. The Sanskrit nabhas becomes nabha in the G�th�s; locative
+nabhe, instead of nabhasi. If, therefore, we find in Chinese lo-che
+for the Sanskrit ra_g_as, dust, we may ascribe the change of r into l
+to the inability of the Chinese to pronounce or to write an r. We may
+admit that the Chinese alphabet offered nothing nearer to the sound of
+_g_a than tche; but the dropping of the final s has no excuse in
+Chinese, and finds its real explanation in the nature of the G�th�
+dialect. Thus the Chinese Fan-lan-mo does not represent the correct
+Sanskrit Brahman, but the vulgar form Brahma. The Chinese so-po for
+sarva, all, thomo for dharma, law, find no explanation in the dialect
+of the G�th�s, but the suppression of the r before v and m, is of
+frequent occurrence in the inscriptions of A_s_oka. The omission of
+the initial s in words like sth�na, place, sthavira, an elder, is
+likewise founded on the rules of P�li and Pr�krit, and need not be
+placed to the account of the Chinese translators. In the inscription
+of Girnar sthavira is even reduced to thaira. The s of the nominative
+is frequently dropped in the dialect of the G�th�s, or changed into o.
+Hence we might venture to doubt whether it is necessary to give to the
+character 1780 of M. Julien's list, which generally has the value of
+ta, a second value sta. This s is only wanted to supply the final s of
+kas, the interrogative pronoun, in such a sentence as kas
+tadgu_n_a_h_? what is the use of this? Now here we are inclined to
+believe that the final s of kas had long disappeared in the popular
+language of India, before the Chinese came to listen to the strange
+sounds and doctrines of the disciples of Buddha. They probably heard
+ka tadgu_n_a, or ka taggu_n_a, and this they represented as best they
+could by the Chinese kia-to-kieou-na.
+
+With these few suggestions we leave the work of M. Stanislas Julien.
+It is in reality a work done once for all--one huge stone and
+stumbling-block effectually rolled away which for years had barred the
+approach to some most valuable documents of the history of the East.
+Now that the way is clear, let us hope that others will follow, and
+that we shall soon have complete and correct translations of the
+travels of Fahian and other Buddhist pilgrims whose works are like so
+many Murray's 'Handbooks of India,' giving us an insight into the
+social, political, and religious state of that country at a time when
+we look in vain for any other historical documents.
+
+_March, 1861._
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+THE WORKS OF CONFUCIUS.[92]
+
+
+In reviewing the works of missionaries, we have repeatedly dwelt on
+the opportunities of scientific usefulness which are open to the
+messengers of the Gospel in every part of the world. We are not afraid
+of the common objection that missionaries ought to devote their whole
+time and powers to the one purpose for which they are sent out and
+paid by our societies. Missionaries cannot always be engaged in
+teaching, preaching, converting, and baptising the heathen. A
+missionary, like every other human creature, ought to have his leisure
+hours; and if those leisure hours are devoted to scientific pursuits,
+to the study of the languages or the literature of the people among
+whom he lives, to a careful description of the scenery and antiquities
+of the country, the manners, laws, and customs of its inhabitants,
+their legends, their national poetry, or popular stories, or, again,
+to the cultivation of any branch of natural science, he may rest
+assured that he is not neglecting the sacred trust which he accepted,
+but is only bracing and invigorating his mind, and keeping it from
+that stagnation which is the inevitable result of a too monotonous
+employment. The staff of missionaries which is spread over the whole
+globe supplies the most perfect machinery that could be devised for
+the collection of all kinds of scientific knowledge. They ought to be
+the pioneers of science. They should not only take out--they should
+also bring something home; and there is nothing more likely to
+increase and strengthen the support on which our missionary societies
+depend, nothing more sure to raise the intellectual standard of the
+men selected for missionary labour, than a formal recognition of this
+additional duty. There may be exceptional cases where missionaries are
+wanted for constant toil among natives ready to be instructed, and
+anxious to be received as members of a Christian community. But, as a
+general rule, the missionary abroad has more leisure than a clergyman
+at home, and time sits heavy on the hands of many whose congregations
+consist of no more than ten or twenty souls. It is hardly necessary to
+argue this point, when we can appeal to so many facts. The most
+successful missionaries have been exactly those whose names are
+remembered with gratitude, not only by the natives among whom they
+laboured, but also by the savants of Europe; and the labours of the
+Jesuit missionaries in India and China, of the Baptist missionaries at
+Serampore, of Gogerly and Spence Hardy in Ceylon, of Caldwell in
+Tinnevelly, of Wilson in Bombay, of Moffat, Krapf, and last, but not
+least, of Livingstone, will live not only in the journals of our
+academies, but likewise in the annals of the missionary Church.
+
+[Footnote 92: 'The Chinese Classics;' with a Translation, Critical and
+Exegetical Notes. By James Legge, D.D., of the London Missionary
+Society. Hong Kong, 1861.]
+
+The first volume of an edition of the Chinese Classics, which we have
+just received from the Rev. Dr. J. Legge, of the London Missionary
+Society, is a new proof of what can be achieved by missionaries, if
+encouraged to devote part of their time and attention to scientific
+and literary pursuits. We do not care to inquire whether Dr. Legge has
+been successful as a missionary. Even if he had not converted a single
+Chinese, he would, after completing the work which he has just begun,
+have rendered most important aid to the introduction of Christianity
+into China. He arrived in the East towards the end of 1839, having
+received only a few months' instruction in Chinese from Professor Kidd
+in London. Being stationed at Malacca, it seemed to him then--and he
+adds 'that the experience of twenty-one years has given its sanction
+to the correctness of the judgment'--that he could not consider
+himself qualified for the duties of his position until he had
+thoroughly mastered the classical books of the Chinese, and
+investigated for himself the whole field of thought through which the
+sages of China had ranged, and in which were to be found the
+foundations of the moral, social, and political life of the people. He
+was not able to pursue his studies without interruption, and it was
+only after some years, when the charge of the Anglo-Chinese College
+had devolved upon him, that he could procure the books necessary to
+facilitate his progress. After sixteen years of assiduous study, Dr.
+Legge had explored the principal works of Chinese literature; and he
+then felt that he could render the course of reading through which he
+had passed more easy to those who were to follow after him, by
+publishing, on the model of our editions of the Greek and Roman
+Classics, a critical text of the Classics of China, together with a
+translation and explanatory notes. His materials were ready, but
+there was the difficulty of finding the funds necessary for so costly
+an undertaking. Scarcely, however, had Dr. Legge's wants become known
+among the British and other foreign merchants in China, than one of
+them, Mr. Joseph Jardine, sent for the Doctor, and said to him, 'I
+know the liberality of the merchants in China, and that many of them
+would readily give their help to such an undertaking; but you need not
+have the trouble of canvassing the community. If you are prepared to
+undertake the toil of the publication, I will bear the expense of it.
+We make our money in China, and we should be glad to assist in
+whatever promises to be a benefit to it.' The result of this
+combination of disinterested devotion on the part of the author, and
+enlightened liberality on the part of his patron, lies now before us
+in a splendid volume of text, translation, and commentary, which, if
+the life of the editor is spared (and the sudden death of Mr. Jardine
+from the effects of the climate is a warning how busily death is at
+work among the European settlers in those regions), will be followed
+by at least six other volumes.
+
+The edition is to comprise the books now recognised as of highest
+authority by the Chinese themselves. These are the five King's and the
+four Shoo's. King means the warp threads of a web, and its application
+to literary compositions rests on the same metaphor as the Latin word
+textus, and the Sanskrit S�tra, meaning a yarn, and a book. Shoo
+simply means writings. The five King's are, 1. the Yih, or the Book of
+Changes; 2. the Shoo, or the Book of History; 3. the She, or the Book
+of Poetry; 4. the Le Ke, or Record of Rites; and 5. the Chun Tsew, or
+Spring and Autumn; a chronicle extending from 721 to 480 B.C. The four
+Shoo's consist of, 1. the Lun Yu, or Digested Conversations between
+Confucius and his disciples; 2. Ta H�o, or Great Learning, commonly
+attributed to one of his disciples; 3. the Chung Yung, or Doctrine of
+the Mean, ascribed to the grandson of Confucius; 4. of the works of
+Mencius, who died 288 B.C.
+
+The authorship of the five King's is loosely attributed to Confucius;
+but it is only the fifth, or 'the Spring and Autumn,' which can be
+claimed as the work of the philosopher. The Yih, the Shoo, and the She
+King were not composed, but only compiled by him, and much of the Le
+Ke is clearly from later hands. Confucius, though the founder of a
+religion and a reformer, was thoroughly conservative in his
+tendencies, and devotedly attached to the past. He calls himself a
+transmitter, not a maker, believing in and loving the ancients (p.
+59). 'I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge,' he
+says, 'I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it
+there' (p. 65). The most frequent themes of his discourses were the
+ancient songs, the history, and the rules of propriety established by
+ancient sages (p. 64). When one of his contemporaries wished to do
+away with the offering of a lamb as a meaningless formality, Confucius
+reproved him with the pithy sentence, 'You love the sheep, I love the
+ceremony.' There were four things, we are told, which Confucius
+taught--letters, ethics, devotion of soul, and truthfulness (p. 66).
+When speaking of himself, he said, 'At fifteen, I had my mind bent on
+learning. At thirty, I stood firm. At forty, I had no doubt. At fifty,
+I knew the decrees of heaven. At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ
+for the reception of truth. At seventy, I could follow what my heart
+desired, without transgressing what was right' (p. 10). Though this
+may sound like boasting, it is remarkable how seldom Confucius himself
+claims any superiority above his fellow-creatures. He offers his
+advice to those who are willing to listen, but he never speaks
+dogmatically; he never attempts to tyrannize over the minds or hearts
+of his friends. If we read his biography, we can hardly understand how
+a man whose life was devoted to such tranquil pursuits, and whose
+death scarcely produced a ripple on the smooth and silent surface of
+the Eastern world, could have left the impress of his mind on millions
+and millions of human beings--an impress which even now, after 2339
+years, is clearly discernible in the national character of the largest
+empire of the world. Confucius died in 478 B.C., complaining that of
+all the princes of the empire there was not one who would adopt his
+principles and obey his lessons. After two generations, however, his
+name had risen to be a power--the rallying point of a vast movement of
+national and religious regeneration. His grandson speaks of him as the
+ideal of a sage, as the sage is the ideal of humanity at large. Though
+Tze-tze claims no divine honour for his grandsire, he exalts his
+wisdom and virtue beyond the limits of human nature. This is a
+specimen of the language which he applies to Confucius:
+
+     'He may be compared to heaven and earth in their supporting
+     and containing, their overshadowing and curtaining all
+     things; he may be compared to the four seasons in their
+     alternating progress, and to the sun and moon in their
+     successive shining.... Quick in apprehension, clear in
+     discernment, of far-reaching intellect and all-embracing
+     knowledge, he was fitted to exercise rule; magnanimous,
+     generous, benign, and mild, he was fitted to exercise
+     forbearance; impulsive, energetic, firm, and enduring, he
+     was fitted to maintain a firm hold; self-adjusted, grave,
+     never swerving from the Mean, and correct, he was fitted to
+     command reverence; accomplished, distinctive, concentrative,
+     and searching, he was fitted to exercise discrimination....
+     All-embracing and vast, he was like heaven; deep and active
+     as a fountain, he was like the abyss.... Therefore his fame
+     overspreads the Middle Kingdom and extends to all barbarous
+     tribes. Wherever ships and carriages reach, wherever the
+     strength of man penetrates, wherever the heavens overshadow
+     and the earth sustains, wherever the sun and moon shine,
+     wherever frost and dews fall, all who have blood and breath
+     unfeignedly honour and love him. Hence it is said--He is the
+     equal of Heaven' (p. 53).
+
+This is certainly very magnificent phraseology, but it will hardly
+convey any definite impression to the minds of those who are not
+acquainted with the life and teaching of the great Chinese sage. These
+may be studied now by all who can care for the history of human
+thought, in the excellent work of Dr. Legge. The first volume, just
+published, contains the Confucian Analects, the Great Learning, and
+the Doctrine of the Mean, or the First, Second, and Third Shoo's, and
+will, we hope, soon be followed by the other Chinese Classics.[93] We
+must here confine ourselves to giving a few of the sage's sayings,
+selected from thousands that are to be found in the Confucian
+Analects. Their interest is chiefly historical, as throwing light on
+the character of one of the most remarkable men in the history of the
+human race. But there is besides this a charm in the simple
+enunciation of simple truths; and such is the fear of truism in our
+modern writers that we must go to distant times and distant countries
+if we wish to listen to that simple Solomonic wisdom which is better
+than the merchandize of silver and the gain thereof than fine gold.
+
+[Footnote 93: Dr. Legge has since published: vol. ii. containing the
+works of Mencius; vol. iii. part 1. containing the first part of the
+Shoo King; vol. iii. part 2. containing the fifth part of the Shoo
+King.]
+
+Confucius shows his tolerant spirit when he says, 'The superior man is
+catholic, and no partisan. The mean man is a partisan, and not
+catholic' (p. 14).
+
+There is honest manliness in his saying, 'To see what is right, and
+not to do it, is want of courage' (p. 18).
+
+His definition of knowledge, though less profound than that of
+Socrates, is nevertheless full of good sense:
+
+     'The Master said, "Shall I teach you what knowledge is? When
+     you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do
+     not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it--this is
+     knowledge"' (p. 15).
+
+Nor was Confucius unacquainted with the secrets of the heart: 'It is
+only the truly virtuous man,' he says in one place, 'who can love or
+who can hate others' (p. 30). In another place he expresses his belief
+in the irresistible charm of virtue: 'Virtue is not left to stand
+alone,' he says; 'he who practises it will have neighbours.' He bears
+witness to the hidden connection between intellectual and moral
+excellence: 'It is not easy,' he remarks, 'to find a man who has
+learned for three years without coming to be good' (p. 76). In his
+ethics, the golden rule of the Gospel, 'Do ye unto others as ye would
+that others should do to you,' is represented as almost unattainable.
+Thus we read, 'Tsze-Kung said, "What I do not wish men to do to me, I
+also wish not to do to men." The Master said, "Tsze, you have not
+attained to that,"' The Brahmans, too, had a distant perception of the
+same truth, which is expressed, for instance, in the Hitopadesa in the
+following words: 'Good people show mercy unto all beings, considering
+how like they are to themselves.' On subjects which transcend the
+limits of human understanding, Confucius is less explicit; but his
+very reticence is remarkable, when we consider the recklessness with
+which Oriental philosophers launch into the depths of religious
+metaphysics. Thus we read (p. 107):
+
+     'Ke Loo asked about serving the spirits of the dead. The
+     Master said, "While you are not able to serve men, how can
+     you serve their spirits?"
+
+     Ke Loo added, "I venture to ask about death." He was
+     answered, "While you do not know life, how can you know
+     about death?"'
+
+And again (p. 190):
+
+     'The Master said, "I would prefer not speaking."
+
+     Tsze-Kung said, "If you, Master, do not speak, what shall
+     we, your disciples, have to record?"
+
+     The Master said, "Does Heaven speak? The four seasons pursue
+     their courses, and all things are continually being
+     produced; but does Heaven say anything?"'
+
+_November, 1861._
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+POPOL VUH.
+
+
+A book called 'Popol Vuh,'[94] and pretending to be the original text
+of the sacred writings of the Indians of Central America, will be
+received by most people with a sceptical smile. The Aztec children who
+were shown all over Europe as descendants of a race to whom, before
+the Spanish conquest, divine honours were paid by the natives of
+Mexico, and who turned out to be unfortunate creatures that had been
+tampered with by heartless speculators, are still fresh in the memory
+of most people; and the 'Livre des Sauvages,'[95] lately published by
+the Abb� Domenech, under the auspices of Count Walewsky, has somewhat
+lowered the dignity of American studies in general. Still, those who
+laugh at the 'Manuscrit Pictographique Am�ricain' discovered by the
+French Abb� in the library of the French Ars�nal, and edited by him
+with so much care as a precious relic of the old Red-skins of North
+America, ought not to forget that there would be nothing at all
+surprising in the existence of such a MS., containing genuine
+pictographic writing of the Red Indians. The German critic of Abb�
+Domenech, M. Petzholdt,[96] assumes much too triumphant an air in
+announcing his discovery that the 'Manuscrit Pictographique' was the
+work of a German boy in the backwoods of America. He ought to have
+acknowledged that the Abb� himself had pointed out the German scrawls
+on some of the pages of his MS.; that he had read the names of Anna
+and Maria; and that he never claimed any great antiquity for the book
+in question. Indeed, though M. Petzholdt tells us very confidently
+that the whole book is the work of a naughty, nasty, and profane
+little boy, the son of German settlers in the backwoods of America, we
+doubt whether anybody who takes the trouble to look through all the
+pages will consider this view as at all satisfactory, or even as more
+probable than that of the French Abb�. We know what boys are capable
+of in pictographic art from the occasional defacements of our walls
+and railings; but we still feel a little sceptical when M. Petzholdt
+assures us that there is nothing extraordinary in a boy filling a
+whole volume with these elaborate scrawls. If M. Petzholdt had taken
+the trouble to look at some of the barbarous hieroglyphics that have
+been collected in North America, he would have understood more readily
+how the Abb� Domenech, who had spent many years among the Red Indians,
+and had himself copied several of their inscriptions, should have
+taken the pages preserved in the library of the Ars�nal at Paris as
+genuine specimens of American pictography. There is a certain
+similarity between these scrawls and the figures scratched on rocks,
+tombstones, and trees by the wandering tribes of North America; and
+though we should be very sorry to endorse the opinion of the
+enthusiastic Abb�, or to start any conjecture of our own as to the
+real authorship of the 'Livre des Sauvages,' we cannot but think that
+M. Petzholdt would have written less confidently, and certainly less
+scornfully, if he had been more familiar than he seems to be with the
+little that is known of the picture-writing of the Indian tribes. As a
+preliminary to the question of the authenticity of the 'Popol Vuh,' a
+few words on the pictorial literature of the Red Indians of North
+America will not be considered out of place. The 'Popol Vuh' is not
+indeed a 'Livre des Sauvages,' but a literary composition in the true
+sense of the word. It contains the mythology and history of the
+civilised races of Central America, and comes before us with
+credentials that will bear the test of critical inquiry. But we shall
+be better able to appreciate the higher achievements of the South
+after we have examined, however cursorily, the rude beginnings in
+literature among the savage races of the North.
+
+[Footnote 94: 'Popol Vuh:' le Livre Sacr� et les Mythes de l'Antiquit�
+Am�ricaine, avec les Livres H�ro�ques et Historiques des Quich�s. Par
+l'Abb� Brasseur de Bourbourg. Paris: Durand, 1861.]
+
+[Footnote 95: 'Manuscrit Pictographique Am�ricain,' pr�c�d� d'une
+Notice sur l'Id�ographie des Peaux-Rouges. Par l'Abb� Em. Domenech.
+Ouvrage publi� sous les auspices de M. le Ministre d'Etat et de la
+Maison de l'Empereur. Paris, 1860.]
+
+[Footnote 96: 'Das Buch der Wilden im Lichte Franz�sischer
+Civilisation.' Mit Proben aus dem in Paris als 'Manuscrit
+Pictographique Am�ricain,' ver�ffentlichten Schmierbuche eines
+Deutsch-Amerikanischen Hinterw�lder Jungen. Von J. Petzholdt. Dresden,
+1861.]
+
+Colden, in his 'History of the Five Nations,' informs us that when, in
+1696, the Count de Frontenac marched a well-appointed army into the
+Iroquois country, with artillery and all other means of regular
+military offence, he found, on the banks of the Onondaga, now called
+Oswego River, a tree, on the trunk of which the Indians had depicted
+the French army, and deposited two bundles of cut rushes at its foot,
+consisting of 1434 pieces; an act of symbolical defiance on their
+part, which was intended to warn their Gallic invaders that they would
+have to encounter this number of warriors.
+
+This warlike message is a specimen of Indian picture-writing. It
+belongs to the lowest stage of graphic representation, and hardly
+differs from the primitive way in which the Persian ambassadors
+communicated with the Greeks, or the Romans with the Carthaginians.
+Instead of the lance and the staff of peace between which the
+Carthaginians were asked to choose, the Red Indians would have sent an
+arrow and a pipe, and the message would have been equally understood.
+This, though not yet _peindre la parole_, is nevertheless a first
+attempt at _parler aux yeux_. It is a first beginning which may lead
+to something more perfect in the end. We find similar attempts at
+pictorial communication among other savage tribes, and they seem to
+answer every purpose. In Freycinet and Arago's 'Voyage to the Eastern
+Ocean' we are told of a native of the Carolina Islands, a Tamor of
+Sathoual, who wished to avail himself of the presence of a ship to
+send to a trader at Botta, M. Martinez, some shells which he had
+promised to collect in exchange for a few axes and some other
+articles. This he expressed to the captain, who gave him a piece of
+paper to make the drawing, and satisfactorily executed the commission.
+The figure of a man at the top denoted the ship's captain, who by his
+outstretched hands represented his office as a messenger between the
+parties. The rays or ornaments on his head denote rank or authority.
+The vine beneath him is a type of friendship. In the left column are
+depicted the number and kinds of shells sent; in the right column the
+things wished for in exchange--namely, seven fish-hooks, three large
+and four small, two axes, and two pieces of iron.
+
+The inscriptions which are found on the Indian graveboards mark a step
+in advance. Every warrior has his crest, which is called his totem,
+and is painted on his tombstone. A celebrated war-chief, the Adjetatig
+of Wabojeeg, died on Lake Superior, about 1793. He was of the clan of
+the Addik, or American reindeer. This fact is symbolized by the figure
+of the deer. The reversed position denotes death. His own personal
+name, which was White Fisher, is not noticed. But there are seven
+transverse strokes on the left, and these have a meaning--namely, that
+he had led seven war parties. Then there are three perpendicular lines
+below his crest, and these again are readily understood by every
+Indian. They represent the wounds received in battle. The figure of a
+moose's head is said to relate to a desperate conflict with an enraged
+animal of this kind; and the symbols of the arrow and the pipe are
+drawn to indicate the chief's influence in war and peace.
+
+There is another graveboard of the ruling chief of Sandy Lake on the
+Upper Mississippi. Here the reversed bird denotes his family name or
+clan, the Crane. Four transverse lines above it denote that he had
+killed four of his enemies in battle. An analogous custom is mentioned
+by Aristotle ('Politica,' vii. 2, p. 220, ed. G�ttling). Speaking of
+the Iberians, he states that they placed as many obelisks round the
+grave of a warrior as he had killed enemies in battle.
+
+But the Indians went further; and though they never arrived at the
+perfection of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, they had a number of
+symbolic emblems which were perfectly understood by all their tribes.
+Eating is represented by a man's hand lifted to his mouth. Power over
+man is symbolized by a line drawn in the figure from the mouth to the
+heart; power in general by a head with two horns. A circle drawn
+around the body at the abdomen denotes full means of subsistence. A
+boy drawn with waved lines from each ear and lines leading to the
+heart represents a pupil. A figure with a plant as head, and two
+wings, denotes a doctor skilled in medicine, and endowed with the
+power of ubiquity. A tree with human legs, a herbalist or professor of
+botany. Night is represented by a finely crossed or barred sun, or a
+circle with human legs. Rain is figured by a dot or semicircle filled
+with water and placed on the head. The heaven with three disks of the
+sun is understood to mean three days' journey, and a landing after a
+voyage is represented by a tortoise. Short sentences, too, can be
+pictured in this manner. A prescription ordering abstinence from food
+for two, and rest for four, days is written by drawing a man with two
+bars on the stomach and four across the legs. We are told even of
+war-songs and love-songs composed in this primitive alphabet; but it
+would seem as if, in these cases, the reader required even greater
+poetical imagination than the writer. There is one war-song consisting
+of four pictures--
+
+     1. The sun rising.
+
+     2. A figure pointing with one hand to the earth and the
+     other extended to the sky.
+
+     3. The moon with two human legs.
+
+     4. A figure personifying the Eastern woman, i. e. the
+     evening star.
+
+These four symbols are said to convey to the Indian the following
+meaning:
+
+    I am rising to seek the war path;
+    The earth and the sky are before me;
+    I walk by day and by night;
+    And the evening star is my guide.
+
+The following is a specimen of a love-song:
+
+     1. Figure representing a god (monedo) endowed with magic
+     power.
+
+     2. Figure beating the drum and singing; lines from his
+     mouth.
+
+     3. Figure surrounded by a secret lodge.
+
+     4. Two bodies joined with one continuous arm.
+
+     5. A woman on an island.
+
+     6. A woman asleep; lines from his ear towards her.
+
+     7. A red heart in a circle.
+
+This poem is intended to express these sentiments:
+
+     1. It is my form and person that make me great--
+
+     2. Hear the voice of my song, it is my voice.
+
+     3. I shield myself with secret coverings.
+
+     4. All your thoughts are known to me, blush!
+
+     5. I could draw you hence were you ever so far--
+
+     6. Though you were on the other hemisphere--
+
+     7. I speak to your naked heart.
+
+All we can say is, that if the Indians can read this writing, they are
+greater adepts in the mysteries of love than the judges of the old
+_Cours d'amour_. But it is much more likely that these war-songs and
+love-songs are known to the people beforehand, and that their writings
+are only meant to revive what exists in the memory of the reader. It
+is a kind of mnemonic writing, and it has been used by missionaries
+for similar purposes, and with considerable success. Thus, in a
+translation of the Bible in the Massachusetts language by Eliot, the
+verses from 25 to 32 in the thirtieth chapter of Proverbs, are
+expressed by 'an ant, a coney, a locust, a spider, a river (symbol of
+motion), a lion, a greyhound, a he-goat and king, a man foolishly
+lifting himself to take hold of the heavens.' No doubt these symbols
+would help the reader to remember the proper order of the verses, but
+they would be perfectly useless without a commentary or without a
+previous knowledge of the text.
+
+We are told that the famous Test�ra, brother of the chamberlain of
+Fran�ois I, who came to America eight or nine years after the taking
+of Mexico, finding it impossible to learn the language of the natives,
+taught them the Bible history and the principal doctrines of the
+Christian religion, by means of pictures, and that these diagrams
+produced a greater effect on the minds of the people, who were
+accustomed to this style of representation, than all other means
+employed by the missionaries. But here again, unless these pictures
+were explained by interpreters, they could by themselves convey no
+meaning to the gazing crowds of the natives. The fullest information
+on this subject is to be found in a work by T. Baptiste, 'Hi�roglyphes
+de la conversion, o� par des estampes et des figures on apprend aux
+naturels � desirer le ciel.'
+
+There is no evidence to show that the Indians of the North ever
+advanced beyond the rude attempts which we have thus described, and of
+which numerous specimens may be found in the voluminous work of
+Schoolcraft, published by authority of Congress, 'Historical and
+Statistical Information respecting the History, Condition, and
+Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States,' Philadelphia,
+1851-1855. There is no trace of anything like literature among the
+wandering tribes of the North, and until a real 'Livre des Sauvages'
+turns up to fill this gap, they must continue to be classed among the
+illiterate races.[97]
+
+[Footnote 97: 'Manuscrit Pictographique,' pp. 26, 29.]
+
+It is very different if we turn our eyes to the people of Central and
+South America, to the races who formed the population of Mexico,
+Guatemala, and Peru, when conquered by the Spaniards. The Mexican
+hieroglyphics published by Lord Kingsborough are not to be placed in
+the same category with the totems and the pictorial scratches of the
+Red-skins. They are, first of all, of a much more artistic character,
+more conventional in their structure, and hence more definite in their
+meaning. They are coloured, written on paper, and in many respects
+quite on a level with the hieroglyphic inscriptions and hieratic
+papyri of Egypt. Even the conception of speaking to the ear through
+the eye, of expressing sound by means of outlines, was familiar to the
+Mexicans, though they seem to have applied their phonetic signs to the
+writing of the names of places and persons only. The principal object,
+indeed, of the Mexican hieroglyphic manuscripts was not to convey new
+information, but rather to remind the reader by means of mnemonic
+artifices of what he had learnt beforehand. This is acknowledged by
+the best authorities, by men who knew the Indians shortly after their
+first intercourse with Europeans, and whom we may safely trust in what
+they tell us of the oral literature and hieroglyphic writings of the
+natives. Acosta, in his 'Historia natural y moral,' vi. 7, tells us
+that the Indians were still in the habit of reciting from memory the
+addresses and speeches of their ancient orators, and numerous songs
+composed by their national poets. As it was impossible to acquire
+these by means of hieroglyphics or written characters such as were
+used by the Mexicans, care was taken that those speeches and poems
+should be learnt by heart. There were colleges and schools for that
+purpose, where these and other things were taught to the young by the
+aged in whose memory they seemed to be engraved. The young men who
+were brought up to be orators themselves had to learn the ancient
+compositions word by word; and when the Spaniards came and taught them
+to read and write the Spanish language, the Indians soon began to
+write for themselves, a fact attested by many eye-witnesses.
+
+Las Casas, the devoted friend of the Indians, writes as follows:
+
+     'It ought to be known that in all the republics of this
+     country, in the kingdoms of New Spain and elsewhere, there
+     was amongst other professions, that of the chroniclers and
+     historians. They possessed a knowledge of the earliest
+     times, and of all things concerning religion, the gods, and
+     their worship. They knew the founders of cities, and the
+     early history of their kings and kingdoms. They knew the
+     modes of election and the right of succession; they could
+     tell the number and characters of their ancient kings, their
+     works, and memorable achievements whether good or bad, and
+     whether they had governed well or ill. They knew the men
+     renowned for virtue and heroism in former days, what wars
+     they had waged, and how they had distinguished themselves;
+     who had been the earliest settlers, what had been their
+     ancient customs, their triumphs and defeats. They knew, in
+     fact, whatever belonged to history; and were able to give an
+     account of all the events of the past.... These chroniclers
+     had likewise to calculate the days, months, and years; and
+     though they had no writing like our own, they had their
+     symbols and characters through which they understood
+     everything; they had their great books, which were composed
+     with such ingenuity and art that our alphabet was really of
+     no great assistance to them.... Our priests have seen those
+     books, and I myself have seen them likewise, though many
+     were burnt at the instigation of the monks, who were afraid
+     that they might impede the work of conversion. Sometimes
+     when the Indians who had been converted had forgotten
+     certain words, or particular points of the Christian
+     doctrine, they began--as they were unable to read our
+     books--to write very ingeniously with their own symbols and
+     characters, drawing the figures which corresponded either to
+     the ideas or to the sounds of our words. I have myself seen
+     a large portion of the Christian doctrine written in figures
+     and images, which they read as we read the characters of a
+     letter; and this is a very extraordinary proof of their
+     genius.... There never was a lack of those chroniclers. It
+     was a profession which passed from father to son, highly
+     respected in the whole republic; each historian instructed
+     two or three of his relatives. He made them practise
+     constantly, and they had recourse to him whenever a doubt
+     arose on a point of history.... But not these young
+     historians only went to consult him; kings, princes, and
+     priests came to ask his advice. Whenever there was a doubt
+     as to ceremonies, precepts of religion, religious festivals,
+     or anything of importance in the history of the ancient
+     kingdoms, every one went to the chroniclers to ask for
+     information.'
+
+In spite of the religious zeal of Dominican and Franciscan friars, a
+few of these hieroglyphic MSS. escaped the flames, and may now be seen
+in some of our public libraries, as curious relics of a nearly extinct
+and forgotten literature. The first collection of these MSS. and other
+American antiquities was due to the zeal of the Milanese antiquarian,
+Boturini, who had been sent by the Pope in 1736 to regulate some
+ecclesiastical matters, and who devoted the eight years of his stay in
+the New World to rescuing whatever could be rescued from the scattered
+ruins of ancient America. Before, however, he could bring these
+treasures safe to Europe, he was despoiled of his valuables by the
+Spanish Viceroy; and when at last he made his escape with the remnants
+of his collection, he was taken prisoner by an English cruiser, and
+lost everything. The collection, which remained at Mexico, became the
+subject of several lawsuits, and after passing through the hands of
+Veytia and Gama, who both added to it considerably, it was sold at
+last by public auction. Humboldt, who was at that time passing through
+Mexico, acquired some of the MSS., which he gave to the Royal Museum
+at Berlin. Others found their way into private hands, and after many
+vicissitudes they have mostly been secured by the public libraries or
+private collectors of Europe. The most valuable part of that
+unfortunate shipwreck is now in the hands of M. Aubin, who was sent to
+Mexico in 1830 by the French Government, and who devoted nearly
+twenty years to the same work which Boturini had commenced a hundred
+years before. He either bought the dispersed fragments of the
+collections of Boturini, Gama, and Pichardo, or procured accurate
+copies; and he has brought to Europe, what is, if not the most
+complete, at least the most valuable and most judiciously arranged
+collection of American antiquities. We likewise owe to M. Aubin the
+first accurate knowledge of the real nature of the ancient Mexican
+writing; and we look forward with confident hope to his still
+achieving in his own field as great a triumph as that of Champollion,
+the decipherer of the hieroglyphics of Egypt.
+
+One of the most important helps towards the deciphering of the
+hieroglyphic MSS. of the Americans is to be found in certain books
+which, soon after the conquest of Mexico, were written down by natives
+who had learnt the art of alphabetic writing from their conquerors,
+the Spaniards. Ixtlilxochitl, descended from the royal family of
+Tetzcuco, and employed as interpreter by the Spanish Government, wrote
+the history of his own country from the earliest time to the arrival
+of Cortez. In writing this history he followed the hieroglyphic
+paintings as they had been explained to him by the old chroniclers.
+Some of these very paintings, which formed the text-book of the
+Mexican historian, have been recovered by M. Aubin; and as they helped
+the historian in writing his history, that history now helps the
+scholar in deciphering their meaning. It is with the study of works
+like that of Ixtlilxochitl that American philology ought to begin.
+They are to the student of American antiquities what Manetho is to
+the student of Egyptian hieroglyphics, or Berosus to the decipherer of
+the cuneiform inscriptions. They are written in dialects not more than
+three hundred years old, and still spoken by large numbers of natives,
+with such modifications as three centuries are certain to produce.
+They give us whatever was known of history, mythology, and religion
+among the people whom the Spaniards found in Central and South America
+in the possession of most of the advantages of a long-established
+civilisation. Though we must not expect to find in them what we are
+accustomed to call history, they are nevertheless of great historical
+interest, as supplying the vague outlines of a distant past, filled
+with migrations, wars, dynasties, and revolutions, such as were
+cherished in the memory of the Greeks at the time of Solon, and
+believed in by the Romans at the time of Cato. They teach us that the
+New World which was opened to Europe a few centuries ago, was in its
+own eyes an old world, not so different in character and feelings from
+ourselves as we are apt to imagine when we speak of the Red-skins of
+America, or when we read the accounts of the Spanish conquerors, who
+denied that the natives of America possessed human souls, in order to
+establish their own right of treating them like wild beasts.
+
+The 'Popol Vuh,' or the sacred book of the people of Guatemala, of
+which the Abb� Brasseur de Bourbourg has just published the original
+text, together with a literal French translation, holds a very
+prominent rank among the works composed by natives in their own native
+dialects, and written down by them with the letters of the Roman
+alphabet. There are but two works that can be compared to it in their
+importance to the student of American antiquities and American
+languages, namely, the 'Codex Chimalpopoca' in Nahuatl, the ancient
+written language of Mexico, and the 'Codex Cakchiquel' in the dialect
+of Guatemala. These, together with the work published by the Abb�
+Brasseur de Bourbourg under the title of 'Popol Vuh,' must form the
+starting-point of all critical inquiries into the antiquities of the
+American people.
+
+The first point which has to be determined with regard to books of
+this kind is whether they are genuine or not: whether they are what
+they pretend to be--compositions about three centuries old, founded on
+the oral traditions and the pictographic documents of the ancient
+inhabitants of America, and written in the dialects as spoken at the
+time of Columbus, Cortez, and Pizarro. What the Abb� Brasseur de
+Bourbourg has to say on this point amounts to this:--The manuscript
+was first discovered by Father Francisco Ximenes towards the end of
+the seventeenth century. He was cur� of Santo-Tomas Chichicastenango,
+situated about three leagues south of Santa-Cruz del Quich�, and
+twenty-two leagues north-east of Guatemala. He was well acquainted
+with the languages of the natives of Guatemala, and has left a
+dictionary of their three principal dialects, his 'Tesoro de las
+Lenguas Quich�, Cakchiquel y Tzutohil.' This work, which has never
+been printed, fills two volumes, the second of which contains the copy
+of the MS. discovered by Ximenes. Ximenes likewise wrote a history of
+the province of the preachers of San-Vincente de Chiapas y Guatemala,
+in four volumes. Of this he left two copies. But three volumes only
+were still in existence when the Abb� Brasseur de Bourbourg visited
+Guatemala, and they are said to contain valuable information on the
+history and traditions of the country. The first volume contains the
+Spanish translation of the manuscript which occupies us at present.
+The Abb� Brasseur de Bourbourg copied that translation in 1855. About
+the same time a German traveller, Dr. Scherzer, happened to be at
+Guatemala, and had copies made of the works of Ximenes. These were
+published at Vienna, in 1856.[98] The French Abb�, however, was not
+satisfied with a mere reprint of the text and its Spanish translation
+by Ximenes, a translation which he qualifies as untrustworthy and
+frequently unintelligible. During his travels in America he acquired a
+practical knowledge of several of the native dialects, particularly of
+the Quich�, which is still spoken in various dialects by about six
+hundred thousand people. As a priest he was in daily intercourse with
+these people; and it was while residing among them and able to consult
+them like living dictionaries, that, with the help of the MSS. of
+Ximenes, he undertook his own translation of the ancient chronicles of
+the Quich�s. From the time of the discovery of Ximenes, therefore, to
+the time of the publication of the Abb� Brasseur de Bourbourg, all
+seems clear and satisfactory. But there is still a century to be
+accounted for, from the end of the sixteenth century, when the
+original is supposed to have been written, to the end of the
+seventeenth, when it was first discovered by Ximenes at
+Chichicastenango.
+
+[Footnote 98: Mr. A. Helps was the first to point out the importance
+of this work in his excellent 'History of the Spanish Conquest in
+America.']
+
+These years are not bridged over. We may appeal, however, to the
+authority of the MS. itself, which carries the royal dynasties down to
+the Spanish Conquest, and ends with the names of the two princes, Don
+Juan de Rojas and Don Juan Cortes, the sons of Tecum and Tepepul.
+These princes, though entirely subject to the Spaniards, were allowed
+to retain the insignia of royalty to the year 1558, and it is shortly
+after their time that the MS. is supposed to have been written. The
+author himself says in the beginning that he wrote 'after the word of
+God (chabal Dios) had been preached, in the midst of Christianity; and
+that he did so because people could no longer see the 'Popol Vuh,'
+wherein it was clearly shown that they came from the other side of the
+sea, the account of our living in the land of shadow, and how we saw
+light and life.' There is no attempt at claiming for his work any
+extravagant age or mysterious authority. It is acknowledged to have
+been written when the Castilians were the rulers of the land; when
+bishops were preaching the word of Dios, the new God; when the ancient
+traditions of the people were gradually dying out. Even the title of
+'Popol Vuh,' which the Abb� Brasseur de Bourbourg has given to this
+work, is not claimed for it by its author. He says that he wrote when
+the 'Popol Vuh' was no longer to be seen. Now 'Popol Vuh' means the
+book of the people, and referred to the traditional literature in
+which all that was known about the early history of the nation, their
+religion and ceremonies, was handed down from age to age.
+
+It is to be regretted that the Abb� Brasseur de Bourbourg should have
+sanctioned the application of this name to the Quich� MS. discovered
+by Father Ximenes, and that he should apparently have translated it by
+'Livre sacr�' instead of 'Livre national,' or 'Libro del comun,' as
+proposed by Ximenes. Such small inaccuracies are sure to produce great
+confusion. Nothing but a desire to have a fine sounding title could
+have led the editor to commit this mistake, for he himself confesses
+that the work published by him has no right to the title 'Popol Vuh,'
+and that 'Popol Vuh' does not mean 'Livre sacr�.' Nor is there any
+more reason to suppose, with the learned Abb�, that the first two
+books of the Quich� MS. contain an almost literal transcript of the
+'Popol Vuh,' or that the 'Popol Vuh; was the original of the
+'Teo-Amoxtli,' or the sacred book of the Toltecs. All we know is, that
+the author wrote his anonymous work because the 'Popol Vuh'--the
+national book, or the national tradition--was dying out, and that he
+comprehended in the first two sections the ancient traditions common
+to the whole race, while he devoted the last two to the historical
+annals of the Quich�s, the ruling nation at the time of the Conquest
+in what is now the republic of Guatemala. If we look at the MS. in
+this light, there is nothing at all suspicious in its character and
+its contents. The author wished to save from destruction the stories
+which he had heard as a child of his gods and his ancestors. Though
+the general outline of these stories may have been preserved partly in
+the schools, partly in the pictographic MSS., the Spanish Conquest had
+thrown everything into confusion, and the writer had probably to
+depend chiefly on his own recollections. To extract consecutive
+history from these recollections, is simply impossible. All is vague,
+contradictory, miraculous, absurd. Consecutive history is altogether
+a modern idea, of which few only of the ancient nations had any
+conception. If we had the exact words of the 'Popol Vuh,' we should
+probably find no more history there than we find in the Quich� MS. as
+it now stands. Now and then, it is true, one imagines one sees certain
+periods and landmarks, but in the next page all is chaos again. It may
+be difficult to confess that with all the traditions of the early
+migrations of Cecrops and Danaus into Greece, with the Homeric poems
+of the Trojan war, and the genealogies of the ancient dynasties of
+Greece, we know nothing of Greek history before the Olympiads, and
+very little even then. Yet the true historian does not allow himself
+to indulge in any illusions on this subject, and he shuts his eyes
+even to the most plausible reconstructions.
+
+The same applies with a force increased a hundredfold to the ancient
+history of the aboriginal races of America, and the sooner this is
+acknowledged, the better for the credit of American scholars. Even the
+traditions of the migrations of the Chichimecs, Colhuas, and Nahuas,
+which form the staple of all American antiquarians, are no better than
+the Greek traditions about Pelasgians, �olians, and Ionians; and it
+would be a mere waste of time to construct out of such elements a
+systematic history, only to be destroyed again sooner or later by some
+Niebuhr, Grote, or Lewis.
+
+But if we do not find history in the stories of the ancient races of
+Guatemala, we do find materials for studying their character, for
+analysing their religion and mythology, for comparing their principles
+of morality, their views of virtue, beauty, and heroism, to those of
+other races of mankind. This is the charm, the real and lasting charm,
+of such works as that presented to us for the first time in a
+trustworthy translation by the Abb� Brasseur de Bourbourg.
+Unfortunately there is one circumstance which may destroy even this
+charm. It is just possible that the writers of this and other American
+MSS. may have felt more or less consciously the influence of European
+and Christian ideas, and if so, we have no sufficient guarantee that
+the stories they tell represent to us the American mind in its
+pristine and genuine form. There are some coincidences between the Old
+Testament and the Quich� MS. which are certainly startling. Yet even
+if a Christian influence has to be admitted, much remains in these
+American traditions which is so different from anything else in the
+national literatures of other countries, that we may safely treat it
+as the genuine growth of the intellectual soil of America. We shall
+give, in conclusion, some extracts to bear out our remarks; but we
+ought not to part with Abb� Brasseur de Bourbourg without expressing
+to him our gratitude for his excellent work, and without adding a hope
+that he may be able to realise his plan of publishing a 'Collection of
+documents written in the indigenous languages, to assist the student
+of the history and philology of ancient America,' a collection of
+which the work now published is to form the first volume.
+
+
+_Extracts from the 'Popol Vuh.'_
+
+The Quich� MS. begins with an account of the creation. If we read it
+in the literal translation of the Abb� Brasseur de Bourbourg, with all
+the uncouth names of divine and other beings that have to act their
+parts in it, it does not leave any very clear impression on our minds.
+Yet after reading it again and again, some salient features stand out
+more distinctly, and make us feel that there was a groundwork of noble
+conceptions which has been covered and distorted by an aftergrowth of
+fantastic nonsense. We shall do best for the present to leave out all
+proper names, which only bewilder the memory and which convey no
+distinct meaning even to the scholar. It will require long-continued
+research before it can be determined whether the names so profusely
+applied to the Deity were intended as the names of so many distinct
+personalities, or as the names of the various manifestations of one
+and the same Power. At all events, they are of no importance to us
+till we can connect more distinct ideas than it is possible to gather
+from the materials now at hand, with such inharmonious sounds as
+Tzakol, Bitol, Alom, Qaholom, Hun-Ahpu-Vuch, Gucumatz, Quax-Cho, &c.
+Their supposed meanings are in some cases very appropriate, such as
+the Creator, the Fashioner, the Begetter, the Vivifier, the Ruler, the
+Lord of the green planisphere, the Lord of the azure surface, the
+Heart of heaven; in other cases we cannot fathom the original
+intention of names such as the feathered serpent, the white boar, _le
+tireur de sarbacane au sarigue_, and others; and they therefore sound
+to our ears simply absurd. Well, the Quich�s believed that there was a
+time when all that exists in heaven and earth was made. All was then
+in suspense, all was calm and silent; all was immovable, all peaceful,
+and the vast space of the heavens was empty. There was no man, no
+animal, no shore, no trees; heaven alone existed. The face of the
+earth was not to be seen; there was only the still expanse of the sea
+and the heaven above. Divine Beings were on the waters like a growing
+light. Their voice was heard as they meditated and consulted, and when
+the dawn rose, man appeared. Then the waters were commanded to retire,
+the earth was established that she might bear fruit and that the light
+of day might shine on heaven and earth.
+
+'For, they said, we shall receive neither glory nor honour from all we
+have created until there is a human being--a being endowed with
+reason. "Earth," they said, and in a moment the earth was formed. Like
+a vapour it rose into being, mountains appeared from the waters like
+lobsters, and the great mountains were made. Thus was the creation of
+the earth, when it was fashioned by those who are the Heart of heaven,
+the Heart of the earth; for thus were they called who first gave
+fertility to them, heaven and earth being still inert and suspended in
+the midst of the waters.'
+
+Then follows the creation of the brute world, and the disappointment
+of the gods when they command the animals to tell their names and to
+honour those who had created them. Then the gods said to the animals:
+
+'You will be changed, because you cannot speak. We have changed your
+speech. You shall have your food and your dens in the woods and crags;
+for our glory is not perfect, and you do not invoke us. There will be
+beings still that can salute us; we shall make them capable of
+obeying. Do your task; as to your flesh, it will be broken by the
+tooth.'
+
+Then follows the creation of man. His flesh was made of earth (_terre
+glaise_). But man was without cohesion or power, inert and aqueous;
+he could not turn his head, his sight was dim, and though he had the
+gift of speech, he had no intellect. He was soon consumed again in the
+water.
+
+And the gods consulted a second time how to create beings that should
+adore them, and after some magic ceremonies, men were made of wood,
+and they multiplied. But they had no heart, no intellect, no
+recollection of their Creator; they did not lift up their heads to
+their Maker, and they withered away and were swallowed up by the
+waters.
+
+Then follows a third creation, man being made of a tree called tzit�,
+woman of the marrow of a reed called sibac. They, too, did neither
+think nor speak before him who had made them, and they were likewise
+swept away by the waters and destroyed. The whole nature--animals,
+trees, and stones--turned against men to revenge the wrongs they had
+suffered at their hands, and the only remnant of that early race is to
+be found in small monkeys which still live in the forests.
+
+Then follows a story of a very different character, and which
+completely interrupts the progress of events. It has nothing to do
+with the creation, though it ends with two of its heroes being changed
+into sun and moon. It is a story very much like the fables of the
+Brahmans or the German M�hrchen. Some of the principal actors in it
+are clearly divine beings who have been brought down to the level of
+human nature, and who perform feats and tricks so strange and
+incredible that in reading them we imagine ourselves in the midst of
+the Arabian Nights. In the struggles of the two favourite heroes
+against the cruel princes of Xibalba, there may be reminiscences of
+historical events; but it would be perfectly hopeless to attempt to
+extricate these from the mass of fable by which they are surrounded.
+The chief interest of the American tale consists in the points of
+similarity which it exhibits with the tales of the Old World. We shall
+mention two only--the repeated resuscitation of the chief heroes, who,
+even when burnt and ground to powder and scattered on the water, are
+born again as fish and changed into men; and the introduction of
+animals endowed with reason and speech. As in the German tales,
+certain peculiarities in the appearance and natural habits of animals
+are frequently accounted for by events that happened 'once upon a
+time'--for instance, the stumpy tail of the bear, by his misfortune
+when he went out fishing on the ice--so we find in the American tales,
+'that it was when the two principal heroes (Hun-Ahpu and Xbalanqu�)
+had caught the rat and were going to strangle it over the fire, that
+_le rat commen�a � porter une queue sans poil_. Thus, because a
+certain serpent swallowed a frog who was sent as a messenger,
+therefore _aujourd'hui encore les serpents engloutissent les
+crapauds_.'
+
+The story, which well deserves the attention of those who are
+interested in the origin and spreading of popular tales, is carried on
+to the end of the second book, and it is only in the third that we
+hear once more of the creation of man.
+
+Three attempts, as we saw, had been made and had failed. We now hear
+again that before the beginning of dawn, and before the sun and moon
+had risen, man had been made, and that nourishment was provided for
+him which was to supply his blood, namely, yellow and white maize.
+Four men are mentioned as the real ancestors of the human race, or
+rather of the race of the Quich�s. They were neither begotten by the
+gods nor born of woman, but their creation was a wonder wrought by the
+Creator. They could reason and speak, their sight was unlimited, and
+they knew all things at once. When they had rendered thanks to their
+Creator for their existence, the gods were frightened and they
+breathed a cloud over the eyes of men that they might see a certain
+distance only, and not be like the gods themselves. Then while the
+four men were asleep, the gods gave them beautiful wives, and these
+became the mothers of all tribes, great and small. These tribes, both
+black and white, lived and spread in the East. They did not yet
+worship the gods, but only turned their faces up to heaven, hardly
+knowing what they were meant to do here below. Their features were
+sweet, so was their language, and their intellect was strong.
+
+We now come to a most interesting passage, which is intended to
+explain the confusion of tongues. No nation, except the Jews, has
+dwelt much on the problem why there should be many languages instead
+of one. Grimm, in his 'Essay on the Origin of Language,' remarks: 'It
+may seem surprising that neither the ancient Greeks nor the ancient
+Indians attempted to propose or to solve the question as to the origin
+and the multiplicity of human speech. Holy Writ strove to solve at
+least one of these riddles, that of the multiplicity of languages, by
+means of the tower of Babel. I know only one other poor Esthonian
+legend which might be placed by the side of this biblical solution.
+"The old god," they say, "when men found their first seats too narrow,
+resolved to spread them over the whole earth, and to give to each
+nation its own language. For this purpose he placed a caldron of water
+on the fire, and commanded the different races to approach it in
+order, and to select for themselves the sounds which were uttered by
+the singing of the water in its confinement and torture.'"
+
+Grimm might have added another legend which is current among the
+Thlinkithians, and was clearly framed in order to account for the
+existence of different languages. The Thlinkithians are one of the
+four principal races inhabiting Russian America. They are called
+Kaljush, Koljush, or Kolosh by the Russians, and inhabit the coast
+from about 60� to 45� N.L., reaching therefore across the Russian
+frontier as far as the Columbia River, and they likewise hold many of
+the neighbouring islands. Weniaminow estimates their number, both in
+the Russian and English colonies, at 20 to 25,000. They are evidently
+a decreasing race, and their legends, which seem to be numerous and
+full of original ideas, would well deserve the careful attention of
+American ethnologists. Wrangel suspected a relationship between them
+and the Aztecs of Mexico. These Thlinkithians believe in a general
+flood or deluge, and that men saved themselves in a large floating
+building. When the waters fell, the building was wrecked on a rock,
+and by its own weight burst into two pieces. Hence arose the
+difference of languages. The Thlinkithians with their language
+remained on one side; on the other side were all the other races of
+the earth.[99]
+
+[Footnote 99: Holmberg, 'Ethnographische Skizzen �ber die V�lker des
+Russischen Amerika,' Helsingfors, 1855.]
+
+Neither the Esthonian nor the Thlinkithian legend, however, offers any
+striking points of coincidence with the Mosaic accounts. The
+analogies, therefore, as well as the discrepancies, between the ninth
+chapter of Genesis and the chapter here translated from the Quich� MS.
+require special attention:
+
+     'All had but one language, and they did not invoke as yet
+     either wood or stones; they only remembered the word of the
+     Creator, the Heart of heaven and earth.
+
+     'And they spoke while meditating on what was hidden by the
+     spring of day; and full of the sacred word, full of love,
+     obedience, and fear, they made their prayers, and lifting
+     their eyes up to heaven, they asked for sons and daughters:
+
+     '"Hail! O Creator and Fashioner, thou who seest and hearest
+     us! do not forsake us, O God, who art in heaven and earth,
+     Heart of the sky, Heart of the earth! Give us offspring and
+     descendants as long as the sun and dawn shall advance. Let
+     there be seed and light. Let us always walk on open paths,
+     on roads where there is no ambush. Let us always be quiet
+     and in peace with those who are ours. May our lives run on
+     happily. Give us a life secure from reproach. Let there be
+     seed for harvest, and let there be light."
+
+     'They then proceeded to the town of Tulan, where they
+     received their gods.
+
+     'And when all the tribes were there gathered together, their
+     speech was changed, and they did not understand each other
+     after they arrived at Tulan. It was there that they
+     separated, and some went to the East, others came here. Even
+     the language of the four ancestors of the human race became
+     different. "Alas," they said, "we have left our language.
+     How has this happened? We are ruined! How could we have been
+     led into error? We had but one language when we came to
+     Tulan; our form of worship was but one. What we have done is
+     not good," replied all the tribes in the woods and under the
+     lianas.'
+
+The rest of the work, which consists altogether of four books, is
+taken up with an account of the migrations of the tribes from the
+East, and their various settlements. The four ancestors of the race
+seem to have had a long life, and when at last they came to die, they
+disappeared in a mysterious manner, and left to their sons what is
+called the Hidden Majesty, which was never to be opened by human
+hands. What it was we do not know. There are many subjects of interest
+in the chapters which follow, only we must not look there for history,
+although the author evidently accepts as truly historical what he
+tells us about the successive generations of kings. But when he brings
+us down at last, after sundry migrations, wars, and rebellions, to the
+arrival of the Castilians, we find that between the first four
+ancestors of the human or of the Quich� race and the last of their
+royal dynasties, there intervene only fourteen generations, and the
+author, whoever he was, ends with the confession:
+
+'This is all that remains of the existence of Quich�; for it is
+impossible to see the book in which formerly the kings could read
+everything, as it has disappeared. It is over with all those of
+Quich�! It is now called Santa-Cruz!'
+
+_March, 1862._
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+SEMITIC MONOTHEISM.[100]
+
+
+A work such as M. Renan's 'Histoire G�n�rale et Syst�me Compar� des
+Langues S�mitiques' can only be reviewed chapter by chapter. It
+contains a survey not only, as its title would lead us to suppose, of
+the Semitic languages, but of the Semitic languages and nations; and,
+considering that the whole history of the civilised world has hitherto
+been acted by two races only, the Semitic and the Aryan, with
+occasional interruptions produced by the inroads of the Turanian race,
+M. Renan's work comprehends in reality half of the history of the
+ancient world. We have received as yet the first volume only of this
+important work, and before the author had time to finish the second,
+he was called upon to publish a second edition of the first, which
+appeared in 1858, with important additions and alterations.
+
+[Footnote 100: 'Histoire G�n�rale et Syst�me Compar� des Langues
+S�mitiques.' Par Ernest Renan, Membre de l'Institut. Seconde �dition,
+Paris, 1858.
+
+'Nouvelles Consid�rations sur le Caract�re G�n�ral des Peuples
+S�mitiques, et en particulier sur leur Tendance au Monoth�isme,' Par
+Ernest Renan. Paris, 1859.]
+
+In writing the history of the Semitic race it is necessary to lay down
+certain general characteristics common to all the members of that
+race, before we can speak of nations so widely separated from each
+other as the Jews, the Babylonians, Phenicians, Carthaginians, and
+Arabs, as one race or family. The most important bond which binds
+these scattered tribes together into one ideal whole is to be found in
+their language. There can be as little doubt that the dialects of all
+the Semitic nations are derived from one common type as there is about
+the derivation of French, Spanish, and Italian from Latin, or of
+Latin, Greek, German, Celtic, Slavonic, and Sanskrit from the
+primitive idiom of the ancestors of the Aryan race. The evidence of
+language would by itself be quite sufficient to establish the fact
+that the Semitic nations descended from common ancestors, and
+constitute what, in the science of language, may be called a distinct
+race. But M. Renan was not satisfied with this single criterion of the
+relationship of the Semitic tribes, and he has endeavoured to draw,
+partly from his own observations, partly from the suggestions of other
+scholars, such as Ewald and Lassen, a more complete portrait of the
+Semitic man. This was no easy task. It was like drawing the portrait
+of a whole family, omitting all that is peculiar to each individual
+member, and yet preserving the features which, constitute the general
+family likeness. The result has been what might be expected. Critics
+most familiar with one or the other branch of the Semitic family have
+each and all protested that they can see no likeness in the portrait.
+It seems to some to contain features which it ought not to contain,
+whereas others miss the very expression which appears to them most
+striking.
+
+The following is a short abstract of what M. Renan considers the
+salient points in the Semitic character:
+
+'Their character,' he says, 'is religious rather than political, and
+the mainspring of their religion is the conception of the unity of
+God. Their religious phraseology is simple, and free from mythological
+elements. Their religious feelings are strong, exclusive, intolerant,
+and sustained by a fervour which finds its peculiar expression in
+prophetic visions. Compared to the Aryan nations, they are found
+deficient in scientific and philosophical originality. Their poetry is
+chiefly subjective or lyrical, and we look in vain among their poets
+for excellence in epic and dramatic compositions. Painting and the
+plastic arts have never arrived at a higher than the decorative stage.
+Their political life has remained patriarchal and despotic, and their
+inability to organise on a large scale has deprived them of the means
+of military success. Perhaps the most general feature of their
+character is a negative one,--their inability to perceive the general
+and the abstract, whether in thought, language, religion, poetry, or
+politics; and, on the other hand, a strong attraction towards the
+individual and personal, which makes them monotheistic in religion,
+lyrical in poetry, monarchical in politics, abrupt in style, and
+impractical for speculation.'
+
+One cannot look at this bold and rapid outline of the Semitic
+character without perceiving how many points it contains which are
+open to doubt and discussion. We shall confine our remarks to one
+point, which, in our mind, and, as far as we can see, in M. Renan's
+mind likewise, is the most important of all--namely, the supposed
+monotheistic tendency of the Semitic race. M. Renan asserts that this
+tendency belongs to the race by instinct,--that it forms the rule, not
+the exception; and he seems to imply that without it the human race
+would never have arrived at the knowledge or worship of the One God.
+
+If such a remark had been made fifty years ago, it would have roused
+little or no opposition. 'Semitic' was then used in a more restricted
+sense, and hardly comprehended more than the Jews and Arabs. Of this
+small group of people it might well have been said, with such
+limitations as are tacitly implied in every general proposition on the
+character of individuals or nations, that the work set apart for them
+by a Divine Providence in the history of the world was the preaching
+of a belief in one God. Three religions have been founded by members
+of that more circumscribed Semitic family--the Jewish, the Christian,
+the Mohammedan; and all three proclaim, with the strongest accent, the
+doctrine that there is but one God.
+
+Of late, however, not only have the limits of the Semitic family been
+considerably extended, so as to embrace several nations notorious for
+their idolatrous worship, but the history of the Jewish and Arab
+tribes has been explored so much more fully, that even there traces of
+a wide-spread tendency to polytheism have come to light.
+
+The Semitic family is divided by M. Renan into two great branches,
+differing from each other in the form of their monotheistic belief,
+yet both, according to their historian, imbued from the beginning with
+the instinctive faith in one God:
+
+1. The nomad branch, consisting of Arabs, Hebrews, and the
+neighbouring tribes of Palestine, commonly called the descendants of
+Terah; and
+
+2. The political branch, including the nations of Phenicia, of Syria,
+Mesopotamia, and Yemen.
+
+Can it be said that all these nations, comprising the worshippers of
+Elohim, Jehovah, Sabaoth, Moloch, Nisroch, Rimmon, Nebo, Dagon,
+Ashtaroth, Baal or Bel, Baal-peor, Baal-zebub, Chemosh, Milcom,
+Adrammelech, Annamelech, Nibhaz and Tartak, Ashima, Nergal,
+Succoth-benoth, the Sun, Moon, planets, and all the host of heaven,
+were endowed with a monotheistic instinct? M. Renan admits that
+monotheism has always had its principal bulwark in the nomadic branch,
+but he maintains that it has by no means been so unknown among the
+members of the political branch as is commonly supposed. But where are
+the criteria by which, in the same manner as their dialects, the
+religions of the Semitic races could be distinguished from the
+religions of the Aryan and Turanian races? We can recognise any
+Semitic dialect by the triliteral character of its roots. Is it
+possible to discover similar radical elements in all the forms of
+faith, primary or secondary, primitive or derivative, of the Semitic
+tribes? M. Renan thinks that it is. He imagines that he hears the
+key-note of a pure monotheism through all the wild shoutings of the
+priests of Baal and other Semitic idols, and he denies the presence of
+that key-note in any of the religious systems of the Aryan nations,
+whether Greeks or Romans, Germans or Celts, Hindus or Persians. Such
+an assertion could not but rouse considerable opposition, and so
+strong seems to have been the remonstrances addressed to M. Renan by
+several of his colleagues in the French Institute that, without
+awaiting the publication of the second volume of his great work, he
+has thought it right to publish part of it as a separate pamphlet. In
+his 'Nouvelles Consid�rations sur le Caract�re G�n�ral des Peuples
+S�mitiques, et en particulier sur leur Tendance au Monoth�isme,' he
+endeavours to silence the objections raised against the leading idea
+of his history of the Semitic race. It is an essay which exhibits not
+only the comprehensive knowledge of the scholar, but the warmth and
+alacrity of the advocate. With M. Renan the monotheistic character of
+the descendants of Shem is not only a scientific tenet, but a moral
+conviction. He wishes that his whole work should stand or fall with
+this thesis, and it becomes, therefore, all the more the duty of the
+critic, to inquire whether the arguments which he brings forward in
+support of his favourite idea are valid or not.
+
+It is but fair to M. Renan that, in examining his statements, we
+should pay particular attention to any slight modifications which he
+may himself have adopted in his last memoir. In his history he asserts
+with great confidence, and somewhat broadly, that 'le monoth�isme
+r�sume et explique tous les caract�res de la race S�mitique.' In his
+later pamphlet he is more captious. As an experienced pleader he is
+ready to make many concessions in order to gain all the more readily
+our assent to his general proposition. He points out himself with
+great candour the weaker points of his argument, though, of course,
+only in order to return with unabated courage to his first
+position,--that of all the races of mankind the Semitic race alone was
+endowed with the instinct of monotheism. As it is impossible to deny
+the fact that the Semitic nations, in spite of this supposed
+monotheistic instinct, were frequently addicted to the most degraded
+forms of a polytheistic idolatry, and that even the Jews, the most
+monotheistic of all, frequently provoked the anger of the Lord by
+burning incense to other gods, M. Renan remarks that when he speaks of
+a nation in general he only speaks of the intellectual aristocracy of
+that nation. He appeals in self-defence to the manner in which
+historians lay down the character of modern nations. 'The French,' he
+says, 'are repeatedly called "_une nation spirituelle_," and yet no
+one would wish to assert either that every Frenchman is _spirituel_,
+or that no one could be _spirituel_ who is not a Frenchman.' Now, here
+we may grant to M. Renan that if we speak of '_esprit_' we naturally
+think of the intellectual minority only, and not of the whole bulk of
+a nation; but if we speak of religion, the case is different. If we
+say that the French believe in one God only, or that they are
+Christians, we speak not only of the intellectual aristocracy of
+France but of every man, woman, and child born and bred in France.
+Even if we say that the French are Roman Catholics, we do so only
+because we know that there is a decided majority in France in favour
+of the unreformed system of Christianity. But if, because some of the
+most distinguished writers of France have paraded their contempt for
+all religious dogmas, we were to say broadly that the French are a
+nation without religion, we should justly be called to order for
+abusing the legitimate privileges of generalization. The fact that
+Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and Jeremiah were firm believers in one God
+could not be considered sufficient to support the general proposition
+that the Jewish nation was monotheistic by instinct. And if we
+remember that among the other Semitic races we should look in vain for
+even four such names, the case would seem to be desperate to any one
+but M. Renan.
+
+We cannot believe that M. Renan would be satisfied with the admission
+that there had been among the Jews a few leading men who believed in
+one God, or that the existence of but one God was an article of faith
+not quite unknown among the other Semitic races; yet he has hardly
+proved more. He has collected, with great learning and ingenuity, all
+traces of monotheism in the annals of the Semitic nations; but he has
+taken no pains to discover the traces of polytheism, whether faint or
+distinct, which are disclosed in the same annals. In acting the part
+of an advocate he has for a time divested himself of the nobler
+character of the historian.
+
+If M. Renan had looked with equal zeal for the scattered vestiges both
+of a monotheistic and of a polytheistic worship, he would have drawn,
+perhaps, a less striking, but we believe a more faithful, portrait of
+the Semitic man. We may accept all the facts of M. Renan, for his
+facts are almost always to be trusted; but we cannot accept his
+conclusions, because they would be in contradiction to other facts
+which M. Renan places too much in the background, or ignores
+altogether. Besides, there is something in the very conclusions to
+which he is driven by his too partial evidence which jars on our ears,
+and betrays a want of harmony in the premises on which he builds.
+Taking his stand on the fact that the Jewish race was the first of all
+the nations of the world to arrive at the knowledge of one God, M.
+Renan proceeds to argue that, if their monotheism had been the result
+of a persevering mental effort--if it had been a discovery like the
+philosophical or scientific discoveries of the Greeks, it would be
+necessary to admit that the Jews surpassed all other nations of the
+world in intellect and vigour of speculation. This, he admits, is
+contrary to fact:
+
+     'Apart la sup�riorit� de son culte, le peuple juif n'en a
+     aucune autre; c'est un des peuples les moins dou�s pour la
+     science et la philosophie parmi les peuples de l'antiquit�;
+     il n'a une grande position ni politique ni militaire. Ses
+     institutions sont purement conservatrices; les proph�tes,
+     qui repr�sentent excellemment son g�nie, sont des hommes
+     essentiellement r�actionnaires, se reportant toujours vers
+     un id�al ant�rieur. Comment expliquer, au sein d'une soci�t�
+     aussi �troite et aussi peu d�velopp�e, une r�volution
+     d'id�es qu'Ath�nes et Alexandrie n'ont pas r�ussi �
+     accomplir?'
+
+M. Renan then defines the monotheism of the Jews, and of the Semitic
+nations in general, as the result of a low, rather than of a high
+state of intellectual cultivation: 'Il s'en faut,' he writes (p. 40),
+'que le monoth�isme soit le produit d'une race qui a des id�es
+exalt�es en fait de religion; c'est en r�alit� le fruit d'une race qui
+a peu de besoins religieux. C'est comme _minimum_ de religion, en fait
+de dogmes et en fait de pratiques ext�rieures, que le monoth�isme est
+surtout accommod� aux besoins des populations nomades.'
+
+But even this _minimum_ of religious reflection which is required,
+according to M. Renan, for the perception of the unity of God, he
+grudges to the Semitic nations, and he is driven in the end (p. 73)
+to explain the Semitic Monotheism as the result of a religious
+instinct, analogous to the instinct which led each race to the
+formation of its own language.
+
+Here we miss the usual clearness and precision which distinguish most
+of M. Renan's works. It is always dangerous to transfer expressions
+from one branch of knowledge to another. The word 'instinct' has its
+legitimate application in natural history, where it is used of the
+unconscious acts of unconscious beings. We say that birds build their
+nests by instinct, that fishes swim by instinct, that cats catch mice
+by instinct; and, though no natural philosopher has yet explained what
+instinct is, yet we accept the term as a conventional expression for
+an unknown power working in the animal world.
+
+If we transfer this word to the unconscious acts of conscious beings,
+we must necessarily alter its definition. We may speak of an
+instinctive motion of the arm, but we only mean a motion which has
+become so habitual as to require no longer any special effort of the
+will.
+
+If, however, we transfer the word to the conscious thoughts of
+conscious beings, we strain the word beyond its natural capacities, we
+use it in order to avoid other terms which would commit us to the
+admission either of innate ideas or inspired truths. We use a word in
+order to avoid a definition. It may sound more scientific to speak of
+a monotheistic instinct rather than of the inborn image or the
+revealed truth of the One living God; but is instinct less mysterious
+than revelation? Can there be an instinct without an instigation or an
+instigator? And whose hand was it that instigated the Semitic mind to
+the worship of one God? Could the same hand have instigated the Aryan
+mind to the worship of many gods? Could the monotheistic instinct of
+the Semitic race, if an instinct, have been so frequently obscured, or
+the polytheistic instinct of the Aryan race, if an instinct, so
+completely annihilated, as to allow the Jews to worship on all the
+high places round Jerusalem, and the Greeks and Romans to become
+believers in Christ? Fishes never fly, and cats never catch frogs.
+These are the difficulties into which we are led; and they arise
+simply and solely from our using words for their sound rather than for
+their meaning. We begin by playing with words, but in the end the
+words will play with us.
+
+There are, in fact, various kinds of monotheism, and it becomes our
+duty to examine more carefully what they mean and how they arise.
+There is one kind of monotheism, though it would more properly be
+called theism, or henotheism, which forms the birthright of every
+human being. What distinguishes man from all other creatures, and not
+only raises him above the animal world, but removes him altogether
+from the confines of a merely natural existence, is the feeling of
+sonship inherent in and inseparable from human nature. That feeling
+may find expression in a thousand ways, but there breathes through all
+of them the inextinguishable conviction, 'It is He that hath made us,
+and not we ourselves.' That feeling of sonship may with some races
+manifest itself in fear and trembling, and it may drive whole
+generations into religious madness and devil worship. In other
+countries it may tempt the creature into a fatal familiarity with the
+Creator, and end in an apotheosis of man, or a headlong plunging of
+the human into the divine. It may take, as with the Jews, the form of
+a simple assertion that 'Adam was the son of God,' or it may be
+clothed in the mythological phraseology of the Hindus, that Manu, or
+man, was the descendant of Svayambhu, the Self-existing. But, in some
+form or other, the feeling of dependence on a higher Power breaks
+through in all the religions of the world, and explains to us the
+meaning of St. Paul, 'that God, though in times past He suffered all
+nations to walk in their own ways, nevertheless He left not Himself
+without witness, in that He did good and gave us rain from heaven, and
+fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.'
+
+This primitive intuition of God and the ineradicable feeling of
+dependence on God, could only have been the result of a primitive
+revelation, in the truest sense of that word. Man, who owed his
+existence to God, and whose being centred and rested in God, saw and
+felt God as the only source of his own and of all other existence. By
+the very act of the creation, God had revealed Himself. There He was,
+manifested in His works, in all His majesty and power, before the face
+of those to whom He had given eyes to see and ears to hear, and into
+whose nostrils He had breathed the breath of life, even the Spirit of
+God.
+
+This primitive intuition of God, however, was in itself neither
+monotheistic nor polytheistic, though it might become either,
+according to the expression which it took in the languages of man. It
+was this primitive intuition which supplied either the subject or the
+predicate in all the religions of the world, and without it no
+religion, whether true or false, whether revealed or natural, could
+have had even its first beginning. It is too often forgotten by those
+who believe that a polytheistic worship was the most natural
+unfolding of religious life, that polytheism must everywhere have been
+preceded by a more or less conscious theism. In no language does the
+plural exist before the singular. No human mind could have conceived
+the idea of gods without having previously conceived the idea of a
+god. It would be, however, quite as great a mistake to imagine,
+because the idea of a god must exist previously to that of gods, that
+therefore a belief in One God preceded everywhere the belief in many
+gods. A belief in God as exclusively One, involves a distinct negation
+of more than one God, and that negation is possible only after the
+conception, whether real or imaginary, of many gods.
+
+The primitive intuition of the Godhead is neither monotheistic nor
+polytheistic, and it finds its most natural expression in the simplest
+and yet the most important article of faith--that God is God. This
+must have been the faith of the ancestors of mankind previously to any
+division of race or confusion of tongues. It might seem, indeed, as if
+in such a faith the oneness of God, though not expressly asserted, was
+implied, and that it existed, though latent, in the first revelation
+of God. History, however, proves that the question of oneness was yet
+undecided in that primitive faith, and that the intuition of God was
+not yet secured against the illusions of a double vision. There are,
+in reality, two kinds of oneness which, when we enter into
+metaphysical discussions, must be carefully distinguished, and which
+for practical purposes are well kept separate by the definite and
+indefinite articles. There is one kind of oneness which does not
+exclude the idea of plurality; there is another which does. When we
+say that Cromwell was a Protector of England, we do not assert that he
+was the only protector. But if we say that he was the Protector of
+England, it is understood that he was the only man who enjoyed that
+title. If, therefore, an expression had been given to that primitive
+intuition of the Deity, which is the mainspring of all later religion,
+it would have been--'There is a God,' but not yet 'There is but "One
+God."' The latter form of faith, the belief in One God, is properly
+called monotheism, whereas the term of henotheism would best express
+the faith in a single god.
+
+We must bear in mind that we are here speaking of a period in the
+history of mankind when, together with the awakening of ideas, the
+first attempts only were being made at expressing the simplest
+conceptions by means of a language most simple, most sensuous, and
+most unwieldy. There was as yet no word sufficiently reduced by the
+wear and tear of thought to serve as an adequate expression for the
+abstract idea of an immaterial and supernatural Being. There were
+words for walking and shouting, for cutting and burning, for dog and
+cow, for house and wall, for sun and moon, for day and night. Every
+object was called by some quality which had struck the eye as most
+peculiar and characteristic. But what quality should be predicated of
+that Being of which man knew as yet nothing but its existence?
+Language possessed as yet no auxiliary verbs. The very idea of being
+without the attributes of quality or action, had never entered into
+the human mind. How then was that Being to be called which had
+revealed its existence, and continued to make itself felt by
+everything that most powerfully impressed the awakening mind, but
+which as yet was known only like a subterraneous spring by the waters
+which it poured forth with inexhaustible strength? When storm and
+lightning drove a father with his helpless family to seek refuge in
+the forests, and the fall of mighty trees crushed at his side those
+who were most dear to him, there were, no doubt, feelings of terror
+and awe, of helplessness and dependence, in the human heart which
+burst forth in a shriek for pity or help from the only Being that
+could command the storm. But there was no name by which He could be
+called. There might be names for the storm-wind and the thunderbolt,
+but these were not the names applicable to Him that rideth upon the
+heavens of heavens, which were of old. Again, when after a wild and
+tearful night the sun dawned in the morning, smiling on man--when
+after a dreary and deathlike winter spring came again with its
+sunshine and flowers, there were feelings of joy and gratitude, of
+love and adoration in the heart of every human being; but though there
+were names for the sun and the spring, for the bright sky and the
+brilliant dawn, there was no word by which to call the source of all
+this gladness, the giver of light and life.
+
+At the time when we may suppose that the first attempts at finding a
+name for God were made, the divergence of the languages of mankind had
+commenced. We cannot dwell here on the causes which led to the
+multiplicity of human speech; but whether we look on the confusion of
+tongues as a natural or supernatural event, it was an event which the
+science of language has proved to have been inevitable. The ancestors
+of the Semitic and the Aryan nations had long become unintelligible to
+each other in their conversations on the most ordinary topics, when
+they each in their own way began to look for a proper name for God.
+Now one of the most striking differences between the Aryan and the
+Semitic forms of speech was this:--In the Semitic languages the roots
+expressive of the predicates which were to serve as the proper names
+of any subjects, remained so distinct within the body of a word, that
+those who used the word were unable to forget its predicative meaning,
+and retained in most cases a distinct consciousness of its appellative
+power. In the Aryan languages, on the contrary, the significative
+element, or the root of a word, was apt to become so completely
+absorbed by the derivative elements, whether prefixes or suffixes,
+that most substantives ceased almost immediately to be appellative,
+and were changed into mere names or proper names. What we mean can
+best be illustrated by the fact that the dictionaries of Semitic
+languages are mostly arranged according to their roots. When we wish
+to find the meaning of a word in Hebrew or Arabic we first look for
+its root, whether triliteral or biliteral, and then look in the
+dictionary for that root and its derivatives. In the Aryan languages,
+on the contrary, such an arrangement would be extremely inconvenient.
+In many words it is impossible to detect the radical element. In
+others, after the root is discovered, we find that it has not given
+birth to any other derivatives which would throw their converging rays
+of light on its radical meaning. In other cases, again, such seems to
+have been the boldness of the original name-giver that we can hardly
+enter into the idiosyncrasy which assigned such a name to such an
+object.
+
+This peculiarity of the Semitic and Aryan languages must have had the
+greatest influence on the formation of their religious phraseology.
+The Semitic man would call on God in adjectives only, or in words
+which always conveyed a predicative meaning. Every one of his words
+was more or less predicative, and he was therefore restricted in his
+choice to such words as expressed some one or other of the abstract
+qualities of the Deity. The Aryan man was less fettered in his choice.
+Let us take an instance. Being startled by the sound of thunder, he
+would at first express his impression by the single phrase, It
+thunders,--[Greek: brouta]. Here the idea of God is understood rather
+than expressed, very much in the same manner as the Semitic proper
+names Zabd (present), Abd (servant), Aus (present), are habitually
+used for Zabd-allah, Abd-allah, Aus-allah,--the servant of God, the
+gift of God. It would be more in accordance with the feelings and
+thoughts of those who first used these so-called impersonal verbs to
+translate them by He thunders, He rains, He snows. Afterwards, instead
+of the simple impersonal verb He thunders, another expression
+naturally suggested itself. The thunder came from the sky, the sky was
+frequently called Dyaus (the bright one), in Greek [Greek: Zeus]; and
+though it was not the bright sky which thundered, but the dark, yet
+Dyaus had already ceased to be an expressive predicate, it had become
+a traditional name, and hence there was nothing to prevent an Aryan
+man from saying Dyaus, or the sky thunders, in Greek [Greek: Zeus
+brouta]. Let us here mark the almost irresistible influence of
+language on the mind. The word Dyaus, which at first meant bright, had
+lost its radical meaning, and now meant simply sky. It then entered
+into a new stage. The idea which had first been expressed by the
+pronoun or the termination of the third person, He thunders, was taken
+up into the word Dyaus, or sky. He thunders, and Dyaus thunders,
+became synonymous expressions, and by the mere habit of speech He
+became Dyaus, and Dyaus became He. Henceforth Dyaus remained as an
+appellative of that unseen though ever present Power, which had
+revealed its existence to man from the beginning, but which remained
+without a name long after every beast of the field and every fowl of
+the air had been named by Adam.
+
+Now, what happened in this instance with the name of Dyaus, happened
+again and again with other names. When men felt the presence of God in
+the great and strong wind, in the earthquake, or the fire, they said
+at first, He storms, He shakes, He burns. But they likewise said, the
+storm (Marut) blows, the fire (Agni) burns, the subterraneous fire
+(Vulcanus) upheaves the earth. And after a time the result was the
+same as before, and the words meaning originally wind or fire were
+used, under certain restrictions, as names of the unknown God. As long
+as all these names were remembered as mere names or attributes of one
+and the same Divine Power, there was as yet no polytheism, though, no
+doubt, every new name threatened to obscure more and more the
+primitive intuition of God. At first, the names of God, like fetishes
+or statues, were honest attempts at expressing or representing an idea
+which could never find an adequate expression or representation. But
+the eidolon, or likeness, became an idol; the nomen, or name, lapsed
+into a numen, or demon, as soon as they were drawn away from their
+original intention. If the Greeks had remembered that Zeus was but a
+name or symbol of the Deity, there would have been no more harm in
+calling God by that name than by any other. If they had remembered
+that Kronos, and Uranos, and Apollon were all but so many attempts at
+naming the various sides, or manifestations, or aspects, or persons of
+the Deity, they might have used these names in the hours of their
+various needs, just as the Jews called on Jehovah, Elohim, and
+Sabaoth, or as Roman Catholics implore the help of Nunziata, Dolores,
+and Notre-Dame-de-Grace.
+
+What, then, is the difference between the Aryan and Semitic
+nomenclature for the Deity? Why are we told that the pious invocations
+of the Aryan world turned into a blasphemous mocking of the Deity,
+whereas the Semitic nations are supposed to have found from the first
+the true name of God? Before we look anywhere else for an answer to
+the question, we must look to language itself, and here we see that
+the Semitic dialects could never, by any possibility, have produced
+such names as the Sanskrit Dyaus (Zeus), Varu_n_a (Uranos), Marut
+(Storm, Mars), or Ushas (Eos). They had no doubt names for the bright
+sky, for the tent of heaven, and for the dawn. But these names were so
+distinctly felt as appellatives, that they could never be thought of
+as proper names, whether as names of the Deity, or as names of
+deities. This peculiarity has been illustrated with great skill by M.
+Renan. We differ from him when he tries to explain the difference
+between the mythological phraseology of the Aryan and the theological
+phraseology of the Semitic races, by assigning to each a peculiar
+theological instinct. We cannot, in fact, see how the admission of
+such an instinct, i. e. of an unknown and incomprehensible power,
+helps us in any way whatsoever to comprehend this curious mental
+process. His problem, however, is exactly the same as ours, and it
+would be impossible to state that problem in a more telling manner
+than he has done.
+
+'The rain,' he says (p. 79), 'is represented, in all the primitive
+mythologies of the Aryan race, as the fruit of the embraces of Heaven
+and Earth.' 'The bright sky,' says �schylus, in a passage which one
+might suppose was taken from the Vedas, 'loves to penetrate the earth;
+the earth on her part aspires to the heavenly marriage. Rain falling
+from the loving sky impregnates the earth, and she produces for
+mortals pastures of the flocks and the gifts of Ceres.' In the Book of
+Job,[101] on the contrary, it is God who tears open the waterskins of
+Heaven (xxxviii. 37), who opens the courses for the floods (ibid. 25),
+who engenders the drops of dew (ibid. 28):
+
+    'He draws towards Him the mists from the waters,
+    Which pour down as rain, and form their vapours.
+    Afterwards the clouds spread them out,
+    They fall as drops on the crowds of men.' (Job xxxvi. 27, 28.)
+
+[Footnote 101: We give the extracts according to M. Renan's
+translation of the Book of Job (Paris, 1859, Michel L�vy).]
+
+    'He charges the night with damp vapours,
+    He drives before Him the thunder-bearing cloud.
+    It is driven to one side or the other by His command.
+    To execute all that He ordains
+    On the face of the universe,
+    Whether it be to punish His creatures
+    Or to make thereof a proof of His mercy,' (Job xxxvii. 11-13.)
+
+Or, again, Proverbs xxx. 4:
+
+     'Who hath gathered the wind in His fists? Who hath bound the
+     waters in a garment? Who hath established all the ends of
+     the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son's name, if
+     thou canst tell?'
+
+It has been shown by ample evidence from the Rig-veda how many mythes
+were suggested to the Aryan world by various names of the dawn, the
+day-spring of life. The language of the ancient Aryans of India had
+thrown out many names for that heavenly apparition, and every name, as
+it ceased to be understood, became, like a decaying seed, the germ of
+an abundant growth of mythe and legend. Why should not the same have
+happened to the Semitic names for the dawn? Simply and solely because
+the Semitic words had no tendency to phonetic corruption; simply and
+solely because they continued to be felt as appellatives, and would
+inevitably have defeated every attempt at mythological phraseology
+such as we find in India and Greece. When the dawn is mentioned in the
+Book of Job (ix. 11), it is God 'who commandeth the sun and it riseth
+not, and sealeth up the stars.' It is His power which causeth the
+day-spring to know its place, that it might take hold of the ends of
+the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it (Job xxxviii. 12,
+13; Renan, 'Livre de Job,' pref. 71). Shahar, the dawn, never becomes
+an independent agent; she is never spoken of as Eos rising from the
+bed of her husband Tithonos (the setting sun), solely and simply
+because the word retained its power as an appellative, and thus could
+not enter into any mythological metamorphosis.
+
+Even in Greece there are certain words which have remained so pellucid
+as to prove unfit for mythological refraction. Selene in Greek is so
+clearly the moon that her name would pierce through the darkest clouds
+of mythe and fable. Call her Hecate, and she will bear any disguise,
+however fanciful. It is the same with the Latin Luna. She is too
+clearly the moon to be mistaken for anything else, but call her
+Lucina, and she will readily enter into various mythological phases.
+If, then, the names of sun and moon, of thunder and lightning, of
+light and day, of night and dawn could not yield to the Semitic races
+fit appellatives for the Deity, where were they to be found? If the
+names of Heaven or Earth jarred on their ears as names unfit for the
+Creator, where could they find more appropriate terms? They would not
+have objected to real names such as Jupiter Optimus Maximus, or
+[Greek: Zeus kydistos megistos], if such words could have been framed
+in their dialects, and the names of Jupiter and Zeus could have been
+so ground down as to become synonymous with the general term for
+'God.' Not even the Jews could have given a more exalted definition of
+the Deity than that of Optimus Maximus--the Best and the Greatest;
+and their very name of God, Jehovah, is generally supposed to mean no
+more than what the Peleiades of Dodona said of Zeus, [Greek: Zeus �n,
+Zeus estin, Zeus essetai � megale Zeu], 'He was, He is, He will be, Oh
+great Zeus!' Not being able to form such substantives as Dyaus, or
+Varu_n_a, or Indra, the descendants of Shem fixed on the predicates
+which in the Aryan prayers follow the name of the Deity, and called
+Him the Best and the Greatest, the Lord and King. If we examine the
+numerous names of the Deity in the Semitic dialects we find that they
+are all adjectives, expressive of moral qualities. There is El,
+strong; Bel or Baal, Lord; Beel-samin, Lord of Heaven; Adonis (in
+Phenicia), Lord; Marnas (at Gaza), our Lord; Shet, Master, afterwards
+a demon; Moloch, Milcom, Malika, King; Eliun, the Highest (the God of
+Melchisedek); Ram and Rimmon, the Exalted; and many more names, all
+originally adjectives and expressive of certain general qualities of
+the Deity, but all raised by one or the other of the Semitic tribes to
+be the names of God or of that idea which the first breath of life,
+the first sight of this world, the first consciousness of existence,
+had for ever impressed and implanted in the human mind.
+
+But do these names prove that the people who invented them had a clear
+and settled idea of the unity of the Deity? Do we not find among the
+Aryan nations that the same superlatives, the same names of Lord and
+King, of Master and Father, are used when the human mind is brought
+face to face with the Divine, and the human heart pours out in prayer
+and thanksgiving the feelings inspired by the presence of God?
+Brahman, in Sanskrit, meant originally Power, the same as El. It
+resisted for a long time the mythological contagion, but at last it
+yielded like all other names of God, and became the name of one God.
+By the first man who formed or fixed these names, Brahman, like El,
+and like every name of God, was meant, no doubt, as the best
+expression that could be found for the image reflected from the
+Creator upon the mind of the creature. But in none of these words can
+we see any decided proof that those who framed them had arrived at the
+clear perception of One God, and were thus secured against the danger
+of polytheism. Like Dyaus, like Indra, like Brahman, Baal and El and
+Moloch were names of God, but not yet of the One God.
+
+And we have only to follow the history of these Semitic names in order
+to see that, in spite of their superlative meaning, they proved no
+stronger bulwark against polytheism than the Latin Optimus Maximus.
+The very names which we saw explained before as meaning the Highest,
+the Lord, the Master, are represented in the Phenician mythology as
+standing to each other in the relation of Father and Son. (Renan, p.
+60.) There is hardly one single Semitic tribe which did not at times
+forget the original meaning of the names by which they called on God.
+If the Jews had remembered the meaning of El, the Omnipotent, they
+could not have worshipped Baal, the Lord, as different from El. But as
+the Aryan tribes bartered the names of their gods, and were glad to
+add the worship of Zeus to that of Uranos, the worship of Apollon to
+that of Zeus, the worship of Hermes to that of Apollon, the Semitic
+nations likewise were ready to try the gods of their neighbours. If
+there had been in the Semitic race a truly monotheistic instinct, the
+history of those nations would become perfectly unintelligible.
+Nothing is more difficult to overcome than an instinct: naturam furc�
+expellas, tamen usque recurret. But the history even of the Jews is
+made up of an almost uninterrupted series of relapses into polytheism.
+Let us admit, on the contrary, that God had in the beginning revealed
+Himself the same to the ancestors of the whole human race. Let us then
+observe the natural divergence of the languages of man, and consider
+the peculiar difficulties that had to be overcome in framing names for
+God, and the peculiar manner in which they were overcome in the
+Semitic and Aryan languages, and everything that follows will be
+intelligible. If we consider the abundance of synonymes into which all
+ancient languages burst out at their first starting--if we remember
+that there were hundreds of names for the earth and the sky, the sun
+and the moon, we shall not be surprised at meeting with more than one
+name for God both among the Semitic and the Aryan nations. If we
+consider how easily the radical or significative elements of words
+were absorbed and obscured in the Aryan, and how they stood out in
+bold relief in the Semitic languages, we shall appreciate the
+difficulty which the Shemites experienced in framing any name that
+should not seem to take too one-sided a view of the Deity by
+predicating but one quality, whether strength, dominion, or majesty;
+and we shall equally perceive the snare which their very language laid
+for the Aryan nations, by supplying them with a number of words which,
+though they seemed harmless as meaning nothing except what by
+tradition or definition they were made to mean, yet were full of
+mischief owing to the recollections which, at any time, they might
+revive. Dyaus in itself was as good a name as any for God, and in some
+respects more appropriate than its derivative deva, the Latin deus,
+which the Romance nations still use without meaning any harm. But
+Dyaus had meant sky for too long a time to become entirely divested of
+all the old mythes or sayings which were true of Dyaus, the sky, but
+could only be retained as fables if transferred to Dyaus, God. Dyaus,
+the Bright, might be called the husband of the earth; but, when the
+same mythe was repeated of Zeus, the god, then Zeus became the husband
+of Demeter, Demeter became a goddess, a daughter sprang from their
+union, and all the sluices of mythological madness were opened. There
+were a few men, no doubt, at all times, who saw through this
+mythological phraseology, who called on God, though they called him
+Zeus, or Dyaus, or Jupiter. Xenophanes, one of the earliest Greek
+heretics, boldly maintained that there was but 'one God, and that He
+was not like unto men, either in body or mind.'[102] A poet in the
+Veda asserts distinctly, 'They call Him Indra, Mitra, Varu_n_a, Agni;
+then He is the well-winged heavenly Garutmat; that which is One the
+wise call it many ways--they call it Agni, Yama, M�tari_s_van.'[103]
+
+[Footnote 102: Xenophanes, about contemporary with Cyrus, as quoted by
+Clemens Alex., Strom. v, p. 601,--[Greek: eis theos en te theoisi kai
+anthr�poisi megistos, oute demas thn�toisin homoiios oude no�ma].]
+
+[Footnote 103: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' by M. M., p.
+567.]
+
+But, on the whole, the charm of mythology prevailed among the Aryan
+nations, and a return to the primitive intuition of God and a total
+negation of all gods, wore rendered more difficult to the Aryan than
+to the Semitic man. The Semitic man had hardly ever to resist the
+allurements of mythology. The names with which he invoked the Deity
+did not trick him by their equivocal character. Nevertheless, these
+Semitic names, too, though predicative in the beginning, became
+subjective, and from being the various names of One Being, lapsed into
+names of various beings. Hence arose a danger which threatened
+well-nigh to bar to the Semitic race the approach to the conception
+and worship of the One God.
+
+Nowhere can we see this danger more clearly than in the history of the
+Jews. The Jews had, no doubt, preserved, from the beginning the idea
+of God, and their names of God contained nothing but what might by
+right be ascribed to Him. They worshipped a single God, and, whenever
+they fell into idolatry, they felt that they had fallen away from God.
+But that God, under whatever name they invoked Him, was especially
+their God, their own national God, and His existence did not exclude
+the existence of other gods or demons. Of the ancestors of Abraham and
+Nachor, even of their father Terah, we know that in old time, when
+they dwelt on the other side of the flood, they served other gods
+(Joshua xxiv. 2). At the time of Joshua these gods were not yet
+forgotten, and instead of denying their existence altogether, Joshua
+only exhorts the people to put away the gods which their fathers
+served on the other side of the flood and in Egypt, and to serve the
+Lord: 'Choose ye this day,' he says, 'whom you will serve; whether the
+gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the
+flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell; but as
+for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.'
+
+Such a speech, exhorting the people to make their choice between
+various gods, would have been unmeaning if addressed to a nation which
+had once conceived the unity of the Godhead. Even images of the gods
+were not unknown to the family of Abraham, for, though we know nothing
+of the exact form of the teraphim, or images which Rachel stole from
+her father, certain it is that Laban calls them his gods (Genesis
+xxxi. 19, 30). But what is much more significant than these traces of
+polytheism and idolatry is the hesitating tone in which some of the
+early patriarchs speak of their God. When Jacob flees before Esau into
+Padan-Aram and awakes from his vision at Bethel, he does not profess
+his faith in the One God, but he bargains, and says, 'If God will be
+with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me
+bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my
+father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God: and this
+stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house: and of all
+that thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee'
+(Genesis xxviii. 20-22). Language of this kind evinces not only a
+temporary want of faith in God, but it shows that the conception of
+God had not yet acquired that complete universality which alone
+deserves to be called monotheism, or belief in the One God. To him who
+has seen God face to face there is no longer any escape or doubt as to
+who is to be his god; God is his god, whatever befall. But this Jacob
+learnt not until he had struggled and wrestled with God, and committed
+himself to His care at the very time when no one else could have
+saved him. In that struggle Jacob asked for the true name of God, and
+he learnt from God that His name was secret (Genesis xxxii. 29). After
+that, his God was no longer one of many gods. His faith was not like
+the faith of Jethro (Exodus xxvii. 11), the priest of Midian, the
+father-in-law of Moses, who when he heard of all that God had done for
+Moses acknowledged that God (Jehovah) was greater than all gods
+(Elohim). This is not yet faith in the One God. It is a faith hardly
+above the faith of the people who were halting between Jehovah and
+Baal, and who only when they saw what the Lord did for Elijah, fell on
+their faces and said, 'The Lord He is the God.'
+
+And yet this limited faith in Jehovah as the God of the Jews, as a God
+more powerful than the gods of the heathen, as a God above all gods,
+betrays itself again and again in the history of the Jews. The idea of
+many gods is there, and wherever that idea exists, wherever the plural
+of god is used in earnest, there is polytheism. It is not so much the
+names of Zeus, Hermes, &c., which constitute the polytheism of the
+Greeks; it is the plural [Greek: theoi], gods, which contains the
+fatal spell. We do not know what M. Renan means when he says that
+Jehovah with the Jews 'n'est pas le plus grand entre plusieurs dieux;
+c'est le Dieu unique.' It was so with Abraham, it was so after Jacob
+had been changed into Israel, it was so with Moses, Elijah, and
+Jeremiah. But what is the meaning of the very first commandment, 'Thou
+shalt have no other gods before me?' Could this command have been
+addressed to a nation to whom the plural of God was a nonentity? It
+might be answered that the plural of God was to the Jews as revolting
+as it is to us, that it was revolting to their faith, if not to their
+reason. But how was it that their language tolerated the plural of a
+word which excludes plurality as much as the word for the centre of a
+sphere? No man who had clearly perceived the unity of God, could say
+with the Psalmist (lxxxvi. 8), 'Among the gods there is none like unto
+Thee, O Lord, neither are there any works like unto Thy works.' Though
+the same poet says, 'Thou art God alone,' he could not have compared
+God with other gods, if his idea of God had really reached that
+all-embracing character which it had with Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and
+Jeremiah. Nor would God have been praised as the 'great king above all
+gods' by a poet in whose eyes the gods of the heathen had been
+recognised as what they were--mighty shadows, thrown by the mighty
+works of God, and intercepting for a time the pure light of the
+Godhead.
+
+We thus arrive at a different conviction from that which M. Renan has
+made the basis of the history of the Semitic race. We can see nothing
+that would justify the admission of a monotheistic instinct, granted
+to the Semitic, and withheld from the Aryan race. They both share in
+the primitive intuition of God, they are both exposed to dangers in
+framing names for God, and they both fall into polytheism. What is
+peculiar to the Aryan race is their mythological phraseology,
+superadded to their polytheism; what is peculiar to the Semitic race
+is their belief in a national god--in a god chosen by his people as
+his people had been chosen by him.
+
+No doubt, M. Renan might say that we ignored his problem, and that we
+have not removed the difficulties which drove him to the admission of
+a monotheistic instinct. How is the fact to be explained, he might
+ask, that the three great religions of the world in which the unity of
+the Deity forms the key-note, are of Semitic origin, and that the
+Aryan nations, wherever they have been brought to a worship of the One
+God, invoke Him with names borrowed from the Semitic languages?
+
+But let us look more closely at the facts before we venture on
+theories. Mohammedanism, no doubt, is a Semitic religion, and its very
+core is monotheism. But did Mohammed invent monotheism? Did he invent
+even a new name of God? (Renan, p. 23.) Not at all. His object was to
+destroy the idolatry of the Semitic tribes of Arabia, to dethrone the
+angels, the Jin, the sons and daughters who had been assigned to
+Allah, and to restore the faith of Abraham in one God. (Renan, p. 37.)
+
+And how is it with Christianity? Did Christ come to preach a faith in
+a new God? Did He or His disciples invent a new name of God? No,
+Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil; and the God whom He
+preached was the God of Abraham.
+
+And who is the God of Jeremiah, of Elijah, and of Moses? We answer
+again, the God of Abraham.
+
+Thus the faith in the One living God, which seemed to require the
+admission of a monotheistic instinct, grafted in every member of the
+Semitic family, is traced back to one man, to him 'in whom all
+families of the earth shall be blessed' (Genesis xii. 3, Acts iii. 25,
+Galatians iii. 8). If from our earliest childhood we have looked upon
+Abraham, the friend of God, with love and veneration; if our first
+impressions of a truly god-fearing life were taken from him, who left
+the land of his fathers to live a stranger in the land whither God
+had called him, who always listened to the voice of God, whether it
+conveyed to him the promise of a son in his old age, or the command to
+sacrifice that son, his only son Isaac, his venerable figure will
+assume still more majestic proportions when we see in him the
+life-spring of that faith which was to unite all the nations of the
+earth, and the author of that blessing which was to come on the
+Gentiles through Jesus Christ.
+
+And if we are asked how this one Abraham possessed not only the
+primitive intuition of God as He had revealed Himself to all mankind,
+but passed through the denial of all other gods to the knowledge of
+the one God, we are content to answer that it was by a special Divine
+Revelation. We do not indulge in theological phraseology, but we mean
+every word to its fullest extent. The Father of Truth chooses His own
+prophets, and He speaks to them in a voice stronger than the voice of
+thunder. It is the same inner voice through which God speaks to all of
+us. That voice may dwindle away, and become hardly audible; it may
+lose its Divine accent, and sink into the language of worldly
+prudence; but it may also, from time to time, assume its real nature,
+with the chosen of God, and sound into their ears as a voice from
+Heaven. A 'divine instinct' may sound more scientific, and less
+theological; but in truth it would neither be an appropriate name for
+what is a gift or grace accorded to but few, nor would it be a more
+scientific, i. e. a more intelligible word than 'special revelation.'
+
+The important point, however, is not whether the faith of Abraham
+should be called a divine instinct or a revelation; what we wish here
+to insist on is that that instinct, or that revelation, was special,
+granted to one man, and handed down from him to Jews, Christians, and
+Mohammedans, to all who believe in the God of Abraham. Nor was it
+granted to Abraham entirely as a free gift. Abraham was tried and
+tempted before he was trusted by God. He had to break with the faith
+of his fathers; he had to deny the gods who were worshipped by his
+friends and neighbours. Like all the friends of God, he had to hear
+himself called an infidel and atheist, and in our own days he would
+have been looked upon as a madman for attempting to slay his son. It
+was through special faith that Abraham received his special
+revelation, not through instinct, not through abstract meditation, not
+through ecstatic visions. We want to know more of that man than we do;
+but, even with the little we know of him, he stands before us as a
+figure second only to one in the whole history of the world. We see
+his zeal for God, but we never see him contentious. Though Melchisedek
+worshipped God under a different name, invoking Him as Eliun, the Most
+High, Abraham at once acknowledged in Melchisedek a worshipper and
+priest of the true God, or Elohim, and paid him tithes. In the very
+name of Elohim we seem to trace the conciliatory spirit of Abraham.
+Elohim is a plural, though it is followed by the verb in the singular.
+It is generally said that the genius of the Semitic languages
+countenances the use of plurals for abstract conceptions, and that
+when Jehovah is called Elohim, the plural should be translated by 'the
+Deity.' We do not deny the fact, but we wish for an explanation, and
+an explanation is suggested by the various phases through which, as
+we saw, the conception of God passed in the ancient history of the
+Semitic mind. Eloah was at first the name for God, and as it is found
+in all the dialects of the Semitic family except the Phenician (Renan,
+p. 61), it may probably be considered as the most ancient name of the
+Deity, sanctioned at a time when the original Semitic speech had not
+yet branched off into national dialects. When this name was first used
+in the plural, it could only have signified, like every plural, many
+Eloahs, and such a plural could only have been formed after the
+various names of God had become the names of independent deities, i.
+e. during a polytheistic stage. The transition from this into the
+monotheistic stage could be effected in two ways--either by denying
+altogether the existence of the Elohim, and changing them into devils,
+as the Zoroastrians did with the Devas of their Brahmanic ancestors;
+or by taking a higher view, and looking upon the Elohim as so many
+names, invented with the honest purpose of expressing the various
+aspects of the Deity, though in time diverted from their original
+purpose. This is the view taken by St. Paul of the religion of the
+Greeks when he came to declare unto them 'Him whom they ignorantly
+worshipped,' and the same view was taken by Abraham. Whatever the
+names of the Elohim, worshipped by the numerous clans of his race,
+Abraham saw that all the Elohim were meant for God, and thus Elohim,
+comprehending by one name everything that ever had been or could be
+called divine, became the name with which the monotheistic age was
+rightly inaugurated,--a plural, conceived and construed as a singular.
+Jehovah was all the Elohim, and therefore there could be no other God.
+From this point of view the Semitic name of the Deity, Elohim, which
+seemed at first not only ungrammatical but irrational, becomes
+perfectly clear and intelligible, and it proves better than anything
+else that the true monotheism could not have risen except on the ruins
+of a polytheistic faith. It is easy to scoff at the gods of the
+heathen, but a cold-hearted philosophical negation of the gods of the
+ancient world is more likely to lead to Deism or Atheism than to a
+belief in the One living God, the Father of all mankind, 'who hath
+made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of
+the earth; and hath determined the times before appointed, and the
+bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply
+they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from
+every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as
+certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also His
+offspring.'
+
+Taking this view of the historical growth of the idea of God, many of
+the difficulties which M. Renan has to overcome by most elaborate and
+sometimes hair-splitting arguments, disappear at once. M. Renan, for
+instance, dwells much on Semitic proper names in which the names of
+the Deity occur, and he thinks that, like the Greek names Theodorus or
+Theodotus, instead of Zenodotus, they prove the existence of a faith
+in one God. We should say they may or may not. As Devadatta, in
+Sanskrit, may mean either 'given by God,' or 'given by the gods,' so
+every proper name which M. Renan quotes, whether of Jews, or Edomites,
+Ishmaelites, Ammonites, Moabites, and Themanites, whether from the
+Bible, or from Arab historians, from Greek authors, Greek
+inscriptions, the Egyptian papyri, the Himyaritic and Sinaitic
+inscriptions and ancient coins, are all open to two interpretations.
+'The servant of Baal' may mean the servant of the Lord, but it may
+also mean the servant of Baal, as one of many lords, or even the
+servant of the Baalim or the Lords. The same applies to all other
+names. 'The gift of El' may mean 'the gift of the only strong God;'
+but it may likewise mean 'the gift of the El,' as one of many gods, or
+even 'the gift of the Els,' in the sense of the strong gods. Nor do we
+see why M. Renan should take such pains to prove that the name of
+Orotal or Orotulat, mentioned by Herodotos (III. 8), may be
+interpreted as the name of a supreme deity; and that Alilat, mentioned
+by the same traveller, should be taken, not as the name of a goddess,
+but as a feminine noun expressive of the abstract sense of the deity.
+Herodotos says distinctly that Orotal was a deity like Bacchus; and
+Alilat, as he translates her name by [Greek: Ourani�], must have
+appeared to him as a goddess, and not as the Supreme Deity. One verse
+of the Koran is sufficient to show that the Semitic inhabitants of
+Arabia worshipped not only gods, but goddesses also. 'What think ye of
+Allat, al Uzza, and Manah, that other third goddess?'
+
+If our view of the development of the idea of God be correct, we can
+perfectly understand how, in spite of this polytheistic phraseology,
+the primitive intuition of God should make itself felt from time to
+time, long before Mohammed restored the belief of Abraham in one God.
+The old Arabic prayer mentioned by Abulfarag may be perfectly genuine:
+'I dedicate myself to thy service, O God! Thou hast no companion,
+except thy companion, of whom thou art absolute master, and of
+whatever is his.' The verse pointed out to M. Renan by M. Caussin de
+Perceval from the Moallaka of Zoheyr, was certainly anterior to
+Mohammed: 'Try not to hide your secret feelings from the sight of
+Allah; Allah knows all that is hidden.' But these quotations serve no
+more to establish the universality of the monotheistic instinct in the
+Semitic race than similar quotations from the Veda would prove the
+existence of a conscious monotheism among the ancestors of the Aryan
+race. There too we read, 'Agni knows what is secret among mortals'
+(Rig-veda VIII. 39, 6): and again, 'He, the upholder of order,
+Varu_n_a, sits down among his people; he, the wise, sits there to
+govern. From thence perceiving all wondrous things, he sees what has
+been and what will be done.'[104] But in these very hymns, better than
+anywhere else, we learn that the idea of supremacy and omnipotence
+ascribed to one god did by no means exclude the admission of other
+gods, or names of God. All the other gods disappear from the vision of
+the poet while he addresses his own God, and he only who is to fulfil
+his desires stands in full light before the eyes of the worshipper as
+the supreme and only God.
+
+[Footnote 104: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' by M. M., p.
+536.]
+
+The Science of Religion is only just beginning, and we must take care
+how we impede its progress by preconceived notions or too hasty
+generalizations. During the last fifty years the authentic documents
+of the most important religions of the world have been recovered in a
+most unexpected and almost miraculous manner. We have now before us
+the canonical books of Buddhism; the Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster is no
+longer a sealed book; and the hymns of the Rig-veda have revealed a
+state of religion anterior to the first beginnings of that mythology
+which in Homer and Hesiod stands before us as a mouldering ruin. The
+soil of Mesopotamia has given back the very images once worshipped by
+the most powerful of the Semitic tribes, and the cuneiform
+inscriptions of Babylon and Nineveh have disclosed the very prayers
+addressed to Baal or Nisroch. With the discovery of these documents a
+new era begins in the study of religion. We begin to see more clearly
+every day what St. Paul meant in his sermon at Athens. But as the
+excavator at Babylon or Nineveh, before he ventures to reconstruct the
+palaces of these ancient kingdoms, sinks his shafts into the ground
+slowly and circumspectly lest he should injure the walls of the
+ancient palaces which he is disinterring; as he watches every
+corner-stone lest he mistake their dark passages and galleries, and as
+he removes with awe and trembling the dust and clay from the brittle
+monuments lest he destroy their outlines, and obliterate their
+inscriptions, so it behoves the student of the history of religion to
+set to work carefully, lest he should miss the track, and lose himself
+in an inextricable maze. The relics which he handles are more precious
+than the ruins of Babylon; the problems he has to solve are more
+important than the questions of ancient chronology; and the
+substructions which he hopes one day to lay bare are the world-wide
+foundations of the eternal kingdom of God.
+
+We look forward with the highest expectations to the completion of M.
+Renan's work, and though English readers will differ from many of the
+author's views, and feel offended now and then at his blunt and
+unguarded language, we doubt not that they will find his volumes both
+instructive and suggestive. They are written in that clear and
+brilliant style which has secured to M. Renan the rank of one of the
+best writers of French, and which throws its charm even over the dry
+and abstruse inquiries into the grammatical forms and radical elements
+of the Semitic languages.
+
+_April, 1860._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Note: List of corrections.
+
+Duplication of paragraphs.
+
+Page xix
+
+Duplication of pages.
+
+3 pages after 236
+
+Missing text
+
+Page xviii - last paragraph
+
+Page xxviii - last paragraph
+
+Page 18
+
+Page 46
+
+Page 89
+
+Page 91
+
+Page 99
+
+Page 116
+
+Pages missing
+
+3 pages after 233
+
+The page numbers have gone awry because of the corrections. Any
+reference to page numbers may be made to the Internet Archive edition.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I, by 
+Friedrich Max  M�ller
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I, by 
+Friedrich Max  M�ller
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I
+       Essays on the Science of Religion
+
+Author: Friedrich Max  M�ller
+
+Release Date: February 26, 2008 [EBook #24686]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Geetu Melwani, Thierry
+Alberto, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<div class="tr"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<p>This book had a number of typesetting errors such as missing text, pages, duplicate pages, and text. The text has been verified with the etext available with the Internet
+Archives (http://www.archive.org/details/germanwork01mulluoft) and corrected with the addition of missing text and removal of duplicate text. The Internet archive edition is a 1872 edition whereas this is a 1867 edition.</p>
+
+<p>Details of corrections and additions are given at the end of the book.</p>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>CHIPS<br />
+
+
+FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP.</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>MAX M&Uuml;LLER, M.A.</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD.</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>VOLUME I.</h3>
+<h2>Essays on the Science of Religion.</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>LONDON</h4>
+<h3>LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.</h3>
+<h3>1867</h3>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><i>To the Memory</i></h3>
+<h4>OF</h4>
+<h2>BARON BUNSEN,</h2>
+<h3>MY FRIEND AND BENEFACTOR.</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20"><i>et quanto diutius</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i12"><i>Abes, magis cupio tanto et magis desidero.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+<p>ore than twenty years have passed since my revered friend Bunsen
+called me one day into his library at Carlton House Terrace, and
+announced to me with beaming eyes that the publication of the Rig-veda
+was secure. He had spent many days in seeing the Directors of the
+East-India Company, and explaining to them the importance of this
+work, and the necessity of having it published in England. At last his
+efforts had been successful, the funds for printing my edition of the
+text and commentary of the Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans had been
+granted, and Bunsen was the first to announce to me the happy result
+of his literary diplomacy. 'Now,' he said, 'you have got a work for
+life&mdash;a large block that will take years to plane and polish.' 'But
+mind,' he added, 'let us have from time to time some chips from your
+workshop.'</p>
+
+<p>I have tried to follow the advice of my departed friend, and I have
+published almost every year a few articles on such subjects as had
+engaged my attention, while prosecuting at the same time, as far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span> as
+altered circumstances would allow, my edition of the Rig-veda, and of
+other Sanskrit works connected with it. These articles were chiefly
+published in the 'Edinburgh' and 'Quarterly Reviews,' in the 'Oxford
+Essays,' in 'Macmillan's' and 'Fraser's Magazines,' in the 'Saturday
+Review,' and in the 'Times.' In writing them my principal endeavour
+has been to bring out even in the most abstruse subjects the points of
+real interest that ought to engage the attention of the public at
+large, and never to leave a dark nook or corner without attempting to
+sweep away the cobwebs of false learning, and let in the light of real
+knowledge. Here, too, I owe much to Bunsen's advice, and when last
+year I saw in Cornwall the large heaps of copper ore piled up around
+the mines, like so many heaps of rubbish, while the poor people were
+asking for coppers to buy bread, I frequently thought of Bunsen's
+words, 'Your work is not finished when you have brought the ore from
+the mine: it must be sifted, smelted, refined, and coined before it
+can be of real use, and contribute towards the intellectual food of
+mankind.' I can hardly hope that in this my endeavour to be clear and
+plain, to follow the threads of every thought to the very ends, and to
+place the web of every argument clearly and fully before my readers, I
+have always been successful. Several of the subjects treated in these
+essays are, no doubt, obscure and difficult: but there is no subject,
+I believe, in the whole realm of human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span> knowledge, that cannot be
+rendered clear and intelligible, if we ourselves have perfectly
+mastered it. And now while the two last volumes of my edition of the
+Rig-veda are passing through the press, I thought the time had come
+for gathering up a few armfulls of these chips and splinters, throwing
+away what seemed worthless, and putting the rest into some kind of
+shape, in order to clear my workshop for other work.</p>
+
+<p>The first and second volumes which I am now publishing contain essays
+on the early thoughts of mankind, whether religious or mythological,
+and on early traditions and customs. There is to my mind no subject
+more absorbing than the tracing the origin and first growth of human
+thought;&mdash;not theoretically, or in accordance with the Hegelian laws
+of thought, or the Comtian epochs; but historically, and like an
+Indian trapper, spying for every footprint, every layer, every broken
+blade that might tell and testify of the former presence of man in his
+early wanderings and searchings after light and truth.</p>
+
+<p>In the languages of mankind, in which everything new is old and
+everything old is new, an inexhaustible mine has been discovered for
+researches of this kind. Language still bears the impress of the
+earliest thoughts of man, obliterated, it may be, buried under new
+thoughts, yet here and there still recoverable in their sharp original
+outline. The growth of language is continuous, and by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span> continuing our
+researches backward from the most modern to the most ancient strata,
+the very elements and roots of human speech have been reached, and
+with them the elements and roots of human thought. What lies beyond
+the beginnings of language, however interesting it may be to the
+physiologist, does not yet belong to the history of man, in the true
+and original sense of that word. Man means the thinker, and the first
+manifestation of thought is speech.</p>
+
+<p>But more surprising than the continuity in the growth of language, is
+the continuity in the growth of religion. Of religion, too, as of
+language, it may be said that in it everything new is old, and
+everything old is new, and that there has been no entirely new
+religion since the beginning of the world. The elements and roots of
+religion were there, as far back as we can trace the history of man;
+and the history of religion, like the history of language, shows us
+throughout a succession of new combinations of the same radical
+elements. An intuition of God, a sense of human weakness and
+dependence, a belief in a Divine government of the world, a
+distinction between good and evil, and a hope of a better life, these
+are some of the radical elements of all religions. Though sometimes
+hidden, they rise again and again to the surface. Though frequently
+distorted, they tend again and again to their perfect form. Unless
+they had formed part of the original dowry of the human soul, religion
+itself would have remained an impossibility, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span> the tongues of
+angels would have been to human ears but as sounding brass or a
+tinkling cymbal. If we once understand this clearly, the words of St.
+Augustine which have seemed startling to many of his admirers, become
+perfectly clear and intelligible, when he says:<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> 'What is now called
+the Christian religion, has existed among the ancients, and was not
+absent from the beginning of the human race, until Christ came in the
+flesh: from which time the true religion, which existed already, began
+to be called Christian.' From this point of view the words of Christ
+too, which startled the Jews, assume their true meaning, when He said
+to the centurion of Capernaum: 'Many shall come from the east and the
+west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the
+kingdom of heaven.'</p>
+
+<p>During the last fifty years the accumulation of new and authentic
+materials for the study of the religions of the world, has been most
+extraordinary; but such are the difficulties in mastering these
+materials that I doubt whether the time has yet come for attempting to
+trace, after the model of the Science of Language, the definite
+outlines of the Science of Religion. By a succession of the most
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[xii]</a></span>fortunate circumstances, the canonical books of three of the
+principal religions of the ancient world have lately been recovered,
+the Veda, the Zend-Avesta, and the Tripi<i>t</i>aka. But not only have we
+thus gained access to the most authentic documents from which to study
+the ancient religion of the Brahmans, the Zoroastrians, and the
+Buddhists, but by discovering the real origin of Greek, Roman, and
+likewise of Teutonic, Slavonic, and Celtic mythology, it has become
+possible to separate the truly religious elements in the sacred
+traditions of these nations from the mythological crust by which they
+are surrounded, and thus to gain a clearer insight into the real faith
+of the ancient Aryan world.</p>
+
+<p>If we turn to the Semitic world, we find that although no new
+materials have been discovered from which to study the ancient
+religion of the Jews, yet a new spirit of inquiry has brought new life
+into the study of the sacred records of Abraham, Moses, and the
+Prophets; and the recent researches of Biblical scholars, though
+starting from the most opposite points, have all helped to bring out
+the historical interest of the Old Testament, in a manner not dreamt
+of by former theologians. The same may be said of another Semitic
+religion, the religion of Mohammed, since the Koran and the literature
+connected with it were submitted to the searching criticism of real
+scholars and historians. Some new materials for the study of the
+Semitic religions have come from the monuments of Babylon and
+Nineveh.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</a></span> The very images of Bel and Nisroch now stand before our
+eyes, and the inscriptions on the tablets may hereafter tell us even
+more of the thoughts of those who bowed their knees before them. The
+religious worship of the Phenicians and Carthaginians has been
+illustrated by Movers from the ruins of their ancient temples, and
+from scattered notices in classical writers; nay, even the religious
+ideas of the Nomads of the Arabian peninsula, previous to the rise of
+Mohammedanism, have been brought to light by the patient researches of
+Oriental scholars.</p>
+
+<p>There is no lack of idols among the ruined and buried temples of Egypt
+with which to reconstruct the pantheon of that primeval country: nor
+need we despair of recovering more and more of the thoughts buried
+under the hieroglyphics of the inscriptions, or preserved in hieratic
+and demotic MSS., if we watch the brilliant discoveries that have
+rewarded the patient researches of the disciples of Champollion.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the Aryan and Semitic families of religion, we have in China
+three recognised forms of public worship, the religion of Confucius,
+that of Lao-tse, and that of Fo (Buddha); and here, too, recent
+publications have shed new light, and have rendered an access to the
+canonical works of these religions, and an understanding of their
+various purports, more easy, even to those who have not mastered the
+intricacies of the Chinese language.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[xiv]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Among the Turanian nations, a few only, such as the Finns, and the
+Mongolians, have preserved some remnants of their ancient worship and
+mythology, and these too have lately been more carefully collected and
+explained by d'Ohson, Castr&egrave;n, and others.</p>
+
+<p>In America the religions of Mexico and Peru had long attracted the
+attention of theologians; and of late years the impulse imparted to
+ethnological researches has induced travellers and missionaries to
+record any traces of religious life that could be discovered among the
+savage inhabitants of Africa, America, and the Polynesian islands.</p>
+
+<p>It will be seen from these few indications, that there is no lack of
+materials for the student of religion; but we shall also perceive how
+difficult it is to master such vast materials. To gain a full
+knowledge of the Veda, or the Zend-Avesta, or the Tripi<i>t</i>aka, of the
+Old Testament, the Koran, or the sacred books of China, is the work of
+a whole life. How then is one man to survey the whole field of
+religious thought, to classify the religions of the world according to
+definite and permanent criteria, and to describe their characteristic
+features with a sure and discriminating hand?</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is more difficult to seize than the salient features, the
+traits that constitute the permanent expression and real character of
+a religion. Religion seems to be the common property of a large
+community, and yet it not only varies in numerous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[xv]</a></span> sects, as language
+does in its dialects, but it really escapes our firm grasp till we can
+trace it to its real habitat, the heart of one true believer. We speak
+glibly of Buddhism and Brahmanism, forgetting that we are generalizing
+on the most intimate convictions of millions and millions of human
+souls, divided by half the world and by thousands of years.</p>
+
+<p>It may be said that at all events where a religion possesses canonical
+books, or a definite number of articles, the task of the student of
+religion becomes easier, and this, no doubt, is true to a certain
+extent. But even then we know that the interpretation of these
+canonical books varies, so much so that sects appealing to the same
+revealed authorities, as, for instance, the founders of the Ved&acirc;nta
+and the S&acirc;nkhya systems, accuse each other of error, if not of wilful
+error or heresy. Articles too, though drawn up with a view to define
+the principal doctrines of a religion, lose much of their historical
+value by the treatment they receive from subsequent schools; and they
+are frequently silent on the very points which make religion what it
+is.</p>
+
+<p>A few instances may serve to show what difficulties the student of
+religion has to contend with, before he can hope firmly to grasp the
+facts on which his theories are to be based.</p>
+
+<p>Roman Catholic missionaries who had spent their lives in China, who
+had every opportunity, while staying at the court of Pekin, of
+studying in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[xvi]</a></span> original the canonical works of Confucius and their
+commentaries, who could consult the greatest theologians then living,
+and converse with the crowds that thronged the temples of the capital,
+differed diametrically in their opinions as to the most vital points
+in the state religion of China. Lecomte, Fouquet, Pr&eacute;mare, and Bouvet
+thought it undeniable that Confucius, his predecessors and his
+disciples, had entertained the noblest ideas on the constitution of
+the universe, and had sacrificed to the true God in the most ancient
+temple of the earth. According to Maigrot, Navarette, on the contrary,
+and even according to the Jesuit Longobardi, the adoration of the
+Chinese was addressed to inanimate tablets, meaningless inscriptions,
+or, in the best case, to coarse ancestral spirits and beings without
+intelligence.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> If we believe the former, the ancient deism of China
+approached the purity of the Christian religion; if we listen to the
+latter, the absurd fetichism of the multitude degenerated amongst the
+educated, into systematic materialism and atheism. In answer to the
+peremptory texts quoted by one party, the other adduced the glosses of
+accredited interpreters, and the dispute of the missionaries who had
+lived in China and knew Chinese, had to be settled in the last
+instance by a decision of the see of Rome.</p>
+
+
+<p>There is hardly any religion that has been studied in its sacred
+literature, and watched in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[xvii]</a></span>its external worship with greater care
+than the modern religion of the Hindus, and yet it would be extremely
+hard to give a faithful and intelligible description of it. Most
+people who have lived in India would maintain that the Indian
+religion, as believed in and practised at present by the mass of the
+people, is idol worship and nothing else. But let us hear one of the
+mass of the people, a Hindu of Benares, who in a lecture delivered
+before an English and native audience defends his faith and the faith
+of his forefathers against such sweeping accusations. 'If by
+idolatry,' he says, "is meant a system of worship which confines our
+ideas of the Deity to a mere image of clay or stone, which prevents
+our hearts from being expanded and elevated with lofty notions of the
+attributes of God, if this is what is meant by idolatry, we disclaim
+idolatry, we abhor idolatry, and deplore the ignorance or
+uncharitableness of those that charge us with this grovelling system
+of worship.... But if, firmly believing, as we do, in the omnipresence
+of God, we behold, by the aid of our imagination, in the form of an
+image any of his glorious manifestations, ought we to be charged with
+identifying them with the matter of the image, whilst during those
+moments of sincere and fervent devotion, we do not even think of
+matter? If at the sight of a portrait of a beloved and venerated
+friend no longer existing in this world, our heart is filled with
+sentiments of love and reverence; if
+we fancy him present in the
+picture, still looking upon us with his wonted tenderness and
+affection, and then indulge our feelings of love and gratitude, should
+we be charged with offering the grossest insult to him&mdash;that of
+fancying him to be no other than a piece of painted paper?... We
+really lament the ignorance or uncharitableness of those who confound
+our representative worship with the Phenician, Grecian, or Roman
+idolatry as represented by European writers, and then charge us with
+polytheism in the teeth of thousands of texts in the Pur�<i>n</i>as,
+declaring in clear and unmistakable
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[xviii]</a></span> terms that there is but
+one God who manifests Himself as Brahma, Vish<i>n</i>u, and Rudra (Siva),
+in His functions of creation, preservation, and destruction."<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+
+<p>In support of these statements, this eloquent advocate quotes numerous
+passages from the sacred literature of the Brahmans, and he sums up
+his view of the three manifestations of the Deity in the words of
+their great poet Kalid&acirc;sa, as translated by Mr. Griffith:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"In those Three Persons the One God was shown:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each First in place, each Last,&mdash;not one alone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Siva, Vish<i>n</i>u, Brahma, each may be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">First, second, third, among the Blessed Three."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>If such contradictory views can be held and defended with regard to
+religious systems still prevalent amongst us, where we can
+cross-examine living witnesses, and appeal to chapter and verse in
+their sacred writings, what must the difficulty be when we have to
+deal with the religions of the past? I do not wish to disguise these
+difficulties which are inherent in a comparative study of the
+religions of the world. I rather dwell on them strongly, in order to
+show how much care and caution is required in so difficult a subject,
+and how much indulgence should be shown in judging of the shortcomings
+and errors that are unavoidable in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[xix]</a></span>so comprehensive a study. It was
+supposed at one time that a comparative analysis of the languages of
+mankind must transcend the powers of man: and yet by the combined and
+well directed efforts of many scholars, great results have here been
+obtained, and the principles that must guide the student of the
+Science of Language are now firmly established. It will be the same
+with the Science of Religion. By a proper division of labor, the
+materials that are still wanting will be collected and published and
+translated, and when that is done, surely man will never rest till he
+has discovered the purpose that runs through the religions of mankind,
+and till he has reconstructed the true <i>Civitas Dei</i> on foundations as
+wide as the ends of the world. The Science of Religion may be the last
+of the sciences which man is destined to elaborate; but when it is
+elaborated, it will change the aspect of the world, and give a new
+life to Christianity itself.</p>
+
+<p>The Fathers of the Church, though living in much more dangerous
+proximity to the ancient religions of the Gentiles, admitted freely
+that a comparison of Christianity and other religions was useful. "If
+there is any agreement," Basilius remarked, "between their (the
+Greeks') doctrines and our own, it may benefit us to know them: if
+not, then to compare them and to learn how they differ, will help not
+a little towards confirming that which is the better of the two."<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[xx]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>But this is not the only advantage of a comparative study of
+religions. The Science of Religion will for the first time assign to
+Christianity its right place among the religions of the world; it will
+show for the first time fully what was meant by the fulness of time;
+it will restore to the whole history of the world, in its unconscious
+progress towards Christianity, its true and sacred character.</p>
+
+<p>Not many years ago great offence was given by an eminent writer who
+remarked that the time had come when the history of Christianity
+should be treated in a truly historical spirit, in the same spirit in
+which we treat the history of other religions, such as Brahmanism,
+Buddhism, or Mohammedanism. And yet what can be truer? He must be a
+man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the
+same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other
+religions. We need <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxi" id="Page_xxi">[xxi]</a></span>not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment
+for that faith which we hold to be the only true one. We should rather
+challenge for it the severest tests and trials, as the sailor would
+for the good ship to which he entrusts his own life, and the lives of
+those who are most dear to him. In the Science of Religion, we can
+decline no comparisons, nor claim any immunities for Christianity, as
+little as the missionary can, when wrestling with the subtle Brahman,
+or the fanatical Mussulman, or the plain speaking Zulu. And if we send
+out our missionaries to every part of the world to face every kind of
+religion, to shrink from no contest, to be appalled by no objections,
+we must not give way at home or within our own hearts to any
+misgivings, that a comparative study of the religions of the world
+could shake the firm foundations on which we must stand or fall.</p>
+
+<p>To the missionary more particularly a comparative study of the
+religions of mankind will be, I believe, of the greatest assistance.
+Missionaries are apt to look upon all other religions as something
+totally distinct from their own, as formerly they used to describe the
+languages of barbarous nations as something more like the twittering
+of birds than the articulate speech of men. The Science of Language
+has taught us that there is order and wisdom in all languages, and
+that even the most degraded jargons contain the ruins of former
+greatness and beauty. The Science of Religion, I hope, will produce<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxii" id="Page_xxii">[xxii]</a></span> a
+similar change in our views of barbarous forms of faith and worship;
+and missionaries, instead of looking only for points of difference,
+will look out more anxiously for any common ground, any spark of the
+true light that may still be revived, any altar that may be dedicated
+afresh to the true God.</p>
+
+<p>And even to us at home, a wider view of the religious life of the
+world may teach many a useful lesson. Immense as is the difference
+between our own and all other religions of the world&mdash;and few can know
+that difference who have not honestly examined the foundations of
+their own as well as of other religions&mdash;the position which believers
+and unbelievers occupy with regard to their various forms of faith is
+very much the same all over the world. The difficulties which trouble
+us, have troubled the hearts and minds of men as far back as we can
+trace the beginnings of religious life. The great problems touching
+the relation of the Finite to the Infinite, of the human mind as the
+recipient, and of the Divine Spirit as the source of truth, are old
+problems indeed; and while watching their appearance in different
+countries, and their treatment under varying circumstances, we shall
+be able, I believe, to profit ourselves, both by the errors which
+others committed before us, and by the truth which they discovered. We
+shall know the rocks that threaten every religion in this changing and
+shifting world of ours, and having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxiii" id="Page_xxiii">[xxiii]</a></span> watched many a storm of religious
+controversy and many a shipwreck in distant seas, we shall face with
+greater calmness and prudence the troubled waters at home.</p>
+
+<p>If there is one thing which a comparative study of religions places in
+the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion
+is exposed. It may seem almost like a truism, that no religion can
+continue to be what it was during the lifetime of its founder and its
+first apostles. Yet it is but seldom borne in mind that without
+constant reformation, i. e. without a constant return to its
+fountain-head, every religion, even the most perfect, nay the most
+perfect on account of its very perfection, more even than others,
+suffers from its contact with the world, as the purest air suffers
+from the mere fact of its being breathed.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first beginnings, we find
+it free from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases.
+The founders of the ancient religions of the world, as far as we can
+judge, were minds of a high stamp, full of noble aspirations, yearning
+for truth, devoted to the welfare of their neighbours, examples of
+purity and unselfishness. What they desired to found upon earth was
+but seldom realised, and their sayings, if preserved in their original
+form, offer often a strange contrast to the practice of those who
+profess to be their disciples. As soon as a religion is established,
+and more particularly when it has become the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxiv" id="Page_xxiv">[xxiv]</a></span> religion of a powerful
+state, the foreign and worldly elements encroach more and more on the
+original foundation, and human interests mar the simplicity and purity
+of the plan which the founder had conceived in his own heart, and
+matured in his communings with his God. Even those who lived with
+Buddha, misunderstood his words, and at the Great Council which had to
+settle the Buddhist canon, Asoka, the Indian Constantine, had to
+remind the assembled priests that 'what had been said by Buddha, that
+alone was well said;' and that certain works ascribed to Buddha, as,
+for instance, the instruction given to his son, R&acirc;hula, were
+apocryphal, if not heretical.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> With every century, Buddhism, when it
+was accepted by nations, differing as widely as Mongols and Hindus,
+when its sacred writings were translated into languages as wide apart
+as Sanskrit and Chinese, assumed widely different aspects, till at
+last the Buddhism of the Shamans in the steppes of Tatary is as
+different from the teaching of the original <i>S</i>ama<i>n</i>a, as the
+Christianity of the leader of the Chinese rebels is from the teaching
+of Christ. If missionaries could show to the Brahmans, the Buddhists,
+the Zoroastrians, nay, even to the Mohammedans, how much their present
+faith differs from the faith of their forefathers and founders, if
+they could place into their hands and read with them in a kindly
+spirit the original documents in which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxv" id="Page_xxv">[xxv]</a></span>these various religions
+profess to be founded, and enable them to distinguish between the
+doctrines of their own sacred books and the additions of later ages,
+an important advantage would be gained, and the choice between Christ
+and other Masters would be rendered far more easy to many a
+truth-seeking soul. But for that purpose it is necessary that we too
+should see the beam in our own eyes, and learn to distinguish between
+the Christianity of the nineteenth century and the religion of Christ.
+If we find that the Christianity of the nineteenth century does not
+win as many hearts in India and China as it ought, let us remember
+that it was the Christianity of the first century in all its dogmatic
+simplicity, but with its overpowering love of God and man, that
+conquered the world and superseded religions and philosophies, more
+difficult to conquer than the religious and philosophical systems of
+Hindus and Buddhists. If we can teach something to the Brahmans in
+reading with them their sacred hymns, they too can teach us something
+when reading with us the Gospel of Christ. Never shall I forget the
+deep despondency of a Hindu convert, a real martyr to his faith, who
+had pictured to himself from the pages of the New Testament what a
+Christian country must be, and who when he came to Europe found
+everything so different from what he had imagined in his lonely
+meditations at Benares! It was the Bible only that saved him from
+returning to his old religion, and helped him to discern beneath<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxvi" id="Page_xxvi">[xxvi]</a></span>
+theological futilities, accumulated during nearly two thousand years,
+beneath pharisaical hypocrisy, infidelity, and want of charity, the
+buried, but still living seed, committed to the earth by Christ and
+his Apostles. How can a missionary in such circumstances meet the
+surprise and questions of his pupils, unless he may point to that
+seed, and tell them what Christianity was meant to be; unless he may
+show that like all other religions, Christianity, too, has had its
+history; that the Christianity of the nineteenth century is not the
+Christianity of the Middle Ages, that the Christianity of the Middle
+Ages was not that of the early Councils, that the Christianity of the
+early Councils was not that of the Apostles, and 'that what has been
+said by Christ that alone was well said?'</p>
+
+
+
+<p>The advantages, however, which missionaries and other defenders of the
+faith will gain from a comparative study of religions, though
+important hereafter, are not at present the chief object of these
+researches. In order to maintain their scientific character, they must
+be independent of all extraneous considerations: they must aim at
+truth, trusting that even unpalatable truths, like unpalatable
+medicine, will reinvigorate the system into which they enter. To
+those, no doubt, who value the tenets of their religion as the miser
+values his pearls and precious stones, thinking their value lessened
+if pearls and stones of the same kind are found in other parts of the
+world, the Science of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxvii" id="Page_xxvii">[xxvii]</a></span> Religion will bring many a rude shock; but to
+the true believer, truth, wherever it appears, is welcome, nor will
+any doctrine seem to be less true or less precious, because it was
+seen, not only by Moses or Christ, but likewise by Buddha or Lao-tse.
+Nor should it be forgotten that while a comparison of ancient
+religions will certainly show that some of the most vital articles of
+faith are the common property of the whole of mankind, at least of all
+who seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him,
+the same comparison alone can possibly teach us what is peculiar to
+Christianity, and what has secured to it that pre-eminent position
+which now it holds in spite of all obloquy. The gain will be greater
+than the loss, if loss there be, which I, at least, shall never admit.</p>
+
+<p>There is a strong feeling, I know, in the minds of all people against
+any attempt to treat their own religion as a member of a class, and,
+in one sense, that feeling is perfectly justified. To each individual,
+his own religion, if he really believes in it, is something quite
+inseparable from himself, something unique, that cannot be compared to
+anything else, or replaced by anything else. Our own religion is, in
+that respect, something like our own language. In its form it may be
+like other languages; in its essence and in its relation to ourselves,
+it stands alone and admits of no peer or rival.</p>
+
+<p>But in the history of the world, our religion, like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxviii" id="Page_xxviii">[xxviii]</a></span> our own language,
+is but one out of many; and in order to understand fully the position
+of Christianity in the history of the world, and its true place among
+the religions of mankind, we must compare it, not with Jud&aelig;ism only,
+but with the religious aspirations of the whole world, with all, in
+fact, that Christianity came either to destroy or to fulfil. From this
+point of view Christianity forms part, no doubt, of what people call
+profane history, but by that very fact, profane history ceases to be
+profane, and regains throughout that sacred character of which it had
+been deprived by a false distinction. The ancient Fathers of the
+Church spoke on these subjects with far greater freedom than we
+venture to use in these days.
+Justin Martyr, in his 'Apology' (<span class="smcap">a.d</span> 139), has this memorable passage
+('Apol.' i. 46): 'One article of our faith then is, that Christ is the
+first begotten of God, and we have already proved Him to be the very
+Logos (or universal Reason), of which mankind are all partakers; and
+therefore those who live according to the Logos are Christians,
+notwithstanding they may pass with you for Atheists; such among the
+Greeks were Sokrates and Herakleitos and the like; and such among the
+Barbarians were Abraham, and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, and
+Elias, and many others, whose actions, nay whose very names, I know,
+would be tedious to relate, and therefore shall pass them over. So, on
+the other side, those who have lived in former times in defiance of
+the Logos or Reason, were evil, and enemies to Christ and murderers of
+such as lived according to the Logos; but <i>they who have made or make
+the Logos or Reason the rule of their actions are Christians</i>, and men
+without fear and trembling.'<a name="FNanchor_5_1_1" id="FNanchor_5_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_1_1" class="fnanchor">[5_1]</a></p>
+<p>'God,' says Clement,<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> 'is the cause of
+all that is good: only of some good gifts He is the primary cause, as
+of the Old and New Testaments, of others the secondary, as of (Greek)
+philosophy. But even philosophy may have been given primarily by Him
+to the Greeks, before the Lord had called the Greeks also. For that
+philosophy, like a teacher, has guided the Greeks also, as the Law did
+the Hebrews, towards Christ. Philosophy, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxix" id="Page_xxix">[xxix]</a></span>therefore, prepares and
+opens the way to those who are made perfect by Christ.'</p>
+
+
+<p>And again: 'It is clear that the same God to whom we owe the Old and
+New Testaments, gave also to the Greeks their Greek philosophy by
+which the Almighty is glorified among the Greeks.'<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p>And Clement was by no means the only one who spoke thus freely and
+fearlessly, though, no doubt, his knowledge of Greek philosophy
+qualified him better than many of his contemporaries to speak with
+authority on such subjects.</p>
+
+<p>St. Augustine writes: 'If the Gentiles also had possibly something
+divine and true in their doctrines, our Saints did not find fault with
+it, although for their superstition, idolatry, and pride, and other
+evil habits, they had to be detested, and, unless they improved, to be
+punished by divine judgment. For the apostle Paul, when he said
+something about God among the Athenians, quoted the testimony of some
+of the Greeks who had said something of the same kind: and this, if
+they came to Christ, would be acknowledged in them, and not blamed.
+Saint Cyprian, too, uses such witnesses against the Gentiles. For when
+he speaks of the Magians, he says that the chief among them, Hostanes,
+maintains that the true God is invisible, and that true angels sit at
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxx" id="Page_xxx">[xxx]</a></span>His throne; and that Plato agrees with this, and believes in One God,
+considering the others to be angels or demons; and that Hermes
+Trismegistus also speaks of One God, and confesses that He is
+incomprehensible.' (Augustinus, 'De Baptismo contra Donatistas,' lib.
+VI, cap. xliv.)</p>
+
+<p>Every religion, even the most imperfect and degraded, has something
+that ought to be sacred to us, for there is in all religions a secret
+yearning after the true, though unknown, God. Whether we see the Papua
+squatting in dumb meditation before his fetish, or whether we listen
+to Firdusi exclaiming: 'The heighth and the depth of the whole world
+have their centre in Thee, O my God! I do not know Thee what Thou art:
+but I know that Thou art what Thou alone canst be,'&mdash;we ought to feel
+that the place whereon we stand is holy ground. There are
+philosophers, no doubt, to whom both Christianity and all other
+religions are exploded errors, things belonging to the past, and to be
+replaced by more positive knowledge. To them the study of the
+religions of the world could only have a pathological interest, and
+their hearts could never warm at the sparks of truth that light up,
+like stars, the dark yet glorious night of the ancient world. They
+tell us that the world has passed through the phases of religious and
+metaphysical errors, in order to arrive at the safe haven of positive
+knowledge of facts. But if they would but study positive facts, if
+they would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxxi" id="Page_xxxi">[xxxi]</a></span> but read, patiently and thoughtfully, the history of the
+world, as it is, not as it might have been: they would see that, as in
+geology, so in the history of human thought, theoretic uniformity does
+not exist, and that the past is never altogether lost. The oldest
+formations of thought crop out everywhere, and if we dig but deep
+enough, we shall find that even the sandy desert in which we are asked
+to live, rests everywhere on the firm foundation of that primeval, yet
+indestructible granite of the human soul,&mdash;religious faith.</p>
+
+<p>There are other philosophers again who would fain narrow the limits of
+the Divine government of the world to the history of the Jewish and of
+the Christian nations, who would grudge the very name of religion to
+the ancient creeds of the world, and to whom the name of natural
+religion has almost become a term of reproach. To them, too, I should
+like to say that if they would but study positive facts, if they would
+but read their own Bible, they would find that the greatness of Divine
+Love cannot be measured by human standards, and that God has never
+forsaken a single human soul that has not first forsaken Him. 'He hath
+made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of
+the earth; and hath determined the times before appointed, and the
+bounds of their habitation: that they should seek the Lord, if haply
+they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from
+every one of us,' If they would but dig deep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxxii" id="Page_xxxii">[xxxii]</a></span> enough, they too would
+find that what they contemptuously call natural religion, is in
+reality the greatest gift that God has bestowed on the children of
+man, and that without it, revealed religion itself would have no firm
+foundation, no living roots in the heart of man.</p>
+
+<p>If by the essays here collected I should succeed in attracting more
+general attention towards an independent, yet reverent study of the
+ancient religions of the world, and in dispelling some of the
+prejudices with which so many have regarded the yearnings after truth
+embodied in the sacred writings of the Brahmans, the Zoroastrians, and
+the Buddhists, in the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, nay, even in
+the wild traditions and degraded customs of Polynesian savages, I
+shall consider myself amply rewarded for the labour which they have
+cost me. That they are not free from errors, in spite of a careful
+revision to which they have been submitted before I published them in
+this collection, I am fully aware, and I shall be grateful to any one
+who will point them out, little concerned whether it is done in a
+seemly or unseemly manner, as long as some new truth is elicited, or
+some old error effectually exploded. Though I have thought it right in
+preparing these essays for publication, to alter what I could no
+longer defend as true, and also, though rarely, to add some new facts
+that seemed essential for the purpose of establishing what I wished to
+prove, yet in the main they have been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxxiii" id="Page_xxxiii">[xxxiii]</a></span> left as they were originally
+published. I have added to each the dates when they were written,
+these dates ranging over the last fifteen years, and I must beg my
+readers to bear these dates in mind when judging both of the form and
+the matter of these contributions towards a better knowledge of the
+creeds and prayers, the legends and customs of the ancient world.</p>
+
+<p class="f1">M. M.</p>
+
+<p class="f2"><span class="smcap">Parks End, Oxford</span>:</p>
+
+<p class="f3"><i>October</i>, 1867.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> August. Retr. 1, 13. 'Res ipsa, qu&aelig; nunc religio
+Christiana nuncupatur, erat apud antiquos, nec defuit ab initio
+generis humani, quousque Christus veniret in carnem, unde vera
+religio, qu&aelig; jam erat, c&oelig;pit appellari Christiana.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Abel R&eacute;musat, 'M&eacute;langes,' p. 162.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The modern pandit's reply to the missionary who accuses
+him of polytheism is: "O, these are only various manifestations of the
+one God; the same as, though the sun be one in the heavens, yet he
+appears in multi-form reflections upon the lake. The various sects are
+only different entrances to the one city." See W. W. Hunter, <i>Annals
+of Rural Bengal</i>, p. 116.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Basilius, <i>De legendis Gr&aelig;c.</i> libris, c. v.
+&#917;&#7984; &#956;&#7953;&#957; &#959;&#8019;&#957; &#7952;&#963;&#964;&#7985; &#964;&#953;&#962; &#959;&#7984;&#954;&#949;&#953;&#8001;&#964;&#951;&#962; &#960;&#961;&#8000;&#962; &#7936;&#955;&#955;&#7969;&#955;&#959;&#965;&#962; &#964;&#959;&#8150;&#962; &#955;&#8001;&#947;&#959;&#953;&#962;, &#960;&#961;&#959;&#8020;&#961;&#947;&#959;&#965; &#7940;&#957;
+&#7969;&#956;&#8150;&#957; &#945;&#8016;&#964;&#8182;&#957; &#7969; &#947;&#957;&#8182;&#963;&#953;&#962; &#947;&#7953;&#957;&#959;&#953;&#964;&#959;. &#949;&#7984; &#948;&#8050; &#956;&#8052;, &#7936;&#955;&#955;&#7936; &#964;&#959; &#947;&#949; &#960;&#945;&#961;&#7937;&#945;&#955;&#955;&#951;&#955;&#945; &#952;&#7952;&#957;&#964;&#945;&#962;
+&#954;&#945;&#964;&#945;&#956;&#945;&#952;&#949;&#8150;&#957; &#964;&#8000; &#948;&#953;&#7937;&#966;&#959;&#961;&#959;&#957;, &#959;&#8016; &#956;&#953;&#954;&#961;&#8000;&#957; &#949;&#7984;&#962; &#946;&#949;&#946;&#945;&#7985;&#969;&#963;&#953;&#962; &#946;&#949;&#955;&#964;&#7985;&#959;&#957;&#959;&#962;.
+</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' Appendice, No. x. &sect;
+4.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_1_1" id="Footnote_5_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_1_1"><span class="label">[5_1]</span></a>
+</p><p>
+&#932;&#8000;&#957; &#967;&#961;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#8000;&#957; &#960;&#961;&#969;&#964;&#8001;&#964;&#959;&#954;&#959;&#957; &#964;&#959;&#8166; &#920;&#949;&#959;&#8166; &#949;&#7990;&#957;&#945;&#953; &#7952;&#948;&#953;&#948;&#7937;&#967;&#952;&#951;&#956;&#949;&#957;, &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#960;&#961;&#959;&#949;&#956;&#951;&#957;&#8017;&#963;&#945;&#956;&#949;&#957;
+&#923;&#8001;&#947;&#959;&#957; &#8002;&#957;&#964;&#945;, &#959;&#8023; &#960;&#8118;&#957; &#947;&#7953;&#957;&#959;&#962; &#7936;&#957;&#952;&#961;&#8033;&#960;&#969;&#957; &#956;&#949;&#964;&#7953;&#963;&#967;&#949; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#959;&#7985; &#956;&#949;&#964;&#7936; &#923;&#8001;&#947;&#959;&#965; &#946;&#953;&#8033;&#963;&#945;&#957;&#964;&#949;&#962;
+&#967;&#961;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#953;&#945;&#957;&#959;&#7985; &#949;&#7984;&#963;&#953;, &#954;&#7940;&#957; &#7940;&#952;&#949;&#959;&#953; &#7952;&#957;&#959;&#956;&#7985;&#963;&#952;&#951;&#963;&#945;&#957;, &#959;&#7985;&#959;&#957; &#7952;&#957; &#7963;&#955;&#955;&#951;&#963;&#953; &#956;&#7952;&#957; &#931;&#969;&#954;&#961;&#7937;&#964;&#951;&#962;
+&#954;&#945;&#7984; &#919;&#961;&#7937;&#954;&#955;&#949;&#8150;&#964;&#959;&#962; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#959;&#7985; &#8001;&#956;&#959;&#8150;&#959;&#953; &#945;&#8016;&#964;&#959;&#8150;&#962;, &#7952;&#957; &#946;&#945;&#961;&#946;&#7937;&#961;&#959;&#953;&#962; &#948;&#7952; &#7947;&#946;&#961;&#945;&#7936;&#956; &#954;&#945;&#7984;
+&#913;&#957;&#945;&#957;&#7985;&#945;&#962; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#913;&#986;&#945;&#961;&#7985;&#945;&#962; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#924;&#953;&#963;&#945;&#8052;&#955; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#7980;&#955;&#7985;&#945;&#962; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#7940;&#955;&#955;&#959;&#953; &#960;&#959;&#955;&#955;&#959;&#7984;, &#8036;&#957; &#964;&#7936;&#962;
+&#960;&#961;&#7937;&#958;&#949;&#964;&#962; &#7971; &#964;&#7936; &#8000;&#957;&#8001;&#956;&#945;&#964;&#945; &#954;&#945;&#964;&#945;&#955;&#7953;&#947;&#949;&#953;&#957; &#956;&#945;&#954;&#961;&#8000;&#957; &#949;&#7986;&#957;&#945;&#953; &#7954;&#960;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#7937;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#959;&#953;, &#964;&#945;&#957;&#8166;&#957;
+&#960;&#945;&#961;&#945;&#953;&#964;&#959;&#8017;&#956;&#949;&#952;&#945;. &#8036;&#963;&#964;&#949; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#959;&#7985; &#960;&#961;&#959;&#947;&#949;&#957;&#8001;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#959;&#953; &#7940;&#957;&#949;&#965; &#923;&#948;&#947;&#959;&#965; &#946;&#953;&#8033;&#963;&#945;&#957;&#964;&#949;&#962;, &#7940;&#967;&#961;&#951;&#963;&#964;&#959;&#953;
+&#954;&#945;.
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Clem. Alex. Strom, lib. I, cap. v, &sect; 28.
+&#928;&#7937;&#957;&#964;&#969;&#957;
+&#956;&#7952;&#957; &#947;&#7936;&#961; &#945;&#7986;&#964;&#953;&#959;&#962; &#964;&#8182;&#957; &#954;&#945;&#955;&#8182;&#957; &#8001; &#952;&#949;&#8000;&#962;, &#7936;&#955;&#955;&#7936; &#964;&#8182;&#957; &#956;&#7952;&#957; &#954;&#945;&#964;&#7936; &#960;&#961;&#959;&#951;&#947;&#959;&#8017;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#959;&#957;, &#8033;&#962;
+&#964;&#8134;&#962; &#964;&#949; &#948;&#953;&#945;&#952;&#8053;&#954;&#951;&#962; &#964;&#8134;&#962; &#960;&#945;&#955;&#945;&#953;&#8118;&#962; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#964;&#8134;&#962; &#957;&#7953;&#945;&#962;, &#964;&#8182;&#957; &#948;&#7952; &#954;&#945;&#964; &#7952;&#960;&#945;&#954;&#959;&#955;&#959;&#8017;&#952;&#951;&#956;&#945;, &#8033;&#962;
+&#964;&#8134;&#962; &#966;&#953;&#955;&#959;&#963;&#959;&#966;&#7984;&#945;&#962; &#964;&#7937;&#967;&#945; &#948;&#7952; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#960;&#961;&#959;&#951;&#947;&#959;&#965;&#956;&#7953;&#957;&#969;&#962; &#964;&#959;&#8150;&#962; &#7962;&#955;&#955;&#951;&#963;&#953;&#957; &#7952;&#948;&#8001;&#952;&#951; &#964;&#8001;&#964;&#949;
+&#960;&#961;&#7984;&#957; &#7971; &#964;&#8000;&#957; &#954;&#8017;&#961;&#953;&#959;&#957; &#954;&#945;&#955;&#7953;&#963;&#945;&#953; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#964;&#959;&#8016;&#962; &#7962;&#955;&#955;&#951;&#965;&#945;&#962;. &#7960;&#960;&#945;&#953;&#948;&#945;&#947;&#8033;&#947;&#949;&#953; &#947;&#7936;&#961; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#945;&#8016;&#964;&#8052;
+&#964;&#8000; &#7961;&#955;&#955;&#951;&#957;&#953;&#954;&#8000;&#957; &#8033;&#962; &#8001; &#957;&#8001;&#956;&#959;&#962; &#964;&#959;&#8016;&#962; &#7961;&#946;&#961;&#945;&#7985;&#959;&#965;&#962; &#949;&#7984;&#962; &#935;&#961;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#8001;&#957;. &#960;&#961;&#959;&#960;&#945;&#961;&#945;&#963;&#954;&#949;&#965;&#7937;&#958;&#949;&#953;
+&#964;&#959;&#7985;&#957;&#965;&#957; &#7969; &#966;&#953;&#955;&#959;&#963;&#959;&#966;&#7985;&#945; &#960;&#961;&#959;&#959;&#948;&#959;&#960;&#959;&#953;&#959;&#8166;&#963;&#945; &#964;&#8000;&#957; &#8017;&#960;&#8000; &#935;&#961;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#959;&#8166; &#964;&#949;&#955;&#949;&#953;&#959;&#8017;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#959;&#957;.
+</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Strom, lib. VI, cap. V, &sect; 42.
+&#928;&#961;&#8000;&#962; &#948;&#7952; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#8002;&#964;&#953; &#8001;
+&#945;&#8016;&#964;&#8000;&#962; &#952;&#949;&#8000;&#962; &#7936;&#956;&#966;&#959;&#8150;&#957; &#964;&#945;&#8150;&#957; &#948;&#953;&#945;&#952;&#7969;&#954;&#945;&#953;&#957; &#967;&#959;&#961;&#951;&#947;&#8000;&#962;, &#8001; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#964;&#8134;&#962; &#7961;&#955;&#955;&#951;&#957;&#953;&#954;&#8134;&#962;
+&#966;&#953;&#955;&#959;&#963;&#959;&#966;&#7985;&#945;&#962; &#948;&#959;&#964;&#8052;&#961; &#964;&#959;&#8150;&#962; &#7963;&#955;&#955;&#951;&#963;&#953;&#957;, &#948;&#7984; &#7974;&#962; &#8001; &#960;&#945;&#957;&#964;&#959;&#954;&#961;&#7937;&#964;&#969;&#961; &#960;&#945;&#961; &#7963;&#955;&#955;&#951;&#963;&#953;
+&#948;&#959;&#958;&#7937;&#950;&#949;&#964;&#945;&#953;, &#960;&#945;&#961;&#7953;&#963;&#964;&#951;&#963;&#949;&#957;, &#948;&#8134;&#955;&#959;&#957; &#948;&#7952; &#954;&#7936;&#957;&#952;&#7953;&#948;&#949;.
+</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS OF FIRST VOLUME.</h2>
+
+<table summary="Contents">
+<tr><td></td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td><td class="tocpg f4">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">I.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#I">Lecture on the Vedas or the Sacred Books of
+the Brahmans, delivered at Leeds, 1865</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">II.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#II">Christ and other Masters, 1858</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_50">50</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">III.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#III">The Veda and Zend-Avesta, 1853</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">IV.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#IV">The Aitareya-Br&acirc;hmana, 1864</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_104">104</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">V.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#V">On the Study of the Zend-Avesta in India, 1862</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">VI.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#VI">Progress of Zend Scholarship, 1865</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_129">129</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">VII.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#VII">Genesis and the Zend-Avesta, 1864</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">VIII.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#VIII">The Modern Parsis, 1862</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_160">160</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">IX.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#IX">Buddhism, 1862</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">X.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#X">Buddhist Pilgrims, 1857</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_235">235</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">XI.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#XI">The Meaning of Nirv&acirc;na, 1857</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_279">279</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">XII.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#XII">Chinese Translations of Sanskrit Texts, 1861</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_291">291</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">XIII.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#XIII">The Works of Confucius, 1861</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_304">304</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">XIV.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#XIV">Popol Vuh, 1862</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_313">313</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="tocch">XV.</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><span class="smcap"><a href="#XV">Semitic Monotheism, 1860</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_341">341</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I.</h2>
+
+<h2>LECTURE ON THE VEDAS</h2>
+<h4>OR THE</h4>
+<h2>SACRED BOOKS OF THE BRAHMANS,<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></h2>
+<h4>DELIVERED AT THE</h4>
+<h3>PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION, LEEDS, <span class="smcap">March, 1865</span>.</h3>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;have brought with me one volume of my edition of the Veda, and I
+should not wonder if it were the first copy of the work which has ever
+reached this busy town of Leeds. Nay, I confess I have some misgivings
+whether I have not undertaken a hopeless task, and I begin to doubt
+whether I shall succeed in explaining to you the interest which I feel
+for this ancient collection of sacred hymns, an interest which has
+never failed me while devoting to the publication of this voluminous
+work the best twenty years of my life. Many times have I been asked,
+But what is the Veda? Why should <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>it be published? What are we likely
+to learn from a book composed nearly four thousand years ago, and
+intended from the beginning for an uncultivated race of mere heathens
+and savages,&mdash;a book which the natives of India have never published
+themselves, although, to the present day, they profess to regard it as
+the highest authority for their religion, morals, and philosophy? Are
+we, the people of England or of Europe, in the nineteenth century,
+likely to gain any new light on religious, moral, or philosophical
+questions from the old songs of the Brahmans? And is it so very
+certain that the whole book is not a modern forgery, without any
+substantial claims to that high antiquity which is ascribed to it by
+the Hindus, so that all the labour bestowed upon it would not only be
+labour lost, but throw discredit on our powers of discrimination, and
+make us a laughing-stock among the shrewd natives of India? These and
+similar questions I have had to answer many times when asked by
+others, and some of them when asked by myself, before embarking on so
+hazardous an undertaking as the publication of the Rig-veda and its
+ancient commentary. And, I believe, I am not mistaken in supposing
+that many of those who to-night have honoured me with their presence
+may have entertained similar doubts and misgivings when invited to
+listen to a Lecture 'On the Vedas or the Sacred Books of the
+Brahmans.'</p>
+
+<p>I shall endeavour, therefore, as far as this is possible within the
+limits of one Lecture, to answer some of these questions, and to
+remove some of these doubts, by explaining to you, first, what the
+Veda really is, and, secondly, what importance it possesses, not only
+to the people of India, but to ourselves in Europe,&mdash;and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> here again,
+not only to the student of Oriental languages, but to every student of
+history, religion, or philosophy; to every man who has once felt the
+charm of tracing that mighty stream of human thought on which we
+ourselves are floating onward, back to its distant mountain-sources;
+to every one who has a heart for whatever has once filled the hearts
+of millions of human beings with their noblest hopes, and fears, and
+aspirations;&mdash;to every student of mankind in the fullest sense of that
+full and weighty word. Whoever claims that noble title must not
+forget, whether he examines the highest achievements of mankind in our
+own age, or the miserable failures of former ages, what man is, and in
+whose image and after whose likeness man was made. Whether listening
+to the shrieks of the Shaman sorcerers of Tatary, or to the odes of
+Pindar, or to the sacred songs of Paul Gerhard: whether looking at the
+pagodas of China, or the Parthenon of Athens, or the cathedral of
+Cologne: whether reading the sacred books of the Buddhists, of the
+Jews, or of those who worship God in spirit and in truth, we ought to
+be able to say, like the Emperor Maximilian, 'Homo sum, humani nihil a
+me alienum puto,' or, translating his words somewhat freely, 'I am a
+man, nothing pertaining to man I deem foreign to myself.' Yes, we must
+learn to read in the history of the whole human race something of our
+own history; and as in looking back on the story of our own life, we
+all dwell with a peculiar delight on the earliest chapters of our
+childhood, and try to find there the key to many of the riddles of our
+later life, it is but natural that the historian, too, should ponder
+with most intense interest over the few relics that have been
+preserved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> to him of the childhood of the human race. These relics are
+few indeed, and therefore very precious, and this I may venture to
+say, at the outset and without fear of contradiction, that there
+exists no literary relic that carries us back to a more primitive, or,
+if you like, more child-like state in the history of man<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> than the
+Veda. As the language of the Veda, the Sanskrit, is the most ancient
+type of the English of the present day, (Sanskrit and English are but
+varieties of one and the same language,) so its thoughts and feelings
+contain in reality the first roots and germs of that intellectual
+growth which by an unbroken chain connects our own generation with the
+ancestors of the Aryan race,&mdash;with those very people who at the rising
+and setting of the sun listened with trembling hearts to the songs of
+the Veda, that told them of bright powers above, and of a life to come
+after the sun of their own lives had set in the clouds of the evening.
+Those men were the true ancestors of our race; and the Veda is the
+oldest book we have in which to study the first beginnings of our
+language, and of all that is embodied in language. We are by nature
+Aryan, Indo-European, not Semitic: our spiritual kith and kin are to
+be found in India, Persia, Greece, Italy, Germany; not in Mesopotamia,
+Egypt, or Palestine. This is a fact that ought to be clearly
+perceived, and constantly kept in view, in order to understand the
+importance which the Veda has for us, after the lapse of more than
+three thousand years, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>and after ever so many changes in our language,
+thought, and religion.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever the intrinsic value of the Veda, if it simply contained the
+names of kings, the description of battles, the dates of famines, it
+would still be, by its age alone, the most venerable of books. Do we
+ever find much beyond such matters in Egyptian hieroglyphics, or in
+Cuneiform inscriptions? In fact, what does the ancient history of the
+world before Cyrus, before 500 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, consist of, but meagre lists of
+Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian dynasties? What do the tablets of
+Karnak, the palaces of Nineveh, and the cylinders of Babylon tell us
+about the thoughts of men? All is dead and barren, nowhere a sigh,
+nowhere a jest, nowhere a glimpse of humanity. There has been but one
+oasis in that vast desert of ancient Asiatic history, the history of
+the Jews. Another such oasis is the Veda. Here, too, we come to a
+stratum of ancient thought, of ancient feelings, hopes, joys, and
+fears,&mdash;of ancient religion. There is perhaps too little of kings and
+battles in the Veda, and scarcely anything of the chronological
+framework of history. But poets surely are better than kings, hymns
+and prayers are more worth listening to than the agonies of butchered
+armies, and guesses at truth more valuable than unmeaning titles of
+Egyptian or Babylonian despots. It will be difficult to settle whether
+the Veda is 'the oldest of books,' and whether some of the portions of
+the Old Testament may not be traced back to the same or even an
+earlier date than the oldest hymns of the Veda. But, in the Aryan
+world, the Veda is certainly the oldest book, and its preservation
+amounts almost to a marvel.</p>
+
+<p>It is nearly twenty years ago that my attention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> was first drawn to
+the Veda, while attending, in the years 1846 and 1847, the lectures of
+Eug&egrave;ne Burnouf at the Coll&egrave;ge de France. I was then looking out, like
+most young men at that time of life, for some great work, and without
+weighing long the difficulties which had hitherto prevented the
+publication of the Veda, I determined to devote all my time to the
+collection of the materials necessary for such an undertaking. I had
+read the principal works of the later Sanskrit literature, but had
+found little there that seemed to be more than curious. But to publish
+the Veda, a work that had never before been published in India or in
+Europe, that occupied in the history of Sanskrit literature the same
+position which the Old Testament occupies in the history of the Jews,
+the New Testament in the history of modern Europe, the Koran in the
+history of Mohammedanism,&mdash;a work which fills a gap in the history of
+the human mind, and promises to bring us nearer than any other work to
+the first beginnings of Aryan language and Aryan thought,&mdash;this seemed
+to me an undertaking not altogether unworthy a man's life. What added
+to the charm of it was that it had once before been undertaken by
+Frederick Rosen, a young German scholar, who died in England before he
+had finished the first book, and that after his death no one seemed
+willing to carry on his work. What I had to do, first of all, was to
+copy not only the text, but the commentary of the Rig-veda, a work
+which when finished will fill six of these large volumes. The author
+or rather the compiler of this commentary, S&acirc;ya<i>n</i>a &Acirc;<i>k</i>&acirc;rya, lived
+about 1400 after Christ, that is to say, about as many centuries
+after, as the poets<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> of the Veda lived before, the beginning of our
+era. Yet through the 3000 years which separate the original poetry of
+the Veda from the latest commentary, there runs an almost continuous
+stream of tradition, and it is from it, rather than from his own
+brain, that S&acirc;ya<i>n</i>a draws his explanations of the sacred texts.
+Numerous MSS., more or less complete, more or less inaccurate, of
+S&acirc;ya<i>n</i>a's classical work, existed in the then Royal Library at Paris,
+in the Library of the East-India House, then in Leadenhall Street, and
+in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. But to copy and collate these MSS.
+was by no means all. A number of other works were constantly quoted in
+S&acirc;ya<i>n</i>a's commentary, and these quotations had all to be verified. It
+was necessary first to copy these works, and to make indexes to all of
+them, in order to be able to find any passage that might be referred
+to in the larger commentary. Many of these works have since been
+published in Germany and France, but they were not to be procured
+twenty years ago. The work, of course, proceeded but slowly, and many
+times I doubted whether I should be able to carry it through. Lastly
+came the difficulty,&mdash;and by no means the smallest,&mdash;who was to
+publish a work that would occupy about six thousand pages in quarto,
+all in Sanskrit, and of which probably not a hundred copies would ever
+be sold. Well, I came to England in order to collect more materials at
+the East-India House and at the Bodleian Library, and thanks to the
+exertions of my generous friend Baron Bunsen, and of the late
+Professor Wilson, the Board of Directors of the East-India Company
+decided to defray the expenses of a work which, as they stated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> in
+their letter, 'is in a peculiar manner deserving of the patronage of
+the East-India Company, connected as it is with the early religion,
+history, and language of the great body of their Indian subjects.' It
+thus became necessary for me to take up my abode in England, which has
+since become my second home. The first volume was published in 1849,
+the second in 1853, the third in 1856, the fourth in 1862. The
+materials for the remaining volumes are ready, so that, if I can but
+make leisure, there is little doubt that before long the whole work
+will be complete.</p>
+
+<p>Now, first, as to the name. Veda means originally knowing or
+knowledge, and this name is given by the Brahmans not to one work, but
+to the whole body of their most ancient sacred literature. Veda is the
+same word which appears in the Greek &#959;&#7990;&#948;&#945;, I know, and in the
+English wise, wisdom, to wit.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> The name of Veda is commonly given
+to four collections of hymns, which are respectively known by the
+names of Rig-veda, Ya<i>g</i>ur-veda, S&acirc;ma-veda, and Atharva-veda; but for
+our own purposes, namely for tracing the earliest growth of religious
+ideas in India, the only important, the only real Veda, is the
+Rig-veda.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The other so-called Vedas, which deserve the name of Veda no more than
+the Talmud deserves the name of Bible, contain chiefly extracts from
+the Rig-veda, together with sacrificial formulas, charms, and
+incantations, many of them, no doubt, extremely curious, but never
+likely to interest any one except the Sanskrit scholar by profession.</p>
+
+<p>The Ya<i>g</i>ur-veda and S&acirc;ma-veda may be described as prayer-books,
+arranged according to the order of certain sacrifices, and intended to
+be used by certain classes of priests.</p>
+
+<p>Four classes of priests were required in India at the most solemn
+sacrifices:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>1. The officiating priests, manual labourers, and acolytes;
+who have chiefly to prepare the sacrificial ground, to dress
+the altar, slay the victims, and pour out the libations.</p>
+
+<p>2. The choristers, who chant the sacred hymns.</p>
+
+<p>3. The reciters or readers, who repeat certain hymns.</p>
+
+<p>4. The overseers or bishops, who watch and superintend the
+proceedings of the other priests, and ought to be familiar
+with all the Vedas.</p></div>
+
+<p>The formulas and verses to be muttered by the first class are
+contained in the Ya<i>g</i>ur-veda-sanhit&acirc;. The hymns to be sung by the
+second class are in the S&acirc;ma-veda-sanhit&acirc;.</p>
+
+<p>The Atharva-veda is said to be intended for the Brahman or overseer,
+who is to watch the proceedings of the sacrifice, and to remedy any
+mistake that may occur.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+
+<p>Fortunately, the hymns to be recited by the third <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>class were not
+arranged in a sacrificial prayer-book, but were preserved in an old
+collection of hymns, containing all that had been saved of ancient,
+sacred, and popular poetry, more like the Psalms than like a ritual; a
+collection made for its own sake, and not for the sake of any
+sacrificial performances.</p>
+
+<p>I shall, therefore, confine my remarks to the Rig-veda, which in the
+eyes of the historical student is the Veda <i>par excellence</i>. Now
+Rig-veda means the Veda of hymns of praise, for <i>R</i>ich, which before
+the initial soft letter of Veda is changed to <i>R</i>ig, is derived from a
+root which in Sanskrit means to celebrate.</p>
+
+<p>In the Rig-veda we must distinguish again between the original collection
+of the hymns or Mantras, called the <span class="sp1">Sanhit&acirc;</span> or the collection, being
+entirely metrical and poetical, and a number of prose works, called
+<span class="sp1">Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as</span> and <span class="sp1">S&ucirc;tras</span>, written in prose, and giving information on the
+proper use of the hymns at sacrifices, on their sacred meaning, on their
+supposed authors, and similar topics. These works, too, go by the name of
+Rig-veda: but though very curious in themselves, they are evidently of a
+much later period, and of little help to us in tracing the beginnings of
+religious life in India. For that purpose we must depend entirely on the
+hymns, such as we find them in the Sanhit&acirc; or the collection of the
+Rig-veda.</p>
+
+<p>Now this collection consists of ten books, and contains altogether
+1028 hymns. As early as about 600 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> we find that in the theological
+schools of India every verse, every word, every syllable of the Veda
+had been carefully counted. The number of verses as computed in
+treatises of that date, varies from 10,402 to 10,622; that of the
+words is 153,826,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> that of the syllables 432,000.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> With these
+numbers, and with the description given in these early treatises of
+each hymn, of its metre, its deity, its number of verses, our modern
+MSS. of the Veda correspond as closely as could be expected.</p>
+
+<p>I say, our modern MSS., for all our MSS. are modern, and very modern.
+Few Sanskrit MSS. are more than four or five hundred years old, the
+fact being that in the damp climate of India no paper will last for
+more than a few centuries. How then, you will naturally ask, can it be
+proved that the original hymns were composed between 1200 and 1500
+before the Christian era, if our MSS. only carry us back to about the
+same date after the Christian era? It is not very easy to bridge over
+this gulf of nearly three thousand years, but all I can say is that,
+after carefully examining every possible objection that can be made
+against the date of the Vedic hymns, their claim to that high
+antiquity which is ascribed to them, has not, as far as I can judge,
+been shaken. I shall try to explain on what kind of evidence these
+claims rest.</p>
+
+<p>You know that we possess no MS. of the Old Testament in Hebrew older
+than about the tenth century after the Christian era; yet the
+Septuagint translation by itself would be sufficient to prove that the
+Old Testament, such as we now read it, existed in MS. previous, at
+least, to the third century before our era. By a similar train of
+argument, the works to which I referred before, in which we find every
+hymn, every verse, every word and syllable of the Veda <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>accurately
+counted by native scholars about five or six hundred years before
+Christ, guarantee the existence of the Veda, such as we now read it,
+as far back at least as five or six hundred years before Christ. Now
+in the works of that period, the Veda is already considered, not only
+as an ancient, but as a sacred book; and, more than this, its language
+had ceased to be generally intelligible. The language of India had
+changed since the Veda was composed, and learned commentaries were
+necessary in order to explain to the people, then living, the true
+purport, nay, the proper pronunciation, of their sacred hymns. But
+more than this. In certain exegetical compositions, which are
+generally comprised under the name of S&ucirc;tras, and which are
+contemporary with, or even anterior to, the treatises on the
+theological statistics just mentioned, not only are the ancient hymns
+represented as invested with sacred authority, but that other class of
+writings, the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as, standing half-way between the hymns and the
+S&ucirc;tras, have likewise been raised to the dignity of a revealed
+literature. These Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as, you will remember, are prose treatises,
+written in illustration of the ancient sacrifices and of the hymns
+employed at them. Such treatises would only spring up when some kind
+of explanation began to be wanted both for the ceremonial and for the
+hymns to be recited at certain sacrifices, and we find, in
+consequence, that in many cases the authors of the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as had
+already lost the power of understanding the text of the ancient hymns
+in its natural and grammatical meaning, and that they suggested the
+most absurd explanations of the various sacrificial acts, most of
+which, we may charitably suppose,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> had originally some rational
+purpose. Thus it becomes evident that the period during which the
+hymns were composed must have been separated by some centuries, at
+least, from the period that gave birth to the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as, in order to
+allow time for the hymns growing unintelligible and becoming invested
+with a sacred character. Secondly, the period during which the
+Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as were composed must be separated by some centuries from the
+authors of the S&ucirc;tras, in order to allow time for further changes in
+the language, and more particularly for the growth of a new theology,
+which ascribed to the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as the same exceptional and revealed
+character which the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as themselves ascribed to the hymns. So
+that we want previously to 600 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, when every syllable of the Veda
+was counted, at least two strata of intellectual and literary growth,
+of two or three centuries each; and are thus brought to 1100 or 1200
+<span class="smcap">b.c.</span> as the earliest time when we may suppose the collection of the
+Vedic hymns to have been finished. This collection of hymns again
+contains, by its own showing, ancient and modern hymns, the hymns of
+the sons together with the hymns of their fathers and earlier
+ancestors; so that we cannot well assign a date more recent than 1200
+to 1500 before our era, for the original composition of those simple
+hymns which up to the present day are regarded by the Brahmans with
+the same feelings with which a Mohammedan regards the Koran, a Jew the
+Old Testament, a Christian his Gospel.</p>
+
+<p>That the Veda is not quite a modern forgery can be proved, however, by more tangible
+evidence. Hiouen-thsang, a Buddhist pilgrim, who travelled from China to
+India in the years 629-645, and who,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> in his diary translated from Chinese
+into French by M. Stanislas Julien, gives the names of the four Vedas,
+mentions some grammatical forms peculiar to the Vedic Sanskrit, and states
+that at his time young Brahmans spent all their time, from the seventh to
+the thirtieth year of their age, in learning these sacred texts. At the
+time when Hiouen-thsang was travelling in India, Buddhism was clearly on
+the decline. But Buddhism was originally a reaction against Brahmanism, and
+chiefly against the exclusive privileges which the Brahmans claimed, and
+which from the beginning were represented by them as based on their
+revealed writings, the Vedas, and hence beyond the reach of human attacks.
+Buddhism, whatever the date of its founder, became the state religion of
+India under <span class="sp1">A<i>s</i>oka</span>, the Constantine of India, in the middle of the third
+century <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> This A<i>s</i>oka was the third king of a new dynasty founded by
+<span class="sp1"><i>K</i>andragupta</span>, the well-known contemporary of <span class="sp1">Alexander</span> and <span class="sp1">Seleucus</span>, about
+315 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> The preceding dynasty was that of the Nandas, and it is under this
+dynasty that the traditions of the Brahmans place a number of distinguished
+scholars whose treatises on the Veda we still possess, such as <span class="sp1"><i>S</i>aunaka</span>,
+<span class="sp1">K&acirc;ty&acirc;yana</span>, <span class="sp1">&Acirc;<i>s</i>val&acirc;yana</span>, and others. Their works, and others written with a
+similar object and in the same style, carry us back to about 600 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> This
+period of literature, which is called the <span class="sp1">S&ucirc;tra</span> period, was preceded, as we
+saw, by another class of writings, the <span class="sp1">Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as</span>, composed in a very
+prolix and tedious style, and containing lengthy lucubrations on the
+sacrifices and on the duties of the different classes of priests. Each of
+the three or four Vedas, or each of the three or four classes of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> priests,
+has its own Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as and its own S&ucirc;tras; and as the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as are
+presupposed by the S&ucirc;tras, while no S&ucirc;tra is ever quoted by the
+Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as, it is clear that the period of the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>a literature must
+have preceded the period of the S&ucirc;tra literature. There are, however, old
+and new Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as, and there are in the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as themselves long lists
+of teachers who handed down old Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as or composed new ones, so that
+it seems impossible to accommodate the whole of that literature in less
+than two centuries, from about 800 to 600 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> Before, however, a single
+Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>a could have been composed, it was not only necessary that there
+should have been one collection of ancient hymns, like that contained in
+the ten books of the Rig-veda, but the three or four classes of priests
+must have been established, the officiating priests and the choristers must
+have had their special prayer-books, nay, these prayer-books must have
+undergone certain changes, because the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as presuppose different
+texts, called <span class="sp1">s&acirc;kh&acirc;s</span>, of each of these prayer-books, which are called the
+Ya<i>g</i>ur-veda-sanhit&acirc;, the S&acirc;ma-veda-sanhit&acirc;, and the Atharva-veda-sanhit&acirc;.
+The work of collecting the prayers for the different classes of priests,
+and of adding new hymns and formulas for purely sacrificial purposes,
+belonged probably to the tenth century <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, and three generations more
+would, at least, be required to account for the various readings adopted in
+the prayer-books by different sects, and invested with a kind of sacred
+authority, long before the composition of even the earliest among the
+Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as. If, therefore, the years from about 1000 to 800 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> are
+assigned to this collecting age, the time before 1000 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> must be set
+apart for the free<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> and natural growth of what was then national and
+religious, but not yet sacred and sacrificial poetry. How far back this
+period extends it is impossible to tell; it is enough if the hymns of the
+Rig-veda can be traced to a period anterior to 1000 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span></p>
+
+<p>Much in the chronological arrangement of the three periods of Vedic
+literature that are supposed to have followed the period of the
+original growth of the hymns, must of necessity be hypothetical, and
+has been put forward rather to invite than to silence criticism. In
+order to discover truth, we must be truthful ourselves, and must
+welcome those who point out our errors as heartily as those who
+approve and confirm our discoveries. What seems, however, to speak
+strongly in favour of the historical character of the three periods of
+Vedic literature is the uniformity of style which marks the
+productions of each. In modern literature we find, at one and the same
+time, different styles of prose and poetry cultivated by one and the
+same author. A Goethe writes tragedy, comedy, satire, lyrical poetry,
+and scientific prose; but we find nothing like this in primitive
+literature. The individual is there much less prominent, and the
+poet's character disappears in the general character of the layer of
+literature to which he belongs. It is the discovery of such large
+layers of literature following each other in regular succession which
+inspires the critical historian with confidence in the truly
+historical character of the successive literary productions of ancient
+India. As in Greece there is an epic age of literature, where we
+should look in vain for prose or dramatic poetry; as in that country
+we never meet with real elegiac poetry before the end of the eighth
+century, nor with iambics<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> before the same date; as even in more
+modern times rhymed heroic poetry appears in England with the Norman
+conquest, and in Germany the Minnes&auml;nger rise and set with the Swabian
+dynasty&mdash;so, only in a much more decided manner, we see in the ancient
+and spontaneous literature of India, an age of poets followed by an
+age of collectors and imitators, that age to be succeeded by an age of
+theological prose writers, and this last by an age of writers of
+scientific manuals. New wants produced new supplies, and nothing
+sprang up or was allowed to live, in prose or poetry, except what was
+really wanted. If the works of poets, collectors, imitators,
+theologians, and teachers were all mixed up together&mdash;if the
+Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as quoted the S&ucirc;tras, and the hymns alluded to the
+Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as&mdash;an historical restoration of the Vedic literature of
+India would be almost an impossibility. We should suspect artificial
+influences, and look with small confidence on the historical character
+of such a literary agglomerate. But he who would question the
+antiquity of the Veda must explain how the layers of literature were
+formed that are super-imposed over the original stratum of the poetry
+of the Rishis; he who would suspect a literary forgery must show how,
+when, and for what purpose the 1000 hymns of the Rig-veda could have
+been forged, and have become the basis of the religious, moral,
+political, and literary life of the ancient inhabitants of India.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of revelation, and I mean more particularly book-revelation,
+is not a modern idea, nor is it an idea peculiar to Christianity.
+Though we look for it in vain in the literature of Greece and Rome, we
+find the literature of India saturated with this idea from beginning
+to end. In no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> country, I believe, has the theory of revelation been
+so minutely elaborated as in India. The name for revelation in
+Sanskrit is <span class="sp1"><i>S</i>ruti</span>, which means <span class="sp1">hearing</span>; and this title distinguishes
+the Vedic hymns and, at a later time, the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as also, from all
+other works, which, however sacred, and authoritative to the Hindu
+mind, are admitted to have been composed by human authors. The <span class="sp1">Laws of
+Manu</span>, for instance, according to the Brahmanic theology, are not
+revelation; they are not <span class="sp1"><i>S</i>ruti</span>, but only <span class="sp1">Sm<i>r</i>iti</span>, which means
+recollection or tradition. If these laws or any other work of
+authority can be proved on any point to be at variance with a single
+passage of the Veda, their authority is at once overruled. According
+to the orthodox views of Indian theologians, not a single line of the
+Veda was the work of human authors. The whole Veda is in some way or
+other the work of the Deity; and even those who received the
+revelation, or, as they express it, those who <span class="sp1">saw</span> it, were not
+supposed to be ordinary mortals, but beings raised above the level of
+common humanity, and less liable therefore to error in the reception
+of revealed truth. The views entertained of revelation by the orthodox
+theologians of India are far more minute and elaborate than those of
+the most extreme advocates of verbal inspiration in Europe. The human
+element, called <span class="sp1">paurusheyatva</span> in Sanskrit, is driven out of every
+corner or hiding-place, and as the Veda is held to have existed in the
+mind of the Deity before the beginning of time, every allusion to
+historical events, of which there are not a few, is explained away
+with a zeal and ingenuity worthy of a better cause.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But let me state at once that there is nothing in the hymns themselves
+to warrant such extravagant theories. In many a hymn the author says
+plainly that he or his friends made it to please the gods; that he
+made it, as a carpenter makes a chariot (Rv. I. 130, 6; V. 2, 11), or
+like a beautiful vesture (Rv. V. 29, 15); that he fashioned it in his
+heart and kept it in his mind (Rv. I. 171, 2); that he expects, as his
+reward, the favour of the god whom he celebrates (Rv. IV. 6, 21). But
+though the poets of the Veda know nothing of the artificial theories
+of verbal inspiration, they were not altogether unconscious of higher
+influences: nay, they speak of their hymns as god-given ('devattam,'
+Rv. III. 37, 4). One poets says (Rv. VI. 47, 10): 'O god (Indra) have
+mercy, give me my daily bread! Sharpen my mind, like the edge of iron.
+Whatever I now may utter, longing for thee, do thou accept it; make me
+possessed of God!' Another utters for the first time the famous hymn,
+the <span class="sp1">G&acirc;yatr&icirc;</span>, which now for more than three thousand years has been the
+daily prayer of every Brahman, and is still repeated every morning by
+millions of pious worshippers: 'Let us meditate on the adorable light
+of the divine Creator: may he rouse our minds.'<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> This consciousness
+of higher influences, or of divine help in those who uttered for the
+first time the simple words of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, is
+very different, however, from the artificial theories of verbal
+inspiration which we find in the later theological writings; it is
+indeed but another expression of that deepfelt dependence on the
+Deity, of that surrender and denial of all that seems to be self,
+which was felt more or less by every nation, but by none, I believe,
+more strongly, more constantly, than by the Indian. "It is He that has
+made it,"&mdash;namely, the prayer in which the soul of the poet has thrown
+off her burden,&mdash;is but a variation of, "It is He that has made us,"
+which is the key-note of all religion, whether ancient or modern,
+whether natural or revealed.</p>
+
+<p>I must say no more to-night of what the Veda is, for I am very anxious
+to explain to you, as far as it is possible, what I consider to be the
+real importance of the Veda to the student of history, to the student
+of religion, to the student of mankind.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p>
+<p>In the study of mankind there can hardly be a subject more deeply
+interesting than the study of the different forms of religion; and
+much as I value the Science of Language for the aid which it lends us
+in unraveling some of the most complicated tissues of the human
+intellect, I confess that to my mind there is no study more absorbing
+than that of the Religions of the World,&mdash;the study, if I may so call
+it, of the various languages in which man has spoken to his Maker, and
+of that language in which his Maker "at sundry times and in divers
+manners" spake to man.</p>
+
+<p>To my mind the great epochs in the world's history are marked not by
+the foundation or the destruction of empires, by the migrations of
+races, or by French revolutions. All this is outward history, made up
+of events that seem gigantic and overpowering to those only who cannot
+see beyond and beneath. The real history of man is the history of
+religion&mdash;the wonderful ways by which the different families of the
+human race advanced towards a truer knowledge and a deeper love of
+God. This is the foundation that underlies all profane history: it is
+the light, the soul, and life of history, and without it all history
+would indeed be profane.</p>
+
+<p>On this subject there are some excellent works in English, such as Mr.
+Maurice's "Lectures on the Religions of the World," or Mr. Hardwick's
+"Christ and other Masters;" in German, I need only mention Hegel's
+"Philosophy of Religion," out of many other learned treatises on the
+different systems of religion in the East and the West. But in all
+these works religions are treated very much as languages were treated
+during the last century. They are rudely classed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> either according to
+the different localities in which they prevailed, just as in Adelung's
+"Mithridates" you find the languages of the world classified as
+European, African, American, Asiatic, etc.; or according to their age,
+as formerly languages used to be divided into ancient and modern; or
+according to their respective dignity, as languages used to be treated
+as sacred or profane, as classical or illiterate. Now you know that
+the Science of Language has sanctioned a totally different system of
+classification; and that the Comparative Philologist ignores
+altogether the division of languages according to their locality, or
+according to their age, or according to their classical or illiterate
+character. Languages are now classified genealogically, <i>i. e.</i>
+according to their real relationship; and the most important languages
+of Asia, Europe, and Africa,&mdash;that is to say, of that part of the
+world on which what we call the history of man has been acted,&mdash;have
+been grouped together into three great divisions, the Aryan or
+Indo-European Family, the Semitic Family, and the Turanian Class.
+According to that division you are aware that English, together with
+all the Teutonic languages of the Continent, Celtic, Slavonic, Greek,
+Latin with its modern offshoots, such as French and Italian, Persian,
+and Sanskrit, are so many varieties of one common type of speech: that
+Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Veda, is no more distinct from
+the Greek of Homer, or from the Gothic of Ulfilas, or from the
+Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, than French is from Italian. All these
+languages together form one family, one whole, in which every member
+shares certain features in common with all the rest, and is at the
+same time distinguished from the rest by certain features peculiarly
+its own. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> the world on which what we call the history of man has
+been acted, have been grouped together into three great divisions, the
+<span class="sp1">Aryan</span> or <span class="sp1">Indo-European</span> Family, the <span class="sp1">Semitic</span> Family, and the <span class="sp1">Turanian</span>
+Class. According to that division you are aware that English together
+with all the <span class="sp1">Teutonic</span> languages of the Continent, <span class="sp1">Celtic</span>, <span class="sp1">Slavonic</span>,
+<span class="sp1">Greek</span>, <span class="sp1">Latin</span> with its modern offshoots, such as French and Italian,
+<span class="sp1">Persian</span>, and <span class="sp1">Sanskrit</span>, are so many varieties of one common type of
+speech: that Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Veda, is no more
+distinct from the Greek of Homer, or from the Gothic of Ulfilas, or
+from the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, than French is from Italian. All these
+languages together form one family, one whole, in which every member
+shares certain features in common with all the rest, and is at the
+same time distinguished from the rest by certain features peculiarly
+its own. The same applies to the Semitic Family, which comprises, as
+its most important members, the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the
+Arabic of the Koran, and the ancient languages on the monuments of
+Phenicia and Carthage, of Babylon and Assyria. These languages, again,
+form a compact family, and differ entirely from the other family,
+which we called Aryan or Indo-European. The third group of languages,
+for we can hardly call it a family, comprises most of the remaining
+languages of Asia, and counts among its principal members the
+Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, Samoyedic, and Finnic, together with the
+languages of Siam, the Malay islands, Tibet, and Southern India.
+Lastly, the Chinese language stands by itself, as monosyllabic, the
+only remnant of the earliest formation of human speech.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now I believe that the same division which has introduced a new and
+natural order into the history of languages, and has enabled us to
+understand the growth of human speech in a manner never dreamt of in
+former days, will be found applicable to a scientific study of
+religions. I shall say nothing to-night of the Semitic or Turanian or
+Chinese religions, but confine my remarks to the religions of the
+Aryan family. These religions, though more important in the ancient
+history of the world, as the religions of the Greeks and Romans, of
+our own Teutonic ancestors, and of the Celtic and Slavonic races, are
+nevertheless of great importance even at the present day. For although
+there are no longer any worshippers of Zeus, or Jupiter, of Wodan,
+Esus,<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> or Perkunas,<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> the two religions of Aryan origin which
+still survive, Brahmanism and Buddhism, claim together a decided
+majority among the inhabitants of the globe. Out of the whole
+population of the world,</p>
+
+
+<ul>
+<li>31.2 per cent are Buddhists,</li>
+<li>13.4 per cent are Brahmanists,</li>
+<li>&mdash;&mdash;</li>
+<li>44.6</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<p>which together gives us 44 per cent for what may be called living
+Aryan religions. Of the remaining 56 per cent, 15.7 are Mohammedans,
+8.7 per cent non-descript Heathens, 30.7 per cent Christians, and only
+O.3 per cent Jews.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p>
+<p>Now, as a scientific study of the Aryan languages became possible only
+after the discovery of Sanskrit, a scientific study of the Aryan
+religion dates really from the discovery of the Veda. The study of
+Sanskrit brought to light the original documents of three religions,
+the <span class="sp1">Sacred Books of the Brahmans</span>,<span class="sp1"> the Sacred Books of the Magians</span>, the
+followers of Zoroaster, and <span class="sp1">the Sacred Books of the Buddhists</span>. Fifty
+years ago, these three collections of sacred writings were all but
+unknown, their very existence was doubted, and there was not a single
+scholar who could have translated a line of the Veda, a line of the
+Zend-Avesta, or a line of the Buddhist Tripi<i>t</i>aka. At present large
+portions of these, the canonical writings of the most ancient and most
+important religions of the Aryan race, are published and deciphered,
+and we begin to see a natural progress, and almost a logical
+necessity, in the growth of these three systems of worship. The
+oldest, most primitive, most simple form of Aryan faith finds its
+expression in the Veda. The Zend-Avesta represents in its language, as
+well as in its thoughts, a branching off from that more primitive
+stem; a more or less conscious opposition to the worship of the gods
+of nature, as adored in the Veda, and a striving after a more
+spiritual, supreme, moral deity, such as Zoroaster proclaimed under
+the name of Ahura mazda, or Ormuzd. Buddhism, lastly, marks a decided
+schism, a decided antagonism against the established religion of the
+Brahmans, a denial of the true divinity of the Vedic gods, and a
+proclamation of new philosophical and social doctrines.</p>
+
+<p>Without the Veda, therefore, neither the reforms of Zoroaster nor the
+new teaching of Buddha would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> have been intelligible: we should not
+know what was behind them, or what forces impelled Zoroaster and
+Buddha to the founding of new religions; how much they received, how
+much they destroyed, how much they created. Take but one word in the
+religious phraseology of these three systems. In the Veda the gods are
+called <span class="sp1">Deva</span>. This word in Sanskrit means <span class="sp1">bright</span>,&mdash;brightness or light
+being one of the most general attributes shared by the various
+manifestations of the Deity, invoked in the Veda, as Sun, or Sky, or
+Fire, or Dawn, or Storm. We can see, in fact, how in the minds of the
+poets of the Veda, <span class="sp1">deva</span> from meaning bright, came gradually to mean
+divine. In the Zend-Avesta the same word <span class="sp1">da&ecirc;va</span> means evil spirit. Many
+of the Vedic gods, with <span class="sp1">Indra</span> at their head, have been degraded to the
+position of <span class="sp1">da&ecirc;vas</span>, in order to make room for Ahura mazda, the Wise
+Spirit, as the supreme deity of the Zoroastrians. In his confession of
+faith the follower of Zoroaster declares: 'I cease to be a worshipper
+of the <span class="sp1">da&ecirc;vas</span>.' In Buddhism, again, we find these ancient Devas, Indra
+and the rest, as merely legendary beings, carried about at shows, as
+servants of Buddha, as goblins or fabulous heroes; but no longer
+either worshipped or even feared by those with whom the name of <span class="sp1">Deva</span>
+had lost every trace of its original meaning. Thus this one word <span class="sp1">Deva</span>
+marks the mutual relations of these three religions. But more than
+this. The same word <span class="sp1">deva</span> is the Latin <span class="sp1">deus</span>, thus pointing to that
+common source of language and religion, far beyond the heights of the
+Vedic Olympus, from which the Romans, as well as the Hindus, draw the
+names of their deities, and the elements of their language as well as
+of their religion.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Veda, by its language and its thoughts, supplies that distant
+background in the history of all the religions of the Aryan race,
+which was missed indeed by every careful observer, but which formerly
+could be supplied by guess-work only. How the Persians came to worship
+Ormuzd, how the Buddhists came to protest against temples and
+sacrifices, how Zeus and the Olympian gods came to be what they are in
+the mind of Homer, or how such beings as Jupiter and Mars came to be
+worshipped by the Italian peasant:&mdash;all these questions, which used to
+yield material for endless and baseless speculations, can now be
+answered by a simple reference to the hymns of the Veda. The religion
+of the Veda is not the source of all the other religions of the Aryan
+world, nor is Sanskrit the mother of all the Aryan languages.
+Sanskrit, as compared to Greek and Latin, is an elder sister, not a
+parent: Sanskrit is the earliest deposit of Aryan speech, as the Veda
+is the earliest deposit of Aryan faith. But the religion and incipient
+mythology of the Veda possess the same simplicity and transparency
+which distinguish the grammar of Sanskrit from Greek, Latin, or German
+grammar. We can watch in the Veda ideas and their names growing, which
+in Persia, Greece, and Rome we meet with only as full-grown or as fast
+decaying. We get one step nearer to that distant source of religious
+thought and language which has fed the different national streams of
+Persia, Greece, Rome, and Germany; and we begin to see clearly, what
+ought never to have been doubted, that there is no religion without
+God, or, as St. Augustine expressed, that 'there is no false religion
+which does not contain some elements of truth.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I do not wish by what I have said to raise any exaggerated
+expectations as to the worth of these ancient hymns of the Veda, and
+the character of that religion which they indicate rather than fully
+describe. The historical importance of the Veda can hardly be
+exaggerated, but its intrinsic merit, and particularly the beauty or
+elevation of its sentiments, have by many been rated far too high.
+Large numbers of the Vedic hymns are childish in the extreme: tedious,
+low, common-place. The gods are constantly invoked to protect their
+worshippers, to grant them food, large flocks, large families, and a
+long life; for all which benefits they are to be rewarded by the
+praises and sacrifices offered day after day, or at certain seasons of
+the year. But hidden in this rubbish there are precious stones. Only
+in order to appreciate them justly, we must try to divest ourselves of
+the common notions about Polytheism, so repugnant not only to our
+feelings, but to our understanding. No doubt, if we must employ
+technical terms, the religion of the Veda is Polytheism, not
+Monotheism. Deities are invoked by different names, some clear and
+intelligible, such as <span class="sp1">Agni</span>, fire; <span class="sp1">S&ucirc;rya</span>, the sun; <span class="sp1">Ushas</span>, dawn; <span class="sp1">Maruts</span>,
+the storms; <span class="sp1">P<i>r</i>ithiv&icirc;</span>, the earth; <span class="sp1">&Acirc;p</span>, the waters; <span class="sp1">Nad&icirc;</span>, the rivers;
+others such as <span class="sp1">Varu<i>n</i>a</span>, <span class="sp1">Mitra</span>, <span class="sp1">Indra</span>, which have become proper names,
+and disclose but dimly their original application to the great aspects
+of nature, the sky, the sun, the day. But whenever one of these
+individual gods is invoked, they are not conceived as limited by the
+powers of others, as superior or inferior in rank. Each god is to the
+mind of the supplicant as good as all gods. He is felt, at the time,
+as a real divinity,&mdash;as supreme and absolute,&mdash;without a suspicion of
+those limitations which, to our mind, a plurality of gods <i>must</i>
+entail on every single god. All the rest disappear for a moment from
+the vision of the poet, and he only who is to fulfill their desires
+stands in full light before the eyes of the worshippers. In one hymn,
+ascribed to Manu, the poet says: "Among you, O gods, there is none
+that is small, none that is young; you are all great indeed." And this
+is indeed the key-note of the ancient Aryan worship. Yet it would be
+easy to find in the numerous hymns of the Veda, passages in which
+almost every important deity is represented as supreme and absolute.
+Thus in one hymn, Agni (fire) is called "the ruler of the universe,"
+"the lord of men," "the wise king, the father, the brother, the son,
+the friend of man;" nay, all the powers and names of the other gods
+are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>distinctly ascribed to Agni. But though Agni is thus highly
+exalted, nothing is said to disparage the divine character of the
+other gods. In another hymn another god, Indra, is said to be greater
+than all: "The gods," it is said, "do not reach thee, Indra, nor men;
+thou overcomest all creatures in strength." Another god, Soma, is
+called the king of the world, the king of heaven and earth, the
+conqueror of all. And what more could human language achieve, in
+trying to express the idea of a divine and supreme power, than what
+another poet says of another god, Varu<i>n</i>a: "Thou art lord of all, of
+heaven and earth; thou art the king of all, of those who are gods, and
+of those who are men!"</p>
+
+<p>This surely is not what is commonly understood by Polytheism. Yet it
+would be equally wrong to call it Monotheism. If we must have a name
+for it, I should call it Kathenotheism. The consciousness that all the
+deities are but different names of one and the same godhead, breaks
+forth indeed here and there in the Veda. But it is far from being
+general. One poet, for instance, says (Rv. I. 164, 46): "They call him
+Indra, Mitra, Varu<i>n</i>a, Agni; then he is the beautiful-winged heavenly
+Garutmat: that which is One the wise call it in divers manners: they
+call it Agni, Yama, M&acirc;tari<i>s</i>van." And again (Rv. X. 114, 5): "Wise
+poets make the beautiful-winged, though he is one, manifold by words."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I shall read you a few Vedic verses, in which the religious sentiment
+predominates, and in which we perceive a yearning after truth, and
+after the true God, untrammeled as yet by any names or any
+traditions<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> (Rv. X. 121):&mdash;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>1. In the beginning there arose the golden Child&mdash;He was the
+one born lord of all that is. He stablished the earth, and
+this sky;&mdash;Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
+sacrifice?</p>
+
+<p>2. He who gives life, He who gives strength; whose command
+all the bright gods revere; whose shadow is immortality,
+whose shadow is death;&mdash;Who is the God to whom we shall
+offer our sacrifice?</p>
+
+<p>3. He who through His power is the one king of the breathing
+and awakening world&mdash;He who governs all, man and beast;&mdash;Who
+is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?</p>
+
+<p>4. He whose greatness these snowy mountains, whose greatness
+the sea proclaims, with the distant river&mdash;He whose these
+regions are, as it were His two arms;&mdash;Who is the God to
+whom we shall offer our sacrifice?</p>
+
+<p>5. He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm&mdash;He
+through whom the heaven was stablished,&mdash;nay, the highest
+heaven,&mdash;He who measured out the light in the air;&mdash;Who is
+the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?</p>
+
+<p>6. He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His will,
+look up, trembling inwardly&mdash;He over whom the rising sun
+shines forth;&mdash;Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
+sacrifice?</p>
+
+<p>7. Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they placed
+the seed and lit the fire, thence arose He who is the sole
+life of the bright gods;&mdash;Who is the God to whom we shall
+offer our sacrifice?</p>
+
+<p>8. He who by His might looked even over the water-clouds,
+the clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice; He who
+alone is God above all gods;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>9. May He not destroy us&mdash;He the creator of the earth; or
+He, the righteous, who created the heaven; He also created
+the bright and mighty waters;&mdash;Who is the God to whom we
+shall offer our sacrifice?<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>The following may serve as specimens of hymns addressed to individual
+deities whose names have become the centres of religious thought and
+legendary traditions; deities, in fact, like Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, or
+Minerva, no longer mere germs, but fully developed forms of early
+thought and language:</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="center"><span class="smcap">Hymn to Indra</span> (Rv. I. 53).<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<p>1. Keep silence well!<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> we offer praises to the great
+Indra in the house of the sacrificer. Does he find treasure
+for those who are like sleepers? Mean praise is not valued
+among the munificent.</p>
+
+<p>2. Thou art the giver of horses, Indra, thou art the giver
+of cows, the giver of corn, the strong lord of wealth: the
+old guide of man, disappointing no desires, a friend to
+friends:&mdash;to him we address this song.</p>
+
+<p>3. O powerful Indra, achiever of many works, most brilliant
+god&mdash;all this wealth around here is known to be thine alone:
+take from it, conqueror! bring it hither! Do not stint the
+desire of the worshipper who longs for thee!</p>
+
+<p>4. On these days thou art gracious, and on these
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>nights,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> keeping off the enemy from our cows and from
+our stud. Tearing<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> the fiend night after night with the
+help of Indra, let us rejoice in food, freed from haters.</p>
+
+<p>5. Let us rejoice, Indra, in treasure and food, in wealth of
+manifold delight and splendour. Let us rejoice in the
+blessing of the gods, which gives us the strength of
+offspring, gives us cows first and horses.</p>
+
+<p>6. These draughts inspired thee, O lord of the brave! these
+were vigour, these libations, in battles, when for the sake
+of the poet, the sacrificer, thou struckest down
+irresistibly ten thousands of enemies.</p>
+
+<p>7. From battle to battle thou advancest bravely, from town
+to town thou destroyest all this with might, when thou,
+Indra, with N&acirc;m&icirc; as thy friend, struckest down from afar the
+deceiver Namu<i>k</i>i.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p>
+<p>8. Thou hast slain Kara&#7749;ga and Par<i>n</i>aya with the
+brightest spear of Atithigva. Without a helper thou didst
+demolish the hundred cities of Va&#7749;g<i>r</i>ida, which were
+besieged by <i>R</i>i<i>g</i>i<i>s</i>van.</p>
+
+<p>9. Thou hast felled down with the chariot-wheel these twenty
+kings of men, who had attacked the friendless
+Su<i>s</i>ravas,<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> and gloriously the sixty thousand and
+ninety-nine forts.</p>
+
+<p>10. Thou, Indra, hast succoured Su<i>s</i>ravas with thy
+succours, T&ucirc;rvay&acirc;<i>n</i>a with thy protections. Thou hast made
+Kutsa, Atithigva, and &Acirc;yu subject to this mighty youthful
+king.</p>
+
+<p>11. We who in future, protected by the gods, wish to be thy
+most blessed friends, we shall praise thee, blessed by thee
+with offspring, and enjoying henceforth a longer life.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<p>The next hymn is one of many addressed to Agni as the god of fire, not
+only the fire as a powerful element, but likewise the fire of the
+hearth and the altar, the guardian of the house, the minister of the
+sacrifice, the messenger between gods and men:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="center"><span class="smcap">Hymn to Agni</span> (Rv. II. 6).</p>
+
+<p>1. Agni, accept this log which I offer to thee, accept this
+my service; listen well to these my songs.</p>
+
+<p>2. With this log, O Agni, may we worship thee, thou son of
+strength, conqueror of horses! and with this hymn, thou
+high-born!</p>
+
+<p>3. May we thy servants serve thee with songs, O granter of
+riches, thou who lovest songs and delightest in riches.</p>
+
+<p>4. Thou lord of wealth and giver of wealth, be thou wise and
+powerful; drive away from us the enemies!</p>
+
+<p>5. He gives us rain from heaven, he gives us inviolable
+strength, he gives us food a thousandfold.</p>
+
+<p>6. Youngest of the gods, their messenger, their invoker,
+most deserving of worship, come, at our praise, to him who
+worships thee and longs for thy help.</p>
+
+<p>7. For thou, O sage, goest wisely between these two
+creations (heaven and earth, gods and men), like a friendly
+messenger between two hamlets.</p>
+
+<p>8. Thou art wise, and thou hast been pleased; perform thou,
+intelligent Agni, the sacrifice without interruption, sit
+down on this sacred grass!</p></div>
+
+<p>The following hymn, partly laudatory, partly deprecatory, is addressed
+to the Maruts or Rudras, the Storm-gods:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="center"><span class="smcap">Hymn to the Maruts</span> (Rv. I. 39).<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p>1. When you thus from afar cast forward your measure, like a
+blast of fire, through whose wisdom is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>it, through whose
+design? To whom do you go, to whom, ye shakers (of the
+earth)?</p>
+
+<p>2. May your weapons be firm to attack, strong also to
+withstand! May yours be the more glorious strength, not that
+of the deceitful mortal!</p>
+
+<p>3. When you overthrow what is firm, O ye men, and whirl
+about what is heavy, ye pass through the trees of the earth,
+through the clefts of the rocks.</p>
+
+<p>4. No real foe of yours is known in heaven, nor in earth, ye
+devourers of enemies! May strength be yours, together with
+your race, O Rudras, to defy even now.</p>
+
+<p>5. They make the rocks to tremble, they tear asunder the
+kings of the forest. Come on, Maruts, like madmen, ye gods,
+with your whole tribe.</p>
+
+<p>6. You have harnessed the spotted deer to your chariots, a
+red deer draws as leader. Even the earth listened at your
+approach, and men were frightened.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>7. O Rudras, we quickly desire your help for our race. Come
+now to us with help, as of yore, thus for the sake of the
+frightened Ka<i>n</i>va.</p>
+
+<p>8. Whatever fiend, roused by you or roused by mortals,
+attacks us, tear him from us by your power, by your
+strength, by your aid.</p>
+
+<p>9. For you, worshipful and wise, have wholly protected
+Ka<i>n</i>va. Come to us, Maruts, with your whole help, as
+quickly as lightnings come after the rain.</p>
+
+<p>10. Bounteous givers, ye possess whole strength, whole
+power, ye shakers (of the earth). Send, O Maruts, against
+the proud enemy of the poets, an enemy, like an arrow.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The following is a simple prayer addressed to the Dawn:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="center"><span class="smcap">Hymn to Ushas</span> (Rv. VII. 77).</p>
+
+<p>1. She shines upon us, like a young wife, rousing every
+living being to go to his work. When the fire had to be
+kindled by men, she made the light by striking down
+darkness.</p>
+
+<p>2. She rose up, spreading far and wide, and moving
+everywhere. She grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant
+garment. The mother of the cows, (the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>mornings) the leader
+of the days, she shone gold-coloured, lovely to behold.</p>
+
+<p>3. She, the fortunate, who brings the eye of the gods, who
+leads the white and lovely steed (of the sun), the Dawn was
+seen revealed by her rays, with brilliant treasures,
+following every one.</p>
+
+<p>4. Thou who art a blessing where thou art near, drive far
+away the unfriendly; make the pasture wide, give us safety!
+Scatter the enemy, bring riches! Raise up wealth to the
+worshipper, thou mighty Dawn.</p>
+
+<p>5. Shine for us with thy best rays, thou bright Dawn, thou
+who lengthenest our life, thou the love of all, who givest
+us food, who givest us wealth in cows, horses, and chariots.</p>
+
+<p>6. Thou, daughter of the sky, thou high-born Dawn, whom the
+Vasish<i>t</i>has magnify with songs, give us riches high and
+wide: all ye gods, protect us always with your blessings.</p></div>
+
+<p>I must confine myself to shorter extracts, in order to be able to show
+to you that all the principal elements of real religion are present in
+the Veda. I remind you again that the Veda contains a great deal of
+what is childish and foolish, though very little of what is bad and
+objectionable. Some of its poets ascribe to the gods sentiments and
+passions unworthy of the deity, such as anger, revenge, delight in
+material sacrifices; they likewise represent human nature on a low
+level of selfishness and worldliness. Many hymns are utterly unmeaning
+and insipid, and we must search patiently before we meet, here and
+there, with sentiments that come from the depth of the soul, and with
+prayers in which we could join ourselves.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> Yet there are such
+passages, and they are the really important passages, as marking the
+highest points to which the religious life of the ancient poets of
+India had reached; and it is to these that I shall now call your
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>First of all, the religion of the Veda knows of no idols. The worship
+of idols in India is a secondary formation, a later degradation of the
+more primitive worship of ideal gods.</p>
+
+<p>The gods of the Veda are conceived as immortal: passages in which the
+birth of certain gods is mentioned have a physical meaning: they refer
+to the birth of the day, the rising of the sun, the return of the
+year.</p>
+
+<p>The gods are supposed to dwell in heaven, though several of them, as,
+for instance, Agni, the god of fire, are represented as living among
+men, or as approaching the sacrifice, and listening to the praises of
+their worshippers.</p>
+
+<p>Heaven and earth are believed to have been made or to have been
+established by certain gods. Elaborate theories of creation, which
+abound in the later works, the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as, are not to be found in the
+hymns. What we find are such passages as:</p>
+
+<p>'Agni held the earth, he stablished the heaven by truthful words' (Rv.
+I. 67, 3).</p>
+
+<p>'Varu<i>n</i>a stemmed asunder the wide firmaments; he lifted on high the
+bright and glorious heaven; he stretched out apart the starry sky and
+the earth' (Rv. VII. 86, 1).</p>
+
+<p>More frequently, however, the poets confess their ignorance of the
+beginning of all things, and one of them exclaims:</p>
+
+<p>'Who has seen the first-born? Where was the life,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> the blood, the soul
+of the world? Who went to ask this from any that knew it? (Rv. I. 164,
+4).<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p>
+
+<p>Or again, Rv. X. 81, 4: 'What was the forest, what was the tree out of
+which they shaped heaven and earth? Wise men, ask this indeed in your
+mind, on what he stood when he held the worlds?'</p>
+
+<p>I now come to a more important subject. We find in the Veda, what few
+would have expected to find there, the two ideas, so contradictory to
+the human understanding, and yet so easily reconciled in every human
+heart: God has established the eternal laws of right and wrong, he
+punishes sin and rewards virtue, and yet the same God is willing to
+forgive; just, yet merciful; a judge, and yet a father. Consider, for
+instance, the following lines, Rv. I. 41, 4: 'His path is easy and
+without thorns, who does what is right.'</p>
+
+<p>And again, Rv. I. 41, 9: 'Let man fear Him who holds the four (dice),
+before he throws them down (i. e. God who holds the destinies of men
+in his hand); let no man delight in evil words!'</p>
+
+<p>And then consider the following hymns, and imagine the feelings which
+alone could have prompted them:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="center"><span class="smcap">Hymn to Varu<i>n</i>a</span> (Rv. VII. 89).</p>
+
+<p>1. Let me not yet, O Varu<i>n</i>a, enter into the house of clay;
+have mercy, almighty, have mercy!</p>
+
+<p>2. If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind;
+have mercy, almighty, have mercy!</p>
+
+<p>3. Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god,
+have I gone wrong; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p><p>4. Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in the
+midst of the waters; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!</p>
+
+<p>5. Whenever we men, O Varu<i>n</i>a, commit an offence before the
+heavenly host, whenever we break the law through
+thoughtlessness; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!</p></div>
+
+
+
+<p>And again, Rv. VII. 86:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>1. Wise and mighty are the works of him who stemmed asunder
+the wide firmaments (heaven and earth). He lifted on high
+the bright and glorious heaven; he stretched out apart the
+starry sky and the earth.</p>
+
+<p>2. Do I say this to my own self? How can I get unto
+Varu<i>n</i>a? Will he accept my offering without displeasure?
+When shall I, with a quiet mind, see him propitiated?</p>
+
+<p>3. I ask, O Varu<i>n</i>a, wishing to know this my sin. I go to
+ask the wise. The sages all tell me the same: Varu<i>n</i>a it is
+who is angry with thee.</p>
+
+<p>4. Was it an old sin, O Varu<i>n</i>a, that thou wishest to
+destroy thy friend, who always praises thee? Tell me, thou
+unconquerable lord, and I will quickly turn to thee with
+praise, freed from sin.</p>
+
+<p>5. Absolve us from the sins of our fathers, and from those
+which we committed with our own bodies. Release Vasish<i>t</i>ha,
+O king, like a thief who has feasted on stolen oxen; release
+him like a calf from the rope.</p>
+
+<p>6. It was not our own doing, O Varu<i>n</i>a, it was necessity
+(or temptation), an intoxicating draught, passion, dice,
+thoughtlessness. The old is there to mislead the young; even
+sleep brings unrighteousness.</p>
+
+<p>7. Let me without sin give satisfaction to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>angry god,
+like a slave to the bounteous lord. The lord god enlightened
+the foolish; he, the wisest, leads his worshipper to wealth.</p>
+
+<p>8. O lord Varu<i>n</i>a, may this song go well to thy heart! May
+we prosper in keeping and acquiring! Protect us, O gods,
+always with your blessings!</p></div>
+
+<p>The consciousness of sin is a prominent feature in the religion of the
+Veda, so is likewise the belief that the gods are able to take away
+from man the heavy burden of his sins. And when we read such passages
+as 'Varu<i>n</i>a is merciful even to him who has committed sin' (Rv. VII.
+87, 7), we should surely not allow the strange name of Varu<i>n</i>a to jar
+on our ears, but should remember that it is but one of the many names
+which men invented in their helplessness to express their ideas of the
+Deity, however partial and imperfect.</p>
+
+<p>The next hymn, which is taken from the Atharva-veda (IV. 16), will
+show how near the language of the ancient poets of India may approach
+to the language of the Bible:<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>1. The great lord of these worlds sees as if he were near.
+If a man thinks he is walking by stealth, the gods know it
+all.</p>
+
+<p>2. If a man stands or walks or hides, if he goes to lie down
+or to get up, what two people sitting together whisper, king
+Varu<i>n</i>a knows it, he is there as the third.</p>
+
+<p>3. This earth, too, belongs to Varu<i>n</i>a, the king, and this
+wide sky with its ends far apart. The two <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>seas (the sky and
+the ocean) are Varu<i>n</i>a's loins; he is also contained in
+this small drop of water.</p>
+
+<p>4. He who should flee far beyond the sky, even he would not
+be rid of Varu<i>n</i>a, the king. His spies proceed from heaven
+towards this world; with thousand eyes they overlook this
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>5. King Varu<i>n</i>a sees all this, what is between heaven and
+earth, and what is beyond. He has counted the twinklings of
+the eyes of men. As a player throws the dice, he settles all
+things.</p>
+
+<p>6. May all thy fatal nooses, which stand spread out seven by
+seven and threefold, catch the man who tells a lie, may they
+pass by him who tells the truth.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Another idea which we find in the Veda is that of faith: not only in
+the sense of trust in the gods, in their power, their protection,
+their kindness, but in that of belief in their existence. The Latin
+word <span class="sp1">credo</span>, I believe, is the same as the Sanskrit <span class="sp1"><i>s</i>raddh&acirc;</span>, and this
+<span class="sp1"><i>s</i>raddh&acirc;</span> occurs in the Veda:</p>
+
+<p>Rv. I. 102, 2. 'Sun and moon go on in regular succession, that we may
+see, Indra, and believe.'</p>
+
+<p>Rv. I. 104, 6. 'Destroy not our future offspring, O Indra, for we have
+believed in thy great power.'</p>
+
+<p>Rv. I. 55, 5. 'When Indra hurls again and again his thunderbolt, then
+they believe in the brilliant god.'<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A similar sentiment, namely, that men only believe in the gods when
+they see their signs and wonders in the sky, is expressed by another
+poet (Rv. VIII. 21, 14):</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Thou, Indra, never findest a rich man to be thy friend;
+wine-swillers despise thee. But when thou thunderest, when
+thou gatherest (the clouds), then thou art called, like a
+father.'</p></div>
+
+<p>And with this belief in god, there is also coupled that doubt, that
+true scepticism, if we may so call it, which is meant to give to faith
+its real strength. We find passages even in these early hymns where
+the poet asks himself, whether there is really such a god as Indra,&mdash;a
+question immediately succeeded by an answer, as if given to the poet
+by Indra himself. Thus we read Rv. VIII. 89, 3:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'If you wish for strength, offer to Indra a hymn of praise:
+a true hymn, if Indra truly exist; for some one says, Indra
+does not exist! Who has seen him? Whom shall we praise?'</p></div>
+
+<p>Then Indra answers through the poet:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Here I am, O worshipper, behold me here! in might I surpass
+all things.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Similar visions occur elsewhere, where the poet, after inviting a god
+to a sacrifice, or imploring his pardon for his offences, suddenly
+exclaims that he has seen the god, and that he feels that his prayer
+is granted. For instance:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="center"><span class="smcap">Hymn to Varu<i>n</i>a</span> (Rv. I. 25).</p>
+
+<p>1. However we break thy laws from day to day, men as we are,
+O god, Varu<i>n</i>a,</p>
+
+<p>2. Do not deliver us unto death, nor to the blow of the
+furious; nor to the wrath of the spiteful!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>3. To propitiate thee, O Varu<i>n</i>a, we unbend thy mind with
+songs, as the charioteer a weary steed.</p>
+
+<p>4. Away from me they flee dispirited, intent only on gaining
+wealth; as birds to their nests.</p>
+
+<p>5. When shall we bring hither the man, who is victory to the
+warriors; when shall we bring Varu<i>n</i>a, the wide-seeing, to
+be propitiated?</p>
+
+<p>[6. This they (Mitra and Varu<i>n</i>a) take in common; gracious,
+they never fail the faithful giver.]</p>
+
+<p>7. He who knows the place of the birds that fly through the
+sky, who on the waters knows the ships;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>8. He, the upholder of order, who knows the twelve months
+with the offspring of each, and knows the month that is
+engendered afterwards;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>9. He who knows the track of the wind, of the wide, the
+bright, the mighty; and knows those who reside on high;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>10. He, the upholder of order, Varu<i>n</i>a, sits down among his
+people; he, the wise, sits there to govern.</p>
+
+<p>11. From thence perceiving all wondrous things, he sees what
+has been and what will be done.</p>
+
+<p>12. May he, the wise &Acirc;ditya, make our paths straight all our
+days; may he prolong our lives!</p>
+
+<p>13. Varu<i>n</i>a, wearing golden mail, has put on his shining
+cloak; the spies sat down around him.</p>
+
+<p>14. The god whom the scoffers do not provoke, nor the
+tormentors of men, nor the plotters of mischief;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>15. He, who gives to men glory, and not half glory, who
+gives it even to our own selves;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>16. Yearning for him, the far-seeing, my thoughts move
+onwards, as kine move to their pastures.</p>
+
+<p>17. Let us speak together again, because my honey has been
+brought: that thou mayst eat what thou likest, like a
+friend.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>18. Did I see the god who is to be seen by all, did I see
+the chariot above the earth? He must have accepted my
+prayers.</p>
+
+<p>19. O hear this my calling, Varu<i>n</i>a, be gracious now;
+longing for help, I have called upon thee.</p>
+
+<p>20. Thou, O wise god, art lord of all, of heaven and earth:
+listen on thy way.</p>
+
+<p>21. That I may live, take from me the upper rope, loose the
+middle, and remove the lowest!</p></div>
+
+<p>In conclusion, let me tell you that there is in the Veda no trace of
+metempsychosis or that transmigration of souls from human to animal
+bodies which is generally supposed to be a distinguishing feature of
+Indian religion. Instead of this, we find what is really the <span class="sp1">sine qu&acirc;
+non</span> of all real religion, a belief in immortality, and in personal
+immortality. Without a belief in personal immortality, religion surely
+is like an arch resting on one pillar, like a bridge ending in an
+abyss. We cannot wonder at the great difficulties felt and expressed
+by bishop Warburton and other eminent divines, with regard to the
+supposed total absence of the doctrine of immortality or personal
+immortality in the Old Testament; and it is equally startling that the
+Sadducees who sat in the same council with the high-priest, openly
+denied the resurrection.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> However, though not expressly asserted
+anywhere, a belief in personal immortality is taken for granted in
+several passages of the Old Testament, and we can hardly think of
+Abraham or Moses as without a belief in life and immortality. But
+while this difficulty, so keenly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>felt with regard to the Jewish
+religion, ought to make us careful in the judgments which we form of
+other religions, and teach us the wisdom of charitable interpretation,
+it is all the more important to mark that in the Veda passages occur
+where immortality of the soul, personal immortality and personal
+responsibility after death, are clearly proclaimed. Thus we read:</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'He who gives alms goes to the highest place in heaven; he
+goes to the gods' (Rv. I. 125, 56).</p></div>
+
+<p>Another poet, after rebuking those who are rich and do not
+communicate, says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The kind mortal is greater than the great in heaven!'</p></div>
+
+<p>Even the idea, so frequent in the later literature of the Brahmans,
+that immortality is secured by a son, seems implied, unless our
+translation deceives us, in one passage of the Veda (VII. 56, 24):
+'Asm� (�ti) vira<i>h</i> maruta<i>h</i> sushm� astu <i>g</i>�n�n�m y�<i>h</i> �sura<i>h</i> vi
+dhart�, ap�<i>h</i> y�na su-kshit�ye t�rema, �dha sv�m �ka<i>h</i> abh� vah
+sy�ma.' 'O Maruts, may there be to us a strong son, who is a living
+ruler of men: through whom we may cross the waters on our way to the
+happy abode; then may we come to your own house!'</p>
+
+<p>One poet prays that he may see again his father and mother after death
+(Rv. I. 24, 1); and the fathers (Pit<i>r</i>is) are invoked almost like
+gods, oblations are offered to them, and they are believed to enjoy,
+in company with the gods, a life of never ending felicity (Rv. X. 15,
+16).</p>
+
+<p>We find this prayer addressed to Soma (Rv. IX. 113, 7):</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is
+placed, in that immortal imperishable world place me, O
+Soma!'</p>
+
+<p>'Where king Vaivasvata reigns, where the secret place of
+heaven is, where these mighty waters are, there make me
+immortal!</p>
+
+<p>'Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, where
+the worlds are radiant, there make me immortal!'</p>
+
+<p>'Where wishes and desires are, where the place of the bright
+sun is, where there is freedom and delight, there make me
+immortal!</p>
+
+<p>'Where there is happiness and delight, where joy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> and
+pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire are
+attained, there make me immortal!'<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>Whether the old Rishis believed likewise in a place of punishment for
+the wicked, is more doubtful, though vague allusions to it occur in
+the Rig-veda, and more distinct descriptions are found in the
+Atharva-veda. In one verse it is said that the dead is rewarded for
+his good deeds, that he leaves or casts off all evil, and glorified
+takes his body (Rv. X. 14, 8).<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> The dogs of Yama, the king of the
+departed, present some terrible aspects, and Yama is asked to protect
+the departed from them (Rv. X. 14, 11). Again, a pit (<span class="sp1">karta</span>) is
+mentioned into which the lawless are said to be hurled down (Rv. IX.
+73, 8), and into which Indra casts those who offer no sacrifices (Rv.
+I. 121, 13). One poet prays that the &Acirc;dityas may preserve him from the
+destroying wolf, and from falling into the pit (Rv. II. 29, 6). In one
+passage we read that 'those who break the commandments of Varu<i>n</i>a and
+who speak lies are born for that deep place' (Rv. IV. 5, 5).<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Surely the discovery of a religion like this, as unexpected as the
+discovery of the jaw-bone of Abbeville, deserves to arrest our
+thoughts for a moment, even in the haste and hurry of this busy life.
+No doubt for the daily wants of life, the old division of religions
+into true and false is quite sufficient; as for practical purposes we
+distinguish only between our own mother-tongue on the one side, and
+all other foreign languages on the other. But, from a higher point of
+view, it would not be right to ignore the new evidence that has come
+to light; and as the study of geology has given us a truer insight
+into the stratification of the earth, it is but natural to expect that
+a thoughtful study of the original works of three of the most
+important religions of the world, Brahmanism, Magism, and Buddhism,
+will modify our views as to the growth or history of religion, as to
+the hidden layers of religious thought beneath the soil on which we
+stand. Such inquires should be undertaken without prejudice and
+without fear: the evidence is placed before us; our duty is to sift it
+critically, to weigh it honestly, and to wait for the results.</p>
+
+<p>Three of these results, to which, I believe, a comparative study of
+religions is sure to lead, I may state before I conclude this Lecture:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>1. We shall learn that religions in their most ancient form,
+or in the minds of their authors, are generally free from
+many of the blemishes that attach to them in later times.</p>
+
+<p>2. We shall learn that there is hardly one religion which
+does not contain some truth, some important truth; truth
+sufficient to enable those who seek the Lord and feel after
+Him, to find Him in their hour of need.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>3. We shall learn to appreciate better than ever what we
+have in our own religion. No one who has not examined
+patiently and honestly the other religions of the world, can
+know what Christianity really is, or can join with such
+truth and sincerity in the words of St. Paul: 'I am not
+ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Some of the points touched upon in this Lecture have been
+more fully treated in my 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature.' As
+the second edition of this work has been out of print for several
+years, I have here quoted a few passages from it in full.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> 'In the sciences of law and society, old means not old in
+chronology, but in structure: that is most archaic which lies nearest
+to the beginning of human progress considered as a development, and
+that is most modern which is farthest removed from that
+beginning.'&mdash;J. F. McLennan, 'Primitive Marriage,' p. 8.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a>
+
+<table summary="Eqivalent Words">
+<tr><td>Sanskrit</td><td>Greek</td><td>Gothic</td><td>Anglo-Saxon</td><td>German</td></tr>
+<tr><td>v&eacute;da</td><td>&#959;&#7990;&#948;&#945;</td><td>vait</td><td>w&acirc;t</td><td>ich weiss</td></tr>
+<tr><td>v&eacute;ttha</td><td>&#959;&#7990;&#963;&#952;&#945;</td><td>vaist</td><td>w&acirc;st</td><td>du weisst</td></tr>
+<tr><td>v&eacute;da</td><td>&#959;&#7990;&#948;&#949;</td><td>vait</td><td>w&acirc;t</td><td>er weiss</td></tr>
+<tr><td>vidv&aacute;</td><td>&mdash;</td><td>vitu</td><td>&mdash;</td><td>&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>vid&aacute;thu<i>h</i></td><td>&#7988;&#963;&#964;&#959;&#957;</td><td>vituts</td><td>&mdash;</td><td>&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>vid&aacute;tu<i>h</i></td><td>&#7988;&#963;&#964;&#959;&#957;</td><td>&mdash;</td><td>&mdash;</td><td>&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>vidm&aacute;</td><td>&#7988;&#963;&#956;&#949;&#957;</td><td>vitum</td><td>witon</td><td>wir wissen</td></tr>
+<tr><td>vid&aacute;</td><td>&#7988;&#963;&#964;&#949;</td><td>vituth</td><td>wite</td><td>ihr wisset</td></tr>
+<tr><td>vid&uacute;<i>h</i></td><td>&#7988;&#963;&#945;&#963;&#953;</td><td>vitun</td><td>witan</td> <td>sie wissen.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. 449.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' second
+edition, p. 219 seq.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> 'Tat Savitur vare<i>n</i>yam bhargo devasya dh&icirc;mahi, dhiyo yo
+na<i>h</i> pra<i>k</i>oday&acirc;t.'&mdash;Colebrooke, 'Miscellaneous Essays,' i. 30. Many
+passages bearing on this subject have been collected by Dr. Muir in
+the third volume of his 'Sanskrit Texts,' p. 114 seq.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Mommsen, 'Inscriptiones Helveticae,' 40. Becker, 'Die
+inschriftlichen &Uuml;berreste der Keltischen Sprache,' in 'Beitr&auml;ge zur
+Vergleichenden Sprachforschung,' vol. iii. p. 341. Lucau, Phars. 1,
+445, 'horrensque feris altaribus Hesus.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Cf. G. B&uuml;hler, '&Uuml;ber Parjanya,' in Benfey's 'Orient und
+Occident,' vol. i. p. 214.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature</i>, p. 569.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> A last verse is added, which entirely spoils the
+poetical beauty and the whole character of the hymn. Its later origin
+seems to have struck even native critics, for the author of the Pada
+text did not receive it. 'O Pra<i>g</i>&acirc;pati, no other than thou hast
+embraced all these created things; may what we desired when we called
+on thee, be granted to us, may we be lords of riches.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> I subjoin for some of the hymns here translated, the
+translation of the late Professor Wilson, in order to show what kind
+of difference there is between the traditional rendering of the Vedic
+hymns, as adopted by him, and their interpretation according to the
+rules of modern scholarship:
+</p><p>
+1. We ever offer fitting praise to the mighty Indra, in the dwelling
+of the worshipper, by which he (the deity) has quickly acquired
+riches, as (a thief) hastily carries (off the property) of the
+sleeping. Praise ill expressed is not valued among the munificent.
+</p><p>
+2. Thou, Indra, art the giver of horses, of cattle, of barley, the
+master and protector of wealth, the foremost in liberality, (the
+being) of many days; thou disappointest not desires (addressed to
+thee); thou art a friend to our friends: such an Indra we praise.
+</p><p>
+3. Wise and resplendent Indra, the achiever of great deeds, the riches
+that are spread around are known to be thine: having collected them,
+victor (over thy enemies), bring them to us: disappoint not the
+expectation of the worshipper who trusts in thee.
+</p><p>
+4. Propitiated by these offerings, by these libations, dispel poverty
+with cattle and horses: may we, subduing our adversary, and relieved
+from enemies by Indra, (pleased) by our libations, enjoy together
+abundant food.
+</p><p>
+5. Indra, may we become possessed of riches, and of food; and with
+energies agreeable to many, and shining around, may we prosper through
+thy divine favour, the source of prowess, of cattle, and of horses.
+</p><p>
+6. Those who were thy allies, (the Maruts,) brought thee joy:
+protector of the pious, those libations and oblations (that were
+offered thee on slaying V<i>r</i>itra), yielded thee delight, when thou,
+unimpeded by foes, didst destroy the ten thousand obstacles opposed to
+him who praised thee and offered thee libations.
+</p><p>
+7. Humiliator (of adversaries), thou goest from battle to battle, and
+destroyest by thy might city after city: with thy foe-prostrating
+associate, (the thunderbolt,) thou, Indra, didst slay afar off the
+deceiver named Namu<i>k</i>i.
+</p><p>
+8. Thou hast slain Kara&#7749;ga and Par<i>n</i>aya with thy bright gleaming
+spear, in the cause of Atithigva: unaided, thou didst demolish the
+hundred cities of Va&#7749;g<i>r</i>ida, when besieged by <i>R</i>i<i>g</i>i<i>s</i>van.
+</p><p>
+9. Thou, renowned Indra, overthrewest by thy not-to-be-overtaken
+chariot-wheel, the twenty kings of men, who had come against
+Su<i>s</i>ravas, unaided, and their sixty thousand and ninety and nine
+followers.
+</p><p>
+10. Thou, Indra, hast preserved Su<i>s</i>ravas by thy succour,
+T&ucirc;rvay&acirc;<i>n</i>a, by thy assistance: thou hast made Kutsa, Atithigva, and
+&Acirc;yu subject to the mighty though youthful Su<i>s</i>ravas.
+</p><p>
+11. Protected by the gods, we remain, Indra, at the close of the
+sacrifice, thy most fortunate friends: we praise thee, as enjoying
+through thee excellent offspring, and a long and prosperous life.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Favete linguis.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Cf. Rv. I. 112, 25, 'dy&uacute;bhir akt&uacute;bhi<i>h</i>,' by day and by
+night; also Rv. III. 31, 16. M. M., 'Todtenbestattung,' p. v.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Professor Benfey reads durayanta<i>h</i>, but all MSS. that I
+know, without exception, read darayanta<i>h</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> See Spiegel, 'Er&acirc;n,' p. 269, on Khai Khosru =
+Su<i>s</i>ravas.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Professor Wilson translates as follows:
+</p>
+<div class="blockquot"><p>1. When, Maruts, who make (all things) tremble, you direct
+your awful (vigour) downwards from afar, as light (descends
+from heaven), by whose worship, by whose praise (are you
+attracted)? To what (place of sacrifice), to whom, indeed,
+do you repair?
+</p><p>
+2. Strong be your weapons for driving away (your) foes, firm
+in resisting them: yours be the strength that merits praise,
+not (the strength) of a treacherous mortal.
+</p><p>
+3. Directing Maruts, when you demolish what is stable, when
+you scatter what is ponderous, then you make your way
+through the forest (trees) of earth and the defiles of the
+mountains.
+</p><p>
+4. Destroyers of foes, no adversary of yours is known above
+the heavens, nor (is any) upon earth: may your collective
+strength be quickly exerted, sons of Rudra, to humble (your
+enemies).
+</p><p>
+5. They make the mountains tremble, they drive apart the
+forest trees. Go, divine Maruts, whither you will, with all
+your progeny, like those intoxicated.
+</p><p>
+6. You have harnessed the spotted deer to your chariot; the
+red deer yoked between them, (aids to) drag the car: the
+firmament listens for your coming, and men are alarmed.
+</p><p>
+7. Rudras, we have recourse to your assistance for the sake
+of our progeny: come quickly to the timid Ka<i>n</i>va, as you
+formerly came, for our protection.
+</p><p>
+8. Should any adversary, instigated by you, or by man,
+assail us, withhold from him food and strength and your
+assistance.
+</p><p>
+9. Pra<i>k</i>etasas, who are to be unreservedly worshipped,
+uphold (the sacrificer) Ka<i>n</i>va: come to us, Maruts, with
+undivided protective assistances, as the lightnings (bring)
+the rain.
+</p><p>
+10. Bounteous givers, you enjoy unimpaired vigour: shakers
+(of the earth), you possess undiminished strength: Maruts,
+let loose your anger, like an arrow, upon the wrathful enemy
+of the Rishis.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. 20 note.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> This hymn was first pointed out by Professor Roth in a
+dissertation on the Atharva-veda (T&uuml;bingen, 1856), and it has since
+been translated and annotated by Dr. Muir, in his article on the
+'Vedic Theogony and Cosmogony,' p. 31.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> During violent thunderstorms the natives of New Holland
+are so afraid of War-ru-gu-ra, the evil spirit, that they seek shelter
+even in caves haunted by Ingnas, subordinate demons, which at other
+times they would enter on no account. There, in silent terror, they
+prostrate themselves with their faces to the ground, waiting until the
+spirit, having expended his fury, shall retire to Uta (hell) without
+having discovered their hiding-place.&mdash;'Transactions of Ethnological
+Society,' vol. iii. p. 229. Oldfield, 'The Aborigines of Australia.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Acts xxii. 30, xxiii. 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Professor Roth, after quoting several passages from the
+Veda in which a belief in immortality is expressed, remarks with great
+truth: 'We here find, not without astonishment, beautiful conceptions
+on immortality expressed in unadorned language with child-like
+conviction. If it were necessary, we might here find the most powerful
+weapons against the view which has lately been revived, and proclaimed
+as new, that Persia was the only birthplace of the idea of
+immortality, and that even the nations of Europe had derived it from
+that quarter. As if the religious spirit of every gifted race was not
+able to arrive at it by its own strength.'&mdash;('Journal of the German
+Oriental Society,' vol. iv. p. 427.) See Dr. Muir's article on Yama,
+in the 'Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,' p. 10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> M. M., Die Todtenbestattung bei den Brahmanen
+'Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenl&auml;ndischen Gesellschaft,' vol. ix. p.
+xii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Dr. Muir, article on Yama, p. 18.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II.</h2>
+
+<h2>CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>n so comprehensive a work as Mr. Hardwick's 'Christ and other
+Masters,' the number of facts stated, of topics discussed, of
+questions raised, is so considerable that in reviewing it we can
+select only one or two points for special consideration. Mr. Hardwick
+intends to give in his work, of which the third volume has just been
+published, a complete panorama of ancient religion. After having
+discussed in the first volume what he calls the religious tendencies
+of our age, he enters upon an examination of the difficult problem of
+the unity of the human race, and proceeds to draw, in a separate
+chapter, the characteristic features of religion under the Old
+Testament. Having thus cleared his way, and established some of the
+principles according to which the religions of the world should be
+judged, Mr. Hardwick devotes the whole of the second volume to the
+religions of India. We find there, first of all, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>a short but very
+clear account of the religion of the Veda, as far as it is known at
+present. We then come to a more matter-of-fact representation of
+Brahmanism, or the religion of the Hindus, as represented in the
+so-called Laws of Manu, and in the ancient portions of the two epic
+poems, the R&acirc;m&acirc;ya<i>n</i>a and Mah&acirc;bh&acirc;rata. The next chapter is devoted to
+the various systems of Indian philosophy, which all partake more or
+less of a religious character, and form a natural transition to the
+first subjective system of faith in India, the religion of Buddha. Mr.
+Hardwick afterwards discusses, in two separate chapters, the apparent
+and the real correspondences between Hinduism and revealed religion,
+and throws out some hints how we may best account for the partial
+glimpses of truth which exist in the Vedas, the canonical books of
+Buddhism, and the later Pur&acirc;<i>n</i>as. All these questions are handled
+with such ability, and discussed with so much elegance and eloquence,
+that the reader becomes hardly aware of the great difficulties of the
+subject, and carries away, if not quite a complete and correct, at
+least a very lucid, picture of the religious life of ancient India.
+The third volume, which was published in the beginning of this year,
+is again extremely interesting, and full of the most varied
+descriptions. The religions of China are given first, beginning with
+an account of the national traditions, as collected and fixed by
+Confucius. Then follows the religious system of Lao-tse, or the
+Tao-ism of China, and lastly Buddhism again, only under that modified
+form which it assumed when introduced from India into China. After
+this sketch of the religious life of China, the most ancient centre of
+Eastern civilisation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> Mr. Hardwick suddenly transports us to the New
+World, and introduces us to the worship of the wild tribes of America,
+and to the ruins of the ancient temples in which the civilised races
+of that continent, especially the Mexicans, once bowed themselves down
+before their god or gods. Lastly, we have to embark on the South Sea,
+and to visit the various islands which form a chain between the west
+coast of America and the east coast of Africa, stretching over half of
+the globe, and inhabited by the descendants of the once united race of
+the Malayo-Polynesians.</p>
+
+<p>The account which Mr. Hardwick can afford to give of the various
+systems of religion in so short a compass as he has fixed for himself,
+must necessarily be very general; and his remarks on the merits and
+defects peculiar to each, which were more ample in the second volume,
+have dwindled down to much smaller dimensions in the third. He
+declares distinctly that he does not write for missionaries. 'It is
+not my leading object,' he says, 'to conciliate the more thoughtful
+minds of heathendom in favour of the Christian faith. However laudable
+that task may be, however fitly it may occupy the highest and the
+keenest intellect of persons who desire to further the advance of
+truth and holiness among our heathen fellow-subjects, there are
+difficulties nearer home which may in fairness be regarded as
+possessing prior claims on the attention of a Christian Advocate.'</p>
+
+<p>We confess that we regret that Mr. Hardwick should have taken this
+line. If, in writing his criticism on the ancient or modern systems of
+Pagan religion, he had placed himself face to face with a poor
+helpless creature, such as the missionaries have to deal with&mdash;a man
+brought up in the faith of his fathers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> accustomed to call his god or
+gods by names sacred to him from his first childhood&mdash;a man who had
+derived much real help and consolation from his belief in these
+gods&mdash;who had abstained from committing crime, because he was afraid
+of the anger of a Divine Being&mdash;who had performed severe penance,
+because he hoped to appease the anger of the gods&mdash;who had given, not
+only the tenth part of all he valued most, but the half, nay, the
+whole of his property, as a free offering to his priests, that they
+might pray for him or absolve him from his sin&mdash;if, in discussing any
+of the ancient or modern systems of Pagan religion, Mr. Hardwick had
+tried to address his arguments to such a person, we believe he would
+himself have felt a more human, real, and hearty interest in his
+subject. He would more earnestly have endeavoured to find out the good
+elements in every form of religious belief. No sensible missionary
+could bring himself to tell a man who has done all that he could do,
+and more than many who have received the true light of the Gospel,
+that he was excluded from all hope of salvation, and by his very birth
+and colour handed over irretrievably to eternal damnation. It is
+possible to put a charitable interpretation on many doctrines of
+ancient heathenism, and the practical missionary is constantly obliged
+to do so. Let us only consider what these doctrines are. They are not
+theories devised by men who wish to keep out the truth of
+Christianity, but sacred traditions which millions of human beings are
+born and brought up to believe in, as we are born and brought up to
+believe in Christianity. It is the only spiritual food which God in
+his wisdom has placed within their reach. But if we once begin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> to
+think of modern heathenism, and how certain tenets of Lao-tse resemble
+the doctrines of Comte or Spinoza, our equanimity, our historical
+justice, our Christian charity, are gone. We become advocates
+wrangling for victory&mdash;we are no longer tranquil observers,
+compassionate friends and teachers. Mr. Hardwick sometimes addresses
+himself to men like Lao-tse or Buddha, who are now dead and gone more
+than two thousand years, in a tone of offended orthodoxy, which may or
+may not be right in modern controversy, but which entirely disregards
+the fact that it has pleased God to let these men and millions of
+human beings be born on earth without a chance of ever hearing of the
+existence of the Gospel. We cannot penetrate into the secrets of the
+Divine wisdom, but we are bound to believe that God has His purpose in
+all things, and that He will know how to judge those to whom so little
+has been given. Christianity does not require of us that we should
+criticise, with our own small wisdom, that Divine policy which has
+governed the whole world from the very beginning. We pity a man who is
+born blind&mdash;we are not angry with him; and Mr. Hardwick, in his
+arguments against the tenets of Buddha or Lao-tse, seems to us to
+treat these men too much in the spirit of a policeman who tells a poor
+blind beggar that he is only shamming blindness. However, if, as a
+Christian Advocate, Mr. Hardwick found it impossible to entertain, or
+at least express, any sympathy with the Pagan world, even the cold
+judgment of the historian would have been better than the excited
+pleading of a partisan. Surely it is not necessary, in order to prove
+that our religion is the only true religion, that we should insist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> on
+the utter falseness of all other forms of belief. We need not be
+frightened if we discover traces of truth, traces even of Christian
+truth, among the sages and lawgivers of other nations. St. Augustine
+was not frightened by this discovery, and every thoughtful Christian
+will feel cheered by the words of that pious philosopher, when he
+boldly declares, that there is no religion which, among its many
+errors, does not contain some real and divine truth. It shows a want
+of faith in God, and in His inscrutable wisdom in the government of
+the world, if we think we ought to condemn all ancient forms of faith,
+except the religion of the Jews. A true spirit of Christianity will
+rather lead us to shut our eyes against many things which are
+revolting to us in the religion of the Chinese, or the wild Americans,
+or the civilised Hindus, and to try to discover, as well as we can,
+how even in these degraded forms of worship a spark of light lies
+hidden somewhere&mdash;a spark which may lighten and warm the heart of the
+Gentiles, 'who by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory,
+and honour, and immortality.' There is an undercurrent of thought in
+Mr. Hardwick's book which breaks out again and again, and which has
+certainly prevented him from discovering many a deep lesson which may
+be learnt in the study of ancient religions. He uses harsh language,
+because he is thinking, not of the helpless Chinese, or the dreaming
+Hindu whose tenets he controverts, but of modern philosophers; and he
+is evidently glad of every opportunity where he can show to the latter
+that their systems are mere <i>rechauff&eacute;s</i> of ancient heathenism. Thus
+he says, in his introduction to the third volume:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>'I may also be allowed to add, that, in the present
+chapters, the more thoughtful reader will not fail to
+recognise the proper tendency of certain current
+speculations, which are recommended to us on the ground that
+they accord entirely with the last discoveries of science,
+and embody the deliberate verdicts of the oracle within us.
+Notwithstanding all that has been urged in their behalf,
+those theories are little more than a return to
+long-exploded errors, a resuscitation of extinct volcanoes;
+or at best, they merely offer to introduce among us an array
+of civilising agencies, which, after trial in other
+countries, have been all found wanting. The governing class
+of China, for example, have long been familiar with the
+metaphysics of Spinoza. They have also carried out the
+social principles of M. Comte upon the largest possible
+scale. For ages they have been what people of the present
+day are wishing to become in Europe, with this difference
+only, that the heathen legislator who had lost all faith in
+God attempted to redress the wrongs and elevate the moral
+status of his subjects by the study of political science, or
+devising some new scheme of general sociology; while the
+positive philosopher of the present day, who has relapsed
+into the same positions, is in every case rejecting a
+religious system which has proved itself the mightiest of
+all civilisers, and the constant champion of the rights and
+dignity of men. He offers in the stead of Christianity a
+specious phase of paganism, by which the nineteenth century
+after Christ may be assimilated to the golden age of Mencius
+and Confucius; or, in other words, may consummate its
+religious freedom, and attain the highest pinnacle of human
+progress, by reverting to a state of childhood and of moral
+imbecility.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p></div>
+
+<p>Few serious-minded persons will like the temper of this paragraph. The
+history of ancient religion is too important, too sacred a subject to
+be used as a masked battery against modern infidelity. Nor should a
+Christian Advocate ever condescend to defend his cause by arguments
+such as a pleader who is somewhat sceptical as to the merits of his
+case, may be allowed to use, but which produce on the mind of the
+Judge the very opposite effect of that which they are intended to
+produce. If we want to understand the religions of antiquity, we must
+try, as well as we can, to enter into the religious, moral, and
+political atmosphere of the ancient world. We must do what the
+historian does. We must become ancients ourselves, otherwise we shall
+never understand the motives and meaning of their faith. Take one
+instance. There are some nations who have always regarded death with
+the utmost horror. Their whole religion may be said to be a fight
+against death, and the chief object of their prayers seems to be a
+long life on earth. The Persian clings to life with intense tenacity,
+and the same feeling exists among the Jews. Other nations, on the
+contrary, regard death in a different light. Death is to them a
+passage from one life to another. No misgiving has ever entered their
+minds as to a possible extinction of existence, and at the first call
+of the priest&mdash;nay, sometimes from a mere selfish yearning after a
+better life&mdash;they are ready to put an end to their existence on earth.
+Feelings of this kind can hardly be called convictions arrived at by
+the individual. They are national peculiarities, and they exercise an
+irresistible sway over all who belong to the same nation. The loyal
+devotion which the Slavonic nations feel for their sovereign will
+make<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> the most brutalized Russian peasant step into the place where
+his comrade has just been struck down, without a thought of his wife,
+or his mother, or his children, whom he is never to see again. He does
+not do this because, by his own reflection, he has arrived at the
+conclusion that he is bound to sacrifice himself for his emperor or
+for his country&mdash;he does it because he knows that every one would do
+the same; and the only feeling of satisfaction in which he would allow
+himself to indulge is, that he was doing his duty. If, then, we wish
+to understand the religions of the ancient nations of the world, we
+must take into account their national character. Nations who value
+life so little as the Hindus, and some of the American and Malay
+nations, could not feel the same horror of human sacrifices, for
+instance, which would be felt by a Jew; and the voluntary death of the
+widow would inspire her nearest relations with no other feeling but
+that of compassion and regret at seeing a young bride follow her
+husband into a distant land. She herself would feel that, in following
+her husband into death, she was only doing what every other widow
+would do&mdash;she was only doing her duty. In India, where men in the
+prime of life throw themselves under the car of Jaggern&acirc;th, to be
+crushed to death by the idol they believe in&mdash;where the plaintiff who
+cannot get redress starves himself to death at the door of his
+judge&mdash;where the philosopher who thinks he has learnt all which this
+world can teach him, and who longs for absorption into the Deity,
+quietly steps into the Ganges, in order to arrive at the other shore
+of existence&mdash;in such a country, however much we may condemn these
+practices, we must be on our guard and not judge the strange religions
+of such strange<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> creatures according to our own more sober code of
+morality. Let a man once be impressed with a belief that this life is
+but a prison, and that he has but to break through its walls in order
+to breathe the fresh and pure air of a higher life&mdash;let him once
+consider it cowardice to shrink from this act, and a proof of courage
+and of a firm faith in God to rush back to that eternal source from
+whence he came&mdash;and let these views be countenanced by a whole nation,
+sanctioned by priests, and hallowed by poets, and however we may blame
+and loathe the custom of human sacrifices and religious suicides, we
+shall be bound to confess that to such a man, and to a whole nation of
+such men, the most cruel rites will have a very different meaning from
+what they would have to us. They are not mere cruelty and brutality.
+They contain a religious element, and presuppose a belief in
+immortality, and an indifference with regard to worldly pleasures,
+which, if directed in a different channel, might produce martyrs and
+heroes. Here, at least, there is no danger of modern heresy aping
+ancient paganism; and we feel at liberty to express our sympathy and
+compassion, even with the most degraded of our brethren. The Fijians,
+for instance, commit almost every species of atrocity; but we can
+still discover, as Wilkes remarked in his 'Exploring Expedition,' that
+the source of many of their abhorrent practices is a belief in a
+future state, guided by no just notions of religious or moral
+obligations. They immolate themselves; they think it right to destroy
+their best friends, to free them from the miseries of this life; they
+actually consider it a duty, and perhaps a painful duty, that the son
+should strangle his parents, if requested to do so. Some of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> the
+Fijians, when interrupted by Europeans in the act of strangling their
+mother, simply replied that she was their mother, and they were her
+children, and they ought to put her to death. On reaching the grave
+the mother sat down, when they all, including children, grandchildren,
+relations, and friends, took an affectionate leave of her. A rope,
+made of twisted tapa, was then passed twice around her neck by her
+sons, who took hold of it and strangled her&mdash;after which she was put
+into her grave, with the usual ceremonies. They returned to feast and
+mourn, after which she was entirely forgotten, as though she had not
+existed. No doubt these are revolting rites; but the phase of human
+thought which they disclose is far from being simply revolting. There
+is in these immolations, even in their most degraded form, a grain of
+that superhuman faith which we admire in the temptation of Abraham;
+and we feel that the time will come, nay, that it is coming, when the
+voice of the Angel of the Lord will reach those distant islands, and
+give a higher and better purpose to the wild ravings of their
+religion.</p>
+
+<p>It is among these tribes that the missionary, if he can speak a
+language which they understand, gains the most rapid influence. But he
+must first learn himself to understand the nature of these savages,
+and to translate the wild yells of their devotion into articulate
+language. There is, perhaps, no race of men so low and degraded as the
+Papuas. It has frequently been asserted they had no religion at all.
+And yet these same Papuas, if they want to know whether what they are
+going to undertake is right or wrong, squat before their <span class="sp1">karwar</span>, clasp
+the hands over the forehead, and bow repeatedly, at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> same time
+stating their intentions. If they are seized with any nervous feeling
+during this process, it is considered as a bad sign, and the project
+is abandoned for a time&mdash;if otherwise, the idol is supposed to
+approve. Here we have but to translate what they in their helpless
+language call 'nervous feeling' by our word 'conscience,' and we shall
+not only understand what they really mean, but confess, perhaps, that
+it would be well for us if in our own hearts the <span class="sp1">karwar</span> occupied the
+same prominent place which it occupies in the cottage of every Papua.</p>
+
+<p class="f3"><i>March, 1858.</i></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> 'Christ and other Masters.' An Historical Inquiry into
+some of the chief Parallelisms and Contrasts between Christianity and
+the Religious Systems of the Ancient World, with special reference to
+prevailing Difficulties and Objections. By Charles Hardwick, M.A.,
+Christian Advocate in the University of Cambridge. Parts I, II, III.
+Cambridge, 1858.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE VEDA AND ZEND-AVESTA.</h2>
+<h2>THE VEDA.</h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he main stream of the Aryan nations has always flowed towards the
+north-west. No historian can tell us by what impulse these adventurous
+Nomads were driven on through Asia towards the isles and shores of
+Europe. The first start of this world-wide migration belongs to a
+period far beyond the reach of documentary history; to times when the
+soil of Europe had not been trodden by either Celts, Germans,
+Slavonians, Romans, or Greeks. But whatever it was, the impulse was as
+irresistible as the spell which, in our own times, sends the Celtic
+tribes towards the prairies or the regions of gold across the
+Atlantic. It requires a strong will, or a great amount of inertness,
+to be able to withstand the impetus of such national, or rather
+ethnical, movements. Few will stay behind when all are going. But to
+let one's friends depart, and then to set out ourselves&mdash;to take a
+road which, lead where it may, can never lead us to join those again
+who speak our language and worship our gods&mdash;is a course which only
+men of strong individuality and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> great self-dependence are capable of
+pursuing. It was the course adopted by the southern branch of the
+Aryan family, the Brahmanic Aryas of India and the Zoroastrians of
+Iran.</p>
+
+<p>At the first dawn of traditional history we see these Aryan tribes
+migrating across the snow of the Him&acirc;laya southward towards the 'Seven
+Rivers' (the Indus, the five rivers of the Penj&acirc;b, and the Sarasvat&icirc;),
+and ever since India has been called their home. That before this time
+they had been living in more northern regions, within the same
+precincts with the ancestors of the Greeks, the Italians, Slavonians,
+Germans, and Celts, is a fact as firmly established as that the
+Normans of William the Conqueror were the Northmen of Scandinavia. The
+evidence of language is irrefragable, and it is the only evidence
+worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods. It would
+have been next to impossible to discover any traces of relationship
+between the swarthy natives of India and their conquerors whether
+Alexander or Clive, but for the testimony borne by language. What
+other evidence could have reached back to times when Greece was not
+yet peopled by Greeks, nor India by Hindus? Yet these are the times of
+which we are speaking. What authority would have been strong enough to
+persuade the Grecian army, that their gods and their hero ancestors
+were the same as those of king Porus, or to convince the English
+soldier that the same blood might be running in his veins and in the
+veins of the dark Bengalese? And yet there is not an English jury
+now-a-days, which, after examining the hoary documents of language,
+would reject the claim of a common descent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> and a spiritual
+relationship between Hindu, Greek, and Teuton. Many words still live
+in India and in England that have witnessed the first separation of
+the northern and southern Aryans, and these are witnesses not to be
+shaken by any cross-examination. The terms for God, for house, for
+father, mother, son, daughter, for dog and cow, for heart and tears,
+for axe and tree, identical in all the Indo-European idioms, are like
+the watchwords of soldiers. We challenge the seeming stranger; and
+whether he answer with the lips of a Greek, a German, or an Indian, we
+recognise him as one of ourselves. Though the historian may shake his
+head, though the physiologist may doubt, and the poet scorn the idea,
+all must yield before the facts furnished by language. There was a
+time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Slavonians, the
+Greeks and Italians, the Persians and Hindus, were living together
+beneath the same roof, separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and
+Turanian races.</p>
+
+<p>It is more difficult to prove that the Hindu was the last to leave
+this common home, that he saw his brothers all depart towards the
+setting sun, and that then, turning towards the south and the east, he
+started alone in search of a new world. But as in his language and in
+his grammar he has preserved something of what seems peculiar to each
+of the northern dialects singly, as he agrees with the Greek and the
+German where the Greek and the German differ from all the rest, and as
+no other language has carried off so large a share of the common Aryan
+heirloom&mdash;whether roots, grammar, words, mythes, or legends&mdash;it is
+natural to suppose that, though perhaps the eldest brother, the Hindu
+was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> the last to leave the central home of the Aryan family.</p>
+
+<p>The Aryan nations who pursued a north-westerly direction, stand before
+us in history as the principal nations of north-western Asia and
+Europe. They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of
+history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of
+active life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected
+society and morals, and we learn from their literature and works of
+art the elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of
+philosophy. In continual struggle with each other and with Semitic and
+Turanian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history,
+and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world
+together by the chains of civilisation, commerce, and religion. In a
+word, they represent the Aryan man in his historical character.</p>
+
+<p>But while most of the members of the Aryan family followed this
+glorious path, the southern tribes were slowly migrating towards the
+mountains which gird the north of India. After crossing the narrow
+passes of the Hindukush or the Him&acirc;laya, they conquered or drove
+before them, as it seems without much effort, the aboriginal
+inhabitants of the Trans-Himalayan countries. They took for their
+guides the principal rivers of Northern India, and were led by them to
+new homes in their beautiful and fertile valleys. It seems as if the
+great mountains in the north had afterwards closed for centuries their
+Cyclopean gates against new immigrations, while, at the same time, the
+waves of the Indian Ocean kept watch over the southern borders of the
+peninsula. None of the great conquerors of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> antiquity,&mdash;Sesostris,
+Semiramis, Nebuchadnezzar, or Cyrus,&mdash;disturbed the peaceful seats of
+these Aryan settlers. Left to themselves in a world of their own,
+without a past, and without a future before them, they had nothing but
+themselves to ponder on. Struggles there must have been in India also.
+Old dynasties were destroyed, whole families annihilated, and new
+empires founded. Yet the inward life of the Hindu was not changed by
+these convulsions. His mind was like the lotus leaf after a shower of
+rain has passed over it; his character remained the same, passive,
+meditative, quiet, and thoughtful. A people of this peculiar stamp was
+never destined to act a prominent part in the history of the world;
+nay, the exhausting atmosphere of transcendental ideas in which they
+lived could not but exercise a detrimental influence on the active and
+moral character of the Indians. Social and political virtues were
+little cultivated, and the ideas of the useful and the beautiful
+hardly known to them. With all this, however, they had, what the Greek
+was as little capable of imagining, as they were of realising the
+elements of Grecian life. They shut their eyes to this world of
+outward seeming and activity, to open them full on the world of
+thought and rest. The ancient Hindus were a nation of philosophers,
+such as could nowhere have existed except in India, and even there in
+early times alone. It is with the Hindu mind as if a seed were placed
+in a hothouse. It will grow rapidly, its colours will be gorgeous, its
+perfume rich, its fruits precocious and abundant. But never will it be
+like the oak growing in wind and weather, and striking its roots into
+real earth, and stretching its branches into real<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> air beneath the
+stars and the sun of heaven. Both are experiments, the hothouse flower
+and the Hindu mind; and as experiments, whether physiological or
+psychological, both deserve to be studied.</p>
+
+<p>We may divide the whole Aryan family into two branches, the northern
+and the southern. The northern nations, Celts, Greeks, Romans,
+Germans, and Slavonians, have each one act allotted to them on the
+stage of history. They have each a national character to support. Not
+so the southern tribes. They are absorbed in the struggles of thought,
+their past is the problem of creation, their future the problem of
+existence; and the present, which ought to be the solution of both,
+seems never to have attracted their attention, or called forth their
+energies. There never was a nation believing so firmly in another
+world, and so little concerned about this. Their condition on earth is
+to them a problem; their real and eternal life a simple fact. Though
+this is said chiefly with reference to them before they were brought
+in contact with foreign conquerors, traces of this character are still
+visible in the Hindus, as described by the companions of Alexander,
+nay, even in the Hindus of the present day. The only sphere in which
+the Indian mind finds itself at liberty to act, to create, and to
+worship, is the sphere of religion and philosophy; and nowhere have
+religious and metaphysical ideas struck root so deep in the mind of a
+nation as in India. The shape which these ideas took amongst the
+different classes of society, and at different periods of
+civilisation, naturally varies from coarse superstition to sublime
+spiritualism. But, taken as a whole, history supplies no second
+instance where the inward life of the soul<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> has so completely absorbed
+all the other faculties of a people.</p>
+
+<p>It was natural, therefore, that the literary works of such a nation,
+when first discovered in Sanskrit MSS. by Wilkins, Sir W. Jones, and
+others, should have attracted the attention of all interested in the
+history of the human race. A new page in man's biography was laid
+open, and a literature as large as that of Greece or Rome was to be
+studied. The Laws of Manu, the two epic poems, the R&acirc;m&acirc;ya<i>n</i>a and
+Mah&acirc;bh&acirc;rata, the six complete systems of philosophy, works on
+astronomy and medicine, plays, stories, fables, elegies, and lyrical
+effusions, were read with intense interest, on account of their age
+not less than their novelty.</p>
+
+<p>Still this interest was confined to a small number of students, and in
+a few cases only could Indian literature attract the eyes of men who,
+from the summit of universal history, survey the highest peaks of
+human excellence. Herder, Schlegel, Humboldt, and Goethe, discovered
+what was really important in Sanskrit literature. They saw what was
+genuine and original, in spite of much that seemed artificial. For the
+artificial, no doubt, has a wide place in Sanskrit literature.
+Everywhere we find systems, rules and models, castes and schools, but
+nowhere individuality, no natural growth, and but few signs of strong
+originality and genius.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, one period of Sanskrit literature which forms an
+exception, and which will maintain its place in the history of
+mankind, when the name of Kalid&acirc;sa and <i>S</i>akuntal&acirc; will have been long
+forgotten. It is the most ancient period, the period of the Veda.
+There is, perhaps, a higher degree of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> interest attaching to works of
+higher antiquity; but in the Veda we have more than mere antiquity. We
+have ancient thought expressed in ancient language. Without insisting
+on the fact that even chronologically the Veda is the first book of
+the Aryan nations, we have in it, at all events, a period in the
+intellectual life of man to which there is no parallel in any other
+part of the world. In the hymns of the Veda we see man left to himself
+to solve the riddle of this world. We see him crawling on like a
+creature of the earth with all the desires and weaknesses of his
+animal nature. Food, wealth, and power, a large family and a long
+life, are the theme of his daily prayers. But he begins to lift up his
+eyes. He stares at the tent of heaven, and asks who supports it? He
+opens his ears to the winds, and asks them whence and whither? He is
+awakened from darkness and slumber by the light of the sun, and him
+whom his eyes cannot behold, and who seems to grant him the daily
+pittance of his existence, he calls 'his life, his breath, his
+brilliant Lord and Protector.' He gives names to all the powers of
+nature, and after he has called the fire <span class="sp1">Agni</span>, the sun-light <span class="sp1">Indra</span>,
+the storms <span class="sp1">Maruts</span>, and the dawn <span class="sp1">Ushas</span>, they all seem to grow naturally
+into beings like himself, nay, greater than himself. He invokes them,
+he praises them, he worships them. But still with all these gods
+around him, beneath him, and above him, the early poet seems ill at
+rest within himself. There too, in his own breast, he has discovered a
+power that wants a name, a power nearer to him than all the gods of
+nature, a power that is never mute when he prays, never absent when he
+fears and trembles. It seems to inspire his prayers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> and yet to
+listen to them; it seems to live in him, and yet to support him and
+all around him. The only name he can find for this mysterious power is
+<span class="sp1">Br&aacute;hman</span>; for <span class="sp1">br&aacute;hman</span> meant originally force, will, wish, and the
+propulsive power of creation. But this impersonal <span class="sp1">br&aacute;hman</span>, too, as
+soon as it is named, grows into something strange and divine. It ends
+by being one of many gods, one of the great triad, worshipped to the
+present day. And still the thought within him has no real name; that
+power which is nothing but itself, which supports the gods, the
+heavens, and every living being, floats before his mind, conceived but
+not expressed. At last he calls it <span class="sp1">&Acirc;tman</span>; for <span class="sp1">&acirc;tman</span>, originally breath
+or spirit, comes to mean Self and Self alone&mdash;Self whether divine or
+human, Self whether creating or suffering, Self whether one or all,
+but always Self, independent and free. 'Who has seen the first-born,'
+says the poet, 'when he who has no bones (i. e. form) bore him that
+had bones? Where was the life, the blood, the Self of the world? Who
+went to ask this from any that knew it?' (Rv.I. 164, 4). This idea of
+a divine Self once expressed, everything else must acknowledge its
+supremacy, 'Self is the Lord of all things, Self is the King of all
+things. As all the spokes of a wheel are contained in the nave and the
+circumference, all things are contained in this Self; all selves are
+contained in this Self.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> Br&aacute;hman itself is but Self.'<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p>
+
+<p>This &Acirc;tman also grew; but it grew, as it were, without attributes. The
+sun is called the Self of all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>that moves and rests (Rv. I. 115, 1),
+and still more frequently self becomes a mere pronoun. But <span class="sp1">&Acirc;tman</span>
+remained always free from mythe and worship, differing in this from
+the <span class="sp1">Br&aacute;hman</span> (neuter), who has his temples in India even now, and is
+worshipped as <span class="sp1">Br&aacute;hman</span> (masculine), together with <span class="sp1">Vish<i>n</i>u</span> and <span class="sp1"><i>S</i>iva</span>,
+and other popular gods. The idea of the <span class="sp1">&Acirc;tman</span> or Self, like a pure
+crystal, was too transparent for poetry, and therefore was handed over
+to philosophy, which afterwards polished, and turned, and watched it
+as the medium through which all is seen, and in which all is reflected
+and known. But philosophy is later than the Veda, and it is of the
+Vaidik period only I have here to speak.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p>
+<p>In the Veda, then, we can study a theogony of which that of Hesiod is
+but the last chapter. We can study man's natural growth, and the
+results to which it may lead under the most favourable conditions. All
+was given him that nature can bestow. We see him blest with the
+choicest gifts of the earth, under a glowing and transparent sky,
+surrounded by all the grandeur and all the riches of nature, with a
+language 'capable of giving soul to the objects of sense, and body to
+the abstractions of metaphysics.' We have a right to expect much from
+him, only we must not expect in his youthful poems the philosophy of
+the nineteenth century, or the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>beauties of Pindar, or, with some
+again, the truths of Christianity. Few understand children, still
+fewer understand antiquity. If we look in the Veda for high poetical
+diction, for striking comparisons, for bold combinations, we shall be
+disappointed. These early poets thought more for themselves than for
+others. They sought rather, in their language, to be true to their own
+thought than to please the imagination of their hearers. With them it
+was a great work achieved for the first time to bind thoughts and
+words together, to find expressions or to form new names. As to
+similes, we must look to the words themselves, which, if we compare
+their radical and their nominal meaning, will be found full of bold
+metaphors. No translation in any modern language can do them justice.
+As to beauty, we must discover it in the absence of all effort, and in
+the simplicity of their hearts. Prose was, at that time, unknown, as
+well as the distinction between prose and poetry. It was the attempted
+imitation of those ancient natural strains of thought which in later
+times gave rise to poetry in our sense of the word, that is to say, to
+poetry as an art, with its counted syllables, its numerous epithets,
+its rhyme and rhythm, and all the conventional attributes of 'measured
+thought.'</p>
+
+<p>In the Veda itself, however&mdash;even if by Veda we mean the Rig-veda only
+(the other three, the S&acirc;man, Ya<i>g</i>ush, and &Acirc;tharva<i>n</i>a, having solely
+a liturgical interest, and belonging to an entirely different
+sphere)&mdash;in the Rig-veda also, we find much that is artificial,
+imitated, and therefore modern, if compared with other hymns. It is
+true that all the 1017 hymns of the Rig-veda were comprised in a
+collection which existed as such before one of those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> elaborate
+theological commentaries, known under the name of Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>a, was
+written, that is to say, about 800 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> But before the date of their
+collection these must have existed for centuries. In different songs
+the names of different kings occur, and we see several generations of
+royal families pass away before us with different generations of
+poets. Old songs are mentioned, and new songs. Poets whose
+compositions we possess are spoken of as the seers of olden times;
+their names in other hymns are surrounded by a legendary halo. In some
+cases, whole books or chapters may be pointed out as more modern and
+secondary, in thought and language. But on the whole the Rig-veda is a
+genuine document, even in its most modern portions not later than the
+time of Lycurgus; and it exhibits one of the earliest and rudest
+phases in the history of mankind; disclosing in its full reality a
+period of which in Greece we have but traditions and names, such as
+Orpheus and Linus, and bringing us as near the beginnings in language,
+thought, and mythology as literary documents can ever bring us in the
+Aryan world.</p>
+
+<p>Though much time and labour have been spent on the Veda, in England
+and in Germany, the time is not yet come for translating it as a
+whole. It is possible and interesting to translate it literally, or in
+accordance with scholastic commentaries, such as we find in India from
+Y&acirc;ska in the fifth century <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> down to S&acirc;ya<i>n</i>a in the fourteenth
+century of the Christian era. This is what Professor Wilson has done
+in his translation of the first book of the Rig-veda; and by strictly
+adhering to this principle and excluding conjectural renderings even
+where they offered themselves most naturally, he has imparted to his
+work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> a definite character and a lasting value. The grammar of the
+Veda, though irregular, and still in a rather floating state, has
+almost been mastered; the etymology and the meaning of many words,
+unknown in the later Sanskrit, have been discovered. Many hymns, which
+are mere prayers for food, for cattle, or for a long life, have been
+translated, and can leave no doubt as to their real intention. But
+with the exception of these simple petitions, the whole world of Vedic
+ideas is so entirely beyond our own intellectual horizon, that instead
+of translating we can as yet only guess and combine. Here it is no
+longer a mere question of skilful deciphering. We may collect all the
+passages where an obscure word occurs, we may compare them and look
+for a meaning which would be appropriate to all; but the difficulty
+lies in finding a sense which we can appropriate, and transfer by
+analogy into our own language and thought. We must be able to
+translate our feelings and ideas into their language at the same time
+that we translate their poems and prayers into our language. We must
+not despair even where their words seem meaningless and their ideas
+barren or wild. What seems at first childish may at a happier moment
+disclose a sublime simplicity, and even in helpless expressions we may
+recognise aspirations after some high and noble idea. When the scholar
+has done his work, the poet and philosopher must take it up and finish
+it. Let the scholar collect, collate, sift, and reject&mdash;let him say
+what is possible or not according to the laws of the Vaidik
+language&mdash;let him study the commentaries, the S&ucirc;tras, the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as,
+and even later works, in order to exhaust all the sources from which
+information can be derived. He must not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> despise the tradition of the
+Brahmans, even where their misconceptions and the causes of their
+misconceptions are palpable. To know what a passage cannot mean is
+frequently the key to its real meaning; and whatever reasons may be
+pleaded for declining a careful perusal of the traditional
+interpretations of Y&acirc;ska or S&acirc;ya<i>n</i>a, they can all be traced back to
+an ill-concealed <span class="sp1">argumentum paupertatis</span>. Not a corner in the
+Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as, the S&ucirc;tras, Y&acirc;ska, and S&acirc;ya<i>n</i>a should be left unexplored
+before we venture to propose a rendering of our own. S&acirc;ya<i>n</i>a, though
+the most modern, is on the whole the most sober interpreter. Most of
+his etymological absurdities must be placed to Y&acirc;ska's account, and
+the optional renderings which he allows for metaphysical, theological,
+or ceremonial purposes, are mostly due to his regard for the
+Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as. The Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as, though nearest in time to the hymns of
+the Rig-veda, indulge in the most frivolous and ill-judged
+interpretations. When the ancient Rishi exclaims with a troubled
+heart, 'Who is the greatest of the gods? Who shall first be praised by
+our songs?'&mdash;the author of the Brahma<i>n</i>a sees in the interrogative
+pronoun 'Who' some divine name, a place is allotted in the sacrificial
+invocations to a god 'Who,' and hymns addressed to him are called
+'Whoish' hymns. To make such misunderstandings possible, we must
+assume a considerable interval between the composition of the hymns
+and the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as. As the authors of the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as were blinded by
+theology, the authors of the still later Niruktas were deceived by
+etymological fictions, and both conspired to mislead by their
+authority later and more sensible commentators, such as S&acirc;ya<i>n</i>a.
+Where S&acirc;ya<i>n</i>a has no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> authority to mislead him, his commentary is at
+all events rational; but still his scholastic notions would never
+allow him to accept the free interpretation which a comparative study
+of these venerable documents forces upon the unprejudiced scholar. We
+must therefore discover ourselves the real vestiges of these ancient
+poets; and if we follow them cautiously, we shall find that with some
+effort we are still able to walk in their footsteps. We shall feel
+that we are brought face to face and mind to mind with men yet
+intelligible to us, after we have freed ourselves from our modern
+conceits. We shall not succeed always: words, verses, nay, whole hymns
+in the Rig-veda, will and must remain to us a dead letter. But where
+we can inspire those early relics of thought and devotion with new
+life, we shall have before us more real antiquity than in all the
+inscriptions of Egypt or Nineveh; not only old names and dates, and
+kingdoms and battles, but old thoughts, old hopes, old faith, and old
+errors, the old Man altogether&mdash;old now, but then young and fresh, and
+simple and real in his prayers and in his praises.</p>
+
+<p>The thoughtful bent of the Hindu mind is visible in the Veda also, but
+his mystic tendencies are not yet so fully developed. Of philosophy we
+find but little, and what we find is still in its germ. The active
+side of life is more prominent, and we meet occasionally with wars of
+kings, with rivalries of ministers, with triumphs and defeats, with
+war-songs and imprecations. Moral sentiments and worldly wisdom are
+not yet absorbed by phantastic intuitions. Still the child betrays the
+passions of the man, and there are hymns, though few in number, in the
+Veda, so full of thought and speculation that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> at this early period no
+poet in any other nation could have conceived them. I give but one
+specimen, the 129th hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-veda. It is a
+hymn which long ago attracted the attention of that eminent scholar H.
+T. Colebrooke, and of which, by the kind assistance of a friend, I am
+enabled to offer a metrical translation. In judging it we should bear
+in mind that it was not written by a gnostic or by a pantheistic
+philosopher, but by a poet who felt all these doubts and problems as
+his own, without any wish to convince or to startle, only uttering
+what had been weighing on his mind, just as later poets would sing the
+doubts and sorrows of their heart.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was it the water's fathomless abyss?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There was not death&mdash;yet was there nought immortal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There was no confine betwixt day and night;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The only One breathed breathless by itself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Other than It there nothing since has been.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In gloom profound&mdash;an ocean without light&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The germ that still lay covered in the husk<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then first came love upon it, the new spring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of mind&mdash;yea, poets in their hearts discerned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pondering, this bond between created things<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nature below, and power and will above&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Gods themselves came later into being&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span><span class="i0">He from whom all this great creation came,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether his will created or was mute,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He knows it&mdash;or perchance even He knows not.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The grammar of the Veda (to turn from the contents to the structure of
+the work) is important in many respects. The difference between it and
+the grammar of the epic poems would be sufficient of itself to fix the
+distance between these two periods of language and literature. Many
+words have preserved in these early hymns a more primitive form, and
+therefore agree more closely with cognate words in Greek or Latin.
+Night, for instance, in the later Sanskrit is ni<i>s</i>&acirc;, which is a form
+peculiarly Sanskritic, and agrees in its derivation neither with <span class="sp1">nox</span>
+nor with &#957;&#8017;&#958;. The Vaidik <span class="sp1">na<i>s</i></span> or <span class="sp1">nak</span>, night, is as near to
+Latin as can be. Thus mouse in the common Sanskrit is <span class="sp1">m&ucirc;shas</span> or
+<span class="sp1">m&ucirc;shik&acirc;</span>, both derivative forms if compared with the Latin <span class="sp1">mus</span>, <span class="sp1">muris</span>.
+The Vaidik Sanskrit has preserved the same primitive noun in the
+plural <span class="sp1">m&ucirc;sh-as</span> = Lat. <span class="sp1">mures</span>. There are other words in the Veda which
+were lost altogether in the later Sanskrit, while they were preserved
+in Greek and Latin. <span class="sp1">Dyaus</span>, sky, does not occur as a masculine in the
+ordinary Sanskrit; it occurs in the Veda, and thus bears witness to
+the early Aryan worship of Dyaus, the Greek Ze&uacute;s. <span class="sp1">Ushas</span>, dawn, again
+in the later Sanskrit is neuter. In the Veda it is feminine; and even
+the secondary Vaidik form <span class="sp1">Ush&acirc;s&acirc;</span> is proved to be of high antiquity by
+the nearly corresponding Latin form <span class="sp1">Aurora</span>. Declension and conjugation
+are richer in forms and more unsettled in their usage. It was a
+curious fact, for instance, that no subjunctive mood existed in the
+common<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> Sanskrit. The Greeks and Romans had it, and even the language
+of the Avesta showed clear traces of it. There could be no doubt that
+the Sanskrit also once possessed this mood, and at last it was
+discovered in the hymns of the Rig-veda. Discoveries of this kind may
+seem trifling, but they are as delightful to the grammarian as the
+appearance of a star, long expected and calculated, is to the
+astronomer. They prove that there is natural order in language, and
+that by a careful induction laws can be established which enable us to
+guess with great probability either at the form or meaning of words
+where but scanty fragments of the tongue itself have come down to us.</p>
+
+<p class="f3"><i>October, 1853.</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2>THE ZEND-AVESTA.</h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+<p>y means of laws like that of the Correspondence of Letters,
+discovered by Rask and Grimm, it has been possible to determine the
+exact form of words in Gothic, in cases where no trace of them
+occurred in the literary documents of the Gothic nation. Single words
+which were not to be found in Ulfilas have been recovered by applying
+certain laws to their corresponding forms in Latin or Old High-German,
+and thus retranslating them into Gothic. But a much greater conquest
+was achieved in Persia. Here comparative philology has actually had to
+create and reanimate all the materials of language on which it was
+afterwards to work. Little was known of the language of Persia and
+Media previous to the Shahnameh of Firdusi, composed about 1000 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>,
+and it is due entirely to the inductive method of comparative
+philology that we have now before us contemporaneous documents of
+three periods of Persian language, deciphered, translated, and
+explained. We have the language of the Zoroastrians, the language of
+the Ach&aelig;menians, and the language of the Sassanians, which represent
+the history of the Persian tongue in three successive periods&mdash;all now
+rendered intelligible by the aid of comparative philology, while but
+fifty years ago their very name and existence were questioned.</p>
+
+<p>The labours of Anquetil Duperron, who first translated the
+Zend-Avesta, were those of a bold adventurer&mdash;not of a scholar. Rask
+was the first who,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> with the materials collected by Duperron and
+himself, analysed the language of the Avesta scientifically. He
+proved&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>1. That Zend was not a corrupted Sanskrit, as supposed by W.
+Erskine, but that it differed from it as Greek, Latin, or
+Lithuanian differed from one another and from Sanskrit.</p>
+
+<p>2. That the modern Persian was really derived from Zend as
+Italian was from Latin; and</p>
+
+<p>3. That the Avesta, or the works of Zoroaster, must have
+been reduced to writing at least previously to Alexander's
+conquest. The opinion that Zend was an artificial language
+(an opinion held by men of great eminence in Oriental
+philology, beginning with Sir W. Jones) is passed over by
+Rask as not deserving of refutation.</p></div>
+
+<p>The first edition of the Zend texts, the critical restitution of the
+MSS., the outlines of a Zend grammar, with the translation and
+philological anatomy of considerable portions of the Zoroastrian
+writings, were the work of the late Eug&egrave;ne Burnouf. He was the real
+founder of Zend philology. It is clear from his works, and from Bopp's
+valuable remarks in his 'Comparative Grammar,' that Zend in its
+grammar and dictionary is nearer to Sanskrit than any other
+Indo-European language. Many Zend words can be retranslated into
+Sanskrit simply by changing the Zend letters into their corresponding
+forms in Sanskrit. With regard to the Correspondence of Letters in
+Grimm's sense of the word, Zend ranges with Sanskrit and the classical
+languages. It differs from Sanskrit principally in its sibilants,
+nasals, and aspirates. The Sanskrit s, for instance, is represented by
+the Zend h, a change analogous to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> that of an original s into the
+Greek aspirate, only that in Greek this change is not general. Thus
+the geographical name hapta hendu, which occurs in the Avesta, becomes
+intelligible if we retranslate the Zend h into the Sanskrit s. For
+<span class="sp1">sapta sindhu</span>, or the Seven Rivers, is the old Vaidik name of India
+itself, derived from the five rivers of the Penj&acirc;b, together with the
+Indus, and the Sarasvat&icirc;.</p>
+
+<p>Where Sanskrit differs in words or grammatical peculiarities from the
+northern members of the Aryan family, it frequently coincides with
+Zend. The numerals are the same in all these languages up to 100. The
+name for thousand, however, <span class="sp1">sahasra</span>, is peculiar to Sanskrit, and does
+not occur in any of the Indo-European dialects except in Zend, where
+it becomes <span class="sp1">haza<i>n</i>ra</span>. In the same manner the German and Slavonic
+languages have a word for thousand peculiar to themselves; as also in
+Greek and Latin we find many common words which we look for in vain in
+any of the other Indo-European dialects. These facts are full of
+historical meaning; and with regard to Zend and Sanskrit, they prove
+that these two languages continued together long after they were
+separated from the common Indo-European stock.</p>
+
+<p>Still more striking is the similarity between Persia and India in
+religion and mythology. Gods unknown to any Indo-European nation are
+worshipped under the same names in Sanskrit and Zend; and the change
+of some of the most sacred expressions in Sanskrit into names of evil
+spirits in Zend, only serves to strengthen the conviction that we have
+here the usual traces of a schism which separated a community that had
+once been united.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Burnouf, who compared the language and religion of the Avesta
+principally with the later classical Sanskrit, inclined at first to
+the opinion that this schism took place in Persia, and that the
+dissenting Brahmans immigrated afterwards into India. This is still
+the prevailing opinion, but it requires to be modified in accordance
+with new facts elicited from the Veda. Zend, if compared with
+classical Sanskrit, exhibits in many points of grammar, features of a
+more primitive character than Sanskrit. But it can now be shown, and
+Burnouf himself admitted it, that when this is the case, the Vaidik
+differs on the very same points from the later Sanskrit, and has
+preserved the same primitive and irregular form as the Zend. I still
+hold, that the name of Zend was originally a corruption of the
+Sanskrit word <span class="sp1"><i>k</i>handas</span> (i. e. metrical language, cf. <span class="sp1">scandere</span>),<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a>
+which is the name <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>given to the language of the Veda by P&acirc;<i>n</i>ini and
+others. When we read in P&acirc;<i>n</i>ini's grammar that certain forms occur in
+<span class="sp1"><i>k</i>handas</span>, but not in the classical language, we may almost always
+translate the word <span class="sp1"><i>k</i>handas</span> by Zend, for nearly all these rules apply
+equally to the language of the Avesta.</p>
+
+<p>In mythology also, the 'nomina and numina' of the Avesta appear at
+first sight more primitive than in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>Manu or the Mah&acirc;bh&acirc;rata. But if
+regarded from a Vaidik point of view, this relation shifts at once,
+and many of the gods of the Zoroastrians come out once more as mere
+reflections and deflections of the primitive and authentic gods of the
+Veda. It can now be proved, even by geographical evidence, that the
+Zoroastrians had been settled in India before they immigrated into
+Persia. I say the Zoroastrians, for we have no evidence to bear us out
+in making the same assertion of the nations of Persia and Media in
+general. That the Zoroastrians and their ancestors started from India
+during the Vaidik period can be proved as distinctly as that the
+inhabitants of Massilia started from Greece. The geographical
+traditions in the first Fargard of the Vendidad do not interfere with
+this opinion. If ancient and genuine, they would embody a remembrance
+preserved by the Zoroastrians, but forgotten by the Vaidik poets&mdash;a
+remembrance of times previous to their first common descent into the
+country of the Seven Rivers. If of later origin, and this is more
+likely, they may represent a geographical conception of the
+Zoroastrians after they had become acquainted with a larger sphere of
+countries and nations, subsequent to their emigration from the land of
+the Seven Rivers.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p>
+
+<p>These and similar questions of the highest importance for the early
+history of the Aryan language and mythology, however, must await their
+final decision, until the whole of the Veda and the Avesta shall have
+been published. Of this Burnouf was fully <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>aware, and this was the
+reason why he postponed the publication of his researches into the
+antiquities of the Iranian nation. The same conviction is shared by
+Westergaard and Spiegel, who are each engaged in an edition of the
+Avesta, and who, though they differ on many points, agree in
+considering the Veda as the safest key to an understanding of the
+Avesta. Professor Roth, of T&uuml;bingen, has well expressed the mutual
+relation of the Veda and Zend-Avesta under the following simile: 'The
+Veda,' he writes, 'and the Zend-Avesta are two rivers flowing from one
+fountain-head: the stream of the Veda is the fuller and purer, and has
+remained truer to its original character; that of the Zend-Avesta has
+been in various ways polluted, has altered its course, and cannot,
+with certainty, be traced back to its source.'</p>
+
+<p>As to the language of the Ach&aelig;menians, presented to us in the Persian
+text of the cuneiform inscriptions, there was no room for doubt, as
+soon as it became legible at all, that it was the same tongue as that
+of the Avesta, only in a second stage of its continuous growth. The
+process of deciphering these bundles of arrows by means of Zend and
+Sanskrit has been very much like deciphering an Italian inscription
+without a knowledge of Italian, simply by means of classical and
+medi&aelig;val Latin. It would have been impossible, even with the quick
+perception and patient combination of a Grotefend, to read more than
+the proper names and a few titles on the walls of the Persian palaces,
+without the aid of Zend and Sanskrit; and it seems almost
+providential, as Lassen remarked, that these inscriptions, which at
+any previous period would have been, in the eyes of either classical
+or oriental<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> scholars, nothing but a quaint conglomerate of nails,
+wedges, or arrows, should have been rescued from the dust of centuries
+at the very moment when the discovery and study of Sanskrit and Zend
+had enabled the scholars of Europe to grapple successfully with their
+difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>Upon a closer inspection of the language and grammar of these mountain
+records of the Ach&aelig;menian dynasty, a curious fact came to light which
+seemed to disturb the historical relation between the language of
+Zoroaster and the language of Darius. At first, historians were
+satisfied with knowing that the edicts of Darius could be explained by
+the language of the Avesta, and that the difference between the two,
+which could be proved to imply a considerable interval of time, was
+such as to exclude for ever the supposed historical identity of Darius
+Hystaspes and Gushtasp, the mythical pupil of Zoroaster. The language
+of the Avesta, though certainly not the language of Zarathustra,<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a>
+displayed a grammar so much more luxuriant, and forms so much more
+primitive than the inscriptions, that centuries must <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>have elapsed
+between the two periods represented by these two strata of language.
+When, however, the forms of these languages were subjected to a more
+searching analysis, it became evident that the phonetic system of the
+cuneiform inscriptions was more primitive and regular than even that
+of the earlier portions of the Avesta. This difficulty, however,
+admits of a solution; and, like many difficulties of the kind, it
+tends to confirm, if rightly explained, the very facts and views which
+at first it seemed to overthrow. The confusion in the phonetic system
+of the Zend grammar is no doubt owing to the influence of oral
+tradition. Oral tradition, particularly if confided to the safeguard
+of a learned priesthood, is able to preserve, during centuries of
+growth and change, the sacred accents of a dead language; but it is
+liable at least to the slow and imperceptible influences of a corrupt
+pronunciation. Nowhere can we
+see this more clearly than in the Veda, where grammatical
+forms that had ceased to be intelligible, were
+carefully preserved, while the original pronunciation
+of vowels was lost, and the simple structure of the
+ancient metres destroyed by the adoption of a more
+modern pronunciation. The loss of the Digamma in
+Homer is another case in point. There are no facts to prove that the text of the
+Avesta, in the shape in which the Parsis of Bombay and Yezd now
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>possess it, was committed to writing previous to the Sassanian
+dynasty (226 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>). After that time it can indeed be traced, and to a
+great extent be controlled and checked by the Huzvaresh translations
+made under that dynasty. Additions to it were made, as it seems, even
+after these Huzvaresh translations; but their number is small, and we
+have no reason to doubt that the text of the Avesta, in the days of
+Arda Viraf, was on the whole exactly the same as at present. At the
+time when these translations were made, it is clear from their own
+evidence that the language of Zarathustra had already suffered, and
+that the ideas of the Avesta were no longer fully understood even by
+the learned. Before that time we may infer, indeed, that the doctrine
+of Zoroaster had been committed to writing, for Alexander is said to
+have destroyed the books of the Zoroastrians, Hermippus of Alexandria
+is said to have read them.<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> But whether on the revival of the
+Persian religion and literature, that is to say 500 years after
+Alexander, the works of Zoroaster were collected and restored from
+extant MSS., or from oral tradition, must remain uncertain, and the
+disturbed state of the phonetic system would rather lead us to suppose
+a long-continued influence of oral tradition. What the Zend language
+might become, if entrusted to the guardianship of memory alone,
+unassisted by grammatical study and arch&aelig;ological research, may be
+seen at the present day, when some of the Parsis, who are unable
+either to read or write, still mutter hymns and prayers in their
+temples, which, though to them mere sound, disclose <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>to the
+experienced ear of an European scholar the time-hallowed accents of
+Zarathustra's speech.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far the history of the Persian language had been reconstructed by
+the genius and perseverance of Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and last,
+not least, by the comprehensive labours of Rawlinson, from the
+ante-historical epoch of Zoroaster down to the age of Darius and
+Artaxerxes II. It might have been expected that, after that time, the
+contemporaneous historians of Greece would have supplied the sequel.
+Unfortunately the Greeks cared nothing for any language except their
+own; and little for any other history except as bearing on themselves.
+The history of the Persian language after the Macedonian conquest and
+during the Parthian occupation is indeed but a blank page. The next
+glimpse of an authentic contemporaneous document is the inscription of
+Ardeshir, the founder of the new national dynasty of the Sassanians.
+It is written, though, it may be, with dialectic difference, in what
+was once called 'Pehlevi,' and is now more commonly known as
+'Huzvaresh,' this being the proper title of the language of the
+translations of the Avesta. The legends of Sassanian coins, the
+bilingual inscriptions of Sassanian emperors, and the translation of
+the Avesta by Sassanian reformers, represent the Persian language in
+its third phase. To judge from the specimens given by Anquetil
+Duperron, it was not to be wondered at that this dialect, then called
+Pehlevi, should have been pronounced an artificial jargon. Even when
+more genuine specimens of it became known, the language seemed so
+overgrown with Semitic and barbarous words, that it was expelled from
+the Iranian family. Sir W. Jones pronounced it to be a dialect of
+Chaldaic. Spiegel, however, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> is now publishing the text of
+these translations, has established the fact that the language is
+truly Aryan, neither Semitic nor barbarous, but Persian in roots and
+grammar. He accounts for the large infusion of foreign terms by
+pointing to the mixed elements in the intellectual and religious life
+of Persia during and before that period. There was the Semitic
+influence of Babylonia, clearly discernible even in the characters of
+the Ach&aelig;menian inscriptions; there was the slow infiltration of
+Jewish ideas, customs, and expressions, working sometimes in the
+palaces of Persian kings, and always in the bazars of Persian cities,
+on high roads and in villages; there was the irresistible power of the
+Greek genius, which even under its rude Macedonian garb emboldened
+oriental thinkers to a flight into regions undreamed of in their
+philosophy; there were the academies, the libraries, the works of art
+of the Seleucid&aelig;; there was Edessa on the Euphrates, a city
+where Plato and Aristotle were studied, where Christian, Jewish, and
+Buddhist tenets were discussed, where Ephraem Syrus taught, and Syriac
+translations were circulated which have preserved to us the lost
+originals of Greek and Christian writers. The title of the Avesta
+under its Semitic form <span class="sp1">Apestako</span>, was known in Syria as well as in
+Persia, and the true name of its author, Zarathustra, is not yet
+changed in Syriac into the modern Zerdusht. While this intellectual
+stream, principally flowing through Semitic channels, was irrigating
+and inundating the west of Asia, the Persian language had been left
+without literary cultivation. Need we wonder, then, that the men, who
+at the rising of a new national dynasty (226) became the reformers,
+teachers, and prophets of Persia, should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> have formed their
+language and the whole train of their ideas on a Semitic model. Motley
+as their language may appear to a Persian scholar fresh from the
+Avesta or from Firdusi, there is hardly a language of modern Europe
+which, if closely sifted, would not produce the same impression on a
+scholar accustomed only to the pure idiom of Homer, Cicero, Ulfilas,
+or C&aelig;dmon. Moreover; the soul of the Sassanian language&mdash;I
+mean its grammar&mdash;is Persian and nothing but Persian; and though
+meagre when compared with the grammar of the Avesta, it is richer in
+forms than the later Parsi, the Deri, or the language of Firdusi. The
+supposition (once maintained) that Pehlevi was the dialect of the
+western provinces of Persia is no longer necessary. As well might we
+imagine, (it is Spiegel's apposite remark,) that a Turkish work,
+because it is full of Arabic words, could only have been written on
+the frontiers of Arabia. We may safely consider the Huzvaresh of the
+translations of the Avesta as the language of the Sassanian court and
+hierarchy. Works also like the Bundehesh and Minokhired belong by
+language and thought to the same period of mystic incubation, when
+India and Egypt, Babylonia and Greece, were sitting together and
+gossiping like crazy old women, chattering with toothless gums and
+silly brains about the dreams and joys of their youth, yet unable to
+recall one single thought or feeling with that vigour which once gave
+it life and truth. It was a period of religious and metaphysical
+delirium, when everything became everything, when M&acirc;y&acirc; and
+Sophia, Mitra and Christ, Viraf and Isaiah, Belus, Zarvan, and Kronos
+were mixed up in one jumbled system of inane speculation, from which
+at last the East was delivered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> by the positive doctrines of
+Mohammed, the West by the pure Christianity of the Teutonic nations.</p>
+
+<p>In order to judge fairly of the merits of the Huzvaresh as a language,
+it must be remembered that we know it only from these speculative
+works, and from translations made by men whose very language had
+become technical and artificial in the schools. The idiom spoken by
+the nation was probably much less infected by this Semitic fashion.
+Even the translators sometimes give the Semitic terms only as a
+paraphrase or more distinct expression side by side with the Persian.
+And, if Spiegel's opinion be right that Parsi, and not Huzvaresh, was
+the language of the later Sassanian empire, it furnishes a clear proof
+that Persian had recovered itself, had thrown off the Semitic
+ingredients, and again become a pure and national speech. This dialect
+(the Parsi) also, exists in translations only; and we owe our
+knowledge of it to Spiegel, the author of the first Parsi grammar.</p>
+
+<p>This third period in the history of the Persian language,
+comprehending the Huzvaresh and Parsi, ends with the downfall of the
+Sassanians. The Arab conquest quenched the last sparks of Persian
+nationality; and the fire-altars of the Zoroastrians were never to be
+lighted again, except in the oasis of Yezd and on the soil of that
+country which the Zoroastrians had quitted as the disinherited sons of
+Manu. Still the change did not take place at once. Mohl, in his
+magnificent edition of the Shahnameh, has treated this period
+admirably, and it is from him that I derive the following facts. For a
+time, Persian religion, customs, traditions, and songs survived in the
+hands of the Persian nobility and landed gentry (the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> Dihkans) who
+lived among the people, particularly in, the eastern provinces, remote
+from the capital and the seats of foreign dominion, Baghdad, Kufah,
+and Mosul. Where should Firdusi have collected the national strains of
+ancient epic poetry which he revived in the Shahnameh (1000 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>), if
+the Persian peasant and the Persian knight had not preserved the
+memory of their old heathen heroes, even under the vigilant oppression
+of Mohammedan zealots? True, the first collection of epic traditions
+was made under the Sassanians. But this work, commenced under
+Nushirvan, and finished under Yezdegird, the last of the Sassanians,
+was destroyed by Omar's command. Firdusi himself tells us how this
+first collection was made by the Dihkan Danishver. 'There was a
+Pehlevan,' he says, 'of the family of the Dihkans, brave and powerful,
+wise and illustrious, who loved to study the ancient times, and to
+collect the stories of past ages. He summoned from all the provinces
+old men who possessed portions of (i. e. who knew) an ancient work in
+which many stories were written. He asked them about the origin of
+kings and illustrious heroes, and how they governed the world which
+they left to us in this wretched state. These old men recited before
+him, one after the other, the traditions of the kings and the changes
+in the empire. The Dihkan listened, and composed a book worthy of his
+fame. This is the monument he left to mankind, and great and small
+have celebrated his name.'</p>
+
+<p>The collector of this first epic poem, under Yezdegird, is called a
+Dihkan by Firdusi. Dihkan, according to the Persian dictionaries,
+means (1) farmer, (2) historian; and the reason commonly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> assigned for
+this double meaning is, that the Persian farmers happened to be well
+read in history. Quatrem&egrave;re, however, has proved that the Dihkans were
+the landed nobility of Persia; that they kept up a certain
+independence, even under the sway of the Mohammedan Khalifs, and
+exercised in the country a sort of jurisdiction in spite of the
+commissioners sent from Baghdad, the seat of the government. Thus
+Danishver even is called a Dihkan, although he lived previous to the
+Arab conquest. With him, the title was only intended to show that it
+was in the country and among the peasants that he picked up the
+traditions and songs about Jemshid, Feridun, and Rustem. Of his work,
+however, we know nothing. It was destroyed by Omar; and, though it
+survived in an Arabic translation, even this was lost in later times.
+The work, therefore, had to be recommenced when in the eastern
+provinces of Persia a national, though no longer a Zoroastrian,
+feeling began to revive. The governors of these provinces became
+independent as soon as the power of the Khalifs, after its rapid rise,
+began to show signs of weakness. Though the Mohammedan religion had
+taken root, even among the national party, yet Arabic was no longer
+countenanced by the governors of the eastern provinces. Persian was
+spoken again at their courts, Persian poets were encouraged, and
+ancient national traditions, stripped of their religious garb, began
+to be collected anew. It is said that Jacob, the son of Leis (870),
+the first prince of Persian blood who declared himself independent of
+the Khalifs, procured fragments of Danishver's epic, and had it
+rearranged and continued. Then followed the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> dynasty of the Samanians,
+who claimed descent from the Sassanian kings. They, as well as the
+later dynasty of the Gaznevides, pursued the same popular policy. They
+were strong because they rested on the support of a national Persian
+spirit. The national epic poet of the Samanians was Dakiki, by birth a
+Zoroastrian. Firdusi possessed fragments of his work, and has given a
+specimen of it in the story of Gushtasp. The final accomplishment,
+however, of an idea, first cherished by Nushirvan, was reserved for
+Mahmud the Great, the second king of the Gaznevide dynasty. By his
+command collections of old books were made all over the empire. Men
+who knew ancient poems were summoned to the court. One of them was
+Ader Berzin, who had spent his whole life in collecting popular
+accounts of the ancient kings of Persia. Another was Serv Azad, from
+Merv, who claimed descent from Neriman, and knew all the tales
+concerning Sam, Zal, and Rustem, which had been preserved in his
+family. It was from these materials that Firdusi composed his great
+epic, the Shahnameh. He himself declares, in many passages of his
+poem, that he always followed tradition. 'Traditions,' he says, 'have
+been given by me; nothing of what is worth knowing has been forgotten.
+All that I shall say, others have said before me: they plucked before
+me the fruits in the garden of knowledge.' He speaks in detail of his
+predecessors: he even indicates the sources from which he derives
+different episodes, and it is his constant endeavour to convince his
+readers that what he relates are not poetical inventions of his own.
+Thus only can we account for the fact, first pointed out by Burnouf,
+that many of the heroes in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> the Shahnameh still exhibit the traits,
+sadly distorted, it is true, but still unmistakeable, of Vaidik
+deities, which had passed through the Zoroastrian schism, the
+Ach&aelig;menian reign, the Macedonian occupation, the Parthian wars, the
+Sassanian revival, and the Mohammedan conquest, and of which the
+Dihkans could still sing and tell, when Firdusi's poem impressed the
+last stamp on the language of Zarathustra. Bopp had discovered
+already, in his edition of Nalas (1832), that the Zend <span class="sp1">Viva<i>n</i>hvat</span> was
+the same as the Sanskrit <span class="sp1">Vivasvat</span>; and Burnouf, in his 'Observations
+sur la Grammaire Compar&eacute;e de M. Bopp,' had identified a second
+personage, the Zend <span class="sp1">Kere<i>s</i>&acirc;<i>s</i>pa</span> with the Sanskrit <span class="sp1">K<i>r</i>i<i>s</i>&acirc;<i>s</i>va</span>.
+But the similarity between the Zend <span class="sp1">Kere<i>s</i>&acirc;<i>s</i>pa</span> and the <span class="sp1">Garshasp</span> of
+the Shahnameh opened a new and wide prospect to Burnouf, and
+afterwards led him on to the most striking and valuable results. Some
+of these were published in his last work on Zend, '&Eacute;tudes sur la
+Langue et les Textes Zends.' This is a collection of articles
+published originally in the 'Journal Asiatique' between 1840 and 1846;
+and it is particularly the fourth essay, 'Le Dieu Homa,' which has
+opened an entirely new mine for researches into the ancient state of
+religion and tradition common to the Aryans before their schism.
+Burnouf showed that three of the most famous names in the Shahnameh,
+<span class="sp1">Jemshid</span>, <span class="sp1">Feridun</span>, and <span class="sp1">Garshasp</span>, can be traced back to three heroes
+mentioned in the Zend-Avesta as the representatives of the three
+earliest generations of mankind, <span class="sp1">Yima Ksha&ecirc;ta</span>, <span class="sp1">Thra&ecirc;taona</span>, and
+<span class="sp1">Kere<i>s</i>&acirc;<i>s</i>pa</span>; and that the prototypes of these Zoroastrian heroes
+could be found again in the <span class="sp1">Yama</span>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> <span class="sp1">Trita</span>, and <span class="sp1">K<i>r</i>i<i>s</i>&acirc;<i>s</i>va</span> of the
+Veda. He went even beyond this. He showed that, as in Sanskrit, the
+father of Yama is <span class="sp1">Vivasvat</span>, the father of Yima in the Avesta is
+<span class="sp1">Viva<i>n</i>hvat</span>. He showed that as Thra&ecirc;taona in Persia is the son of
+<span class="sp1">&Acirc;thwya</span>, the patronymic of Trita in the Veda is <span class="sp1">&Acirc;ptya</span>. He explained the
+transition of <span class="sp1">Thra&ecirc;taona</span> into <span class="sp1">Feridun</span> by pointing to the Pehlevi form
+of the name, as given by Neriosengh, <span class="sp1">Fredun</span>. This change of an
+aspirated dental into an aspirated labial, which by many is considered
+a flaw in this argument, is of frequent occurrence. We have only to
+think of &#966;&#8053;&#961; and &#952;&#8053;&#961;, of <span class="sp1">dh&ucirc;ma</span> and <span class="sp1">fumus</span>, of
+modern Greek &#966;&#7953;&#955;&#969; and &#952;&#7953;&#955;&#969;&mdash;nay, Menenius's 'first
+complaint' would suffice to explain it. Burnouf again identified
+<span class="sp1">Zoh&acirc;k</span>, the king of Persia, slain by Feridun, whom even Firdusi still
+knows by the name of <span class="sp1">Ash dah&acirc;k</span>, with the <span class="sp1">Azhi dah&acirc;ka</span>, the biting
+serpent, as he translates it, destroyed by Thra&ecirc;taona in the Avesta;
+and with regard to the changes which these names, and the ideas
+originally expressed by them, had to undergo on the intellectual stage
+of the Aryan nation, he says: 'Il est sans contredit fort curieux de
+voir une des Divinit&eacute;s indiennes les plus v&eacute;n&eacute;r&eacute;es, donner son nom au
+premier souverain de la dynastie ariopersanne; c'est un des faits qui
+attestent le plus &eacute;videmment l'intime union des deux branches de la
+grande famille qui s'est &eacute;tendue, bien de si&egrave;cles avant notre &egrave;re,
+depuis le Gange jusqu'&agrave; l'Euphrate.'</p>
+
+<p>
+The great achievements of Burnouf in this field of
+research have been so often ignored, and what by right
+belongs to him has been so confidently ascribed to
+others, that a faithful representation of the real state of
+the case, as here given, will not appear superfluous.
+There is no intention, while giving his due to Burnouf,
+to detract from the merits of other scholars.
+Some more minute coincidences, particularly in the story of Feridun,
+have subsequently been added by Roth, Benfey, and Weber. The first,
+particularly, has devoted two most interesting articles to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+identification of Yama-Yima-Jemshid and Trita-Thra&ecirc;taona-Feridun.
+Trita, who has generally been fixed upon as the Vaidik original of
+Feridun, because Traitana, whose name corresponds more accurately,
+occurs but once in the Rig-veda, is represented in India as one of the
+many divine powers ruling the firmament, destroying darkness, and
+sending rain, or, as the poets of the Veda are fond of expressing it,
+rescuing the cows and slaying the demons that had carried them off.
+These cows always move along the sky, some dark, some bright-coloured.
+They low over their pasture; they are gathered by the winds; and
+milked by the bright rays of the sun, they drop from their heavy
+udders a fertilising milk upon the parched and thirsty earth. But
+sometimes, the poet says, they are carried off by robbers and kept in
+dark caves near the uttermost ends of the sky. Then the earth is
+without rain; the pious worshipper offers up his prayer to Indra, and
+Indra rises to conquer the cows for him. He sends his dog to find the
+scent of the cattle, and after she has heard their lowing, she
+returns, and the battle commences. Indra hurls his thunderbolt; the
+Maruts ride at his side; the Rudras roar; till at last the rock is
+cleft asunder, the demon destroyed, and the cows brought back to their
+pasture. This is one of the oldest mythes or sayings current among the
+Aryan nations. It appears again in the mythology of Italy, in Greece,
+in Germany. In the Avesta, the battle is fought between Thra&ecirc;taona and
+Azhi dah&acirc;ka, the destroying serpent. Traitana takes the place of Indra
+in this battle in one song of the Veda; more frequently it is Trita,
+but other gods also share in the same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> honour. The demon, again, who
+fights against the gods is likewise called <span class="sp1">Ahi</span>, or the serpent, in the
+Veda. But the characteristic change that has taken place between the
+Veda and Avesta is that the battle is no longer a conflict of gods and
+demons for cows, nor of light and darkness for rain. It is the battle
+of a pious man against the power of evil. 'Le Zoroastrisme,' as
+Burnouf says, 'en se d&eacute;tachant plus franchement de Dieu et de la
+nature, a certainement tenu plus de compte de l'homme que n'a fait le
+Brahmanisme, et on peut dire qu'il a regagn&eacute; en profondeur ce qu'il
+perdait en &eacute;tendue. Il ne m'appartient pas d'indiquer ici ce qu'un
+syst&egrave;me qui tend &agrave; d&eacute;velopper les instincts les plus nobles de notre
+nature, et qui impose &agrave; l'homme, comme le plus important de ses
+devoirs, celui de lutter constamment contre le principe du mal, a pu
+exercer d'influence sur les destin&eacute;es des peuples de l'Asie, chez
+lesquels il a &eacute;t&eacute; adopt&eacute; &agrave; diverses &eacute;poques. On peut cependant d&eacute;j&agrave;
+dire que le caract&egrave;re religieux et martial tout &agrave; la fois, qui para&icirc;t
+avec des traits si h&eacute;ro&iuml;ques dans la plupart des Jeshts, n'a pas d&ucirc;
+&ecirc;tre sans action sur la m&acirc;le discipline sous laquelle ont grandi les
+commencements de la monarchie de Cyrus.'</p>
+
+<p>A thousand years after Cyrus (for Zoh&acirc;k is mentioned by Moses of
+Khorene in the fifth century) we find all this forgotten once more,
+and the vague rumours about Thra&ecirc;taona and Azhi Dah&acirc;ka are gathered at
+last, and arranged and interpreted into something intelligible to
+later ages. Zoh&acirc;k is a three-headed tyrant on the throne of
+Persia&mdash;three-headed, because the Vaidik Ahi was three-headed, only
+that one of Zoh&acirc;k's heads has now become<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> human. Zoh&acirc;k has killed
+Jemshid of the Peshdadian dynasty: Feridun now conquers Zoh&acirc;k on the
+banks of the Tigris. He then strikes him down with his cow-headed
+mace, and is on the point of killing him, when, as Firdusi says, a
+supernatural voice whispered in his ear&mdash;<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Slay him not now, his time is not yet come,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His punishment must be prolonged awhile;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as he cannot now survive the wound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bind him with heavy chains&mdash;convey him straight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the mountain, there within a cave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep, dark, and horrible&mdash;with none to soothe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His sufferings, let the murderer lingering die.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The work of heaven performing, Feridun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">First purified the world from sin and crime.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet Feridun was not an angel, nor<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Composed of musk and ambergris. By justice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And generosity he gained his fame.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do thou but exercise these princely virtues,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thou wilt be renowned as Feridun.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As a last stage in the mythe of the Vaidik Traitana we may mention
+versions like those given by Sir John Malcolm and others, who see in
+Zoh&acirc;k the representative of an Assyrian invasion lasting during the
+thousand years of Zoh&acirc;k's reign, and who change Feridun into Arbaces
+the Mede, the conqueror of Sardanapalus. We may then look at the whole
+with the new light which Burnouf's genius has shed over it, and watch
+the retrograde changes of Arbaces into Feridun, of Feridun into
+Phred&ucirc;n, of Phred&ucirc;n into Thra&ecirc;taona, of Thra&ecirc;taona into
+Traitana,&mdash;each a separate phase in the dissolving view of mythology.</p>
+
+<p>As to the language of Persia, its biography is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>at an end with the
+Shahnameh. What follows exhibits hardly any signs of either growth or
+decay. The language becomes more and more encumbered with foreign
+words; but the grammar seems to have arrived at its lowest ebb, and
+withstands further change. From this state of grammatical numbness,
+languages recover by a secondary formation, which grows up slowly and
+imperceptibly at first in the speech of the people; till at last the
+reviving spirit rises upwards, and sweeps away, like the waters in
+spring, the frozen surface of an effete government, priesthood,
+literature, and grammar.</p>
+
+<p class="f3"><i>October, 1853.</i></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> B<i>r</i>ihad-&acirc;ra<i>n</i>yaka, IV. 5, 15 ed. Roer, p. 487.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> Ibid. p. 478. <i>K</i>h&acirc;ndogya-upanishad, VIII. 3, 3-4.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> In writing the above, I was thinking rather of the
+mental process that was necessary for the production of such words as
+<span class="sp1">br&aacute;hman</span>, <span class="sp1">&acirc;tman</span>, and others, than of their idiomatic use in the ancient
+literature of India. It might be objected, for instance, that <span class="sp1">br&aacute;hman</span>,
+neut. in the sense of creative power or the principal cause of all
+things, does not occur in the Rig-veda. This is true. But it occurs in
+that sense in the Atharva-veda, and in several of the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as.
+There we read of 'the oldest or greatest Br&aacute;hman which rules
+everything that has been or will be.' Heaven is said to belong to
+Br&aacute;hman alone (Atharva-veda X. 8, 1). In the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as, this Br&aacute;hman
+is called the first-born, the self-existing, the best of the gods, and
+heaven and earth are said to have been established by it. Even the
+vital spirits are identified with it (<i>S</i>atapatha-br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>a VIII. 4,
+9, 3).
+</p><p>
+In other passages, again, this same Brahman is represented as existing
+in man (Atharva-veda X. 7, 17), and in this very passage we can watch
+the transition from the neutral Br&aacute;hman into Br&aacute;hman, conceived of as
+a masculine:
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ye purushe br&aacute;hma vidus te vidu<i>h</i> paramesh<i>t</i>hina<i>m</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yo veda paramesh<i>t</i>hina<i>m</i>, ya<i>s</i> <i>k</i>a veda pra<i>g</i>&acirc;patim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>G</i>yesh<i>t</i>ha<i>m</i> ye br&atilde;hma<i>n</i>a<i>m</i> vidus, te skambham anu sa<i>m</i>vidu<i>h</i>.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'They who know Br&aacute;hman in man, they know the Highest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He who knows the Highest, and he who knows Pra<i>g</i>&acirc;pati (the lord of creatures),<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they who know the oldest Br&atilde;hma<i>n</i>a, they know the Ground.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>
+The word Br&atilde;hma<i>n</i>a which is here used, is a derivative form of
+Br&aacute;hman; but what is most important in these lines is the mixing of
+neuter and masculine words, of impersonal and personal deities. This
+process is brought to perfection by changing Br&aacute;hman, the neuter, even
+grammatically into Br&aacute;hman, a masculine,&mdash;a change which has taken
+place in the &Acirc;ra<i>n</i>yakas, where we find Br&aacute;hman used as the name of a
+male deity. It is this Br&aacute;hman, with the accent on the first, not, as
+has been supposed, brahm&aacute;n, the priest, that appears again in the
+later literature as one of the divine triad, <span class="sp1">Br&aacute;hman</span>, <span class="sp1">Vish<i>n</i>u</span>,
+<span class="sp1"><i>S</i>iva</span>.
+</p><p>
+The word br&aacute;hman, as a neuter, is used in the Rig-veda in the sense of
+prayer also, originally what bursts forth from the soul, and, in one
+sense, what is revealed. Hence in later times br&aacute;hman is used
+collectively for the Veda, the sacred word.
+</p><p>
+Another word, with the accent on the last syllable, is brahm&aacute;n, the
+man who prays, who utters prayers, the priest, and gradually the
+Brahman by profession. In this sense it is frequently used in the
+Rig-veda (I. 108, 7), but not yet in the sense of Brahman by birth or
+caste.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> The derivation of <span class="sp1"><i>k</i>handas</span>, metre, from the same root
+which yielded the Latin <span class="sp1">scandere</span>, seems to me still the most
+plausible. An account of the various explanations of this word,
+proposed by Eastern and Western scholars, is to be found in Spiegel's
+'Grammar of the Parsi Language' (preface, and p. 205), and in his
+translation of the Vendidad (pp. 44 and 293). That initial <i>k</i>h in
+Sanskrit may represent an original sk, has never, as far as I am
+aware, been denied. (Curtius, 'Grundz&uuml;ge,' p. 60.) The fact that the
+root <span class="sp1"><i>k</i>hand</span>, in the sense of stepping or striding, has not been fixed
+in Sanskrit as a verbal, but only as a nominal base, is no real
+objection either. The same thing has happened over and over again, and
+has been remarked as the necessary result of the dialectic growth of
+language by so ancient a scholar as Y&acirc;ska. ('Zeitschrift der Deutschen
+Morgenl&auml;ndischen Gesellschaft, vol. viii. p. 373 seq.) That <span class="sp1">scandere</span>
+in Latin, in the sense of scanning is a late word, does not affect the
+question at all. What is of real importance is simply this, that the
+principal Aryan nations agree in representing metre as a kind of
+stepping or striding. Whether this arose from the fact that ancient
+poetry was accompanied by dancing or rhythmic choral movements, is a
+question which does not concern us here. (Carmen descindentes
+tripodaverunt in verba h&aelig;c: Enos Lases, etc. Orelli, 'Inscript.' No.
+2271.) The fact remains that the people of India, Greece, and Italy
+agree in calling the component elements of their verses feet or steps
+(&#960;&#959;&#8017;&#962;, <span class="sp1">pes</span>, Sanskrit <span class="sp1">pad</span> or <span class="sp1">p&acirc;da</span>; <span class="sp1">padapa&#7749;kti</span>, a row of
+feet, and <span class="sp1"><i>g</i>agat&icirc;</span>, i. e. <span class="sp1">andante</span>, are names of Sanskrit metres). It
+is not too much, therefore, to say that they may have considered metre
+as a kind of stepping or striding, and that they may accordingly have
+called it 'stride.' If then we find the name for metre in Sanskrit
+<span class="sp1"><i>k</i>handas</span>, i. e. <span class="sp1">skandas</span>, and if we find that <span class="sp1">scando</span> in Latin (from
+which <span class="sp1">sca(d)la</span>), as we may gather from <span class="sp1">ascendo</span> and <span class="sp1">descendo</span>, meant
+originally striding, and that <span class="sp1">skand</span> in Sanskrit means the same as
+<span class="sp1">scando</span> in Latin, surely there can be little doubt as to the original
+intention of the Sanskrit name for metre, viz. <span class="sp1"><i>k</i>handas</span>. Hindu
+grammarians derive <span class="sp1"><i>k</i>handas</span> either from <span class="sp1"><i>k</i>had</span>, to cover, or from
+<span class="sp1"><i>k</i>had</span>, to please. Both derivations are possible, as far as the
+letters are concerned. But are we to accept the dogmatic
+interpretation of the theologians of the <span class="sp1"><i>K</i>handogas</span>, who tell us that
+the metres were called <span class="sp1"><i>k</i>handas</span> because the gods, when afraid of
+death, covered themselves with the metres? Or of the <span class="sp1">V&acirc;<i>g</i>asaneyins</span>,
+who tell us that the <span class="sp1"><i>k</i>handas</span> were so called because they pleased
+<span class="sp1">Pra<i>g</i>&acirc;pati</span>? Such artificial interpretations only show that the
+Brahmans had no traditional feeling as to the etymological meaning of
+that word, and that we are at liberty to discover by the ordinary
+means its original intention. I shall only mention from among much
+that has been written on the etymology of <span class="sp1"><i>k</i>handas</span>, a most happy
+remark of Professor Kuhn, who traces the Northern <span class="sp1">skald</span>, poet, back to
+the same root as the Sanskrit <span class="sp1"><i>k</i>handas</span>, metre. (Kuhn's 'Zeitschrift,'
+vol. iii. p. 428.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> The purely mythological character of this geographical
+chapter has been proved by M. Michel Br&eacute;al, 'Journal Asiatique,'
+1862.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Spiegel states the results of his last researches into
+the language of the different parts of the Avesta in the following
+words:
+</p><p>
+'We are now prepared to attempt an arrangement of the different
+portions of the Zend-Avesta in the order of their antiquity. First, we
+place the second part of the Ya<i>s</i>na, as separated in respect to the
+language of the Zend-Avesta, yet not composed by Zoroaster himself,
+since he is named in the third person; and indeed everything intimates
+that neither he nor his disciple Gushtasp was alive. The second place
+must unquestionably be assigned to the Vendidad. I do not believe that
+the book was originally composed as it now stands: it has suffered
+both earlier and later interpolations; still, its present form may be
+traced to a considerable antiquity. The antiquity of the work is
+proved by its contents, which distinctly show that the sacred
+literature was not yet completed.
+</p><p>
+'The case is different with the writings of the last period, among
+which I reckon the first part of the Ya<i>s</i>na, and the whole of the
+Yeshts. Among these a theological character is unmistakeable, the
+separate divinities having their attributes and titles dogmatically
+fixed.
+</p><p>
+'Altogether, it is interesting to trace the progress of religion in
+Parsi writings. It is a significant fact, that in the oldest, that is
+to say, the second part of the Ya<i>s</i>na, nothing is fixed in the
+doctrine regarding God. In the writings of the second period, that is
+in the Vendidad, we trace the advance to a theological, and, in its
+way, mild and scientific system. Out of this, in the last place, there
+springs the stern and intolerant religion of the Sassanian
+epoch.'&mdash;From the Rev. J. Murray Mitchell's Translation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> 'Lectures on the Science of Language,' First Series, p.
+95.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Cf. Atkinson's Shahnameh, p. 48.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE AITAREYA-BR&Acirc;HMANA.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he Sanskrit text, with an English translation of the
+Aitareya-br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>a, just published at Bombay by Dr. Martin Haug, the
+Superintendent of Sanskrit Studies in the Poona College, constitutes
+one of the most important additions lately made to our knowledge of
+the ancient literature of India. The work is published by the Director
+of Public Instruction, in behalf of Government, and furnishes a new
+instance of the liberal and judicious spirit in which Mr. Howard
+bestows his patronage on works of real and permanent utility. The
+Aitareya-br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>a, containing the earliest speculations of the
+Brahmans on the meaning of their sacrificial prayers, and the purport
+of their ancient religious rites, is a work which could be properly
+edited nowhere but in India. It is only a small work of about two
+hundred pages, but it presupposes so thorough a familiarity with all
+the externals of the religion of the Brahmans, the various offices of
+their priests, the times and seasons of their sacred rites, the form
+of their innumerable sacrificial utensils, and the preparation <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>of
+their offerings, that no amount of Sanskrit scholarship, such as can
+be gained in England, would have been sufficient to unravel the
+intricate speculations concerning the matters which form the bulk of
+the Aitareya-br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>a. The difficulty was not to translate the text
+word for word, but to gain a clear, accurate, and living conception of
+the subjects there treated. The work was composed by persons, and for
+persons, who, in a general way, knew the performance of the Vedic
+sacrifices as well as we know the performance of our own sacred rites.
+If we placed the English Prayer-book in the hands of a stranger who
+had never assisted at an English service, we should find that, in
+spite of the simplicity and plainness of its language, it failed to
+convey to the uninitiated a clear idea of what he ought and what he
+ought not to do in church. The ancient Indian ceremonial, however, is
+one of the most artificial and complicated forms of worship that can
+well be imagined; and though its details are, no doubt, most minutely
+described in the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as and the S&ucirc;tras, yet, without having seen
+the actual site on which the sacrifices are offered, the altars
+constructed for the occasion, the instruments employed by different
+priests&mdash;the <i>tout-ensemble</i>, in fact, of the sacred rites&mdash;the reader
+seems to deal with words, but with words only, and is unable to
+reproduce in his imagination the acts and facts which were intended to
+be conveyed by them. Various attempts were made to induce some of the
+more learned Brahmans to edit and translate some of their own rituals,
+and thus enable European scholars to gain an idea of the actual
+performance of their ancient sacrifices, and to enter more easily into
+the spirit of the speculations on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> mysterious meaning of these
+rituals, which are embodied in the so-called <span class="sp1">Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as</span>, or 'the
+sayings of the Brahmans.' But although, thanks to the enlightened
+exertions of Dr. Ballantyne and his associates in the Sanskrit College
+of Benares, Brahmans might have been found knowing English quite
+sufficiently for the purpose of a rough and ready translation from
+Sanskrit into English, such was their prejudice against divulging the
+secrets of their craft that none could be persuaded to undertake the
+ungrateful task. Dr. Haug tells us of another difficulty, which we had
+hardly suspected,&mdash;the great scarcity of Brahmans familiar with the
+ancient Vedic ritual:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Seeing the great difficulties, nay, impossibility of
+attaining to anything like a real understanding of the
+sacrificial art from all the numerous books I had collected,
+I made the greatest efforts to obtain oral information from
+some of those few Brahmans who are known by the name of
+<span class="sp1"><i>S</i>rotriyas</span> or <span class="sp1"><i>S</i>rautis</span>, and who alone are the possessors
+of the sacrificial mysteries as they descended from the
+remotest times. The task was no easy one, and no European
+scholar in this country before me ever succeeded in it. This
+is not to be wondered at; for the proper knowledge of the
+ritual is everywhere in India now rapidly dying out, and in
+many parts, chiefly in those under British rule, it has
+already died out.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Dr. Haug succeeded, however, at last in procuring the assistance of a
+real Doctor of Divinity, who had not only performed the minor Vedic
+sacrifices, such as the full and new-moon offerings, but had
+officiated at some of the great Soma sacrifices, now very rarely to be
+seen in any part of India. He was induced, we are sorry to say by very
+mercenary considerations, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> perform the principal ceremonies in a
+secluded part of Dr. Haug's premises. This lasted five days, and the
+same assistance was afterwards rendered by the same worthy and some of
+his brethren whenever Dr. Haug was in any doubt as to the proper
+meaning of the ceremonial treatises which give the outlines of the
+Vedic sacrifices. Dr. Haug was actually allowed to taste that sacred
+beverage, the <span class="sp1">Soma</span>, which gives health, wealth, wisdom, inspiration,
+nay immortality, to those who receive it from the hands of a
+twice-born priest. Yet, after describing its preparation, all that Dr.
+Haug has to say of it is:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The sap of the plant now used at Poona appears whitish, has
+a very stringent taste, is bitter, but not sour; it is a
+very nasty drink, and has some intoxicating effect. I tasted
+it several times, but it was impossible for me to drink more
+than some teaspoonfuls.'</p></div>
+
+<p>After having gone through all these ordeals, Dr. Haug may well say
+that his explanations of sacrificial terms, as given in the notes, can
+be relied upon as certain; that they proceed from what he himself
+witnessed, and what he was able to learn from men who had inherited
+the knowledge from the most ancient times. He speaks with some
+severity of those scholars in Europe who have attempted to explain the
+technical terms of the Vedic sacrifices without the assistance of
+native priests, and without even availing themselves carefully of the
+information they might have gained from native commentaries.</p>
+
+<p>In the preface to his edition of the Aitareya-br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>a, Dr. Haug has
+thrown out some new ideas on the chronology of Vedic literature which
+deserve careful consideration. Beginning with the hymns of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> the
+Rig-veda, he admits, indeed, that there are in that collection ancient
+and modern hymns, but he doubts whether it will be possible to draw a
+sharp line between what has been called the <span class="sp1"><i>K</i>handas</span> period,
+representing the free growth of sacred poetry, and the <span class="sp1">Mantra</span> period,
+during which the ancient hymns were supposed to have been collected
+and new ones added, chiefly intended for sacrificial purposes. Dr.
+Haug maintains that some hymns of a decidedly sacrificial character
+should be ascribed to the earliest period of Vedic poetry. He takes,
+for instance, the hymn describing the horse sacrifice, and he
+concludes from the fact that seven priests only are mentioned in it by
+name, and that none of them belongs to the class of the <span class="sp1">Udg&acirc;tars</span>
+(singers) and <span class="sp1">Brahmans</span> (superintendents), that this hymn was written
+before the establishment of these two classes of priests. As these
+priests are mentioned in other Vedic hymns, he concludes that the hymn
+describing the horse sacrifice is of a very early date. Dr. Haug
+strengthens his case by a reference to the Zoroastrian ceremonial, in
+which, as he says, the chanters and superintendents are entirely
+unknown, whereas the other two classes, the <span class="sp1">Hotars</span> (reciters) and
+<span class="sp1">Adhvaryus</span> (assistants) are mentioned by the same names as <span class="sp1">Zaotar</span> and
+<span class="sp1">Rathwiskare</span>. The establishment of the two new classes of priests
+would, therefore, seem to have taken place in India after the
+Zoroastrians had separated from the Brahmans; and Dr. Haug would
+ascribe the Vedic hymns in which no more than two classes of priests
+are mentioned to a period preceding, others in which the other two
+classes of priests are mentioned to a period succeeding, that ancient
+schism. We must confess, though doing full<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> justice to Dr. Haug's
+argument, that he seems to us to stretch what is merely negative
+evidence beyond its proper limits. Surely a poet, though acquainted
+with all the details of a sacrifice and the titles of all the priests
+employed in it, might speak of it in a more general manner than the
+author of a manual, and it would be most dangerous to conclude that
+whatever was passed over by him in silence did not exist at the time
+when he wrote. Secondly, if there were more ancient titles of priests,
+the poet would most likely use them in preference to others that had
+been but lately introduced. Thirdly, even the ancient priestly titles
+had originally a more general meaning before they were restricted to
+their technical significance, just as in Europe <span class="sp1">bishop</span> meant
+originally an overseer, <span class="sp1">priest</span> an elder, <span class="sp1">deacon</span> a minister. In several
+hymns, some of these titles&mdash;for instance, that of <span class="sp1">hotar</span>, invoker&mdash;are
+clearly used as appellatives, and not as titles. Lastly, one of the
+priests mentioned in the hymn on the horse sacrifice, the Agnimindha,
+is admitted by Dr. Haug himself to be the same as the &Acirc;gn&icirc;dhra; and if
+we take this name, like all the others, in its technical sense, we
+have to recognise in him one of the four <span class="sp1">Brahman</span> priests.<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> We
+should thus lose the ground on which Dr. Haug's argument is chiefly
+based, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>should have to admit the existence of Brahman priests as
+early at least as the time in which the hymn on the horse sacrifice
+was composed. But, even admitting that allusions to a more or less
+complete ceremonial<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> could be pointed out in certain hymns, this
+might help us no doubt in subdividing and arranging the poetry of the
+second or Mantra period, but it would leave the question, whether
+allusions to ceremonial technicalities are to be considered as
+characteristics of later hymns, entirely unaffected. Dr. Haug, who
+holds that, in the development of the human race, sacrifice comes
+earlier than religious poetry, formulas earlier than prayers,
+Leviticus earlier than the Psalms, applies this view to the
+chronological arrangement of Vedic literature; and he is, therefore,
+naturally inclined to look upon hymns composed for sacrificial
+purposes, more particularly upon the invocations and formulas of the
+Ya<i>g</i>ur-veda, and upon the <span class="sp1">Nivids</span> preserved in the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as and
+S&ucirc;tras, as relics of greater antiquity than the free poetical
+effusions of the Rishis, which defy ceremonial rules, ignore the
+settled rank of priests and deities, and occasionally allude to
+subjects more appropriate for profane than for sacred poetry:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The first sacrifices [he writes] were no doubt simple
+offerings performed without much ceremonial. A few
+appropriate solemn words, indicating the giver, the nature
+of the offering, the deity to which, as well as the purpose
+for which it was offered, were sufficient. All this would be
+embodied in the sacrificial formulas known in later times
+principally by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>the name of <span class="sp1">Ya<i>g</i>ush</span>, whilst the older one
+appears to have been <span class="sp1">Y&acirc;<i>g</i>y&acirc;</span>. The invocation of the deity by
+different names, and its invitation to enjoy the meal
+prepared, may be equally old. It was justly regarded as a
+kind of Ya<i>g</i>ush, and called Nigada or Nivid.'</p></div>
+
+<p>In comparing these sacrificial formulas with the bulk of the Rig-veda
+hymns, Dr. Haug comes to the conclusion that the former are more
+ancient. He shows that certain of these formulas and Nivids were known
+to the poets of the hymns, as they undoubtedly were; but this would
+only prove that these poets were acquainted with these as well as with
+other portions of the ceremonial. It would only confirm the view
+advocated by others, that certain hymns were clearly written for
+ceremonial purposes, though the ceremonial presupposed by these hymns
+may in many cases prove more simple and primitive than the ceremonial
+laid down in the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as and S&ucirc;tras. But if Dr. Haug tells us that
+the Rishis tried their poetical talent first in the composition of
+Y&acirc;<i>g</i>y&acirc;s, or verses to be recited while an offering was thrown into
+the fire, and that the Y&acirc;<i>g</i>y&acirc;s were afterwards extended into little
+songs, we must ask, is this fact or theory? And if we are told that
+'there can be hardly any doubt that the hymns which we possess are
+purely sacrificial, and made only for sacrificial purposes, and that
+those which express more general ideas, or philosophical thoughts, or
+confessions of sins, are comparatively late,' we can only repeat our
+former question. Dr. Haug, when proceeding to give his proofs, that
+the purely sacrificial poetry is more ancient than either profane
+songs or hymns of a more general religious character, only produces
+such collateral evidence as may be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> found in the literary history of
+the Jews and the Chinese&mdash;evidence which is curious, but not
+convincing. Among the Aryan nations, it has hitherto been considered
+as a general rule that poetry precedes prose. Now the Y&acirc;<i>g</i>y&acirc;s and
+Nivids are prose, and though Dr. Haug calls it rhythmical prose, yet,
+as compared with the hymns, they are prose; and though such an
+argument by itself could by no means be considered as sufficient to
+upset any solid evidence to the contrary, yet it is stronger than the
+argument derived from the literature of nations who are neither of
+them Aryan in language or thought.</p>
+
+<p>But though we have tried to show the insufficiency of the arguments
+advanced by Dr. Haug in support of his theory, we are by no means
+prepared to deny the great antiquity of some of the sacrificial
+formulas and invocations, and more particularly of the Nivids to which
+he for the first time has called attention. There probably existed
+very ancient Nivids or invocations, but are the Nivids which we
+possess the identical Nivids alluded to in the hymns? If so, why have
+they no accents, why do they not form part of the Sanhit&acirc;s, why were
+they not preserved, discussed, and analysed with the same religious
+care as the metrical hymns? The Nivids which we now possess may, as
+Dr. Haug supposes, have inspired the Rishis with the burden of their
+hymns; but they may equally well have been put together by later
+compilers from the very hymns of the Rishis. There is many a hymn in
+the Sanhit&acirc; of the Rig-veda which may be called a Nivid, i. e. an
+invitation addressed to the gods to come to the sacrifices, and an
+enumeration of the principal names of each deity. Those who believe,
+on more general grounds, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> all religion began with sacrifice and
+sacrificial formulas will naturally look on such hymns and on the
+Nivids as relics of a more primitive age; while others who look upon
+prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, and the unfettered expression of
+devotion and wonderment as the first germs of a religious worship,
+will treat the same Nivids as productions of a later age. We doubt
+whether this problem can be argued on general grounds. Admitting that
+the Jews began with sacrifice and ended with psalms, it would by no
+means follow that the Aryan nations did the same, nor would the
+chronological arrangement of the ancient literature of China help us
+much in forming an opinion of the growth of the Indian mind. We must
+take each nation by itself, and try to find out what they themselves
+hold as to the relative antiquity of their literary documents. On
+general grounds, the problem whether sacrifice or prayer comes first,
+may be argued <span class="sp1">ad infinitum</span>, just like the problem whether the hen
+comes first or the egg. In the special case of the sacred literature
+of the Brahmans, we must be guided by their own tradition, which
+invariably places the poetical hymns of the Rig-veda before the
+ceremonial hymns and formulas of the Ya<i>g</i>ur-veda and S&acirc;ma-veda. The
+strongest argument that has as yet been brought forward against this
+view is, that the formulas of the Ya<i>g</i>ur-veda and the sacrificial
+texts of the S&acirc;ma-veda contain occasionally more archaic forms of
+language than the hymns of the Rig-veda. It was supposed, therefore,
+that, although the hymns of the Rig-veda might have been composed at
+an earlier time, the sacrificial hymns and formulas were the first to
+be collected and to be preserved in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> schools by means of a strict
+mnemonic discipline. The hymns of the Rig-veda, some of which have no
+reference whatever to the Vedic ceremonial, being collected at a later
+time, might have been stripped, while being handed down by oral
+tradition, of those grammatical forms which in the course of time had
+become obsolete, but which, if once recognised and sanctioned in
+theological seminaries, would have been preserved there with the most
+religious care.</p>
+
+<p>According to Dr. Haug, the period during which the Vedic hymns were
+composed extends from 1400 to 2000 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> The oldest hymns, however, and
+the sacrificial formulas he would place between 2000 and 2400 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>
+This period, corresponding to what has been called the <i>K</i>handas and
+Mantra periods, would be succeeded by the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>a period, and Dr.
+Haug would place the bulk of the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as, all written in prose,
+between 1400 and 1200 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> He does not attribute much weight to the
+distinction made by the Brahmans themselves between revealed and
+profane literature, and would place the S&ucirc;tras almost contemporaneous
+with the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as. The only fixed point from which he starts in his
+chronological arrangement is the date implied by the position of the
+solstitial points mentioned in a little treatise, the <i>G</i>yotisha, a
+date which has been accurately fixed by the Rev. E. Main at 1186
+<span class="smcap">b.c.</span><a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> Dr. Haug fully admits that such an observation was an
+absolute necessity for the Brahmans in regulating their calendar:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>'The proper time [he writes] of commencing and ending their
+sacrifices, principally the so-called Sattras or sacrificial
+sessions, could not be known without an accurate knowledge
+of the time of the sun's northern and southern progress. The
+knowledge of the calendar forms such an essential part of
+the ritual, that many important conditions of the latter
+cannot be carried out without the former. The sacrifices are
+allowed to commence only at certain lucky constellations,
+and in certain months. So, for instance, as a rule, no great
+sacrifice can commence during the sun's southern progress;
+for this is regarded up to the present day as an unlucky
+period by the Brahmans, in which even to die is believed to
+be a misfortune. The great sacrifices generally take place
+in spring in the months of <span class="sp1"><i>K</i>aitra</span> and <span class="sp1">Vai<i>s</i>&acirc;kha</span> (April
+and May). The Sattras, which lasted for one year, were, as
+one may learn from a careful perusal of the fourth book of
+the Aitareya-br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>a, nothing but an imitation of the
+sun's yearly course. They were divided into two distinct
+parts, each consisting of six months of thirty days each; in
+the midst of both was the <span class="sp1">Vishuvat</span>, i. e. equator or central
+day, cutting the whole Sattra into two halves. The
+ceremonies were in both halves exactly the same, but they
+were in the latter half performed in an inverted order.'</p></div>
+
+<p>This argument of Dr. Haug's seems correct as far as the date of the
+establishment of the ceremonial is concerned, and it is curious that
+several scholars who have lately written on the origin of the Vedic
+calendar, and the possibility of its foreign origin, should not have
+perceived the intimate relation between that calendar and the whole
+ceremonial system of the Brahmans. Dr. Haug is, no doubt,<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> perfectly right when he claims the
+invention of the Nakshatras, or the Lunar Zodiac of the Brahmans, if
+we may so call it, for India; he may be right also when he assigns the
+twelfth century as the earliest date for the origin of that simple
+astronomical system on which the calendar of the Vedic festivals is
+founded. He calls the theories of others, who have lately tried to
+claim the first discovery of the Nakshatras for China, Babylon, or
+some other Asiatic country, absurd, and takes no notice of the
+sanguine expectations of certain scholars, who imagine they will soon
+have discovered the very names of the Indian Nakshatras in Babylonian
+inscriptions. But does it follow that, because the ceremonial
+presupposes an observation of the solstitial points in about the
+twelfth century, therefore the theological works in which that
+ceremonial is explained, commented upon, and furnished with all kinds
+of mysterious meanings, were composed at that early date? We see no
+stringency whatever in this argument of Dr. Haug's, and we think it
+will be necessary to look for other anchors by which to fix the
+drifting wrecks of Vedic literature.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Haug's two volumes, containing the text of the
+Aitareya-br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>a, translation, and notes, would probably never have
+been published, if they had not received the patronage of the Bombay
+Government. However interesting the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as may be to students of
+Indian literature, they are of small interest to the general reader.
+The greater portion of them is simply twaddle, and what is worse,
+theological twaddle. No person who is not acquainted beforehand with
+the place which the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as fill in the history of the Indian
+mind, could read more than ten pages without being disgusted. To the
+historian, however, and to the philosopher they are of infinite
+importance&mdash;to the former as a real link between the ancient and
+modern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> literature of India; to the latter as a most important phase
+in the growth of the human mind, in its passage from health to
+disease. Such books, which no circulating library would touch, are
+just the books which Governments, if possible, or Universities and
+learned societies, should patronise; and if we congratulate Dr. Haug
+on having secured the enlightened patronage of the Bombay Government,
+we may congratulate Mr. Howard and the Bombay Government on having, in
+this instance, secured the services of a bon&acirc; fide scholar like Dr.
+Haug.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></p>
+
+<p class="f3"><i>March, 1864.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> 'The Aitareya-br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>am of the Rig-veda,' edited and
+translated by Martin Haug, Ph.D., Superintendent of Sanskrit Studies
+in the Poona College. Bombay, 1863. London: Tr&uuml;bner &amp; Co.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> By an accident two lines containing the names of the
+sixteen priests in my 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature' (p.
+469) have been misplaced. &Acirc;gn&icirc;dhra and Pot<i>r</i>i ought to range with the
+Brahmans, Pratihart<i>r</i>i and Subrahma<i>n</i>ya with the Udg&acirc;t<i>r</i>is. See
+&Acirc;<i>s</i>val. S&ucirc;tras IV. 1 (p. 286, 'Bibliotheca Indica'); and M. M.,
+Todtenbestattung, p. xlvi. It might be said, however, that the
+Agnimindha was meant as one of the Hotr&acirc;<i>s</i>a<i>m</i>sins, or one of the
+Seven Priests, the Sapta Hotars. See Haug, Aitareya-br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>a, vol.
+i. p. 58.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Many such allusions were collected in my 'History of
+Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. 486 seq.; some of them have lately
+been independently discovered by others.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> See preface to the fourth volume of my edition of the
+Rig-veda.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> A few paragraphs in this review, in which allusion was
+made to certain charges of what might be called 'literary rattening,'
+brought by Dr. Haug against some Sanskrit scholars, and more
+particularly against the editor of the 'Indische Studien' at Berlin,
+have here been omitted, as no longer of any interest. They may be
+seen, however, in the ninth volume of that periodical, where my review
+has been reprinted, though, as usual, very incorrectly. It was not I
+who first brought these accusations, nor should I have felt justified
+in alluding to them, if the evidence placed before me had not
+convinced me that there was some foundation for them. I am willing to
+admit that the language of Dr. Haug and others may have been too
+severe, but few will think that a very loud and boisterous denial is
+the best way to show that the strictures were quite undeserved. If, by
+alluding to these matters and frankly expressing my disapproval of
+them, I have given unnecessary pain, I sincerely regret it. So much
+for the past. As to the future, care, I trust, will be taken,&mdash;for the
+sake of the good fame of German scholarship, which, though living in
+England, I have quite as much at heart as if living in Germany,&mdash;not
+to give even the faintest countenance to similar suspicions. If my
+remarks should help in producing that result, I shall be glad to bow
+my head in silence under the vials of wrath that have been poured upon
+it.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V.</h2>
+
+<h3>ON THE STUDY</h3>
+<h4>OF THE</h4>
+<h2>ZEND-AVESTA IN INDIA.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+<p>anskrit scholars resident in India enjoy considerable advantages over
+those who devote themselves to the study of the ancient literature of
+the Brahmans in this country, or in France and Germany. Although
+Sanskrit is no longer spoken by the great mass of the people, there
+are few large towns in which we do not meet with some more or less
+learned natives&mdash;the pandits, or, as they used to be called,
+pundits&mdash;men who have passed through a regular apprenticeship in
+Sanskrit grammar, and who generally devote themselves to the study of
+some special branch of Sanskrit literature, whether law, or logic, or
+rhetoric, or astronomy, or anything else. These men, who formerly
+lived on the liberality of the Rajahs and on the superstition of the
+people, find it more and more difficult to make a living among their
+own countrymen, and are glad to be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>employed by any civilian or
+officer who takes an interest in their ancient lore. Though not
+scholars in our sense of the word, and therefore of little use as
+teachers of the language, they are extremely useful to more advanced
+students, who are able to set them to do that kind of work for which
+they are fit, and to check their labours by judicious supervision. All
+our great Sanskrit scholars, from Sir William Jones to H.H. Wilson,
+have fully acknowledged their obligations to their native assistants.
+They used to work in Calcutta, Benares, and Bombay with a pandit at
+each elbow, instead of the grammar and the dictionary which European
+scholars have to consult at every difficult passage. Whenever an
+English Sahib undertook to edit or translate a Sanskrit text, these
+pandits had to copy and to collate MSS., to make a verbal index, to
+produce parallel passages from other writers, and, in many cases, to
+supply a translation into Hindustani, Bengali, or into their own
+peculiar English. In fact, if it had not been for the assistance thus
+fully and freely rendered by native scholars, Sanskrit scholarship
+would never have made the rapid progress which, during less than a
+century, it has made, not only in India, but in almost every country
+of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>With this example to follow, it is curious that hardly any attempt
+should have been made by English residents, particularly in the Bombay
+Presidency, to avail themselves of the assistance of the Parsis for
+the purpose of mastering the ancient language and literature of the
+worshippers of Ormuzd. If it is remembered that, next to Sanskrit,
+there is no more ancient language than Zend&mdash;and that, next to the
+Veda, there is, among the Aryan nations, no more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> primitive religious
+code than the Zend-Avesta, it is surprising that so little should have
+been done by the members of the Indian Civil Service in this important
+branch of study. It is well known that such was the enthusiasm kindled
+in the heart of Anquetil Duperron by the sight of a facsimile of a
+page of the Zend-Avesta, that in order to secure a passage to India,
+he enlisted as a private soldier, and spent six years (1754-1761) in
+different parts of Western India, trying to collect MSS. of the sacred
+writings of Zoroaster, and to acquire from the Dustoors a knowledge of
+their contents. His example was followed, though in a less adventurous
+spirit, by Rask, a learned Dane, who after collecting at Bombay many
+valuable MSS. for the Danish Government, wrote in 1826 his essay 'On
+the Age and Genuineness of the Zend Language.' Another Dane, at
+present one of the most learned Zend scholars in Europe, Westergaard,
+likewise proceeded to India (1841-1843), before he undertook to
+publish his edition of the religious books of the Zoroastrians.
+(Copenhagen, 1852.) During all this time, while French and German
+scholars, such as Burnouf, Bopp, and Spiegel, were hard at work in
+deciphering the curious remains of the Magian religion, hardly
+anything was contributed by English students living in the very heart
+of Parsiism at Bombay and Poona.</p>
+
+<p>We are all the more pleased, therefore, that a young German scholar,
+Dr. Haug&mdash;who through the judicious recommendation of Mr. Howard,
+Director of Public Instruction in the Bombay Presidency, was appointed
+to a Professorship of Sanskrit in the Poona College&mdash;should have
+grasped the opportunity, and devoted himself to a thorough study of
+the sacred literature of the Parsis. He went to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> India well prepared
+for his task, and he has not disappointed the hopes which those who
+knew him entertained of him on his departure from Germany. Unless he
+had been master of his subject before he went to Poona, the assistance
+of the Dustoors would have been of little avail to him. But knowing
+all that could be known in Europe of the Zend language and literature,
+he knew what questions to ask, he could check every answer, and he
+could learn with his eyes what it is almost impossible to learn from
+books&mdash;namely, the religious ceremonial and the ritual observances
+which form so considerable an element in the Vendidad and Vispered.
+The result of his studies is now before us in a volume of 'Essays on
+the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsees,' published
+at Bombay, 1862. It is a volume of only three hundred and sixty-eight
+pages, and sells in England for one guinea. Nevertheless, to the
+student of Zend it is one of the cheapest books ever published. It
+contains four Essays: 1. History of the Researches into the Sacred
+Writings and Religion of the Parsees from the earliest times down to
+the present; 2. Outline of a Grammar of the Zend Language; 3. The
+Zend-Avesta, or the Scripture of the Parsees; 4. Origin and
+Development of the Zoroastrian Religion. The most important portion is
+the Outline of the Zend Grammar; for, though a mere outline, it is the
+first systematic grammatical analysis of that curious language. In
+other languages, we generally begin by learning the grammar, and then
+make our way gradually through the literature. In Zend, the
+grammatical terminations had first to be discovered by a careful
+anatomy of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> the literature. The Parsis themselves possessed no such
+work. Even their most learned priests are satisfied with learning the
+Zend-Avesta by heart, and with acquiring some idea of its import by
+means of a Pehlevi translation, which dates from the Sassanian period,
+or of a Sanskrit translation of still later date. Hence the
+translation of the Zend-Avesta published by Anquetil Duperron, with
+the assistance of Dustoor D&acirc;r&acirc;b, was by no means trustworthy. It was,
+in fact, a French translation of a Persian rendering of a Pehlevi
+version of the Zend original. It was Burnouf who, aided by his
+knowledge of Sanskrit, and his familiarity with the principles of
+comparative grammar, approached, for the first time, the very words of
+the Zend original. He had to conquer every inch of ground for himself,
+and his 'Commentaire sur le Yasna' is, in fact, like the deciphering
+of one long inscription, only surpassed in difficulty by his later
+decipherments of the cuneiform inscriptions of the Ach&aelig;menian monarchs
+of Persia. Aided by the labours of Burnouf and others, Dr. Haug has at
+last succeeded in putting together the <span class="sp1">disjecta membra poet&aelig;</span>, and we
+have now in his <span class="sp1">Outline</span>, not indeed a grammar like that of P&acirc;<i>n</i>ini
+for Sanskrit, yet a sufficient skeleton of what was once a living
+language, not inferior, in richness and delicacy, even to the idiom of
+the Vedas.</p>
+
+<p>There are, at present, five editions, more or less complete, of the
+Zend-Avesta. The first was lithographed under Burnouf's direction, and
+published at Paris 1829-1843. The second edition of the text,
+transcribed into Roman characters, appeared at Leipzig 1850, published
+by Professor Brockhaus. The third edition, in Zend characters, was
+given to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> world by Professor Spiegel, 1851; and about the same
+time a fourth edition was undertaken by Professor Westergaard, at
+Copenhagen, 1852 to 1854. There are one or two editions of the
+Zend-Avesta, published in India, with Guzerati translations, which we
+have not seen, but which are frequently quoted by native scholars. A
+German translation of the Zend-Avesta was undertaken by Professor
+Spiegel, far superior in accuracy to that of Anquetil Duperron, yet in
+the main based on the Pehlevi version. Portions of the ancient text
+had been minutely analysed and translated by Dr. Haug, even before his
+departure for the East.</p>
+
+<p>The Zend-Avesta is not a voluminous work. We still call it the
+Zend-Avesta, though we are told that its proper title is <span class="sp1">Avesta Zend</span>,
+nor does it seem at all likely that the now familiar name will ever be
+surrendered for the more correct one. Who speaks of Cassius Dio,
+though we are told that Dio Cassius is wrong? Nor do we feel at all
+convinced that the name of <span class="sp1">Avesta Zend</span> is the original and only
+correct name. According to the Parsis, <span class="sp1">Avesta</span> means sacred text, <span class="sp1">Zend</span>
+its Pehlevi translation. But in the Pehlevi translations themselves,
+the original work of Zoroaster is spoken of as <span class="sp1">Avesta Zend</span>. Why it is
+so called by the Pehlevi translators, we are nowhere told by
+themselves, and many conjectures have, in consequence, been started by
+almost every Zend scholar. Dr. Haug supposes that the earliest
+portions of the Zend-Avesta ought to be called <span class="sp1">Avesta</span>, the later
+portions <span class="sp1">Zend</span>&mdash;Zend meaning, according to him, commentary,
+explanation, gloss. Neither the word <span class="sp1">Avesta</span> nor <span class="sp1">Zend</span>, however, occurs
+in the original Zend texts, and though <span class="sp1">Avesta</span> seems to be the Sanskrit
+<span class="sp1">avasth&acirc;</span>, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> Pehlevi <span class="sp1">apestak</span>, in the sense of 'authorised text,' the
+etymology of <span class="sp1">Zend</span>, as derived from a supposed <span class="sp1">zanti</span>, Sanskrit <span class="sp1"><i>gn</i>&acirc;ti</span>,
+knowledge, is not free from serious objections. Avesta Zend was most
+likely a traditional name, hardly understood even at the time of the
+Pehlevi translators, who retained it in their writings. It was
+possibly misinterpreted by them, as many other Zend words have been at
+their hands, and may have been originally the Sanskrit word
+<span class="sp1"><i>k</i>handas</span>,<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> which is applied by the Brahmans to the sacred hymns of
+the Veda. Certainty on such a point is impossible; but as it is but
+fair to give a preference to the conjectures of those who are most
+familiar with the subject, we quote the following explanation of Dr.
+Haug:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The meaning of the term "Zend" varied at different periods.
+Originally it meant the interpretation of the sacred texts
+descended from Zarathustra and his disciples by the
+successors of the prophet. In the course of time, these
+interpretations being regarded as equally sacred with the
+original texts, both were then called Avesta. Both having
+become unintelligible to the majority of the Zoroastrians,
+in consequence of their language having died out, they
+required a Zend or explanation again. This new Zend was
+furnished by the most learned priests of the Sassanian
+period in the shape of a translation into the vernacular
+language of Persia (Pehlevi) in those days, which
+translation being the only source to the priests of the
+present time whence to derive any knowledge of the old
+texts, is therefore the only Zend or explanation they know
+of.... The name <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>Pazend, to be met with frequently in
+connection with Avesta and Zend, denotes the further
+explanation of the Zend doctrine..... The Pazend language is
+the same as the so-called Parsi, i. e. the ancient Persian,
+as written till about the time of Firdusi, 1000 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>'</p></div>
+
+<p>Whatever we may think of the nomenclature thus advocated by Dr. Haug,
+we must acknowledge in the fullest manner his great merit in
+separating for the first time the more ancient from the more modern
+parts of the Zend-Avesta. Though the existence of different dialects
+in the ancient texts was pointed out by Spiegel, and although the
+metrical portions of the Ya<i>s</i>na had been clearly marked by
+Westergaard, it is nevertheless Haug's great achievement to have
+extracted these early relics, to have collected them, and to have
+attempted a complete translation of them, as far as such an attempt
+could be carried out at the present moment. His edition of the
+<span class="sp1">G&acirc;th&acirc;s</span>&mdash;for this is the name of the ancient metrical portions&mdash;marks
+an epoch in the history of Zend scholarship, and the importance of the
+recovery of these genuine relics of Zoroaster's religion has been well
+brought out by Bunsen in the least known of his books, 'Gott in der
+Geschichte.' We by no means think that the translations here offered
+by Dr. Haug are final. We hope, on the contrary, that he will go on
+with the work he has so well begun, and that he will not rest till he
+has removed every dark speck that still covers the image of
+Zoroaster's primitive faith. Many of the passages as translated by him
+are as clear as daylight, and carry conviction by their very
+clearness. Others, however, are obscure, hazy, meaningless. We feel
+that they must have been intended for something else, something more
+definite and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> forcible, though we cannot tell what to do with the
+words as they stand. Sense, after all, is the great test of
+translation. We must feel convinced that there was good sense in these
+ancient poems, otherwise mankind would not have taken the trouble to
+preserve them; and if we cannot discover good sense in them, it must
+be either our fault, or the words as we now read them were not the
+words uttered by the ancient prophets of the world. The following are
+a few specimens of Dr. Haug's translations, in which the reader will
+easily discover the different hues of certainty and uncertainty, of
+sense and mere verbiage:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>1. That I will ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God!
+whether your friend (Sraosha) be willing to recite his own
+hymn as prayer to my friend (Frashaostra or Vist&acirc;spa), thou
+Wise! and whether he should come to us with the good mind,
+to perform for us true actions of friendship.</p>
+
+<p>2. That I will ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God!
+How arose the best present life (this world)? By what means
+are the present things (the world) to be supported? That
+spirit, the holy (<span class="sp1">Vohu mano</span>), O true wise spirit! is the
+guardian of the beings to ward off from them every evil; He
+is the promoter of all life.</p>
+
+<p>3. That I will ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God!
+Who was in the beginning the Father and Creator of truth?
+Who made the sun and stars? Who causes the moon to increase
+and wane if not Thou? This I wish to know, except what I
+already know.</p>
+
+<p>4. That I will ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God!
+Who is holding the earth and the skies above it? Who made
+the waters and the trees of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> field? Who is in the winds
+and storms that they so quickly run? Who is the Creator of
+the good-minded beings, thou Wise?</p></div>
+
+<p>This is a short specimen of the earliest portion of the Zend-Avesta.
+The following is an account of one of the latest, the so-called <span class="sp1">Ormuzd
+Yasht</span>:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Zarathustra asked Ahuramazda after the most effectual spell
+to guard against the influence of evil spirits. He was
+answered by the Supreme Spirit, that the utterance of the
+different names of Ahuramazda protects best from evil.
+Thereupon Zarathustra begged Ahuramazda to communicate to
+him these names. He then enumerates twenty. The first is
+<span class="sp1">Ahmi</span>, i. e. "I am;" the fourth, <span class="sp1">Asha-vahista</span>, i. e. "the
+best purity;" the sixth, "I am wisdom;" the eighth, "I am
+knowledge;" the twelfth, <span class="sp1">Ahura</span>, i. e. "living;" the
+twentieth, "I am who I am, Mazdao."'</p></div>
+
+<p>Ahuramazda says then further:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'"If you call me at day or at night by these names, I shall
+come to assist and help you; the angel Serosh will then
+come, the genii of the waters and the trees." For the utter
+defeat of the evil spirits, bad men, witches, Peris, a
+series of other names are suggested to Zarathustra, such as
+protector, guardian, spirit, the holiest, the best
+fire-priest, etc.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Whether the striking coincidence between one of the suggested names of
+Ahuramazda, namely, 'I am who I am,' and the explanation of the name
+Jehova, Exodus iii. 14, 'I am that I am,' is accidental or not, must
+depend on the age that can be assigned to the <span class="sp1">Ormuzd Yasht</span>. The
+chronological arrangement, however, of the various portions of the
+Zend-Avesta is as yet merely tentative, and these questions must
+remain for future consideration. Dr. Haug points out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> other
+similarities between the doctrines of Zoroaster and the Old and New
+Testaments. 'The Zoroastrian religion,' he writes, 'exhibits a very
+close affinity to, or rather identity with, several important
+doctrines of the Mosaic religion and Christianity, such as the
+personality and attributes of the devil, and the resurrection of the
+dead.' Neither of these doctrines, however, would seem to be
+characteristic of the Old or New Testament, and the resurrection of
+the dead is certainly to be found by implication only, and is nowhere
+distinctly asserted, in the religious books of Moses.</p>
+
+<p>There are other points on which we should join issue with Dr.
+Haug&mdash;as, for instance, when, on page 17, he calls the Zend the elder
+sister of Sanskrit. This seems to us in the very teeth of the evidence
+so carefully brought together by himself in his Zend grammar. If he
+means the modern Sanskrit, as distinguished from the Vedic, his
+statement would be right to some extent; but even thus, it would be
+easy to show many grammatical forms in the later Sanskrit more
+primitive than their corresponding forms in Zend. These, however, are
+minor points compared with the great results of his labours which Dr.
+Haug has brought together in these four Essays; and we feel certain
+that all who are interested in the study of ancient language and
+ancient religion will look forward with the greatest expectations to
+Dr. Haug's continued investigations of the language, the literature,
+the ceremonial, and the religion of the descendants of Zoroaster.</p>
+
+<p class="f3"><i>December, 1862.</i></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> 'Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion
+of the Parsees.' By Martin Haug, Dr. Phil. Bombay, 1862.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> See page 84.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI.</h2>
+
+<h2>PROGRESS OF ZEND SCHOLARSHIP.<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>here are certain branches of philological research which seem to be
+constantly changing, shifting, and, we hope, progressing. After the
+key to the interpretation of ancient inscriptions has been found, it
+by no means follows that every word can at once be definitely
+explained, or every sentence correctly construed. Thus it happens that
+the same hieroglyphic or cuneiform text is rendered differently by
+different scholars; nay, that the same scholar proposes a new
+rendering not many years after his first attempt at a translation has
+been published. And what applies to the decipherment of inscriptions
+applies with equal force to the translation of ancient texts. A
+translation of the hymns of the Veda, or of the Zend-Avesta, and, we
+may add, of the Old Testament too, requires exactly the same process
+as the deciphering of an inscription. The only safe way of finding the
+real meaning of words in the sacred texts of the Brahmans, the
+Zoroastrians, or the Jews, is to compare every passage in which the
+same word occurs, and to look for a meaning that is equally applicable
+to all, and can at the same time be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>defended on grammatical and
+etymological grounds. This is no doubt a tedious process, nor can it
+be free from uncertainty; but it is an uncertainty inherent in the
+subject itself, for which it would be unfair to blame those by whose
+genius and perseverance so much light has been shed on the darkest
+pages of ancient history. To those who are not acquainted with the
+efforts by which Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and Rawlinson unravelled
+the inscriptions of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, it may seem
+inexplicable, for instance, how an inscription which at one time was
+supposed to confirm the statement, known from Herodotus, that Darius
+obtained the sovereignty of Persia by the neighing of his horse,
+should now yield so very different a meaning. Herodotus relates that
+after the assassination of Smerdis the six conspirators agreed to
+confer the royal dignity on him whose horse should neigh first at
+sunrise. The horse of Darius neighed first, and he was accordingly
+elected king of Persia. After his election, Herodotus states that
+Darius erected a stone monument containing the figure of a horseman,
+with the following inscription: 'Darius, the son of Hystaspes,
+obtained the kingdom of the Persians by the virtue of his horse
+(giving its name), and of Oibareus, his groom.' Lassen translated one
+of the cuneiform inscriptions, copied originally by Niebuhr from a
+huge slab built in the southern wall of the great platform at
+Persepolis, in the following manner: 'Auramazdis magnus est. Is
+maximus est deorum. Ipse Darium regem constituit, benevolens imperium
+obtulit. Ex voluntate Auramazdis Darius rex sum. Generosus sum Darius
+rex hujus regionis Persic&aelig;; hanc mihi Auramazdis obtulit "hoc
+pom&oelig;rio ope equi (Choaspis)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> clar&aelig; virtutis."' This translation was
+published in 1844, and the arguments by which Lassen supported it, in
+the sixth volume of the 'Zeitschrift f&uuml;r die Kunde des Morgenlandes,'
+may be read with interest and advantage even now when we know that
+this eminent scholar was mistaken in his analysis. The first step
+towards a more correct translation was made by Professor Holtzmann,
+who in 1845 pointed out that Smerdis was murdered at Susa, not at
+Persepolis; and that only six days later Darius was elected king of
+Persia, which happened again at Susa, and not at Persepolis. The
+monument, therefore, which Darius erected in the &#960;&#961;&#959;&#7937;&#963;&#964;&#949;&#953;&#959;&#957;,
+or suburb, in the place where the fortunate event which led to his
+elevation occurred, and the inscription recording the event <span class="sp1">in loco</span>,
+could not well be looked for at Persepolis. But far more important was
+the evidence derived from a more careful analysis of the words of the
+inscription itself. <span class="sp1">Niba</span>, which Lassen translated as <span class="sp1">pom&oelig;rium</span>,
+occurs in three other places, where it certainly cannot mean <span class="sp1">suburb</span>.
+It seems to be an adjective meaning splendid, beautiful. Besides, <span class="sp1">nib&acirc;</span>
+is a nominative singular in the feminine, and so is the pronoun <span class="sp1">hy&acirc;</span>
+which precedes, and the two words which follow it&mdash;<span class="sp1">uva<i>s</i>p&acirc;</span> and
+<span class="sp1">umartiy&acirc;</span>. Professor Holtzmann translated therefore the same sentence
+which Professor Lassen had rendered by 'hoc pom&oelig;rio ope equi
+(Choaspis) clar&aelig; virtutis,' by 'qu&aelig; nitida, herbosa, celebris est,' a
+translation which is in the main correct, and has been adopted
+afterwards both by Sir H. Rawlinson and M. Oppert. Sir H. Rawlinson
+translates the whole passage as follows: 'This province of Persia
+which Ormazd has granted to me, which is illustrious, abounding in
+good horses,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> producing good men.' Thus vanished the horse of Darius,
+and the curious confirmation which the cuneiform inscription was at
+one time supposed to lend to the Persian legend recorded by Herodotus.</p>
+
+<p>It would be easy to point out many passages of this kind, and to use
+them in order to throw discredit on the whole method by which these
+and other inscriptions have lately been deciphered. It would not
+require any great display of forensic or parliamentary eloquence, to
+convince the public at large, by means of such evidence, that all the
+labours of Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and Rawlinson had been in vain,
+and to lay down once for all the general principle that the original
+meaning of inscriptions written in a dead language, of which the
+tradition is once lost, can never be recovered. Fortunately, questions
+of this kind are not settled by eloquent pleading or by the votes of
+majorities, but, on the contrary, by the independent judgment of the
+few who are competent to judge. The fact that different scholars
+should differ in their interpretations, or that the same scholars
+should reject his former translation, and adopt a new one that
+possibly may have to be surrendered again as soon as new light can be
+thrown on points hitherto doubtful and obscure&mdash;all this, which in the
+hands of those who argue for victory and not for truth, constitutes so
+formidable a weapon, and appeals so strongly to the prejudices of the
+many, produces very little effect on the minds of those who understand
+the reason of these changes, and to whom each new change represents
+but a new step in advance in the discovery of truth.</p>
+
+<p>Nor should the fact be overlooked that, if there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> seems to be less
+change in the translation of the books of the Old Testament for
+instance, or of Homer, it is due in a great measure to the absence of
+that critical exactness at which the decipherers of ancient
+inscriptions and the translators of the Veda and Zend-Avesta aim in
+rendering each word that comes before them. If we compared the
+translation of the Septuagint with the authorised version of the Old
+Testament, we should occasionally find discrepancies nearly as
+startling as any that can be found in the different translations of
+the cuneiform inscriptions, or of the Veda and Zend-Avesta. In the
+Book of Job, the Vulgate translates the exhortation of Job's wife by
+'Bless God and die;' the English version by 'Curse God and die;' the
+Septuagint by 'Say some word to the Lord and die.' Though, at the time
+when the Seventy translated the Old Testament, Hebrew could hardly be
+called a dead language, yet there were then many of its words the
+original meaning of which even the most learned rabbi would have had
+great difficulty in defining with real accuracy. The meaning of words
+changes imperceptibly and irresistibly. Even where there is a
+literature, and a printed literature like that of modern Europe, four
+or five centuries work such a change that few even of the most learned
+divines in England would find it easy to read and to understand
+accurately a theological treatise written in English four hundred
+years ago. The same happened, and happened to a far greater extent, in
+ancient languages. Nor was the sacred character attributed to certain
+writings any safeguard. On the contrary, greater violence is done by
+successive interpreters to sacred writings than to any other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> relics
+of ancient literature. Ideas grow and change, yet each generation
+tries to find its own ideas reflected in the sacred pages of their
+early prophets, and, in addition to the ordinary influences which blur
+and obscure the sharp features of old words, artificial influences are
+here at work distorting the natural expression of words which have
+been invested with a sacred authority. Passages in the Veda or
+Zend-Avesta which do not bear on religious or philosophical doctrines
+are generally explained simply and naturally, even by the latest of
+native commentators. But as soon as any word or sentence can be so
+turned as to support a doctrine, however modern, or a precept, however
+irrational, the simplest phrases are tortured and mangled till at last
+they are made to yield their assent to ideas the most foreign to the
+minds of the authors of the Veda and Zend-Avesta.</p>
+
+<p>To those who take an interest in these matters we may recommend a
+small Essay lately published by the Rev. R. G. S. Browne&mdash;the 'Mosaic
+Cosmogony'&mdash;in which the author endeavours to establish a literal
+translation of the first chapter of Genesis. Touching the first verb
+that occurs in the Bible, he writes: 'What is the meaning or scope of
+the Hebrew verb, in our authorised version, rendered by "created?" To
+English ears and understandings the sound comes naturally, and by long
+use irresistibly, as the representation of an ex nihilo creation. But,
+in the teeth of all the Rabbinical and Cabbalistic fancies of Jewish
+commentators, and with reverential deference to modern criticism on
+the Hebrew Bible, it is not so. R. D. Kimchi, in his endeavour to
+ascertain the shades of difference existing between the terms used in
+the Mosaic cosmogony, has assumed that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> our Hebrew verb <span class="sp1">bar&acirc;</span> has the
+full signification of <span class="sp1">ex nihilo creavit</span>. Our own Castell, a profound
+and self-denying scholar has entertained the same groundless notion.
+And even our illustrious Bryan Walton was not inaccessible to this
+oblique ray of Rabbinical or <span class="sp1">ignis fatuus</span>.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Browne then proceeds to quote Gesenius, who gives as the primary
+meaning of <span class="sp1">bar&acirc;</span>, he cut, cut out, carved, planed down, polished; and
+he refers to Lee, who characterizes it as a silly theory that <span class="sp1">bar&acirc;</span>
+meant to create <span class="sp1">ex nihilo</span>. In Joshua xvii. 15 and 18, the same verb is
+used in the sense of cutting down trees; in Psalm civ. 30 it is
+translated by 'Thou renewest the face of the earth.' In Arabic, too,
+according to Lane, bar&acirc; means properly, though not always, to create
+out of pre-existing matter. All this shows that in the verb <span class="sp1">bar&acirc;</span>, as
+in the Sanskrit <span class="sp1">tvaksh</span> or <span class="sp1">taksh</span>, there is no trace of the meaning
+assigned to it by later scholars, of a creation out of nothing. That
+idea in its definiteness was a modern idea, most likely called forth
+by the contact between Jews and Greeks at Alexandria. It was probably
+in contradistinction to the Greek notion of matter as co-eternal with
+the Creator, that the Jews, to whom Jehovah was all in all, asserted,
+for the first time deliberately, that God had made all things out of
+nothing. This became afterwards the received and orthodox view of
+Jewish and Christian divines, though the verb <span class="sp1">bar&acirc;</span>, so far from
+lending any support to this theory, would rather show that, in the
+minds of those whom Moses addressed and whose language he spoke, it
+could only have called forth the simple conception of fashioning or
+arranging&mdash;if, indeed, it called forth any more definite conception
+than the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> general and vague one conveyed by the &#960;&#959;&#953;&#949;&#8150;&#957; of the
+Septuagint. To find out how the words of the Old Testament were
+understood by those to whom they were originally addressed is a task
+attempted by very few interpreters of the Bible. The great majority of
+readers transfer without hesitation the ideas which they connect with
+words as used in the nineteenth century to the mind of Moses or his
+contemporaries, forgetting altogether the distance which divides their
+language and their thoughts from the thoughts and language of the
+wandering tribes of Israel.</p>
+
+<p>How many words, again, there are in Homer which have indeed a
+traditional interpretation, as given by our dictionaries and
+commentaries, but the exact purport of which is completely lost, is
+best known to Greek scholars. It is easy enough to translate &#960;&#959;&#955;&#7953;&#956;&#959;&#953;&#959; &#947;&#7953;&#966;&#965;&#961;&#945;&#953; by the bridges of war, but what Homer really meant
+by these &#947;&#7953;&#966;&#965;&#961;&#945;&#953; has never been explained. It is extremely
+doubtful whether bridges, in our sense of the word, were known at all
+at the time of Homer; and even if it could be proved that Homer used
+&#947;&#7953;&#966;&#965;&#961;&#945;&#953; in the sense of a dam, the etymology, i. e., the
+earliest history of the word, would still remain obscure and doubtful.
+It is easy, again, to see that &#7985;&#949;&#961;&#8001;&#962; in Greek means
+something like the English sacred. But how, if it did so, the same
+adjective could likewise be applied to a fish or to a chariot, is a
+question which, if it is to be answered at all, can only be answered
+by an etymological analysis of the word.<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> To say that sacred <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>may
+mean <span class="sp1">marvellous</span>, and therefore big, is saying nothing, particularly as
+Homer does not speak of catching big fish, but of catching fish in
+general.</p>
+
+<p>These considerations&mdash;which might be carried much further, but which,
+we are afraid, have carried us away too far from our original
+subject&mdash;were suggested to us while reading a lecture lately published
+by Dr. Haug, and originally delivered by him at Bombay, in 1864,
+before an almost exclusively Parsi audience. In that lecture Dr. Haug
+gives a new translation of ten short paragraphs of the Zend-Avesta,
+which he had explained and translated in his 'Essays on the Sacred
+Language of the Parsees,' published in 1862. To an ordinary reader the
+difference between the two translations, published within the space of
+two years, might certainly be perplexing, and calculated to shake his
+faith in the soundness of a method that can lead to such varying
+results. Nor can it be denied that, if scholars who are engaged in
+these researches are bent on representing their last translation as
+final and as admitting of no further improvement, the public has a
+right to remind them that 'finality' is as dangerous a thing in
+scholarship as in politics. Considering the difficulty of translating
+the pages of the Zend-Avesta, we can never hope to have every sentence
+of it rendered into clear and intelligible English. Those who for the
+first time reduced the sacred traditions of the Zoroastrians to
+writing were separated by more than a thousand years from the time of
+their original composition. After that came all the vicissitudes to
+which manuscripts are exposed during the process of being copied by
+more or less ignorant scribes. The most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> ancient MSS. of the
+Zend-Avesta date from the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is
+true there is an early translation of the Zend-Avesta, the Pehlevi
+translation, and a later one in Sanskrit by Neriosengh. But the
+Pehlevi translation, which was made under the auspices of the
+Sassanian kings of Persia, served only to show how completely the
+literal and grammatical meaning of the Zend-Avesta was lost even at
+that time, in the third century after Christ; while the Sanskrit
+translation was clearly made, not from the original, but from the
+Pehlevi. It is true, also, that even in more modern times the Parsis
+of Bombay were able to give to Anquetil Duperron and other Europeans
+what they considered as a translation of the Zend-Avesta in modern
+Persian. But a scholar like Burnouf, who endeavoured for the first
+time to give an account of every word in the Zend text, to explain
+each grammatical termination, to parse every sentence, and to
+establish the true meaning of each term by an etymological analysis
+and by a comparison of cognate words in Sanskrit, was able to derive
+but scant assistance from these traditional translations. Professor
+Spiegel, to whom we owe a complete edition and translation of the
+Zend-Avesta, and who has devoted the whole of his life to the
+elucidation of the Zoroastrian religion, attributes a higher value to
+the tradition of the Parsis than Dr. Haug. But he also is obliged to
+admit that he could ascribe no greater authority to these traditional
+translations and glosses than a Biblical scholar might allow to
+Rabbinical commentaries. All scholars are agreed in fact on this, that
+whether the tradition be right or wrong, it requires in either case to
+be confirmed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> by an independent grammatical and etymological analysis
+of the original text. Such an analysis is no doubt as liable to error
+as the traditional translation itself, but it possesses this
+advantage, that it gives reasons for every word that has to be
+translated, and for every sentence that has to be construed. It is an
+excellent discipline to the mind even where the results at which we
+arrive are doubtful or erroneous, and it has imparted to these studies
+a scientific value and general interest which they could not otherwise
+have acquired.</p>
+
+<p>We shall give a few specimens of the translations proposed by
+different scholars of one or two verses of the Zend-Avesta. We cannot
+here enter into the grammatical arguments by which each of these
+translations is supported. We only wish to show what is the present
+state of Zend scholarship, and though we would by no means disguise
+the fact of its somewhat chaotic character, yet we do not hesitate to
+affirm that, in spite of the conflict of the opinions of different
+scholars, and in spite of the fluctuation of systems apparently
+opposed to each other, progress may be reported, and a firm hope
+expressed that the essential doctrines of one of the earliest forms of
+religion may in time be recovered and placed before us in their
+original purity and simplicity. We begin with the Pehlevi translation
+of a passage in Ya<i>s</i>na, 45:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Thus the religion is to be proclaimed; now give an
+attentive hearing, and now listen, that is, keep your ear in
+readiness, make your works and speeches gentle. Those who
+have wished from nigh and far to study the religion, may now
+do so. For now all is manifest, that Anhuma (Ormazd)
+created, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> Anhuma created all these beings; that at the
+second time, at the (time of the) future body, Aharman does
+not destroy (the life of) the worlds. Aharman made evil
+desire and wickedness to spread through his tongue.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Professor Spiegel, in 1859, translated the same passage, of which the
+Pehlevi is a running commentary rather than a literal rendering, as
+follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Now I will tell you, lend me your ear, now hear what you
+desired, you that came from near and from afar! It is clear,
+the wise (spirits) have created all things; evil doctrine
+shall not for a second time destroy the world. The Evil One
+has made a bad choice with his tongue.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Next follows the translation of the passage as published by Dr. Haug
+in 1862:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'All ye, who have come from nigh and far, listen now and
+hearken to my speech. Now I will tell you all about that
+pair of spirits how it is known to the wise. Neither the
+ill-speaker (the devil) shall destroy the second (spiritual)
+life, nor that man who, being a liar with his tongue,
+professes the false (idolatrous) belief.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The same scholar, in 1865, translates the same passage somewhat
+differently:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'All you that have come from near and far should now listen
+and hearken to what I shall proclaim. Now the wise have
+manifested this universe as a duality. Let not the
+mischief-maker destroy the second life, since he, the
+wicked, chose with his tongue the pernicious doctrine.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The principal difficulty in this paragraph consists in the word which
+Dr. Haug translated by <span class="sp1">duality</span>, viz. <span class="sp1">d&ucirc;m</span>, and which he identifies with
+Sanskrit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> <span class="sp1">dvam</span>, i. e. <span class="sp1">dvandvam</span>, pair. Such a word, as far as we are
+aware, does not occur again in the Zend-Avesta, and hence it is not
+likely that the uncertainty attaching to its meaning will ever be
+removed. Other interpreters take it as a verb in the second person
+plural, and hence the decided difference of interpretation.</p>
+
+<p>The sixth paragraph of the same passage is explained by the Pehlevi
+translator as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Thus I proclaimed that among all things the greatest is to
+worship God. The praise of purity is (due) to him who has a
+good knowledge, (to those) who depend on Ormazd. I hear
+Spent&ocirc;-mainyu (who is) Ormazd; listen to me, to what I shall
+speak (unto you). Whose worship is intercourse with the Good
+Mind; one can know (experience) the divine command to do
+good through inquiry after what is good. That which is in
+the intellect they teach me as the best, viz. the inborn
+(heavenly) wisdom, (that is, that the divine wisdom is
+superior to the human).'</p></div>
+
+<p>Professor Spiegel translates:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Now I will tell you of all things the greatest. It is
+praise with purity of Him who is wise from those who exist.
+The holiest heavenly being, Ahuramazda, may hear it, He for
+whose praise inquiry is made from the holy spirit, may He
+teach me the best by his intelligence.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Dr. Haug in 1862:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Thus I will tell you of the greatest of all (Sraosha), who
+is praising the truth, and doing good, and of all who are
+gathered round him (to assist him), by order of the holy
+spirit (Ahuramazda). The living Wise may hear me; by means
+of His goodness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> the good mind increases (in the world). He
+may lead me with the best of his wisdom.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Dr. Haug in 1865:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I will proclaim as the greatest of all things that one
+should be good, praising only truth. Ahuramazda will hear
+those who are bent on furthering (all that is good). May he
+whose goodness is communicated by the Good Mind instruct me
+in his best wisdom.'</p></div>
+
+<p>To those who are interested in the study of Zend, and wish to judge
+for themselves of the trustworthiness of these various translations,
+we can recommend a most useful work lately published in Germany by Dr.
+F. Justi, 'Handbuch der Zendsprache,' containing a complete
+dictionary, a grammar, and selections from the Zend-Avesta.</p>
+
+<p class="f3"><i>September, 1865.</i></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> 'A Lecture on the Original Language of Zoroaster.' By
+Martin Haug. Bombay, 1865.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> On &#7985;&#949;&#961;&#8001;&#962;, the Sanskrit <span class="sp1">ishira</span>, lively, see
+Kuhn's 'Zeitschrift,' vol. ii. p. 275, vol. iii. p. 134.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII.</h2>
+
+<h2>GENESIS AND THE ZEND-AVESTA.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a></h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_o.jpg" alt="O" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;that scholars could have the benefit of a little legal training, and
+learn at least the difference between what is probable and what is
+proven! What an advantage also, if they had occasionally to address a
+jury of respectable tradespeople, and were forced to acquire the art,
+or rather not to shrink from the effort, of putting the most intricate
+and delicate points in the simplest and clearest form of which they
+admit! What a lesson again it would be to men of independent research,
+if, after having amassed ever so many bags full of evidence, they had
+always before their eyes the fear of an impatient judge who wants to
+hear nothing but what is important and essential, and hates to listen
+to anything that is not to the point, however carefully it may have
+been worked out, and however eloquently it may be laid before him!
+There is hardly one book published now-a-days which, if everything in
+it that is not to the purpose were left out, could not be reduced to
+half its size. If authors could make up their minds to omit everything
+that is only meant to display their learning, to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>exhibit the
+difficulties they had to overcome, or to call attention to the
+ignorance of their predecessors, many a volume of thirty sheets would
+collapse into a pamphlet of fifty pages, though in that form it would
+probably produce a much greater effect than in its more inflated
+appearance.</p>
+
+<p>Did the writers of the Old Testament borrow anything from the
+Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, or the Indians, is a simple
+enough question. It is a question that may be treated quite apart from
+any theological theories; for the Old Testament, whatever view the
+Jews may take of its origin, may surely be regarded by the historian
+as a really historical book, written at a certain time in the history
+of the world, in a language then spoken and understood, and
+proclaiming certain facts and doctrines meant to be acceptable and
+intelligible to the Jews, such as they were at that time, an
+historical nation, holding a definite place by the side of their more
+or less distant neighbours, whether Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, or
+Indians. It is well known that we have in the language of the New
+Testament the clear vestiges of Greek and Roman influences, and if we
+knew nothing of the historical intercourse between those two nations
+and the writers of the New Testament, the very expressions used by
+them&mdash;not only their language, but their thoughts, their allusions,
+illustrations, and similes&mdash;would enable us to say that some
+historical contact had taken place between the philosophers of Greece,
+the lawgivers of Rome, and the people of Judea. Why then should not
+the same question be asked with regard to more ancient times? Why
+should there be any hesitation in pointing out in the Old Testament an
+Egyptian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> custom, or a Greek word, or a Persian conception? If Moses
+was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, nothing surely would
+stamp his writings as more truly historical than traces of Egyptian
+influences that might be discovered in his laws. If Daniel prospered
+in the reign of Cyrus the Persian, every Persian word that could be
+discovered in Daniel would be most valuable in the eyes of a critical
+historian. The only thing which we may fairly require in
+investigations of this kind is that the facts should be clearly
+established. The subject is surely an important one&mdash;important
+historically, quite apart from any theological consequences that may
+be supposed to follow. It is as important to find out whether the
+authors of the Old Testament had come in contact with the language and
+ideas of Babylon, Persia, or Egypt, as it is to know that the Jews, at
+the time of our Lord's appearance, had been reached by the rays of
+Greek and Roman civilisation&mdash;that in fact our Lord, his disciples,
+and many of his followers, spoke Greek as well as Hebrew (i. e.
+Chaldee), and were no strangers to that sphere of thought in which the
+world of the Gentiles, the Greeks, and Romans had been moving for
+centuries.</p>
+
+<p>Hints have been thrown out from time to time by various writers that
+certain ideas in the Old Testament might be ascribed to Persian
+influences, and be traced back to the Zend-Avesta, the sacred writings
+of Zoroaster. Much progress has been made in the deciphering of these
+ancient documents, since Anquetil Duperron brought the first
+instalment of MSS. from Bombay, and since the late Eug&egrave;ne Burnouf, in
+his 'Commentaire sur le Yasna,' succeeded in establishing the grammar
+and dictionary of the Zend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> language upon a safe basis. Several
+editions of the works of Zoroaster have been published in France,
+Denmark, and Germany; and after the labours of Spiegel, Westergaard,
+Haug, and others, it might be supposed that such a question as the
+influence of Persian ideas on the writers of the Old Testament might
+at last be answered either in the affirmative or in the negative. We
+were much pleased, therefore, on finding that Professor Spiegel, the
+learned editor and translator of the Avesta, had devoted a chapter of
+his last work, 'Er&acirc;n, das Land zwischen dem Indus und Tigris,' to the
+problem in question. We read his chapter, 'Avesta und die Genesis,
+oder die Beziehungen der Eranier zu den Semiten,' with the warmest
+interest, and when we had finished it, we put down the book with the
+very exclamation with which we began our article.</p>
+
+<p>We do not mean to say anything disrespectful to Professor Spiegel, a
+scholar brimfull of learning, and one of the two or three men who know
+the Avesta by heart. He is likewise a good Semitic scholar, and knows
+enough of Hebrew to form an independent opinion on the language,
+style, and general character of the different books of the Old
+Testament. He brings together in his Essay a great deal of interesting
+information, and altogether would seem to be one of the most valuable
+witnesses to give evidence on the point in question. Yet suppose him
+for a moment in a court of justice where, as in a patent case, some
+great issue depends on the question whether certain ideas had first
+been enunciated by the author of Genesis or the author of the Avesta;
+suppose him subjected to a cross-examination by a brow-beating lawyer,
+whose business it is to disbelieve and make others disbelieve every
+assertion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> that the witness makes, and we are afraid the learned
+Professor would break down completely. Now it may be said that this is
+not the spirit in which learned inquiries should be conducted, that
+authors have a right to a certain respect, and may reckon on a certain
+amount of willingness on the part of their readers. Such a plea may,
+perhaps, be urged when all preliminary questions in a contest have
+been disposed of, when all the evidence has been proved to lie in one
+direction, and when even the most obstinate among the gentlemen of the
+jury feel that the verdict is as good as settled. But in a question
+like this, where everything is doubtful, or, we should rather say,
+where all the prepossessions are against the view which Dr. Spiegel
+upholds, it is absolutely necessary for a new witness to be armed from
+top to toe, to lay himself open to no attack, to measure his words,
+and advance step by step in a straight line to the point that has to
+be reached. A writer like Dr. Spiegel should know that he can expect
+no mercy; nay, he should himself wish for no mercy, but invite the
+heaviest artillery against the floating battery which he has launched
+into the troubled waters of Biblical criticism. If he feels that his
+case is not strong enough, the wisest plan surely is to wait, to
+accumulate new strength if possible, or, if no new evidence is
+forthcoming, to acknowledge openly that there is no case.</p>
+
+<p>M. Br&eacute;al&mdash;who, in his interesting Essay 'Hercule et Cacus,' has lately
+treated the same problem, the influence of Persian ideas on the
+writers of the Old Testament&mdash;gives an excellent example of how a case
+of this kind should be argued. He begins with the apocryphal books,
+and he shows that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> name of an evil spirit like Asmodeus, which
+occurs in Tobit, could be borrowed from Persia only. It is a name
+inexplicable in Hebrew, and it represents very closely the Parsi
+<span class="sp1">Eshem-dev</span>, the Zend <span class="sp1">A&ecirc;shma da&ecirc;va</span>, the spirit of concupiscence,
+mentioned several times in the Avesta (Vendidad, c. 10), as one of the
+<span class="sp1">devs</span>, or evil spirits. Now this is the kind of evidence we want for
+the Old Testament. We can easily discover a French word in English,
+nor is it difficult to tell a Persian word in Hebrew. Are there any
+Persian words in Genesis, words of the same kind as Asmodeus in Tobit?
+No such evidence has been brought forward, and the only words we can
+think of which, if not Persian, may be considered of Aryan origin, are
+the names of such rivers as Tigris and Euphrates; and of countries
+such as Ophir and Havilah among the descendants of Shem, Javan,
+Meshech, and others among the descendants of Japhet. These names are
+probably foreign names, and as such naturally mentioned by the author
+of Genesis in their foreign form. If there are other words of Aryan or
+Iranian origin in Genesis, they ought to have occupied the most
+prominent place in Dr. Spiegel's pleading.</p>
+
+<p>We now proceed, and we are again quite willing to admit that, even
+without the presence of Persian words, the presence of Persian ideas
+might be detected by careful analysis. No doubt this is a much more
+delicate process, yet, as we can discover Jewish and Christian ideas
+in the Koran, there ought to be no insurmountable difficulty in
+pointing out any Persian ingredients in Genesis, however disguised and
+assimilated. Only, before we look for such ideas, it is necessary to
+show the channel through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> which they could possibly have flowed either
+from the Avesta into Genesis, or from Genesis into the Avesta. History
+shows us clearly how Persian words and ideas could have found their
+way into such late works as Tobit, or even into the book of Daniel,
+whether he prospered in the reign of Darius, or in the reign of Cyrus
+the Persian. But how did Persians and Jews come in contact, previously
+to the age of Cyrus? Dr. Spiegel says that Zoroaster was born in
+Arran. This name is given by medi&aelig;val Mohammedan writers to the plain
+washed by the Araxes, and was identified by Anquetil Duperron with the
+name <span class="sp1">Airyana va&ecirc;<i>g</i>a</span>, which the Zend-Avesta gives to the first created
+land of Ormuzd. The Parsis place this sacred country in the vicinity
+of Atropatene, and it is clearly meant as the northernmost country
+known to the author or authors of the Zend-Avesta. We think that Dr.
+Spiegel is right in defending the geographical position assigned by
+tradition to <span class="sp1">Airyana va&ecirc;<i>g</i>a</span>, against modern theories that would place
+it more eastward in the plain of Pamer, nor do we hesitate to admit
+that the name (<span class="sp1">Airyana va&ecirc;<i>g</i>a</span>, i. e. the seed of the Aryan) might
+have been changed into Arran. We likewise acknowledge the force of the
+arguments by which he shows that the books now called Zend-Avesta were
+composed in the Eastern, and not in the Western, provinces of the
+Persian monarchy, though we are hardly prepared to subscribe at once
+to his conclusion (p. 270) that, because Zoroaster is placed by the
+Avesta and by later traditions in Arran, or the Western provinces, he
+could not possibly be the author of the Avesta, a literary production
+which would appear to belong exclusively to the Eastern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> provinces.
+The very tradition to which Dr. Spiegel appeals represents Zoroaster
+as migrating from Arran to Balkh, to the court of Gustasp, the son of
+Lohrasp; and, as one tradition has as much value as another, we might
+well admit that the work of Zoroaster, as a religious teacher, began
+in Balkh, and from thence extended still further East. But admitting
+that Arran, the country washed by the Araxes, was the birthplace of
+Zoroaster, can we possibly follow Dr. Spiegel when he says, Arran
+seems to be identical with Haran, the birthplace of Abraham? Does he
+mean the names to be identical? Then how are the aspirate and the
+double r to be explained? how is it to be accounted for that the
+medi&aelig;val corruption of <span class="sp1">Airyana va&ecirc;<i>g</i>a</span>, namely Arran, should appear in
+Genesis? And if the dissimilarity of the two names is waived, is it
+possible in two lines to settle the much contested situation of Haran,
+and thus to determine the ancient watershed between the Semitic and
+Aryan nations? The Abb&eacute; Banier, more than a hundred years ago, pointed
+out that Haran, whither Abraham repaired, was the metropolis of
+Sabism, and that Magism was practised in Ur of the Chaldees
+('Mythology, explained by History,' vol. i. book iii. cap. 3). Dr.
+Spiegel having, as he believes, established the most ancient
+meeting-point between Abraham and Zoroaster, proceeds to argue that
+whatever ideas are shared in common by Genesis and the Avesta must be
+referred to that very ancient period when personal intercourse was
+still possible between Abraham and Zoroaster, the prophets of the Jews
+and the Iranians. Now, here the counsel for the defence would remind
+Dr. Spiegel that Genesis was not the work of Abraham, nor, according
+to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> Dr. Spiegel's view, was Zoroaster the author of the Zend-Avesta;
+and that therefore the neighbourly intercourse between Zoroaster and
+Abraham in the country of Arran had nothing to do with the ideas
+shared in common by Genesis and the Avesta. But even if we admitted,
+for argument's sake, that as Dr. Spiegel puts it, the Avesta contains
+Zoroastrian and Genesis Abrahamitic ideas, surely there was ample
+opportunity for Jewish ideas to find admission into what we call the
+Avesta, or for Iranian ideas to find admission into Genesis, after the
+date of Abraham and Zoroaster, and before the time when we find the
+first MSS. of Genesis and the Avesta. The Zend MSS. of the Avesta are
+very modern, so are the Hebrew MSS. of Genesis, which do not carry us
+beyond the tenth century after Christ. The text of the Avesta,
+however, can be checked by the Pehlevi translation, which was made
+under the Sassanian dynasty (226-651 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>), just as the text of
+Genesis can be checked by the Septuagint translation, which was made
+in the third century before Christ. Now, it is known that about the
+same time and in the same place&mdash;namely at Alexandria&mdash;where the Old
+Testament was rendered into Greek, the Avesta also was translated into
+the same language, so that we have at Alexandria in the third century
+<span class="smcap">b.c.</span> a well established historical contact between the believers in
+Genesis and the believers in the Avesta, and an easy opening for that
+exchange of ideas which, according to Dr. Spiegel, could have taken
+place nowhere but in Arran, and at the time of Abraham and Zoroaster.
+It might be objected that this was wrangling for victory, and not
+arguing for truth, and that no real scholar would admit that the
+Avesta, in its original<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> form, did not go back to a much earlier date
+than the third century before Christ. Yet, when such a general
+principle is to be laid down, that all that Genesis and Avesta share
+in common must belong to a time before Abraham had started for Canaan,
+and Zoroaster for Balkh, other possible means of later intercourse
+should surely not be entirely lost sight of.</p>
+
+<p>For what happens? The very first tradition that is brought forward as
+one common to both these ancient works&mdash;namely, that of the Four Ages
+of the World&mdash;is confessedly found in the later writings only of the
+Parsis, and cannot be traced back in its definite shape beyond the
+time of the Sassanians (Er&acirc;n, p. 275). Indications of it are said to
+be found in the earlier writings, but these indications are extremely
+vague. But we must advance a step further, and, after reading very
+carefully the three pages devoted to this subject by Dr. Spiegel, we
+must confess we see no similarity whatever on that point between
+Genesis and the Avesta. In Genesis, the Four Ages have never assumed
+the form of a theory, as in India, Persia, or perhaps in Greece. If we
+say that the period from Adam to Noah is the first, that from Noah to
+Abraham the second, that from Abraham to the death of Jacob the third,
+that beginning with the exile in Egypt the fourth, we are transferring
+our ideas to Genesis, but we cannot say that the writer of Genesis
+himself laid a peculiar stress on this fourfold division. The Parsis,
+on the contrary, have a definite system. According to them the world
+is to last 12,000 years. During the first period of 3,000 years the
+world was created. During the second period <span class="sp1">Gayo-maratan</span>, the first
+man lived by himself, without suffering from the attacks of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> evil.
+During the third period of 3,000 years the war between good and evil,
+between Ormuzd and Ahriman, began with the utmost fierceness; and it
+will gradually abate during the fourth period of 3,000 years, which is
+still to elapse before the final victory of good. Where here is the
+similarity between Genesis and the Avesta? We are referred by Dr.
+Spiegel to Dr. Windischmann's 'Zoroastrian Studies,' and to his
+discovery that there are ten generations between Adam and Noah, as
+there are ten generations between Yima and Thra&ecirc;taona; that there are
+twelve generations between Shem and Isaac, as there are twelve between
+Thra&ecirc;taona and Manus<i>k</i>itra; and that there are thirteen generations
+between Isaac and David, as there are thirteen between Manus<i>k</i>itra
+and Zarathustra. What has the learned counsel for the defence to say
+to this? First, that the name of Shem is put by mistake for that of
+Noah. Secondly, that Yima, who is here identified with Adam, is never
+represented in the Avesta as the first man, but is preceded there by
+numerous ancestors, and surrounded by numerous subjects, who are not
+his offspring. Thirdly, that in order to establish in Genesis three
+periods of ten, twelve, and thirteen generations, it is necessary to
+count Isaac, who clearly belongs to the third, as a member of the
+second, so that in reality the number of generations is the same in
+one only out of the three periods, which surely proves nothing. As to
+any similarity between the Four Yugas of the Brahmans and the Four
+Ages of the Parsis, we can only say that, if it exists, no one has as
+yet brought it out. The Greeks, again, who are likewise said to share
+the primitive doctrine of the Four Ages, believe really in five, and
+not in four, and separate them in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> manner which does not in the
+least remind us of Hindu Yugas, Hebrew patriarchs, or the battle
+between Ormuzd and Ahriman.</p>
+
+<p>We proceed to a second point&mdash;the Creation as related in Genesis and
+the Avesta. Here we certainly find some curious coincidences. The
+world is created in six days in Genesis, and in six periods in the
+Avesta, which six periods together form one year. In Genesis the
+creation ends with the creation of man, so it does in the Avesta. On
+all other points Dr. Spiegel admits the two accounts differ, but they
+are said to agree again in the temptation and the fall. As Dr. Spiegel
+has not given the details of the temptation and the fall from the
+Avesta, we cannot judge of the points which he considers to be
+borrowed by the Jews from the Persians; but if we consult M. Br&eacute;al,
+who has treated the same subject more fully in his 'Hercule et Cacus,'
+we find there no more than this, that the Dualism of the Avesta, the
+struggle between Ormuzd and Ahriman, or the principles of light and
+darkness, is to be considered as the distant reflex of the grand
+struggle between <span class="sp1">Indra</span>, the god of the sky, and <span class="sp1">V<i>r</i>itra</span>, the demon of
+night and darkness, which forms the constant burden of the hymns of
+the Rig-veda. In this view there is some truth, but we doubt whether
+it fully exhibits the vital principle of the Zoroastrian religion,
+which is founded on a solemn protest against the whole worship of the
+powers of nature invoked in the Vedas, and on the recognition of one
+supreme power, the God of Light, in every sense of the word&mdash;the
+spirit Ahura, who created the world and rules it, and defends it
+against the power of evil. That power of evil which in the most
+ancient portions of the Avesta has not yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> received the name of
+Ahriman (i. e. <span class="sp1">angro mainyus</span>), may afterwards have assumed some of the
+epithets which in an earlier period were bestowed on V<i>r</i>itra and
+other enemies of the bright gods, and among them, it may have assumed
+the name of serpent. But does it follow, because the principle of evil
+in the Avesta is called serpent, or <span class="sp1">azhi dah&acirc;ka</span>, that therefore the
+serpent mentioned in the third chapter of Genesis must be borrowed
+from Persia? Neither in the Veda nor in the Avesta does the serpent
+ever assume that subtil and insinuating form as in Genesis; and the
+curse pronounced on it, 'to be cursed above all cattle, and above
+every beast of the field,' is not in keeping with the relation of
+V<i>r</i>itra to Indra, or Ahriman to Ormuzd, who face each other almost as
+equals. In later books, such as 1 Chronicles xxi. 1, where Satan is
+mentioned as provoking David to number Israel (the very same
+provocation which in 2 Samuel xxiv. 1 is ascribed to the anger of the
+Lord moving David to number Israel and Judah), and in all the passages
+of the New Testament where the power of evil is spoken of as a person,
+we may admit the influence of Persian ideas and Persian expressions,
+though even here strict proof is by no means easy. As to the serpent
+in Paradise, it is a conception that might have sprung up among the
+Jews as well as among the Brahmans; and the serpent that beguiled Eve
+seems hardly to invite comparison with the much grander conceptions of
+the terrible power of V<i>r</i>itra and Ahriman in the Veda and Avesta.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Spiegel next discusses the similarity between the Garden of Eden
+and the Paradise of the Zoroastrians, and though he admits that here
+again he relies chiefly on the <span class="sp1">Bundehesh</span>, a work of the Sassanian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+period, he maintains that that work may well be compared to Genesis,
+because it contains none but really ancient traditions. We do not for
+a moment deny that this may be so, but in a case like the present,
+where everything depends on exact dates, we decline to listen to such
+a plea. We value Dr. Spiegel's translations from the Bundehesh most
+highly, and we believe with him (p. 283) that there is little doubt as
+to the Pishon being the Indus, and the Gihon the Jaxartes. The
+identification, too, of the Persian river-name Ranha (the Vedic Ras&acirc;)
+with the Araxes, the name given by Herodotus (i. 202) to the Jaxartes,
+seems very ingenious and well established. But we should still like to
+know why and in what language the Indus was first called Pishon, and
+the Jaxartes, or, it may be, the Oxus, Gihon.</p>
+
+<p>We next come to the two trees in the garden of Eden, the tree of
+knowledge and the tree of life. Dr. Windischmann has shown that the
+Iranians, too, were acquainted with two trees, one called <span class="sp1">Gaokerena</span>,
+bearing the white <span class="sp1">Haoma</span>, the other called the Painless tree. We are
+told first that these two trees are the same as the one fig tree out
+of which the Indians believe the world to have been created. Now,
+first of all, the Indians believed no such thing, and secondly, there
+is the same difference between one and two trees as there is between
+North and South. But we confess that until we know a good deal more
+about these two trees of the Iranians, we feel no inclination whatever
+to compare the Painless tree and the tree of knowledge of good and
+evil, though perhaps the white Haoma tree might remind us of the tree
+of life, considering that Haoma, as well as the Indian Soma, was
+supposed to give<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> immortality to those who drank its juice. We
+likewise consider the comparison of the Cherubim who keep the way of
+the tree of life and the guardians of the Soma in the Veda and Avesta,
+as deserving attention, and we should like to see the etymological
+derivation of <span class="sp1">Cherubim</span> from &#947;&#961;&#8017;&#966;&#949;&#962;, <span class="sp1">Greifen</span>, and of <span class="sp1">Seraphim</span>
+from the Sanskrit <span class="sp1">sarpa</span>, serpents, either confirmed or refuted.</p>
+
+<p>The Deluge is not mentioned in the sacred writings of the
+Zoroastrians, nor in the hymns of the Rig-veda. It is mentioned,
+however, in one of the latest Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as, and the carefully balanced
+arguments of Burnouf, who considered the tradition of the Deluge as
+borrowed by the Indians from Semitic neighbours, seem to us to be
+strengthened, rather than weakened, by the isolated appearance of the
+story of the Deluge in this one passage out of the whole of the Vedic
+literature. Nothing, however, has yet been pointed out to force us to
+admit a Semitic origin for the story of the Flood, as told in the
+<i>S</i>atapatha-br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>a, and afterwards repeated in the Mah&acirc;bh&acirc;rata and
+the Pur&acirc;<i>n</i>as: the number of days being really the only point on which
+the two accounts startle us by their agreement.</p>
+
+<p>That Noah's ark rested upon the mountain of Ararat, and that Ararat
+may admit of a Persian etymology, is nothing to the point. The
+etymology itself is ingenious, but no more. The same remark applies to
+all the rest of Dr. Spiegel's arguments. Thra&ecirc;taona, who has before
+been compared to Noah, divided his land among his three sons, and gave
+Iran to the youngest, an injustice which exasperated his brothers, who
+murdered him. Now it is true that Noah, too, had three sons, but here
+the similarity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> ends; for that Terach had three sons, and that one of
+them only, Abram, took possession of the land of promise, and that of
+the two sons of Isaac, the youngest became the heir, is again of no
+consequence for our immediate purpose, though it may remind Dr.
+Spiegel and others of the history of Thra&ecirc;taona. We agree with Dr.
+Spiegel, that Zoroaster's character resembles most closely the true
+Semitic notion of a prophet. He is considered worthy of personal
+intercourse with Ormuzd; he receives from Ormuzd every word, though
+not, as Dr. Spiegel says, every letter of the law. But if Zoroaster
+was a real character, so was Abraham, and their being like each other
+proves in no way that they lived in the same place, or at the same
+time, or that they borrowed aught one from the other. What Dr. Spiegel
+says of the Persian name of the Deity, <span class="sp1">Ahura</span>, is very doubtful. <span class="sp1">Ahura</span>,
+he says, as well as <span class="sp1">ahu</span>, means lord, and must be traced back to the
+root <span class="sp1">ah</span>, the Sanskrit <span class="sp1">as</span>, which means to be, so that <span class="sp1">Ahura</span> would
+signify the same as <span class="sp1">Jahve</span>, he who is. The root 'as' no doubt means to
+be, but it has that meaning because it originally meant to breathe.
+From it, in its original sense of breathing, the Hindus formed <span class="sp1">asu</span>,
+breath, and <span class="sp1">asura</span>, the name of God, whether it meant the breathing
+one, or the giver of breath. This <span class="sp1">asura</span> became in Zend <span class="sp1">ahura</span>, and if
+it assumed the general meaning of Lord, this is as much a secondary
+meaning as the meaning of demon or evil spirit, which <span class="sp1">asura</span> assumed in
+the later Sanskrit of the Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as.</p>
+
+<p>After this, Dr. Spiegel proceeds to sum up his evidence. He has no
+more to say, but he believes that he has proved the following points:
+a very early intercourse between Semitic and Aryan nations; a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> common
+belief shared by both in a paradise situated near the sources of the
+Oxus and Jaxartes; the dwelling together of Abraham and Zoroaster in
+Haran, Arran, or Airyana va&ecirc;<i>g</i>a. Semitic and Aryan nations, he tells
+us, still live together in those parts of the world, and so it was
+from the beginning. As the form of the Jewish traditions comes nearer
+to the Persian than to the Indian traditions, we are asked to believe
+that these two races lived in the closest contact before, from this
+ancient hearth of civilisation, they started towards the West and the
+East&mdash;that is to say, before Abraham migrated to Canaan, and before
+India was peopled by the Brahmans.</p>
+
+<p>We have given a fair account of Dr. Spiegel's arguments, and we need
+not say that we should have hailed with equal pleasure any solid facts
+by which to establish either the dependence of Genesis on the
+Zend-Avesta, or the dependence of the Zend-Avesta on Genesis. It would
+be absurd to resist facts where facts exist; nor can we imagine any
+reason why, if Abraham came into personal contact with Zoroaster, the
+Jewish patriarch should have learnt nothing from the Iranian prophet,
+or vice vers&acirc;. If such an intercourse could be established, it would
+but serve to strengthen the historical character of the books of the
+Old Testament, and would be worth more than all the elaborate theories
+that have been started on the purely miraculous origin of these books.
+But though we by no means deny that some more tangible points of
+resemblance may yet be discovered between the Old Testament and the
+Zend-Avesta, we must protest against having so interesting and so
+important a matter handled in such an unbusinesslike manner.</p>
+
+<p class="f3"><i>April, 1864.</i></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> 'Er&acirc;n, das Land zwischen dem Indus und Tigris, Beitr&auml;ge
+zur Kenntniss des Landes und seiner Geschichte.' Von Dr. Friedrich
+Spiegel. Berlin, 1863.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE MODERN PARSIS.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></h2>
+<h2>I.</h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>t is not fair to speak of any religious sect by a name to which its
+members object. Yet the fashion of speaking of the followers of
+Zoroaster as Fire-worshippers is so firmly established that it will
+probably continue long after the last believers in Ormuzd have
+disappeared from the face of the earth. At the present moment, the
+number of the Zoroastrians has dwindled down so much that they hardly
+find a place in the religious statistics of the world. Berghaus in his
+'Physical Atlas' gives the following division of the human race
+according to religion:</p>
+
+<table summary="Percentage of different religions">
+<tr><td>Buddhists</td><td>31.2&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;per cent.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Christians</td><td>30.7&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Mohammedans</td><td>15.7&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Brahmanists</td><td>13.4&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Heathens</td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;8.7&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Jews</td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;0.3&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>He nowhere states the number of the Fire-worshippers, nor does he tell
+us under what head they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>are comprised in his general computation. The
+difficulties of a religious census are very great, particularly when
+we have to deal with Eastern nations. About two hundred years ago,
+travellers estimated the Gabars (as they are called in Persia) at
+eighty thousand families, or about 400,000 souls. At present the
+Parsis in Western India amount to about 100,000, to which, if we add
+5,500 in Yazd and Kirman, we get a total of 105,500. The number of the
+Jews is commonly estimated at 3,600,000; and if they represent 0.3 per
+cent of mankind, the Fire-worshippers could not claim at present more
+than about 0.01 per cent of the whole population of the earth. Yet
+there were periods in the history of the world when the worship of
+Ormuzd threatened to rise triumphant on the ruins of the temples of
+all other gods. If the battles of Marathon and Salamis had been lost,
+and Greece had succumbed to Persia, the state religion of the empire
+of Cyrus, which was the worship of Ormuzd, might have become the
+religion of the whole civilised world. Persia had absorbed the
+Assyrian and Babylonian empires; the Jews were either in Persian
+captivity or under Persian sway at home; the sacred monuments of Egypt
+had been mutilated by the hands of Persian soldiers. The edicts of the
+great king, the king of kings, were sent to India, to Greece, to
+Scythia, and to Egypt; and if 'by the grace of Auramazda' Darius had
+crushed the liberty of Greece, the purer faith of Zoroaster might
+easily have superseded the Olympian fables. Again, under the Sassanian
+dynasty (226-651 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>) the revived national faith of the Zoroastrians
+assumed such vigour that Shapur II, like another Diocletian, could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+aim at the extirpation of the Christian faith. The sufferings of the
+persecuted Christians in the East were as terrible as they had ever
+been in the West; nor was it by the weapons of Roman emperors or by
+the arguments of Christian divines that the fatal blow was dealt to
+the throne of Cyrus and the altars of Ormuzd. The power of Persia was
+broken at last by the Arabs; and it is due to them that the religion
+of Ormuzd, once the terror of the world, is now, and has been for the
+last thousand years, a mere curiosity in the eyes of the historian.</p>
+
+<p>The sacred writings of the Zoroastrians, commonly called the
+Zend-Avesta, have for about a century occupied the attention of
+European scholars, and, thanks to the adventurous devotion of Anquetil
+Duperron, and the careful researches of Rask, Burnouf, Westergaard,
+Spiegel, and Haug, we have gradually been enabled to read and
+interpret what remains of the ancient language of the Persian
+religion. The problem was not an easy one, and had it not been for the
+new light which the science of language has shed on the laws of human
+speech, it would have been as impossible to Burnouf as it was to Hyde,
+the celebrated Professor of Hebrew and Arabic at Oxford, to interpret
+with grammatical accuracy the ancient remnants of Zoroaster's
+doctrine. How that problem was solved is well known to all who take an
+interest in the advancement of modern scholarship. It was as great an
+achievement as the deciphering of the cuneiform edicts of Darius; and
+no greater compliment could have been paid to Burnouf and his
+fellow-labourers than that scholars, without inclination to test their
+method, and without leisure to follow these indefatigable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> pioneers
+through all the intricate paths of their researches, should have
+pronounced the deciphering of the ancient Zend as well as of the
+ancient Persian of the Ach&aelig;menian period to be impossible, incredible,
+and next to miraculous.</p>
+
+<p>While the scholars of Europe are thus engaged in disinterring the
+ancient records of the religion of Zoroaster, it is of interest to
+learn what has become of that religion in those few settlements where
+it is still professed by small communities. Though every religion is
+of real and vital interest in its earliest state only, yet its later
+development too, with all its misunderstandings, faults, and
+corruptions, offers many an instructive lesson to the thoughtful
+student of history. Here is a religion, one of the most ancient of the
+world, once the state religion of the most powerful empire, driven
+away from its native soil, deprived of political influence, without
+even the prestige of a powerful or enlightened priesthood, and yet
+professed by a handful of exiles&mdash;men of wealth, intelligence, and
+moral worth in Western India&mdash;with an unhesitating fervour such as is
+seldom to be found in larger religious communities. It is well worth
+the serious consideration of the philosopher and the divine to
+discover, if possible, the spell by which this apparently effete
+religion continues to command the attachment of the enlightened Parsis
+of India, and makes them turn a deaf ear to the allurements of the
+Brahmanic worship and the earnest appeals of Christian missionaries.
+We believe that to many of our readers the two pamphlets, lately
+published by a distinguished member of the Parsi community, Mr.
+Dadabhai Naoroji, Professor of Guzerati at University College,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+London, will open many problems of a more than passing interest. One
+is a Paper read before the Liverpool Philomathic Society, 'On the
+Manners and Customs of the Parsees;' the other is a Lecture delivered
+before the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, 'On the
+Parsee Religion.'</p>
+
+<p>In the first of these pamphlets, we are told that the small community
+of Parsis in Western India is at the present moment divided into two
+parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals. Both are equally attached
+to the faith of their ancestors, but they differ from each other in
+their modes of life&mdash;the Conservatives clinging to all that is
+established and customary, however absurd and mischievous, the
+Liberals desiring to throw off the abuses of former ages, and to avail
+themselves, as much as is consistent with their religion and their
+Oriental character, of the advantages of European civilisation. 'If I
+say,' writes our informant, 'that the Parsees use tables, knives and
+forks, &amp;c., for taking their dinners, it would be true with regard to
+one portion, and entirely untrue with regard to another. In one house
+you see in the dining-room the dinner table furnished with all the
+English apparatus for its agreeable purposes; next door, perhaps, you
+see the gentleman perfectly satisfied with his primitive good old mode
+of squatting on a piece of mat, with a large brass or copper plate
+(round, and of the size of an ordinary tray) before him, containing
+all the dishes of his dinner, spread on it in small heaps, and placed
+upon a stool about two or three inches high, with a small tinned
+copper cup at his side for his drinks, and his fingers for his knives
+and forks. He does this, not because he cannot afford<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> to have a
+table, &amp;c., but because he would not have them in preference to his
+ancestral mode of life, or, perhaps, the thought has not occurred to
+him that he need have anything of the kind.'</p>
+
+<p>Instead, therefore, of giving a general description of Parsi life at
+present, Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji gives us two distinct accounts&mdash;first of
+the old, secondly of the new school. He describes the incidents in the
+daily life of a Parsi of the old school, from the moment he gets out
+of bed to the time of his going to rest, and the principal ceremonies
+from the hour of his birth to the hour of his burial. Although we can
+gather from the tenour of his writings that the author himself belongs
+to the Liberals, we must give him credit for the fairness with which
+he describes the party to which he is opposed. There is no sneer, no
+expression of contempt anywhere, even when, as in the case of the
+Nirang, the temptation must have been considerable. What this Nirang
+is we may best state in the words of the writer:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The Nirang is the urine of cow, ox, or she-goat, and the
+rubbing of it over the face and hands is the second thing a
+Parsee does after getting out of bed. Either before applying
+the Nirang to the face and hands, or while it remains on the
+hands after being applied, he should not touch anything
+directly with his hands; but, in order to wash out the
+Nirang, he either asks somebody else to pour water on his
+hands, or resorts to the device of taking hold of the pot
+through the intervention of a piece of cloth, such as a
+handkerchief or his Sudr&acirc;, i. e. his <span class="sp1">blouse</span>. He first pours
+water on one hand, then takes the pot in that hand and
+washes his other hand, face and feet.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span></p></div>
+
+<p>Strange as this process of purification may appear, it becomes
+perfectly disgusting when we are told that women, after childbirth,
+have not only to undergo this sacred ablution, but have actually to
+drink a little of the Nirang, and that the same rite is imposed on
+children at the time of their investiture with the Sudr&acirc; and Kusti,
+the badges of the Zoroastrian faith. The Liberal party have completely
+surrendered this objectionable custom, but the old school still keep
+it up, though their faith, as Dadabhai Naoroji says, in the efficacy
+of Nirang to drive away Satan may be shaken. 'The Reformers,' our
+author writes, 'maintain that there is no authority whatever in the
+original books of Zurthosht for the observance of this dirty practice,
+but that it is altogether a later introduction. The old adduce the
+authority of the works of some of the priests of former days, and say
+the practice ought to be observed. They quote one passage from the
+Zend-Avesta corroborative of their opinion, which their opponents deny
+as at all bearing upon the point.' Here, whatever our own feelings may
+be about the Nirang, truth obliges us to side with the old school, and
+if our author had consulted the ninth Fasgard of the Vendidad (page
+120, line 21, in Brockhaus's edition), he would have seen that both
+the drinking and the rubbing in of the so-called Gaomaezo&mdash;i. e.
+Nirang&mdash;are clearly enjoined by Zoroaster in certain purificatory
+rights. The custom rests, therefore, not only on the authority of a
+few priests of former days, but on the <span class="sp1">ipsissima verba</span> of the
+Zend-Avesta, the revealed word of Ormuzd; and if, as Dadabhai Naoroji
+writes, the Reformers of the day will not go beyond abolishing and
+disavowing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> the ceremonies and notions that have no authority in the
+original Zend-Avesta, we are afraid that the washing with Nirang, and
+even the drinking of it, will have to be maintained. A pious Parsi has
+to say his prayers sixteen times at least every day&mdash;first on getting
+out of bed, then during the Nirang operation, again when he takes his
+bath, again when he cleanses his teeth, and when he has finished his
+morning ablutions. The same prayers are repeated whenever, during the
+day, a Parsi has to wash his hands. Every meal&mdash;and there are
+three&mdash;begins and ends with prayer, besides the grace, and before
+going to bed the work of the day is closed by a prayer. The most
+extraordinary thing is that none of the Parsis&mdash;not even their
+priests&mdash;understand the ancient language in which these prayers are
+composed. We must quote the words of our author, who is himself of the
+priestly caste, and who says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'All prayers, on every occasion, are said, or rather
+recited, in the old original Zend language, neither the
+reciter nor the people around intended to be edified,
+understanding a word of it. There is no pulpit among the
+Parsees. On several occasions, as on the occasion of the
+Ghumbars, the bimestral holidays, the third day's ceremonies
+for the dead, and other religious or special holidays, there
+are assemblages in the temple; prayers are repeated, in
+which more or less join, but there is no discourse in the
+vernacular of the people. Ordinarily, every one goes to the
+fire-temple whenever he likes, or, if it is convenient to
+him, recites his prayers himself, and as long as he likes,
+and gives, if so inclined, something to the priests to pray
+for him.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></p></div>
+
+<p>In another passage our author says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Far from being the teachers of the true doctrines and
+duties of their religion, the priests are generally the most
+bigoted and superstitious, and exercise much injurious
+influence over the women especially, who, until lately,
+received no education at all. The priests have, however, now
+begun to feel their degraded position. Many of them, if they
+can do so, bring up their sons in any other profession but
+their own. There are, perhaps, a dozen among the whole body
+of professional priests who lay claim to a knowledge of the
+Zend-Avesta: but the only respect in which they are superior
+to their brethren is, that they have learnt the meanings of
+the words of the books as they are taught, without knowing
+the language, either philosophically or grammatically.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji proceeds to give a clear and graphic description
+of the ceremonies to be observed at the birth and the investiture of
+children, at the betrothal of children, at marriages and at funerals,
+and he finally dismisses some of the distinguishing features of the
+national character of the Parsis. The Parsis are monogamists. They do
+not eat anything cooked by a person of another religion; they object
+to beef, pork, or ham. Their priesthood is hereditary. None but the
+son of a priest can be a priest, but it is not obligatory for the son
+of a priest to take orders. The high-priest is called Dustoor, the
+others are called Mobed.</p>
+
+<p>The principal points for which the Liberals among the Parsis are, at
+the present moment, contending, are the abolition of the filthy
+purifications by means of Nirang; the reduction of the large number of
+obligatory prayers; the prohibition of early betrothal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> and marriage;
+the suppression of extravagance at weddings and funerals; the
+education of women, and their admission into general society. A
+society has been formed, called 'the Rahanumaee Mazdiashna,' i. e. the
+Guide of the Worshippers of God. Meetings are held, speeches made,
+tracts distributed. A counter society, too, has been started, called
+'the True Guides;' and we readily believe what Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji
+tells us&mdash;that, as in Europe, so in India, the Reformers have found
+themselves strengthened by the intolerant bigotry and the weakness of
+the arguments of their opponents. The Liberals have made considerable
+progress, but their work is as yet but half done, and they will never
+be able to carry out their religious and social reforms successfully,
+without first entering on a critical study of the Zend-Avesta, to
+which, as yet, they profess to appeal as the highest authority in
+matters of faith, law, and morality.</p>
+
+<p>We propose, in another article, to consider the state of religion
+among the Parsis of the present day.</p>
+
+<p class="f3"><i>August, 1862.</i></p>
+
+
+<h2>II.</h2>
+<p>The so-called Fire-worshippers certainly do not worship the fire, and
+they naturally object to a name which seems to place them on a level
+with mere idolaters. All they admit is, that in their youth they are
+taught to face some luminous object while worshipping God (p. 7), and
+that they regard the fire, like other great natural phenomena, as an
+emblem of the Divine power (p. 26). But they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> assure us that they
+never ask assistance or blessings from an unintelligent material
+object, nor is it even considered necessary to turn the face to any
+emblem whatever in praying to Ormuzd. The most honest, however, among
+the Parsis, and those who would most emphatically protest against the
+idea of their ever paying divine honours to the sun or the fire, admit
+the existence of some kind of national instinct&mdash;an indescribable awe
+felt by every Parsi with regard to light and fire. The fact that the
+Parsis are the only Eastern people who entirely abstain from smoking
+is very significant; and we know that most of them would rather not
+blow out a candle, if they could help it. It is difficult to analyse
+such a feeling, but it seems, in some respects, similar to that which
+many Christians have about the cross. They do not worship the cross,
+but they have peculiar feelings of reverence for it, and it is
+intimately connected with some of their most sacred rites.</p>
+
+<p>But although most Parsis would be very ready to tell us what they do
+not worship, there are but few who could give a straightforward answer
+if asked what they do worship and believe. Their priests, no doubt,
+would say that they worship Ormuzd and believe in Zoroaster, his
+prophet; and they would appeal to the Zend-Avesta, as containing the
+Word of God, revealed by Ormuzd to Zoroaster. If more closely pressed,
+however, they would have to admit that they cannot understand one word
+of the sacred writings in which they profess to believe, nor could
+they give any reason why they believe Zoroaster to have been a true
+prophet, and not an impostor. 'As a body,' says Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji,
+'the priests are not only ignorant of the duties and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> objects of their
+own profession, but are entirely uneducated, except that they are able
+to read and write, and that, also, often very imperfectly. They do not
+understand a single word of their prayers and recitations, which are
+all in the old Zend language.'</p>
+
+<p>What, then, do the laity know about religion? What makes the old
+teaching of Zoroaster so dear to them that, in spite of all
+differences of opinion among themselves, young and old seem equally
+determined never to join any other religious community? Incredible as
+it may sound, we are told by the best authority, by an enlightened yet
+strictly orthodox Parsi, that there is hardly a man or a woman who
+could give an account of the faith that is in them. 'The whole
+religious education of a Parsi child consists in preparing by rote a
+certain number of prayers in Zend, without understanding a word of
+them; the knowledge of the doctrines of their religion being left to
+be picked up from casual conversation.' A Parsi, in fact, hardly knows
+what his faith is. The Zend-Avesta is to him a sealed book; and though
+there is a Guzerati translation of it, that translation is not made
+from the original, but from a Pehlevi paraphrase, nor is it recognised
+by the priests as an authorised version. Till about five and twenty
+years ago, there was no book from which a Parsi of an inquiring mind
+could gather the principles of his religion. At that time, and, as it
+would seem, chiefly in order to counteract the influence of Christian
+missionaries, a small Dialogue was written in Guzerati&mdash;a kind of
+Catechism, giving, in the form of questions and answers, the most
+important tenets of Parsiism. We shall quote<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> some passages from this
+Dialogue, as translated by Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji. The subject of it is
+thus described:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>A few Questions and Answers to acquaint the Children of the
+holy Zarthosti Community with the Subject of the Mazdiashna
+Religion, </i>i. e.<i> the Worship of God.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Question.</i> Whom do we, of the Zarthosti community, believe
+in?</p>
+
+<p><i>Answer.</i> We believe in only one God, and do not believe in
+any besides Him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Q.</i> Who is that one God?</p>
+
+<p><i>A.</i> The God who created the heavens, the earth, the angels,
+the stars, the sun, the moon, the fire, the water, or all
+the four elements, and all things of the two worlds; that
+God we believe in. Him we worship, him we invoke, him we
+adore.</p>
+
+<p><i>Q.</i> Do we not believe in any other God?</p>
+
+<p><i>A.</i> Whoever believes in any other God but this, is an
+infidel, and shall suffer the punishment of hell.</p>
+
+<p><i>Q.</i> What is the form of our God?</p>
+
+<p><i>A.</i> Our God has neither face nor form, colour nor shape,
+nor fixed place. There is no other like him. He is himself
+singly such a glory that we cannot, praise or describe him;
+nor our mind comprehend him.</p></div>
+
+<p>So far, no one could object to this Catechism, and it must be clear
+that the Dualism, which is generally mentioned as the distinguishing
+feature of the Persian religion&mdash;the belief in two Gods, Ormuzd, the
+principle of good, and Ahriman, the principle of evil&mdash;is not
+countenanced by the modern Parsis. Whether it exists in the
+Zend-Avesta is another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> question, which, however, cannot be discussed
+at present.<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The Catechism continues:</p>
+
+<p><i>Q.</i> What is our religion?</p>
+
+<p><i>A.</i> Our religion is 'Worship of God.'</p>
+
+<p><i>Q.</i> Whence did we receive our religion?</p>
+
+<p><i>A.</i> God's true prophet&mdash;the true Zurthost (Zoroaster)
+Asphantam&acirc;n Anoshirw&acirc;n&mdash;brought the religion to us from God.</p></div>
+
+<p>Here it is curious to observe that not a single question is asked as
+to the claim of Zoroaster to be considered a true prophet. He is not
+treated as a divine being, nor even as the son of Ormuzd. Plato,
+indeed, speaks of Zoroaster as the son of Oromazes (Alc. i. p. 122 a),
+but this is a mistake, not countenanced, as far as we are aware, by
+any of the Parsi writings, whether ancient or modern. With the Parsis,
+Zoroaster is simply a wise man, a prophet favoured by God, and
+admitted into God's immediate presence; but all this, on his own
+showing only, and without any supernatural credentials, except some
+few miracles recorded of him in books of doubtful authority. This
+shows, at all events, how little the Parsis have been exposed to
+controversial discussions; for, as this is so weak a point in their
+system that it would have invited the attacks of every opponent, we
+may be sure that the Dustoors would have framed some argument in
+defence, if such defence had ever been needed.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The next extract from the Catechism treats of the canonical books:</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span></p>
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Q.</i> What religion has our prophet brought us from God?</p>
+
+<p><i>A.</i> The disciples of our prophet have recorded in several
+books that religion. Many of these books were destroyed
+during Alexander's conquest; the remainder of the books were
+preserved with great care and respect by the Sassanian
+kings. Of these again, the greater portion were destroyed at
+the Mohammedan conquest by Khalif Omar, so that we have now
+very few books remaining; viz. the Vandidad, the Yazashn&eacute;,
+the Visparad, the Khordeh Avesta, the Vistasp Nusk, and a
+few Pehlevi books. Resting our faith upon these few books,
+we now remain devoted to our good Mazdiashna religion. We
+consider these books as heavenly books, because God sent the
+tidings of these books to us through the holy Zurthost.</p></div>
+
+<p>Here, again, we see theological science in its infancy. 'We consider
+these books as heavenly books because God sent the tidings of these
+books to us through the holy Zurthost,' is not very powerful logic. It
+would have been more simple to say, 'We consider them heavenly books
+because we consider them heavenly books.' However, whether heavenly or
+not, these few books exist. They form the only basis of the
+Zoroastrian religion, and the principal source from which it is
+possible to derive any authentic information as to its origin, its
+history, and its real character.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>That the Parsis are of a tolerant character with regard to such of
+their doctrines as are not of vital importance, may be seen from the
+following extract:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Q.</i> Whose descendants are we?</p>
+
+<p><i>A.</i> Of Gayomars. By his progeny was Persia populated.</p>
+
+<p><i>Q.</i> Was Gayomars the first man?</p>
+
+<p><i>A.</i> According to our religion he was so, but the wise men
+of our community, of the Chinese, the Hindus, and several
+other nations, dispute the assertion, and say that there was
+human population on the earth before Gayomars.</p></div>
+
+<p>The moral precepts which are embodied in this Catechism do the highest
+credit to the Parsis:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Q.</i> What commands has God sent us through his prophet, the
+exalted Zurthost?</p>
+
+<p><i>A.</i> To know God as one; to know the prophet, the exalted
+Zurthost, as the true prophet; to believe the religion and
+the Avesta brought by him as true beyond all manner of
+doubt; to believe in the goodness of God; not to disobey any
+of the commands of the Mazdiashna religion; to avoid evil
+deeds; to exert for good deeds; to pray five times in the
+day; to believe on the reckoning and justice on the fourth
+morning after death; to hope for heaven and to fear hell; to
+consider doubtless the day of general destruction and
+resurrection; to remember always that God has done what he
+willed, and shall do what he wills; to face some luminous
+object while worshipping God.</p></div>
+
+<p>Then follow several paragraphs which are clearly directed against
+Christian missionaries, and more particularly against the doctrine of
+vicarious sacrifice and prayer:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Some deceivers, [the Catechism says,] with the view of
+acquiring exaltation in this world, have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> set themselves up
+as prophets, and, going among the labouring and ignorant
+people, have persuaded them that, "if you commit sin, I
+shall intercede for you, I shall plead for you, I shall save
+you," and thus deceive them; but the wise among the people
+know the deceit.'</p></div>
+
+<p>This clearly refers to Christian missionaries, but whether Roman
+Catholic or Protestant is difficult to say. The answer given by the
+Parsis is curious and significant:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'If any one commit sin,' they reply, 'under the belief that
+he shall be saved by somebody, both the deceiver as well as
+the deceived shall be damned to the day of Rast&acirc; Khez....
+There is no saviour. In the other world you shall receive
+the return according to your actions.... Your saviour is
+your deeds, and God himself. He is the pardoner and the
+giver. If you repent your sins and reform, and if the Great
+Judge consider you worthy of pardon, or would be merciful to
+you, He alone can and will save you.'</p></div>
+
+<p>It would be a mistake to suppose that the whole doctrine of the Parsis
+is contained in the short Guzerati Catechism, translated by Mr.
+Dadabhai Naoroji, still less in the fragmentary extracts here given.
+Their sacred writings, the Ya<i>s</i>na, Vispered, and Vendidad, the
+productions of much earlier ages, contain many ideas, both religious
+and mythological, which belong to the past, to the childhood of our
+race, and which no educated Parsi could honestly profess to believe in
+now. This difficulty of reconciling the more enlightened faith of the
+present generation with the mythological phraseology of their old
+sacred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> writings is solved by the Parsis in a very simple manner. They
+do not, like Roman Catholics, prohibit the reading of the Zend-Avesta;
+nor do they, like Protestants, encourage a critical study of their
+sacred texts. They simply ignore the originals of their sacred
+writings. They repeat them in their prayers without attempting to
+understand them, and they acknowledge the insufficiency of every
+translation of the Zend-Avesta that has yet been made, either in
+Pehlevi, Sanskrit, Guzerati, French, or German. Each Parsi has to pick
+up his religion as best he may. Till lately, even the Catechism did
+not form a necessary part of a child's religious education. Thus the
+religious belief of the present Parsi communities is reduced to two or
+three fundamental doctrines; and these, though professedly resting on
+the teaching of Zoroaster, receive their real sanction from a much
+higher authority. A Parsi believes in one God, to whom he addresses
+his prayers. His morality is comprised in these words&mdash;pure thoughts,
+pure words, pure deeds. Believing in the punishment of vice and the
+reward of virtue, he trusts for pardon to the mercy of God. There is a
+charm, no doubt, in so short a creed; and if the whole of Zoroaster's
+teaching were confined to this, there would be some truth in what his
+followers say of their religion&mdash;namely, that 'it is for all, and not
+for any particular nation.'</p>
+
+<p>If now we ask again, how it is that neither Christians, nor Hindus,
+nor Mohammedans have had any considerable success in converting the
+Parsis, and why even the more enlightened members of that small
+community, though fully aware of the many weak points of their own
+theology, and deeply<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> impressed with the excellence of the Christian
+religion, morals, and general civilisation, scorn the idea of ever
+migrating from the sacred ruins of their ancient faith, we are able to
+discover some reasons; though they are hardly sufficient to account
+for so extraordinary a fact?</p>
+
+<p>First, the very compactness of the modern Parsi creed accounts for the
+tenacity with which the exiles of Western India cling to it. A Parsi
+is not troubled with many theological problems or difficulties. Though
+he professes a general belief in the sacred writings of Zoroaster, he
+is not asked to profess any belief in the stories incidentally
+mentioned in the Zend-Avesta. If it is said in the Yasna that
+Zoroaster was once visited by Homa, who appeared before him in a
+brilliant supernatural body, no doctrine is laid down as to the exact
+nature of Homa. It is said that Homa was worshipped by certain ancient
+sages, Viva<i>n</i>hvat, &Acirc;thwya, and Thrita, and that, as a reward for
+their worship, great heroes were born as their sons. The fourth who
+worshipped Homa was Pourusha<i>s</i>pa, and he was rewarded by the birth of
+his son Zoroaster. Now the truth is, that Homa is the same as the
+Sanskrit Soma, well known from the Veda as an intoxicating beverage
+used at the great sacrifices, and afterwards raised to the rank of a
+deity. The Parsis are fully aware of this, but they do not seem in the
+least disturbed by the occurrence of such 'fables and endless
+genealogies.' They would not be shocked if they were told, what is a
+fact, that most of these old wives' fables have their origin in the
+religion which they most detest, the religion of the Veda, and that
+the heroes of the Zend-Avesta are the same who, with slightly changed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+names, appear again as Jemshid, Feridun, Gersh&acirc;sp, &amp;c., in the epic
+poetry of Firdusi.</p>
+
+<p>Another fact which accounts for the attachment of the Parsis to their
+religion is its remote antiquity and its former glory. Though age has
+little to do with truth, the length of time for which any system has
+lasted seems to offer a vague argument in favour of its strength. It
+is a feeling which the Parsi shares in common with the Jew and the
+Brahman, and which even the Christian missionary appeals to when
+confronting the systems of later prophets.</p>
+
+<p>Thirdly, it is felt by the Parsis that in changing their religion,
+they would not only relinquish the heirloom of their remote
+forefathers, but of their own fathers; and it is felt as a dereliction
+of filial piety to give up what was most precious to those whose
+memory is most precious and almost sacred to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>If in spite of all this, many people, most competent to judge, look
+forward with confidence to the conversion of the Parsis, it is
+because, in the most essential points, they have already, though
+unconsciously, approached as near as possible to the pure doctrines of
+Christianity. Let them but read the Zend-Avesta, in which they profess
+to believe, and they will find that their faith is no longer the faith
+of the Ya<i>s</i>na, the Vendidad, and the Vispered. As historical relics,
+these works, if critically interpreted, will always retain a prominent
+place in the great library of the ancient world. As oracles of
+religious faith, they are defunct, and a mere anachronism in the age
+in which we live.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, let missionaries read their Bible, and let them
+preach that Christianity which once<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> conquered the world&mdash;the genuine
+and unshackled Gospel of Christ and the Apostles. Let them respect
+native prejudices, and be tolerant with regard to all that can be
+tolerated in a Christian community. Let them consider that
+Christianity is not a gift to be pressed on unwilling minds, but the
+highest of all privileges which natives can receive at the hands of
+their present rulers. Natives of independent and honest character
+cannot afford at present to join the ranks of converts without losing
+that true caste which no man ought to lose&mdash;namely, self-respect. They
+are driven to prop up their tottering religions, rather than profess a
+faith which seems dictated to them by their conquerors. Such feelings
+ought to be respected. Finally, let missionaries study the sacred
+writings on which the faith of the Parsis is professedly founded. Let
+them examine the bulwarks which they mean to overthrow. They will find
+them less formidable from within than from without. But they will also
+discover that they rest on a foundation which ought never to be
+touched&mdash;a faith in one God, the Creator, the Ruler, and the Judge of
+the world.</p>
+
+<p class="f3"><i>August, 1862.</i></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> 'The Manners and Customs of the Parsees.' By Dadabhai
+Naoroji, Esq. Liverpool, 1861.
+</p><p>
+'The Parsee Religion,' By Dadabhai Naoroji, Esq. Liverpool, 1861.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> See page 140.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX.</h2>
+
+<h2>BUDDHISM.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>f the command of St. Paul, 'Prove all things, hold fast that which is
+good,' may be supposed to refer to spiritual things, and, more
+especially, to religious doctrines, it must be confessed that few
+only, whether theologians or laymen, have ever taken to heart the
+apostle's command. How many candidates for holy orders are there who
+could give a straightforward answer if asked to enumerate the
+principal religions of the world, or to state the names of their
+founders, and the titles of the works which are still considered by
+millions of human beings as the sacred authorities for their religious
+belief? To study such books as the Koran of the Mohammedans, the
+Zend-Avesta of the Parsis, the King's of the Confucians, the
+Tao-te-King of the Taoists, the Vedas of the Brahmans, the Tripi<i>t</i>aka
+of the Buddhists, the S&ucirc;tras of the Jains, or the Granth of the Sikhs,
+would be considered by many mere waste of time. Yet St. Paul's command
+is very clear and simple; and to maintain that it referred to the
+heresies of his own time only, or to the philosophical systems of the
+Greeks and Romans, would be to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>narrow the horizon of the apostle's
+mind, and to destroy the general applicability of his teaching to all
+times and to all countries. Many will ask what possible good could be
+derived from the works of men who must have been either deceived or
+deceivers, nor would it be difficult to quote some passages in order
+to show the utter absurdity and worthlessness of the religious books
+of the Hindus and Chinese. But this was not the spirit in which the
+apostle of the Gentiles addressed himself to the Epicureans and
+Stoics, nor is this the feeling with which a thoughtful Christian and
+a sincere believer in the divine government of the world is likely to
+rise from a perusal of any of the books which he knows to be or to
+have been the only source of spiritual light and comfort to thousands
+and thousands among the dwellers on earth.</p>
+
+<p>Many are the advantages to be derived from a careful study of other
+religions, but the greatest of all is that it teaches us to appreciate
+more truly what we possess in our own. When do we feel the blessings
+of our own country more warmly and truly than when we return from
+abroad? It is the same with regard to religion. Let us see what other
+nations have had and still have in the place of religion; let us
+examine the prayers, the worship, the theology even of the most highly
+civilised races,&mdash;the Greeks, the Romans, the Hindus, the
+Persians,&mdash;and we shall then understand more thoroughly what blessings
+are vouchsafed to us in being allowed to breathe from the first breath
+of life the pure air of a land of Christian light and knowledge. We
+are too apt to take the greatest blessings as matters of course, and
+even religion forms no exception. We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> have done so little to gain our
+religion, we have suffered so little in the cause of truth, that
+however highly we prize our own Christianity, we never prize it highly
+enough until we have compared it with the religions of the rest of the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>This, however, is not the only advantage; and we think that M.
+Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire has formed too low an estimate of the
+benefits to be derived from a thoughtful study of the religions of
+mankind when he writes of Buddhism: 'Le seul, mais immense service que
+le Bouddhisme puisse nous rendre, c'est par son triste contraste de
+nous faire appr&eacute;cier mieux encore la valeur inestimable de nos
+croyances, en nous montrant tout ce qu'il en co&ucirc;te &agrave; l'humanit&eacute; qui ne
+les partage point.' This is not all. If a knowledge of other countries
+and a study of the manners and customs of foreign nations teach us to
+appreciate what we have at home, they likewise form the best cure of
+that national conceit and want of sympathy with which we are too apt
+to look on all that is strange and foreign. The feeling which led the
+Hellenic races to divide the whole world into Greeks and Barbarians is
+so deeply engrained in human nature that not even Christianity has
+been able altogether to remove it. Thus when we cast our first glance
+into the labyrinth of the religions of the world, all seems to us
+darkness, self-deceit, and vanity. It sounds like a degradation of the
+very name of religion to apply it to the wild ravings of Hindu Yogins
+or the blank blasphemies of Chinese Buddhists. But as we slowly and
+patiently wend our way through the dreary prisons, our own eyes seem
+to expand, and we perceive a glimmer of light where all was darkness
+at first.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> We learn to understand the saying of one who more than
+anybody had a right to speak with authority on this subject, that
+'there is no religion which does not contain a spark of truth.' Those
+who would limit the riches of God's goodness and forbearance and long
+suffering, and would hand over the largest portion of the human race
+to inevitable perdition, have never adduced a tittle of evidence from
+the Gospel or from any other trustworthy source in support of so
+unhallowed a belief. They have generally appealed to the devilries and
+orgies of heathen worship; they have quoted the blasphemies of
+Oriental Sufis and the immoralities sanctioned by the successors of
+Mohammed; but they have seldom, if ever, endeavoured to discover the
+true and original character of the strange forms of faith and worship
+which they call the work of the devil. If the Indians had formed their
+notions of Christianity from the soldiers of Cortez and Pizarro, or if
+the Hindus had studied the principles of Christian morality in the
+lives of Clive and Warren Hastings; or, to take a less extreme case,
+if a Mohammedan, settled in England, were to test the practical
+working of Christian charity by the spirit displayed in the journals
+of our religious parties, their notions of Christianity would be about
+as correct as the ideas which thousands of educated Christians
+entertain of the diabolical character of heathen religion. Even
+Christianity has been depraved into Jesuitism and Mormonism, and if
+we, as Protestants, claim the right to appeal to the Gospel as the
+only test by which our faith is to be judged, we must grant a similar
+privilege to Mohammedans and Buddhists, and to all who possess a
+written, and, as they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> believe, revealed authority for the articles of
+their faith.</p>
+
+<p>But though no one is likely to deny the necessity of studying each
+religion in its most ancient form and from its original documents,
+before we venture to pronounce our verdict, the difficulties of this
+task are such that in them more than in anything else, must be sought
+the cause why so few of our best thinkers and writers have devoted
+themselves to a critical and historical study of the religions of the
+world. All important religions have sprung up in the East. Their
+sacred books are written in Eastern tongues, and some of them are of
+such ancient date that those even who profess to believe in them,
+admit that they are unable to understand them without the help of
+translations and commentaries. Until very lately the sacred books of
+three of the most important religions, those of the Brahmans, the
+Buddhists, and the Parsis, were totally unknown in Europe. It was one
+of the most important results of the study of Sanskrit, or the ancient
+language of India, that through it the key, not only to the sacred
+books of the Brahmans, the Vedas, but likewise to those of the
+Buddhists and Zoroastrians, was recovered. And nothing shows more
+strikingly the rapid progress of Sanskrit scholarship than that even
+Sir William Jones, whose name has still, with many, a more familiar
+sound than the names of Colebrooke, Burnouf, and Lassen, should have
+known nothing of the Vedas; that he should never have read a line of
+the canonical books of the Buddhists, and that he actually expressed
+his belief that Buddha was the same as the Teutonic deity Wodan or
+Odin, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> <i>S</i>&acirc;kya, another name of Buddha, the same as Shishac, king
+of Egypt. The same distinguished scholar never perceived the intimate
+relationship between the language of the Zend-Avesta and Sanskrit, and
+he declared the whole of the Zoroastrian writings to be modern
+forgeries.</p>
+
+<p>Even at present we are not yet in possession of a complete edition,
+much less of any trustworthy translation, of the Vedas; we only
+possess the originals of a few books of the Buddhist canon; and though
+the text of the Zend-Avesta has been edited in its entirety, its
+interpretation is beset with greater difficulties than that of the
+Vedas or the Tripi<i>t</i>aka. A study of the ancient religions of China,
+those of Confucius and Lao-tse, presupposes an acquaintance with
+Chinese, a language which it takes a life to learn thoroughly; and
+even the religion of Mohammed, though more accessible than any other
+Eastern religion, cannot be fully examined except by a master of
+Arabic. It is less surprising, therefore, than it might at first
+appear, that a comprehensive and scholarlike treatment of the
+religions of the world should still be a desideratum. Scholars who
+have gained a knowledge of the language, and thereby free access to
+original documents, find so much work at hand which none but
+themselves can do, that they grudge the time for collecting and
+arranging, for the benefit of the public at large, the results which
+they have obtained. Nor need we wonder that critical historians should
+rather abstain from the study of the religions of antiquity than trust
+to mere translations and second-hand authorities.</p>
+
+<p>Under these circumstances we feel all the more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> thankful if we meet
+with a writer like M. Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire, who has acquired a
+knowledge of Eastern languages sufficient to enable him to consult
+original texts and to control the researches of other scholars, and
+who at the same time commands that wide view of the history of human
+thought which enables him to assign to each system its proper place,
+to perceive its most salient features, and to distinguish between what
+is really important and what is not, in the lengthy lucubrations of
+ancient poets and prophets. M. Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire is one of the
+most accomplished scholars of France; and his reputation as the
+translator of Aristotle has made us almost forget that the Professor
+of Greek Philosophy at the Coll&egrave;ge de France<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> is the same as the
+active writer in the 'Globe' of 1827, and the 'National' of 1830; the
+same who signed the protest against the July ordinances, and who in
+1848 was Chief Secretary of the Provisional Government. If such a man
+takes the trouble to acquire a knowledge of Sanskrit, and to attend in
+the same College where he was professor, the lectures of his own
+colleague, the late Eug&egrave;ne Burnouf, his publications on Hindu
+philosophy and religion will naturally attract a large amount of
+public interest. The Sanskrit scholar by profession works and
+publishes chiefly for the benefit of other Sanskrit scholars. He is
+satisfied with bringing to light the ore which he has extracted by
+patient labour from among the dusty MSS. of the East-India <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>House. He
+seldom takes the trouble to separate the metal from the ore, to purify
+or to strike it into current coin. He is but too often apt to forget
+that no lasting addition is ever made to the treasury of human
+knowledge unless the results of special research are translated into
+the universal language of science, and rendered available to every
+person of intellect and education. A division of labour seems most
+conducive to this end. We want a class of interpreters, men such as M.
+Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire, who are fully competent to follow and to
+control the researches of professional students, and who at the same
+time have not forgotten the language of the world.</p>
+
+<p>In his work on Buddhism, of which a second edition has just appeared,
+M. Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire has undertaken to give to the world at
+large the really trustworthy and important results which have been
+obtained by the laborious researches of Oriental scholars, from the
+original documents of that interesting and still mysterious religion.
+It was a task of no ordinary difficulty, for although these researches
+are of very recent date, and belong to a period of Sanskrit
+scholarship posterior to Sir W. Jones and Colebrooke, yet such is the
+amount of evidence brought together by the combined industry of
+Hodgson, Turnour, Csoma de K&ouml;r&ouml;s, Stanislas Julien, Foucaux, Fausb&ouml;ll,
+Spence Hardy, but above all, of the late Eug&egrave;ne Burnouf, that it
+required no common patience and discrimination in order to compose
+from such materials so accurate, and at the same time so lucid and
+readable a book on Buddhism as that which we owe to M. Barth&eacute;lemy
+Saint-Hilaire. The greater part of it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> appeared originally in the
+'Journal des Savants,' the time-honoured organ of the French Academy,
+which counts on its staff the names of Cousin, Flourens, Villemain,
+Biot, Mignet, Littr&eacute;, &amp;c., and admits as contributors sixteen only of
+the most illustrious members of that illustrious body, <i>la cr&ecirc;me de la
+cr&ecirc;me</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Though much had been said and written about Buddhism,&mdash;enough to
+frighten priests by seeing themselves anticipated in auricular
+confession, beads, and tonsure by the Lamas of Tibet,<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> and to
+disconcert philosophers by finding themselves outbid in positivism and
+nihilism by the inmates of Chinese monasteries,&mdash;the real beginning of
+an historical and critical study of the doctrines of Buddha dates from
+the year 1824. In that year Mr. Hodgson announced the fact that the
+original documents of the Buddhist canon had been preserved in
+Sanskrit in the monasteries of Nepal. Before that time our information
+on Buddhism had been derived at random from China, Japan, Burmah,
+Tibet, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>Mongolia, and Tartary; and though it was known that the
+Buddhist literature in all these countries professed itself to be
+derived, directly or indirectly, from India, and that the technical
+terms of that religion, not excepting the very name of Buddha, had
+their etymology in Sanskrit only, no hope was entertained that the
+originals of these various translations could ever be recovered. Mr.
+Hodgson, who settled in Nepal in 1821, as political resident of the
+East-India Company, and whose eyes were always open, not only to the
+natural history of that little-explored country, but likewise to its
+antiquities, its languages, and traditions, was not long before he
+discovered that his friends, the priests of Nepal, possessed a
+complete literature of their own. That literature was not written in
+the spoken dialects of the country, but in Sanskrit. Mr. Hodgson
+procured a catalogue of all the works, still in existence, which
+formed the Buddhist canon. He afterwards succeeded in procuring copies
+of these works, and he was able in 1824 to send about sixty volumes to
+the Asiatic Society of Bengal. As no member of that society seemed
+inclined to devote himself to the study of these MSS., Mr. Hodgson
+sent two complete collections of the same MSS. to the Asiatic Society
+of London and the Soci&eacute;t&eacute; Asiatique of Paris. Before alluding to the
+brilliant results which the last-named collection produced in the
+hands of Eug&egrave;ne Burnouf, we must mention the labours of other
+students, which preceded the publication of Burnouf's researches.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hodgson himself gave to the world a number of valuable essays
+written on the spot, and afterwards collected under the title of
+'Illustrations of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> the Literature and Religion of the Buddhists,'
+Serampore, 1841. He established the important fact, in accordance with
+the traditions of the priests of Nepal, that some of the Sanskrit
+documents which he recovered had existed in the monasteries of Nepal
+ever since the second century of our era, and that the whole of that
+collection had, five or six hundred years later, when Buddhism became
+definitely established in Tibet, been translated into the language of
+that country. As the art of printing had been introduced from China
+into Tibet, there was less difficulty in procuring complete copies of
+the Tibetan translation of the Buddhist canon. The real difficulty was
+to find a person acquainted with the language. By a fortunate
+concurrence of circumstances, however, it so happened that about the
+same time when Mr. Hodgson's discoveries began to attract the
+attention of Oriental scholars at Calcutta, a Hungarian, of the name
+of Alexander Csoma de K&ouml;r&ouml;s, arrived there. He had made his way from
+Hungary to Tibet on foot, without any means of his own, and with the
+sole object of discovering somewhere in Central Asia the native home
+of the Hungarians. Arrived in Tibet, his enthusiasm found a new vent
+in acquiring a language which no European before his time had
+mastered, and in exploring the vast collection of the canonical books
+of the Buddhists, preserved in that language. Though he arrived at
+Calcutta almost without a penny, he met with a hearty welcome from the
+members of the Asiatic Society, and was enabled with their assistance
+to publish the results of his extraordinary researches. People have
+complained of the length of the sacred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> books of other nations, but
+there are none that approach in bulk to the sacred canon of the
+Tibetans. It consists of two collections, commonly called the Kanjur
+and Tanjur. The proper spelling of their names is Bkah-hgyur,
+pronounced Kah-gyur, and Bstan-hgyur, pronounced Tan-gyur. The Kanjur
+consists, in its different editions, of 100, 102, or 108 volumes
+folio. It comprises 1083 distinct works. The Tanjur consists of 225
+volumes folio, each weighing from four to five pounds in the edition
+of Peking. Editions of this colossal code were printed at Peking,
+Lhassa, and other places. The edition of the Kanjur published at
+Peking, by command of the Emperor Khian-Lung, sold for &pound;600. A copy of
+the Kanjur was bartered for 7000 oxen by the Buriates, and the same
+tribe paid 1200 silver roubles for a complete copy of the Kanjur and
+Tanjur together.<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> Such a jungle of religious literature&mdash;the most
+excellent hiding-place, we should think, for Lamas and
+Dalai-Lamas&mdash;was too much even for a man who could travel on foot from
+Hungary to Tibet. The Hungarian enthusiast, however, though he did not
+translate the whole, gave a most valuable analysis of this immense
+bible, in the twentieth volume of the 'Asiatic Researches,' sufficient
+to establish the fact that the principal portion of it was a
+translation from the same Sanskrit originals which had been discovered
+in Nepal by Mr. Hodgson. Csoma de K&ouml;r&ouml;s died soon after he had given
+to the world the first fruits of his labours,&mdash;a victim to his heroic
+devotion to the study of ancient languages and religions.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span></p>
+<p>It was another fortunate coincidence that, contemporaneously with the
+discoveries of Hodgson and Csoma de K&ouml;r&ouml;s, another scholar, Schmidt of
+St. Petersburg, had so far advanced in the study of the Mongolian
+language, as to be able to translate portions of the Mongolian version
+of the Buddhist canon, and thus forward the elucidation of some of the
+problems connected with the religion of Buddha.</p>
+
+<p>It never rains but it pours. Whereas for years, nay, for centuries,
+not a single original document of the Buddhist religion had been
+accessible to the scholars of Europe, we witness, in the small space
+of ten years, the recovery of four complete Buddhist literatures. In
+addition to the discoveries of Hodgson in Nepal, of Csoma de K&ouml;r&ouml;s in
+Tibet, and of Schmidt in Mongolia, the Honourable George Turnour
+suddenly presented to the world the Buddhist literature of Ceylon,
+composed in the sacred language of that island, the ancient P&acirc;li. The
+existence of that literature had been known before. Since 1826 Sir
+Alexander Johnston had been engaged in collecting authentic copies of
+the Mah&acirc;vansa, the R&acirc;<i>g</i>&acirc;val&icirc;, and the R&acirc;<i>g</i>aratn&acirc;kar&icirc;. These copies
+were translated at his suggestion from P&acirc;li into modern Singhalese and
+thence into English. The publication was entrusted to Mr. Edward
+Upham, and the work appeared in 1833, under the title of 'Sacred and
+Historical Works of Ceylon,' dedicated to William IV. Unfortunately,
+whether through fraud or through misunderstanding, the priests who
+were to have procured an authentic copy of the P&acirc;li originals and
+translated them into the vernacular language, appear to have formed a
+compilation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> of their own from various sources. The official
+translators by whom this mutilated Singhalese abridgment was to have
+been rendered into English, took still greater liberties; and the
+'Sacred and Historical Books of Ceylon' had hardly been published
+before Burnouf, then a mere beginner in the study of P&acirc;li, was able to
+prove the utter uselessness of that translation. Mr. Turnour, however,
+soon made up for this disappointment. He set to work in a more
+scholarlike spirit, and after acquiring himself a knowledge of the
+P&acirc;li language, he published several important essays on the Buddhist
+canon, as preserved in Ceylon. These were followed by an edition and
+translation of the Mah&acirc;vansa, or the history of Ceylon, written in the
+fifth century after Christ, and giving an account of the island from
+the earliest times to the beginning of the fourth century <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> Several
+continuations of that history are in existence, but Mr. Turnour was
+prevented by an early death from continuing his edition beyond the
+original portion of that chronicle. The exploration of the Ceylonese
+literature has since been taken up again by the Rev. D. J. Gogerly
+(Clough), whose essays are unfortunately scattered about in Singhalese
+periodicals and little known in Europe; and by the Rev. Spence Hardy,
+for twenty years Wesleyan Missionary in Ceylon. His two works,
+'Eastern Monachism' and 'Manual of Buddhism,' are full of interesting
+matter, but as they are chiefly derived from Singhalese, and even more
+modern sources, they require to be used with caution.<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the same manner as the Sanskrit originals of Nepal were translated
+by Buddhist missionaries into Tibetan, Mongolian, and, as we shall
+soon see, into Chinese and Mandshu,<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> the P&acirc;li originals of Ceylon
+were carried to Burmah and Siam, and translated there into the
+languages of those countries. Hardly anything has as yet been done for
+exploring the literature of these two countries, which open a
+promising field for any one ambitious to follow in the footsteps of
+Hodgson, Csoma, and Turnour.</p>
+
+<p>A very important collection of Buddhist MSS. has lately been brought
+from Ceylon to Europe by M. Grimblot, and is now deposited in the
+Imperial Library at Paris. This collection, to judge from a report
+published in 1866 in the 'Journal des Savants' by M. Barth&eacute;lemy
+Saint-Hilaire, consists of no less than eighty-seven works; and, as
+some of them are represented by more than one copy, the total number
+of MSS. amounts to one hundred and twenty-one. They fill altogether
+14,000 palm leaves, and are written partly in Singhalese, partly in
+Burmese characters. Next to Ceylon, Burmah and Siam would seem to be
+the two countries most likely to yield large collections of P&acirc;li MSS.,
+and the MSS. which now exist in Ceylon may, to a considerable extent,
+be traced back to these two countries. At the beginning of the
+sixteenth century, the Tamil conquerors of Ceylon are reported to have
+burnt every Buddhist book they could discover, in the hope of thus
+destroying the vitality of that detested religion. Buddhism, however,
+though persecuted&mdash;or, more probably, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>because persecuted&mdash;remained
+the national religion of the island, and in the eighteenth century it
+had recovered its former ascendency. Missions were then sent to Siam
+to procure authentic copies of the sacred documents; priests properly
+ordained were imported from Burmah; and several libraries, which
+contain both the canonical and the profane literature of Buddhism,
+were founded at Dadala, Ambagapitya, and other places.</p>
+
+<p>The sacred canon of the Buddhists is called the <span class="sp1">Tripi<i>t</i>aka</span>, i. e. the
+three baskets. The first basket contains all that has reference to
+morality, or <span class="sp1">Vinaya</span>; the second contains the <span class="sp1">S&ucirc;tras</span>, i. e. the
+discourses of Buddha; the third includes all works treating of
+dogmatic philosophy or metaphysics. The second and third baskets are
+sometimes comprehended under the general name of <span class="sp1">Dharma</span>, or law, and
+it has become usual to apply to the third basket the name of
+<span class="sp1">Abhidharma</span>, or by-law. The first and second <span class="sp1">pi<i>t</i>akas</span> contain each
+five separate works; the third contains seven. M. Grimblot has secured
+MSS. of nearly every one of these works, and he has likewise brought
+home copies of the famous commentaries of Buddhaghosha. These
+commentaries are of great importance; for although Buddhaghosha lived
+as late as 430 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>, he is supposed to have been the translator of
+more ancient commentaries, brought in 316 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> to Ceylon from Magadha
+by Mahinda, the son of A<i>s</i>oka, translated by him from P&acirc;li into
+Singhalese, and retranslated by Buddhaghosha into P&acirc;li, the original
+language both of the canonical books and of their commentaries.
+Whether historical criticism will allow to the commentaries of
+Buddhaghosha the authority due to documents of the fourth century<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+before Christ, is a question that has yet to be settled. But even as a
+collector of earlier traditions and as a writer of the fifth century
+after Christ, his authority would be considerable with regard to the
+solution of some of the most important problems of Indian history and
+chronology. Some scholars who have written on the history of Buddhism
+have clearly shown too strong an inclination to treat the statements
+contained in the commentaries of Buddhaghosha as purely historical,
+forgetting the great interval of time by which he is separated from
+the events which he relates. No doubt if it could be proved that
+Buddhaghosha's works were literal translations of the so-called
+Attakath&acirc;s or commentaries brought by Mahinda to Ceylon, this would
+considerably enhance their historical value. But the whole account of
+these translations rests on tradition, and if we consider the
+extraordinary precautions taken, according to tradition, by the LXX
+translators of the Old Testament, and then observe the discrepancies
+between the chronology of the Septuagint and that of the Hebrew text,
+we shall be better able to appreciate the risk of trusting to Oriental
+translations, even to those that pretend to be literal. The idea of a
+faithful literal translation seems altogether foreign to Oriental
+minds. Granted that Mahinda translated the original P&acirc;li commentaries
+into Singhalese, there was nothing to restrain him from inserting
+anything that he thought likely to be useful to his new converts.
+Granted that Buddhaghosha translated these translations back into
+P&acirc;li, why should he not have incorporated any facts that were then
+believed in and had been handed down by tradition from generation to
+generation? Was he not at liberty&mdash;nay, would he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> not have felt it his
+duty, to explain apparent difficulties, to remove contradictions, and
+to correct palpable mistakes? In our time, when even the
+contemporaneous evidence of Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, or Jornandes
+is sifted by the most uncompromising scepticism, we must not expect a
+more merciful treatment for the annals of Buddhism. Scholars engaged
+in special researches are too willing to acquiesce in evidence,
+particularly if that evidence has been discovered by their own efforts
+and comes before them with all the charms of novelty. But, in the
+broad daylight of historical criticism, the prestige of such a witness
+as Buddhaghosha soon dwindles away, and his statements as to kings and
+councils eight hundred years before his time are in truth worth no
+more than the stories told of Arthur by Geoffrey of Monmouth, or the
+accounts we read in Livy of the early history of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most important works of M. Grimblot's collection, and one
+that we hope will soon be published, is a history of Buddhism in
+Ceylon, called the <span class="sp1">D&icirc;pavansa</span>. The only work of the same character
+which has hitherto been known is the <span class="sp1">Mah&acirc;vansa</span>, published by the
+Honourable George Turnour. But this is professedly based on the
+D&icirc;pavansa, and is probably of a much later date. Mah&acirc;n&acirc;ma, the
+compiler of the Mah&acirc;vansa, lived about 500 <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> His work was
+continued by later chroniclers to the middle of the eighteenth
+century. Though Mah&acirc;n&acirc;ma wrote towards the end of the fifth century
+after Christ, his own share of the chronicle seems to have ended with
+the year 302 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>, and a commentary which he wrote on his own
+chronicle likewise breaks off at that period. The exact date of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> the
+D&icirc;pavansa is not yet known; but as it also breaks off with the death
+of Mah&acirc;sena in 302 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>, we cannot ascribe to it, for the present, any
+higher authority than could be commanded by a writer of the fourth
+century after Christ.</p>
+
+<p>We now return to Mr. Hodgson. His collections of Sanskrit MSS. had
+been sent, as we saw, to the Asiatic Society of Calcutta from 1824 to
+1839, to the Royal Asiatic Society in London in 1835, and to the
+Soci&eacute;t&eacute; Asiatique of Paris in 1837. They remained dormant at Calcutta
+and in London. At Paris, however, these Buddhist MSS. fell into the
+hands of Burnouf. Unappalled by their size and tediousness, he set to
+work, and was not long before he discovered their extreme importance.
+After seven years of careful study, Burnouf published, in 1844, his
+'Introduction &agrave; l'Histoire du Buddhisme.' It is this work which laid
+the foundation for a systematic study of the religion of Buddha.
+Though acknowledging the great value of the researches made in the
+Buddhist literatures of Tibet, Mongolia, China, and Ceylon, Burnouf
+showed that Buddhism, being of Indian origin, ought to be studied
+first of all in the original Sanskrit documents, preserved in Nepal.
+Though he modestly called his work an Introduction to the History of
+Buddhism, there are few points of importance on which his industry has
+not brought together the most valuable evidence, and his genius shed a
+novel and brilliant light. The death of Burnouf in 1851, put an end to
+a work which, if finished according to the plan sketched out by the
+author in the preface, would have been the most perfect monument of
+Oriental scholarship. A volume published after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> his death, in 1852,
+contains a translation of one of the canonical books of Nepal, with
+notes and appendices, the latter full of the most valuable information
+on some of the more intricate questions of Buddhism. Though much
+remained to be done, and though a very small breach only had been made
+in the vast pile of Sanskrit MSS. presented by Mr. Hodgson to the
+Asiatic Societies of Paris and London, no one has been bold enough to
+continue what Burnouf left unfinished. The only important additions to
+our knowledge of Buddhism since his death are an edition of the
+Lalita-Vistara or the life of Buddha, prepared by a native, the
+learned Babu Rajendralal Mittra; an edition of the P&acirc;li original of
+the Dhammapadam, by Dr. Fausb&ouml;ll, a Dane; and last, not least, the
+excellent translation by M. Stanislas Julien, of the life and travels
+of Hiouen-Thsang. This Chinese pilgrim had visited India from 629 to
+645 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>, for the purpose of learning Sanskrit, and translating from
+Sanskrit into Chinese some important works on the religion and
+philosophy of the Buddhists; and his account of the geography, the
+social, religious, and political state of India at the beginning of
+the seventh century, is invaluable for studying the practical working
+of that religion at a time when its influence began to decline, and
+when it was soon to be supplanted by modern Brahmanism and
+Mohammedanism.</p>
+
+<p>It was no easy task for M. Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire to make himself
+acquainted with all these works. The study of Buddhism would almost
+seem to be beyond the power of any single individual, if it required a
+practical acquaintance with all the languages in which the doctrines
+of Buddha have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> been written down. Burnouf was probably the only man
+who, in addition to his knowledge of Sanskrit, did not shrink from
+acquiring a practical knowledge of Tibetan, P&acirc;li, Singhalese, and
+Burmese, in order to prepare himself for such a task. The same scholar
+had shown, however, that though it was impossible for a Tibetan,
+Mongolian, or Chinese scholar to arrive, without a knowledge of
+Sanskrit, at a correct understanding of the doctrines of Buddha, a
+knowledge of Sanskrit was sufficient for entering into their spirit,
+for comprehending their origin and growth in India, and their
+modification in the different countries where they took root in later
+times. Assisted by his familiarity with Sanskrit, and bringing into
+the field, as a new and valuable auxiliary, his intimate acquaintance
+with nearly all the systems of philosophy and religion of both the
+ancient and modern worlds, M. Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire has succeeded
+in drawing a picture, both lively and correct, of the origin, the
+character, the strong as well as weak points, of the religion of
+Buddha. He has become the first historian of Buddhism. He has not been
+carried away by a temptation which must have been great for one who is
+able to read in the past the lessons for the present or the future. He
+has not used Buddhism either as a bugbear or as a <i>beau id&eacute;al</i>. He is
+satisfied with stating in his preface that many lessons might be
+learned by modern philosophers from a study of Buddhism, but in the
+body of the work he never perverts the chair of the historian into the
+pulpit of the preacher.</p>
+
+<p>'This book may offer one other advantage,' he writes, 'and I regret to
+say that at present it may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> seem to come opportunely. It is the
+misfortune of our times that the same doctrines which form the
+foundation of Buddhism meet at the hands of some of our philosophers
+with a favour which they ill deserve. For some years we have seen
+systems arising in which metempsychosis and transmigration are highly
+spoken of, and attempts are made to explain the world and man without
+either a God or a Providence, exactly as Buddha did. A future life is
+refused to the yearnings of mankind, and the immortality of the soul
+is replaced by the immortality of works. God is dethroned, and in His
+place they substitute man, the only being, we are told, in which the
+Infinite becomes conscious of itself. These theories are recommended
+to us sometimes in the name of science, or of history, or philology,
+or even of metaphysics; and though they are neither new nor very
+original, yet they can do much injury to feeble hearts. This is not
+the place to examine these theories, and their authors are both too
+learned and too sincere to deserve to be condemned summarily and
+without discussion. But it is well that they should know by the
+example, too little known, of Buddhism, what becomes of man if he
+depends on himself alone, and if his meditations, misled by a pride of
+which he is hardly conscious, bring him to the precipice where Buddha
+was lost. Besides, I am well aware of all the differences, and I am
+not going to insult our contemporary philosophers by confounding them
+indiscriminately with Buddha, although addressing to both the same
+reproof. I acknowledge willingly all their additional merits, which
+are considerable. But systems of philosophy must always be judged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> by
+the conclusions to which they lead, whatever road they may follow in
+reaching them; and their conclusions, though obtained by different
+means, are not therefore less objectionable. Buddha arrived at his
+conclusions 2400 years ago. He proclaimed and practised them with an
+energy which is not likely to be surpassed, even if it be equalled. He
+displayed a child-like intrepidity which no one can exceed, nor can it
+be supposed that any system in our days could again acquire so
+powerful an ascendency over the souls of men. It would be useful,
+however, if the authors of these modern systems would just cast a
+glance at the theories and destinies of Buddhism. It is not philosophy
+in the sense in which we understand this great name, nor is it
+religion in the sense of ancient paganism, of Christianity, or of
+Mohammedanism; but it contains elements of all worked up into a
+perfectly independent doctrine which acknowledges nothing in the
+universe but man, and obstinately refuses to recognise anything else,
+though confounding man with nature in the midst of which he lives.
+Hence all those aberrations of Buddhism which ought to be a warning to
+others. Unfortunately, if people rarely profit by their own faults,
+they profit yet more rarely by the faults of others. (Introduction, p.
+vii.)</p>
+
+<p>But though M. Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire does not write history merely
+for the sake of those masked batteries which French writers have used
+with so much skill at all times, but more particularly during the late
+years of Imperial sway, it is clear, from the remarks just quoted,
+that our author is not satisfied with simply chronicling the dry facts
+of Buddhism, or turning into French the tedious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> discourses of its
+founder. His work is an animated sketch, giving too little rather than
+too much. It is just the book which was wanted to dispel the erroneous
+notions about Buddhism, which are still current among educated men,
+and to excite an interest which may lead those who are naturally
+frightened by the appalling proportions of Buddhist literature, and
+the uncouth sounds of Buddhist terminology, to a study of the quartos
+of Burnouf, Turnour, and others. To those who may wish for more
+detailed information on Buddhism, than could be given by M. Barth&eacute;lemy
+Saint-Hilaire, consistently with the plan of his work, we can strongly
+recommend the work of a German writer, 'Die Religion des Buddha,' von
+K&ouml;ppen, Berlin, 1857. It is founded on the same materials as the
+French work, but being written by a scholar and for scholars, it
+enters on a more minute examination of all that has been said or
+written on Buddha and Buddhism. In a second volume the same learned
+and industrious student has lately published a history of Buddhism in
+Tibet.</p>
+
+<p>M. Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire's work is divided into three portions. The
+first contains an account of the origin of Buddhism, a life of Buddha,
+and an examination of Buddhist ethics and metaphysics. In the second,
+he describes the state of Buddhism in India in the seventh century of
+our era, from the materials supplied by the travels of Hiouen-Thsang.
+The third gives a description of Buddhism as actually existing in
+Ceylon, and as lately described by an eye-witness, the Rev. Spence
+Hardy. We shall confine ourselves chiefly to the first part, which
+treats of the life and teaching of Buddha.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>M. Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire, following the example of Burnouf, Lassen,
+and Wilson, accepts the date of the Ceylonese era 543 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> as the date
+of Buddha's death. Though we cannot enter here into long chronological
+discussions, we must remark, that this date was clearly obtained by
+the Buddhists of Ceylon by calculation, not by historical tradition,
+and that it is easy to point out in that calculation a mistake of
+about seventy years. The more plausible date of Buddha's death is 477
+<span class="smcap">b.c.</span> For the purposes, however, which M. Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire had
+in view, this difference is of small importance. We know so little of
+the history of India during the sixth and fifth centuries <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, that
+the stage on which he represents Buddha as preaching and teaching
+would have had very much the same background, the same costume and
+accessories, for the sixth as for the fifth century <span class="smcap">b.c.</span></p>
+
+<p>In the life of Buddha, which extends from p. 1 to 79, M. Barth&eacute;lemy
+Saint-Hilaire follows almost exclusively the Lalita-Vistara. This is
+one of the most popular works of the Buddhists. It forms part of the
+Buddhist canon; and as we know of a translation into Chinese, which M.
+Stanislas Julien ascribes to the year 76 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>, we may safely refer its
+original composition to an ante-Christian date. It has been published
+in Sanskrit by Babu Rajendralal Mittra, and we owe to M. Foucaux an
+edition of the same work in its Tibetan translation, the first Tibetan
+text printed in Europe. From specimens that we have seen, we should
+think it would be highly desirable to have an accurate translation of
+the Chinese text, such as M. Stanislas Julien alone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> is able to give
+us.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> Few people, however, except scholars, would have the patience
+to read this work either in its English or French translation, as may
+be seen from the following specimen, containing the beginning of Babu
+Rajendralal Mittra's version:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Om! Salutation to all Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, &Acirc;ryas,
+<i>S</i>r&acirc;vakas, and Pratyeka Buddhas of all times, past,
+present, and future; who are adored throughout the farthest
+limits of the ten quarters of the globe. Thus hath it been
+heard by me, that once on a time Bhagavat sojourned in the
+garden of An&acirc;thapi<i>nd</i>ada, at <i>G</i>etavana, in <i>S</i>r&acirc;vast&icirc;,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>accompanied by a venerable body of 12,000 Bhikshukas. There
+likewise accompanied him 32,000 Bodhisattvas, all linked
+together by unity of caste, and perfect in the virtues of
+p&acirc;ramit&acirc;; who had made their command over Bodhisattva
+knowledge a pastime, were illumined with the light of
+Bodhisattva dh&acirc;ra<i>n</i>&icirc;s, and were masters of the dh&acirc;ra<i>n</i>&icirc;s
+themselves; who were profound in their meditations, all
+submissive to the lord of Bodhisattvas, and possessed
+absolute control over sam&acirc;dhi; great in self-command,
+refulgent in Bodhisattva forbearance, and replete with the
+Bodhisattva element of perfection. Now then, Bhagavat
+arriving in the great city of <i>S</i>r&acirc;vast&icirc;, sojourned therein,
+respected, venerated, revered, and adored, by the fourfold
+congregation; by kings, princes, their counsellors, prime
+ministers, and followers; by retinues of kshatriyas,
+br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as, householders, and ministers; by citizens,
+foreigners, <i>s</i>r&acirc;ma<i>n</i>as, br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as, recluses, and
+ascetics; and although regaled with all sorts of edibles and
+sauces, the best that could be prepared by purveyors, and
+supplied with cleanly mendicant apparel, begging pots,
+couches, and pain-assuaging medicaments, the benevolent
+lord, on whom had been showered the prime of gifts and
+applauses, remained unattached to them all, like water on a
+lotus leaf; and the report of his greatness as the
+venerable, the absolute Buddha, the learned and
+well-behaved, the god of happy exit, the great knower of
+worlds, the valiant, the all-controlling charioteer, the
+teacher of gods and men, the quinocular lord Buddha fully
+manifest, spread far and wide in the world. And Bhagavat,
+having by his own power acquired all knowledge regarding
+this world and the next, comprising devas,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> m&acirc;ras, br&acirc;hmyas
+(followers of Brahm&acirc;), <i>s</i>r&acirc;ma<i>n</i>as, and br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as, as
+subjects, that is both gods and men, sojourned here,
+imparting instructions in the true religion, and expounding
+the principles of a brahma<i>k</i>arya, full and complete in its
+nature, holy in its import, pure and immaculate in its
+character, auspicious is its beginning, auspicious its
+middle, auspicious its end.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The whole work is written in a similar style, and where fact and
+legend, prose and poetry, sense and nonsense, are so mixed together,
+the plan adopted by M. Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire, of making two lives
+out of one, the one containing all that seems possible, the other what
+seems impossible, would naturally recommend itself. It is not a safe
+process, however, to distil history out of legend by simply straining
+the legendary through the sieve of physical possibility. Many things
+are possible, and may yet be the mere inventions of later writers, and
+many things which sound impossible have been reclaimed as historical,
+after removing from them the thin film of mythological phraseology. We
+believe that the only use which the historian can safely make of the
+Lalita-Vistara, is to employ it, not as evidence of facts which
+actually happened, but in illustration of the popular belief prevalent
+at the time when it was committed to writing. Without therefore
+adopting the division of fact and fiction in the life of Buddha, as
+attempted by M. Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire, we yet believe that in order
+to avoid a repetition of childish absurdities, we shall best consult
+the interest of our readers if we follow his example, and give a short
+and rational abstract of the life of Buddha as handed down by
+tradition, and committed to writing not later than the first century
+<span class="smcap">b.c.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></span></p>
+
+<p>Buddha, or more correctly, the Buddha,&mdash;for Buddha is an appellative
+meaning Enlightened,&mdash;was born at Kapilavastu, the capital of a
+kingdom of the same name, situated at the foot of the mountains of
+Nepal, north of the present Oude. His father, the king of Kapilavastu,
+was of the family of the <i>S</i>&acirc;kyas, and belonged to the clan of the
+Gautamas. His mother was M&acirc;y&acirc;d&ecirc;v&icirc;, daughter of king Suprabuddha, and
+need we say that she was as beautiful as he was powerful and just?
+Buddha was therefore by birth of the Kshatriya or warrior caste, and
+he took the name of <i>S</i>&acirc;kya from his family, and that of Gautama from
+his clan, claiming a kind of spiritual relationship with the honoured
+race of Gautama. The name of Buddha, or the Buddha, dates from a later
+period of his life, and so probably does the name Siddh&acirc;rtha (he whose
+objects have been accomplished), though we are told that it was given
+him in his childhood. His mother died seven days after his birth, and
+the father confided the child to the care of his deceased wife's
+sister, who, however, had been his wife even before the mother's
+death. The child grew up a most beautiful and most accomplished boy,
+who soon knew more than his masters could teach him. He refused to
+take part in the games of his playmates, and never felt so happy as
+when he could sit alone, lost in meditation in the deep shadows of the
+forest. It was there that his father found him, when he had thought
+him lost, and in order to prevent the young prince from becoming a
+dreamer, the king determined to marry him at once. When the subject
+was mentioned by the aged ministers to the future heir to the throne,
+he demanded seven days for reflection, and convinced at last that not
+even marriage could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> disturb the calm of his mind, he allowed the
+ministers to look out for a princess. The princess selected was the
+beautiful Gop&acirc;, the daughter of Da<i>nd</i>ap&acirc;<i>n</i>i. Though her father
+objected at first to her marrying a young prince who was represented
+to him as deficient in manliness and intellect, he gladly gave his
+consent when he saw the royal suitor distancing all his rivals both in
+feats of arms and power of mind. Their marriage proved one of the
+happiest, but the prince remained, as he had been before, absorbed in
+meditation on the problems of life and death. 'Nothing is stable on
+earth,' he used to say, 'nothing is real. Life is like the spark
+produced by the friction of wood. It is lighted and is
+extinguished&mdash;we know not whence it came or whither it goes. It is
+like the sound of a lyre, and the wise man asks in vain from whence it
+came and whither it goes. There must be some supreme intelligence
+where we could find rest. If I attained it, I could bring light to
+man; if I were free myself, I could deliver the world.' The king, who
+perceived the melancholy mood of the young prince, tried every thing
+to divert him from his speculations: but all was in vain. Three of the
+most ordinary events that could happen to any man, proved of the
+utmost importance in the career of Buddha. We quote the description of
+these occurrences from M. Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'One day when the prince with a large retinue drove through
+the eastern gate of the city on the way to one of his parks,
+he met on the road an old man, broken and decrepit. One
+could see the veins and muscles over the whole of his body,
+his teeth chattered, he was covered with wrinkles, bald, and
+hardly able to utter hollow and unmelodious sounds.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> He was
+bent on his stick, and all his limbs and joints trembled.
+"Who is that man?" said the prince to his coachman. "He is
+small and weak, his flesh and his blood are dried up, his
+muscles stick to his skin, his head is white, his teeth
+chatter, his body is wasted away; leaning on his stick he is
+hardly able to walk, stumbling at every step. Is there
+something peculiar in his family, or is this the common lot
+of all created beings?"</p>
+
+<p>'"Sir," replied the coachman, "that man is sinking under old
+age, his senses have become obtuse, suffering has destroyed
+his strength, and he is despised by his relations. He is
+without support and useless, and people have abandoned him,
+like a dead tree in a forest. But this is not peculiar to
+his family. In every creature youth is defeated by old age.
+Your father, your mother, all your relations, all your
+friends, will come to the same state; this is the appointed
+end of all creatures."</p>
+
+<p>'"Alas!" replied the prince, "are creatures so ignorant, so
+weak and foolish, as to be proud of the youth by which they
+are intoxicated, not seeing the old age which awaits them!
+As for me, I go away. Coachman, turn my chariot quickly.
+What have I, the future prey of old age,&mdash;what have I to do
+with pleasure?" And the young prince returned to the city
+without going to his park.</p>
+
+<p>'Another time the prince drove through the southern gate to
+his pleasure garden, when he perceived on the road a man
+suffering from illness, parched with fever, his body wasted,
+covered with mud, without a friend, without a home, hardly
+able to breathe, and frightened at the sight of himself and
+the approach of death. Having questioned his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> coachman, and
+received from him the answer which he expected, the young
+prince said, "Alas! health is but the sport of a dream, and
+the fear of suffering must take this frightful form. Where
+is the wise man who, after having seen what he is, could any
+longer think of joy and pleasure?" The prince turned his
+chariot and returned to the city.</p>
+
+<p>'A third time he drove to his pleasure garden through the
+western gate, when he saw a dead body on the road, lying on
+a bier, and covered with a cloth. The friends stood about
+crying, sobbing, tearing their hair, covering their heads
+with dust, striking their breasts, and uttering wild cries.
+The prince, again calling his coachman to witness this
+painful scene, exclaimed, "Oh! woe to youth, which must be
+destroyed by old age! Woe to health, which must be destroyed
+by so many diseases! Woe to this life, where a man remains
+so short a time! If there were no old age, no disease, no
+death; if these could be made captive for ever!" Then
+betraying for the first time his intentions, the young
+prince said, "Let us turn back, I must think how to
+accomplish deliverance."</p>
+
+<p>'A last meeting put an end to his hesitation. He drove
+through the northern gate on the way to his pleasure
+gardens, when he saw a mendicant who appeared outwardly
+calm, subdued, looking downwards, wearing with an air of
+dignity his religious vestment, and carrying an alms-bowl.</p>
+
+<p>'"Who is this man?" asked the prince.</p>
+
+<p>'"Sir," replied the coachman, "this man is one of those who
+are called bhikshus, or mendicants. He has renounced all
+pleasures, all desires, and leads a life of austerity. He
+tries to conquer himself. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> has become a devotee. Without
+passion, without envy, he walks about asking for alms."</p>
+
+<p>'"This is good and well said," replied the prince. "The life
+of a devotee has always been praised by the wise. It will be
+my refuge, and the refuge of other creatures; it will lead
+us to a real life, to happiness and immortality."</p>
+
+<p>'With these words the young prince turned his chariot and
+returned to the city.'</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>After having declared to his father and his wife his intention of
+retiring from the world, Buddha left his palace one night when all the
+guards that were to have watched him, were asleep. After travelling
+the whole night, he gave his horse and his ornaments to his groom, and
+sent him back to Kapilavastu. 'A monument,' remarks the author of the
+Lalita-Vistara (p. 270), 'is still to be seen on the spot where the
+coachman turned back,' Hiouen-Thsang (II. 330) saw the same monument
+at the edge of a large forest, on his road to Ku<i>s</i>in&acirc;gara, a city now
+in ruins, and situated about fifty miles E.S.E. from Gorakpur.<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p>
+
+<p>Buddha first went to Vai<i>s</i>&acirc;l&icirc;, and became the pupil of a famous
+Brahman, who had gathered round him 300 disciples. Having learnt all
+that the Brahman could teach him, Buddha went away disappointed. He
+had not found the road to salvation. He then tried another Brahman at
+R&acirc;<i>g</i>ag<i>r</i>iha, the capital of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>Magadha or Behar, who had 700
+disciples, and there too he looked in vain for the means of
+deliverance. He left him, followed by five of his fellow-students, and
+for six years retired into solitude, near a village named Uruvilva,
+subjecting himself to the most severe penances, previous to his
+appearing in the world as a teacher. At the end of this period,
+however, he arrived at the conviction that asceticism, far from giving
+peace of mind and preparing the way to salvation, was a snare and a
+stumbling-block in the way of truth. He gave up his exercises, and was
+at once deserted as an apostate by his five disciples. Left to himself
+he now began to elaborate his own system. He had learnt that neither
+the doctrines nor the austerities of the Brahmans were of any avail
+for accomplishing the deliverance of man, and freeing him from the
+fear of old age, disease, and death. After long meditations, and
+ecstatic visions, he at last imagined that he had arrived at that true
+knowledge which discloses the cause, and thereby destroys the fear, of
+all the changes inherent in life. It was from the moment when he
+arrived at this knowledge, that he claimed the name of Buddha, the
+Enlightened. At that moment we may truly say that the fate of millions
+of millions of human beings trembled in the balance. Buddha hesitated
+for a time whether he should keep his knowledge to himself, or
+communicate it to the world. Compassion for the sufferings of man
+prevailed, and the young prince became the founder of a religion
+which, after more than 2000 years, is still professed by 455,000,000
+of human beings.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span></p>
+<p>The further history of the new teacher is very simple. He proceeded to
+Benares, which at all times was the principal seat of learning in
+India, and the first converts he made were the five fellow-students
+who had left him when he threw off the yoke of the Brahmanical
+observances. Many others followed; but as the Lalita-Vistara breaks
+off at Buddha's arrival at Benares, we have no further consecutive
+account of the rapid progress of his doctrine. From what we can gather
+from scattered notices in the Buddhist canon, he was invited by the
+king of Magadha, Bimbis&acirc;ra, to his capital, R&acirc;<i>g</i>ag<i>r</i>iha. Many of his
+lectures are represented as having been delivered at the monastery of
+Kalantaka, with which the king or some rich merchant had presented
+him; others on the Vulture Peak, one of the five hills that surrounded
+the ancient capital.</p>
+
+<p>Three of his most famous disciples, <i>S</i>&acirc;riputra, K&acirc;ty&acirc;yana, and
+Maudgaly&acirc;yana, joined him during <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>his stay in Magadha, where he
+enjoyed for many years the friendship of the king. That king was
+afterwards assassinated by his son, A<i>g</i>&acirc;ta<i>s</i>atru, and then we hear
+of Buddha as settled for a time at <i>S</i>r&acirc;vast&icirc;, north of the Ganges,
+where An&acirc;thapi<i>nd</i>ada, a rich merchant, had offered him and his
+disciples a magnificent building for their residence. Most of Buddha's
+lectures or sermons were delivered at <i>S</i>r&acirc;vast&icirc;, the capital of
+Ko<i>s</i>ala; and the king of Ko<i>s</i>ala himself, Pras&ecirc;na<i>g</i>it, became a
+convert to his doctrine. After an absence of twelve years we are told
+that Buddha visited his father at Kapilavastu, on which occasion he
+performed several miracles, and converted all the <i>S</i>&acirc;kyas to his
+faith. His own wife became one of his followers, and, with his aunt,
+offers the first instance of female Buddhist devotees in India. We
+have fuller particulars again of the last days of Buddha's life. He
+had attained the good age of three score and ten, and had been on a
+visit to R&acirc;<i>g</i>ag<i>r</i>iha, where the king, A<i>g</i>&acirc;ta<i>s</i>atru, the former
+enemy of Buddha, and the assassin of his own father, had joined the
+congregation, after making a public confession of his crimes. On his
+return he was followed by a large number of disciples, and when on the
+point of crossing the Ganges, he stood on a square stone, and turning
+his eyes back towards R&acirc;<i>g</i>ag<i>r</i>iha, he said, full of emotion, 'This
+is the last time that I see that city.' He likewise visited Vai<i>s</i>&acirc;l&icirc;,
+and after taking leave of it, he had nearly reached the city of
+Ku<i>s</i>in&acirc;gara, when his vital strength began to fail. He halted in a
+forest, and while sitting under a s&acirc;l tree, he gave up the ghost, or,
+as a Buddhist would say, entered into Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a.</p>
+
+<p>This is the simple story of Buddha's life. It reads<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> much better in
+the eloquent pages of M. Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire, than in the turgid
+language of the Buddhists. If a critical historian, with the materials
+we possess, entered at all on the process of separating truth from
+falsehood, he would probably cut off much of what our biographer has
+left. Professor Wilson, in his Essay on Buddha and Buddhism, considers
+it doubtful whether any such person as Buddha ever actually existed.
+He dwells on the fact that there are at least twenty different dates
+assigned to his birth, varying from 2420 to 453 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> He points out
+that the clan of the <i>S</i>&acirc;kyas is never mentioned by early Hindu
+writers, and he lays much stress on the fact that most of the proper
+names of the persons connected with Buddha suggest an allegorical
+signification. The name of his father means, he whose food is pure;
+that of his mother signifies illusion; his own secular appellation,
+Siddh&acirc;rtha, he by whom the end is accomplished. Buddha itself means,
+the Enlightened, or, as Professor Wilson translates it less
+accurately, he by whom all is known. The same distinguished scholar
+goes even further, and maintaining that Kapilavastu, the birthplace of
+Buddha, has no place in the geography of the Hindus, suggests that it
+may be rendered, the substance of Kapila; intimating, in fact, the
+S&acirc;nkhya philosophy, the doctrine of Kapila Muni, upon which the
+fundamental elements of Buddhism, the eternity of matter, the
+principles of things, and the final extinction, are supposed to be
+planned. 'It seems not impossible,' he continues, 'that <i>S</i>&acirc;kya Muni
+is an unreal being, and that all that is related of him is as much a
+fiction, as is that of his preceding migrations, and the miracles that
+attended his birth, his life, and his departure.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> This is going far
+beyond Niebuhr, far even beyond Strauss. If an allegorical name had
+been invented for the father of Buddha, one more appropriate than
+'Clean-food' might surely have been found. His wife is not the only
+queen known by the name of M&acirc;y&acirc;, M&acirc;y&acirc;d&ecirc;v&icirc;, or M&acirc;y&acirc;vat&icirc;. Why, if these
+names were invented, should his wife have been allowed to keep the
+prosaic name of Gop&acirc; (cowherdess), and his father-in-law, that of
+Da<i>nd</i>ap&acirc;<i>n</i>i, 'Stick-hand?' As to his own name, Siddh&acirc;rtha, the
+Tibetans maintain that it was given him by his parent, whose wish
+(artha) had been fulfilled (siddha), as we hear of D&eacute;sir&eacute;s and
+Dieu-donn&eacute;s in French. One of the ministers of Da<i>s</i>aratha had the
+same name. It is possible also that Buddha himself assumed it in after
+life, as was the case with many of the Roman surnames. As to the name
+of Buddha, no one ever maintained that it was more than a title, the
+Enlightened, changed from an appellative into a proper name, just like
+the name of Christos, the Anointed, or Mohammed, the Expected.<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a>
+Kapilavastu would be a most extraordinary compound to express 'the
+substance of the S&acirc;nkhya philosophy.' But all doubt on the subject is
+removed by the fact that both Fahian in the fifth, and Hiouen-Thsang
+in the seventh centuries, visited the real ruins of that city.</p>
+
+<p>Making every possible allowance for the accumulation of fiction which
+is sure to gather round the life of the founder of every great
+religion, we may be satisfied that Buddhism, which changed the aspect
+not only of India, but of nearly the whole of Asia, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>had a real
+founder; that he was not a Brahman by birth, but belonged to the
+second or royal caste; that being of a meditative turn of mind, and
+deeply impressed with the frailty of all created things, he became a
+recluse, and sought for light and comfort in the different systems of
+Br&acirc;hman philosophy and theology. Dissatisfied with the artificial
+systems of their priests and philosophers, convinced of the
+uselessness, nay of the pernicious influence, of their ceremonial
+practices and bodily penances, shocked, too, by their worldliness and
+pharisaical conceit, which made the priesthood the exclusive property
+of one caste and rendered every sincere approach of man to his Creator
+impossible without their intervention, Buddha must have produced at
+once a powerful impression on the people at large, when breaking
+through all the established rules of caste, he assumed the privileges
+of a Brahman, and throwing away the splendour of his royal position,
+travelled about as a beggar, not shrinking from the defiling contact
+of sinners and publicans. Though when we now speak of Buddhism, we
+think chiefly of its doctrines, the reform of Buddha had originally
+much more of a social than of a religious character. Buddha swept away
+the web with which the Brahmans had encircled the whole of India.
+Beginning as the destroyer of an old, he became the founder of a new
+religion. We can hardly understand how any nation could have lived
+under a system like that of the Brahmanic hierarchy, which coiled
+itself round every public and private act, and would have rendered
+life intolerable to any who had forfeited the favour of the priests.
+That system was attacked by Buddha. Buddha might have taught whatever
+philosophy he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> pleased, and we should hardly have heard his name. The
+people would not have minded him, and his system would only have been
+a drop in the ocean of philosophical speculation, by which India was
+deluged at all times. But when a young prince assembled round him
+people of all castes, of all ranks, when he defeated the Brahmans in
+public disputations, when he declared the sacrifices by which they
+made their living not only useless but sinful, when instead of severe
+penance or excommunications inflicted by the Brahmans sometimes for
+the most trifling offences, he only required public confession of sin
+and a promise to sin no more: when the charitable gifts hitherto
+monopolised by the Brahmans, began to flow into new channels,
+supporting hundreds and thousands of Buddhist mendicants, more had
+been achieved than probably Buddha himself had ever dreamt of; and he
+whose meditations had been how to deliver the soul of man from misery
+and the fear of death, had delivered the people of India from a
+degrading thraldom and from priestly tyranny.</p>
+
+<p>The most important element of the Buddhist reform has always been its
+social and moral code, not its metaphysical theories. That moral code,
+taken by itself, is one of the most perfect which the world has ever
+known. On this point all testimonies from hostile and from friendly
+quarters agree. Spence Hardy, a Wesleyan Missionary, speaking of the
+Dhamma Padam, or the 'Footsteps of the Law,' admits that a collection
+might be made from the precepts of this work, which in the purity of
+its ethics could hardly be equalled from any other heathen author. M.
+Laboulaye, one of the most distinguished members of the French
+Academy, remarks in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> 'D&eacute;bats' of the 4th of April, 1853: 'It is
+difficult to comprehend how men not assisted by revelation could have
+soared so high, and approached so near to the truth.' Besides the five
+great commandments not to kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery,
+not to lie, not to get drunk, every shade of vice, hypocrisy, anger,
+pride, suspicion, greediness, gossiping, cruelty to animals, is
+guarded against by special precepts. Among the virtues recommended, we
+find not only reverence of parents, care for children, submission to
+authority, gratitude, moderation in time of prosperity, submission in
+time of trial, equanimity at all times, but virtues unknown in any
+heathen system of morality, such as the duty of forgiving insults and
+not rewarding evil with evil. All virtues, we are told, spring from
+Maitr&icirc;, and this Maitr&icirc; can only be translated by charity and love. 'I
+do not hesitate,' says Burnouf,<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> 'to translate by charity the word
+Maitr&icirc;; it does not express friendship or the feeling of particular
+affection which a man has for one or more of his fellow-creatures, but
+that universal feeling which inspires us with good-will towards all
+men and constant willingness to help them.' We add one more testimony
+from the work of M. Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Je n'h&eacute;site pas &agrave; ajouter,' he writes, 'que, sauf le Christ
+tout seul, il n'est point, parmi les fondateurs de religion,
+de figure plus pure ni plus touchante que celle du Bouddha.
+Sa vie n'a point de t&acirc;che. Son constant h&eacute;roisme &eacute;gale sa
+conviction; et si la th&eacute;orie qu'il pr&eacute;conise est fausse, les
+exemples personnels qu'il donne sont irr&eacute;prochables. Il est
+le <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>mod&egrave;le achev&eacute; de toutes les vertus qu'il pr&ecirc;che; son
+abn&eacute;gation, sa charit&eacute; son inalt&eacute;rable douceur, ne se
+d&eacute;mentent point un seul instant; il abandonne &agrave; vingt-neuf
+ans la cour du roi son p&egrave;re pour se faire religieux et
+mendiant; il pr&eacute;pare silencieusement sa doctrine par six
+ann&eacute;es de retraite et de m&eacute;ditation; il la propage par la
+seule puissance de la parole et de la persuasion, pendant
+plus d'un demi-si&egrave;cle; et quand il meurt entre les bras de
+ses disciples, c'est avec la s&eacute;r&eacute;nit&eacute; d'un sage qui a
+pratiqu&eacute; le bien toute sa vie, et qui est assur&eacute; d'avoir
+trouv&eacute; le vrai.' (Page v.)</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>There still remain, no doubt, some blurred and doubtful pages in the
+history of the prince of Kapilavastu; but we have only to look at the
+works on ancient philosophy and religion published some thirty years
+ago, in order to perceive the immense progress that has been made in
+establishing the true historical character of the founder of Buddhism.
+There was a time when Buddha was identified with Christ. The
+Manich&aelig;ans were actually forced to abjure their belief that Buddha,
+Christ, and Mani were one and the same person.<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> But we are thinking
+rather of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when elaborate
+books were written, in order to prove that Buddha had been in reality
+the Thoth of the Egyptians, that he was Mercury, or Wodan, or
+Zoroaster, or Pythagoras. Even Sir W. Jones, as we saw, identified
+Buddha, first with Odin, and afterwards with Shishak, 'who either in
+person or by a colony from Egypt imported into India the mild heresy
+of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>the ancient Bauddhas.' At present we know that neither Egypt nor
+the Walhalla of Germany, neither Greece nor Persia, could have
+produced either the man himself or his doctrine. He is the offspring
+of India in mind and soul. His doctrine, by the very antagonism in
+which it stands to the old system of Brahmanism, shows that it could
+not have sprung up in any country except India. The ancient history of
+Brahmanism leads on to Buddhism, with the same necessity with which
+medi&aelig;val Romanism led to Protestantism. Though the date of Buddha is
+still liable to small chronological oscillations, his place in the
+intellectual annals of India is henceforth definitely marked: Buddhism
+became the state religion of India at the time of A<i>s</i>oka; and
+A<i>s</i>oka, the Buddhist Constantine, was the grandson of <i>K</i>andragupta,
+the contemporary of Seleucus Nicator. The system of the Brahmans had
+run its course. Their ascendency, at first purely intellectual and
+religious, had gradually assumed a political character. By means of
+the system of caste this influence pervaded the whole social fabric,
+not as a vivifying leaven, but as a deadly poison. Their increasing
+power and self-confidence are clearly exhibited in the successive
+periods of their ancient literature. It begins with the simple hymns
+of the Veda. These are followed by the tracts, known by the name of
+Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as, in which a complete system of theology is elaborated, and
+claims advanced in favour of the Brahmans, such as were seldom
+conceded to any hierarchy. The third period in the history of their
+ancient literature is marked by their S&ucirc;tras or Aphorisms, curt and
+dry formularies, showing the Brahmans in secure possession of all
+their claims. Such privileges as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> they then enjoyed are never enjoyed
+for any length of time. It was impossible for anybody to move or to
+assert his freedom of thought and action without finding himself
+impeded on all sides by the web of the Brahmanic law; nor was there
+anything in their religion to satisfy the natural yearnings of the
+human heart after spiritual comfort. What was felt by Buddha, had been
+felt more or less intensely by thousands; and this was the secret of
+his success. That success was accelerated, however, by political
+events. <i>K</i>andragupta had conquered the throne of Magadha, and
+acquired his supremacy in India in defiance of the Brahmanic law. He
+was of low origin, a mere adventurer, and by his accession to the
+throne an important mesh had been broken in the intricate system of
+caste. Neither he nor his successors could count on the support of the
+Brahmans, and it is but natural that his grandson, A<i>s</i>oka, should
+have been driven to seek support from the sect founded by Buddha.
+Buddha, by giving up his royal station, had broken the law of caste as
+much as <i>K</i>andragupta by usurping it. His school, though it had
+probably escaped open persecution until it rose to political
+importance, could never have been on friendly terms with the Brahmans
+of the old school. The <i>parvenu</i> on the throne saw his natural allies
+in the followers of Buddha, and the mendicants, who by their
+unostentatious behaviour had won golden opinions among the lower and
+middle classes, were suddenly raised to an importance little dreamt of
+by their founder. Those who see in Buddhism, not a social but chiefly
+a religious and philosophical reform, have been deceived by the later
+Buddhist literature, and particularly by the controversies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> between
+Buddhists and Brahmans, which in later times led to the total
+expulsion of the former from India, and to the political
+re-establishment of Brahmanism. These, no doubt, turn chiefly on
+philosophical problems, and are of the most abstruse and intricate
+character. But such was not the teaching of Buddha. If we may judge
+from 'the four verities,' which Buddha inculcated from the first day
+that he entered on his career as a teacher, his philosophy of life was
+very simple. He proclaims that there was nothing but sorrow in life;
+that sorrow is produced by our affections, that our affections must be
+destroyed in order to destroy the root of sorrow, and that he could
+teach mankind how to eradicate all the affections, all passions, all
+desires. Such doctrines were intelligible; and considering that Buddha
+received people of all castes, who after renouncing the world and
+assuming their yellow robes, were sure of finding a livelihood from
+the charitable gifts of the people, it is not surprising that the
+number of his followers should have grown so rapidly. If Buddha really
+taught the metaphysical doctrines which are ascribed to him by
+subsequent writers&mdash;and this is a point which it is impossible to
+settle&mdash;not one in a thousand among his followers would have been
+capable of appreciating those speculations. They must have been
+reserved for a few of his disciples, and they would never have formed
+the nucleus for a popular religion.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly all who have written on Buddhism, and M. Barth&eacute;lemy
+Saint-Hilaire among the rest, have endeavoured to show that these
+metaphysical doctrines of Buddha were borrowed from the earlier
+systems of Brahmanic philosophy, and more particularly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> from the
+S&acirc;nkhya system. The reputed founder of that system is Kapila, and we
+saw before how Professor Wilson actually changed the name of
+Kapilavastu, the birthplace of Buddha, into a mere
+allegory:&mdash;Kapilavastu meaning, according to him, the substance of
+Kapila or of the S&acirc;nkhya philosophy. This is not all. Mr. Spence Hardy
+(p. 132) quotes a legend in which it is said that Buddha was in a
+former existence the ascetic Kapila, that the <i>S</i>&acirc;kya princes came to
+his hermitage, and that he pointed out to them the proper place for
+founding a new city, which city was named after him Kapilavastu. But
+we have looked in vain for any definite similarities between the
+system of Kapila, as known to us in the S&acirc;nkhya-s&ucirc;tras, and the
+Abhidharma, or the metaphysics of the Buddhists. Such similarities
+would be invaluable. They would probably enable us to decide whether
+Buddha borrowed from Kapila or Kapila from Buddha, and thus determine
+the real chronology of the philosophical literature of India, as
+either prior or subsequent to the Buddhist era. There are certain
+notions which Buddha shares in common not only with Kapila, but with
+every Hindu philosopher. The idea of transmigration, the belief in the
+continuing effects of our good and bad actions, extending from our
+former to our present and from our present to our future lives, the
+sense that life is a dream or a burden, the admission of the
+uselessness of religious observances after the attainment of the
+highest knowledge, all these belong, so to say, to the national
+philosophy of India. We meet with these ideas everywhere, in the
+poetry, the philosophy, the religion of the Hindus. They cannot be
+claimed as the exclusive property of any system in particular.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span> But if
+we look for more special coincidences between Buddha's doctrines and
+those of Kapila or other Indian philosophers, we look in vain. At
+first it might seem as if the very first aphorism of Kapila, namely,
+'the complete cessation of pain, which is of three kinds, is the
+highest aim of man,' was merely a philosophical paraphrase of the
+events which, as we saw, determined Buddha to renounce the world in
+search of the true road to salvation. But though the starting-point of
+Kapila and Buddha is the same, a keen sense of human misery and a
+yearning after a better state, their roads diverge so completely and
+their goals are so far apart, that it is difficult to understand how,
+almost by common consent, Buddha is supposed either to have followed
+in the footsteps of Kapila, or to have changed Kapila's philosophy
+into a religion. Some scholars imagine that there was a more simple
+and primitive philosophy which was taught by Kapila, and that the
+S&ucirc;tras which are now ascribed to him, are of later date. It is
+impossible either to prove or to disprove such a view. At present we
+know Kapila's philosophy from his S&ucirc;tras only,<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> and these S&ucirc;tras
+seem to us posterior, not anterior, to Buddha. Though the name of
+Buddha is not mentioned in the S&ucirc;tras, his doctrines are clearly
+alluded to and controverted in several parts of them.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that Buddha and Kapila were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>both atheists, and that
+Buddha borrowed his atheism from Kapila. But atheism is an indefinite
+term, and may mean very different things. In one sense every Indian
+philosopher was an atheist, for they all perceived that the gods of
+the populace could not claim the attributes that belong to a Supreme
+Being. But all the important philosophical systems of the Brahmans
+admit, in some form or other, the existence of an Absolute and Supreme
+Being, the source of all that exists, or seems to exist. Kapila, when
+accused of atheism, is not accused of denying the existence of an
+Absolute Being. He is accused of denying the existence of &Icirc;<i>s</i>vara,
+which in general means the Lord, but which in the passage where it
+occurs, refers to the &Icirc;<i>s</i>vara of the Yogins, or mystic philosophers.
+They maintained that in an ecstatic state man possesses the power of
+seeing God face to face, and they wished to have this ecstatic
+intuition included under the head of sensuous perceptions. To this
+Kapila demurred. You have not proved the existence of your Lord, he
+says, and therefore I see no reason why I should alter my definition
+of sensuous perception in order to accommodate your ecstatic visions.
+The commentator narrates that this strong language was used by Kapila
+in order to silence the wild talk of the Mystics, and that, though he
+taunted his adversaries with having failed to prove the existence of
+their Lord, he himself did not deny the existence of a Supreme Being.
+Kapila, however, went further. He endeavoured to show that all the
+attributes which the Mystics ascribed to their Lord are inappropriate.
+He used arguments very similar to those which have lately been used
+with such ability by a distinguished Bampton Lecturer. The supreme
+lord<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span> of the Mystics, Kapila argued, is either absolute and
+unconditioned (mukta), or he is bound and conditioned (baddha). If he
+is absolute and unconditioned, he cannot enter into the condition of a
+Creator; he would have no desires which could instigate him to create.
+If, on the contrary, he is represented as active, and entering on the
+work of creation, he would no longer be the absolute and unchangeable
+Being which we are asked to believe in. Kapila, like the preacher of
+our own days, was accused of paving the road to atheism, but his
+philosophy was nevertheless admitted as orthodox, because, in addition
+to sensuous perception and inductive reasoning, Kapila professed
+emphatically his belief in revelation, i. e. in the Veda, and allowed
+to it a place among the recognised instruments of knowledge. Buddha
+refused to allow to the Vedas any independent authority whatever, and
+this constituted the fundamental difference between the two
+philosophers.</p>
+
+<p>Whether Kapila's philosophy was really in accordance with the spirit
+of the Veda, is quite a different question. No philosophy, at least
+nothing like a definite system, is to be found in the sacred hymns of
+the Brahmans; and though the Ved&acirc;nta philosophy does less violence to
+the passages which it quotes from the Veda, the authors of the Veda
+would have been as much surprised at the consequences deduced from
+their words by the Ved&acirc;ntin, as by the strange meaning attributed to
+them by Kapila. The Ved&acirc;nta philosopher, like Kapila, would deny the
+existence of a Creator in the usual sense of the word. He explained
+the universe as an emanation from Brahman, which is all in all. Kapila
+admitted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> two principles, an absolute Spirit and Nature, and he looked
+upon the universe as produced by a reflection of Nature thrown on the
+mirror of the absolute Spirit. Both systems seem to regard creation,
+or the created world, as a misfortune, as an unfortunate accident. But
+they maintain that its effects can be neutralised, and that
+emancipation from the bonds of earthly existence is possible by means
+of philosophy. The Ved&acirc;nta philosopher imagines he is free when he has
+arrived at the knowledge that nothing exists but Brahman; that all
+phenomena are merely the result of ignorance; that after the
+destruction of that ignorance, and of its effects, all is merged again
+in Brahman, the true source of being, thought, and happiness. Kapila
+taught that the spirit became free from all mundane fetters as soon as
+it perceived that all phenomena were only passing reflections produced
+by nature upon the spirit, and as soon as it was able to shut its eyes
+to those illusory visions. Both systems therefore, and the same
+applies to all the other philosophical systems of the Brahmans,
+admitted an absolute or self-existing Being as the cause of all that
+exists or seems to exist. And here lies the specific difference
+between Kapila and Buddha. Buddha, like Kapila, maintained that this
+world had no absolute reality, that it was a snare and an illusion.
+The words, 'All is perishable, all is miserable, all is void,' must
+frequently have passed his lips. But we cannot call things unreal
+unless we have a conception of something that is real. Where, then,
+did Buddha find a reality in comparison with which this world might be
+called unreal? What remedy did he propose as an emancipation from the
+sufferings of this life? Difficult as it seems to us to conceive it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+Buddha admits of no real cause of this unreal world. He denies the
+existence not only of a Creator, but of any Absolute Being. According
+to the metaphysical tenets, if not of Buddha himself, at least of his
+sect, there is no reality anywhere, neither in the past nor in the
+future. True wisdom consists in perceiving the nothingness of all
+things, and in a desire to become nothing, to be blown out, to enter
+into Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a. Emancipation is obtained by total extinction, not by
+absorption in Brahman, or by a recovery of the soul's true estate. If
+to be is misery, not to be must be felicity, and this felicity is the
+highest reward which Buddha promised to his disciples. In reading the
+Aphorisms of Kapila, it is difficult not to see in his remarks on
+those who maintain that all is void, covert attacks on Buddha and his
+followers. In one place (I. 43) Kapila argues that if people believed
+in the reality of thought only, and denied the reality of external
+objects, they would soon be driven to admit that nothing at all
+exists, because we perceive our thoughts in the same manner as we
+perceive external objects. This naturally leads him to an examination
+of that extreme doctrine, according to which all that we perceive is
+void, and all is supposed to perish, because it is the nature of
+things that they should perish. Kapila remarks in reference to this
+view (I. 45), that it is a mere assertion of persons who are 'not
+enlightened,' in Sanskrit <span class="sp1">a-buddha</span>, a sarcastic expression in which it
+is very difficult not to see an allusion to Buddha, or to those who
+claimed for him the title of the Enlightened. Kapila then proceeds to
+give the best answer that could be given to those who taught that
+complete annihilation must be the highest aim of man, as the only
+means of a complete<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> cessation of suffering. 'It is not so,' he says,
+'for if people wish to be free from suffering, it is they themselves
+who wish to be free, just as in this life it is they themselves who
+wish to enjoy happiness. There must be a permanent soul in order to
+satisfy the yearnings of the human heart, and if you deny that soul,
+you have no right to speak of the highest aim&mdash;of man.'</p>
+
+<p>Whether the belief in this kind of Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, i. e. in a total
+extinction of being, personality, and consciousness, was at any time
+shared by the large masses of the people, is difficult either to
+assert or deny. We know nothing in ancient times of the religious
+convictions of the millions. We only know what a few leading spirits
+believed, or professed to believe. That certain individuals should
+have spoken and written of total extinction as the highest aim of man,
+is intelligible. Job cursed the day on which he was born, and Solomon
+praised the 'dead which are already dead, more than the living which
+are yet alive,' 'Yea, better is he than both they,' he said, 'which
+hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under
+the sun,' Voltaire said in his own flippant way, 'On aime la vie, mais
+le n&eacute;ant ne laisse pas d'avoir du bon;' and a modern German
+philosopher, who has found much favour with those who profess to
+despise Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, writes, 'Considered in its
+objective value, it is more than doubtful that life is preferable to
+the Nothing. I should say even, that if experience and reflection
+could lift up their voices they would recommend to us the Nothing. We
+are what ought not to be, and we shall therefore cease to be.' Under
+peculiar circumstances, in the agonies of despair, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> under the
+gathering clouds of madness, such language is intelligible; but to
+believe, as we are asked to believe, that one half of mankind had
+yearned for total annihilation, would be tantamount to a belief that
+there is a difference in kind between man and man. Buddhist
+philosophers, no doubt, held this doctrine, and it cannot be denied
+that it found a place in the Buddhist canon. But even among the
+different schools of Buddhist philosophers, very different views are
+adopted as to the true meaning of Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, and with the modern
+Buddhists of Burmah, Nigban, as they call it, is defined simply as
+freedom from old age, disease, and death. We do not find fault with M.
+Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire for having so emphatically pressed the charge
+of nihilism against Buddha himself. In one portion of the Buddhist
+canon the most extreme views of nihilism are put into his mouth. All
+we can say is that that canon is later than Buddha, and that in the
+same canon<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> the founder of Buddhism, after having entered into
+Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, is still spoken of as living, nay, as showing himself to
+those who believe in him. Buddha, who denied the existence, or at
+least the divine nature, of the gods worshipped by the Brahmans, was
+raised himself to the rank of a deity by some of his followers (the
+Ai<i>s</i>varikas), and we need not wonder therefore if his Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a too
+was gradually changed into an Elysian field. And finally, if we may
+argue from human nature, such as we find it at all times and in all
+countries, we confess that we cannot bring ourselves to believe that
+the reformer of India, the teacher of so perfect a code of morality,
+the young <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>prince who gave up all he had in order to help those whom
+he saw afflicted in mind, body, or estate, should have cared much
+about speculations which he knew would either be misunderstood, or not
+understood at all, by those whom he wished to benefit; that he should
+have thrown away one of the most powerful weapons in the hands of
+every religious teacher, the belief in a future life, and should not
+have seen, that if this life was sooner or later to end in nothing, it
+was hardly worth the trouble which he took himself, or the sacrifices
+which he imposed on his disciples.</p>
+
+<p class="f3"><i>April, 1862.</i></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> 'Le Bouddha et sa Religion.' Par J. Barth&eacute;lemy
+Saint-Hilaire, Membre de l'Institut. Paris, 1860.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> M. de St. Hilaire resigned the chair of Greek literature
+at the Coll&egrave;ge de France after the <i>coup d'&eacute;tat</i> of 1851, declining to
+take the oath of allegiance to the existing government.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> The late Abb&eacute; Huc pointed out the similarities between
+the Buddhist and Roman Catholic ceremonials with such <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i>, that,
+to his surprise, he found his delightful 'Travels in Tibet' placed on
+the 'Index.' 'On ne peut s'emp&ecirc;cher d'&ecirc;tre frapp&eacute;,' he writes, 'de
+leur rapport avec le Catholicisme. La crosse, la mitre, la dalmatique,
+la chape ou pluvial, que les grands Lamas portent en voyage, ou
+lorsqu'ils font quelque c&eacute;r&eacute;monie hors du temple; l'office &agrave; deux
+choeurs, la psalmodie, les exorcismes, l'encensoir soutenu par cinq
+chaines, et pouvant s'ouvrir et se fermer &agrave; volont&eacute;; les b&eacute;n&eacute;dictions
+donn&eacute;es par les Lamas en &eacute;tendant la main droite sur la t&ecirc;te des
+fid&egrave;les; le chapelet, le c&eacute;libat eccl&eacute;siastique, les retraites
+spirituelles, le culte des saints, les je&ucirc;nes, les processions, les
+litanies, l'eau b&eacute;nite; voil&agrave; autant de rapports que les Bouddhistes
+ont avec nous.' He might have added tonsure, relics, and the
+confessional.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> 'Die Religion des Buddha,' von K&ouml;ppen, vol. ii. p.
+282.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> The same author has lately published another valuable
+work, 'The Legends and Theories of the Buddhists.' London, 1866.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> 'M&eacute;langes Asiatiques,' vol. ii. p. 373.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> The advantages to be derived from these Chinese
+translations have been pointed out by M. Stanislas Julien. The
+analytical structure of that language imparts to Chinese translations
+the character almost of a gloss; and though we need not follow
+implicitly the interpretations of the Sanskrit originals, adopted by
+the Chinese translators, still their antiquity would naturally impart
+to them a considerable value and interest. The following specimens
+were kindly communicated to me by M. Stanislas Julien:
+</p>
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Je ne sais si je vous ai communiqu&eacute; autrefois les curieux
+passages qui suivent: On lit dans le Lotus fran&ccedil;ais, p. 271,
+l. 14, C'est que c'est une chose difficile &agrave; rencontrer que
+la naissance d'un bouddha, aussi difficile &agrave; rencontrer que
+la fleur de l'Udumbara, que l'introduction du col d'une
+tortue dans l'ouverture d'un joug form&eacute; par le grand oc&eacute;an.
+</p><p>
+'Il y a en chinois: un bouddha est difficile &agrave; rencontrer,
+comme les fleurs Udumbara et Pal&acirc;&ccedil;a; et en outre comme si
+une tortue borgne voulait rencontrer un trou dans un bois
+flottant (litt. le trou d'un bois flottant).
+</p><p>
+'Lotus fran&ccedil;ais, p. 39, l. 110 (les cr&eacute;atures), encha&icirc;n&eacute;es
+par la concupiscence comme par la queue du Yak,
+perp&eacute;tuellement aveugl&eacute;es en ce monde par les d&eacute;sirs, elles
+ne cherchent pas le Buddha.
+</p><p>
+'Il y a en chinois: Profond&eacute;ment attach&eacute;es aux cinq
+d&eacute;sirs&mdash;Elles les aiment comme le Yak aime sa queue. Par la
+concupiscence et l'amour, elles s'aveuglent elles-m&ecirc;mes,
+etc.'</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> The geography of India at the time of Buddha, and later
+at the time of Fahian and Hiouen-Thsang, has been admirably treated by
+M. L. Vivien de Saint-Martin, in his 'M&eacute;moire Analytique sur la Carte
+de l'Asie Centrale et de l'Inde,' in the third volume of M. Stanislas
+Julien's 'P&egrave;lerins Bouddhistes.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> Though truth is not settled by majorities, it would be
+interesting to know which religion, counts at the present moment the
+largest numbers of believers. Berghaus, in his 'Physical Atlas,' gives
+the following division of the human race according to religion:
+</p>
+<table summary="Percentage of different religions">
+<tr><td>Buddhists</td><td>31.2&nbsp;&nbsp;per cent.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Christians</td><td>30.7&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Mohammedans</td><td>15.7&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Brahmanists</td><td>13.4&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Heathens</td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;8.7&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Jews</td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;0.3&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>
+As Berghaus does not distinguish the Buddhists in China from the
+followers of Confucius and Lao-tse, the first place on the scale
+belongs really to Christianity. It is difficult in China to say to
+what religion a man belongs, as the same person may profess two or
+three. The emperor himself, after sacrificing according to the ritual
+of Confucius, visits a Tao-ss&eacute; temple, and afterwards bows before an
+image of Fo in a Buddhist chapel. ('M&eacute;langes Asiatiques de St.
+P&eacute;tersbourg,' vol. ii. p. 374.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> See Sprenger, 'Das Leben des Mohammed,' 1861, vol. i. p.
+155.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 300.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> Neander, 'History of the Church,' vol. i. p. 817:
+&#932;&#8000;&#957; &#918;&#945;&#961;&#945;&#948;&#7936;&#957; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#914;&#959;&#965;&#948;&#7936;&#957; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#964;&#8000;&#957; &#935;&#961;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#8000;&#957; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#964;&#8000;&#957; &#924;&#945;&#957;&#953;&#967;&#945;&#953;&#8000;&#957;
+&#7955;&#957;&#945; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#964;&#8000;&#957; &#945;&#8016;&#964;&#8000;&#957; &#949;&#7990;&#957;&#945;&#953;.
+</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> Of Kapila's S&ucirc;tras, together with the commentary of
+Vi<i>g</i>&ntilde;&acirc;na Bhikshu, a new edition was published in 1856, by Dr.
+Fitz-Edward Hall, in the 'Bibliotheca Indica.' An excellent
+translation of the Aphorisms, with illustrative extracts from the
+commentaries, was printed for the use of the Benares College, by Dr.
+Ballantyne.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> 'L'enfant &eacute;gar&eacute;,' par Ph. Ed. Foucaux, p. 19.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X.</h2>
+
+<h2>BUDDHIST PILGRIMS.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m_dot.jpg" alt="M." width="71" height="50" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;Stanislas Julien has commenced the publication of a work entitled,
+'Voyages des P&egrave;lerins Bouddhistes.' The first volume, published in the
+year 1853, contains the biography of Hiouen-thsang, who, in the middle
+of the seventh century <span class="smcap">a.d.</span>, travelled from China through Central Asia
+to India. The second, which has just reached us, gives us the first
+portion of Hiouen-thsang's own diary.</p>
+
+<p>There are not many books of travel which can be compared to these
+volumes. Hiouen-thsang passed through countries which few had visited
+before him. He describes parts of the world which no one has explored
+since, and where even our modern maps contain hardly more than the
+ingenious conjectures of Alexander von Humboldt. His observations are
+minute; his geographical, statistical, and historical remarks <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>most
+accurate and trustworthy. The chief object of his travels was to study
+the religion of Buddha, the great reformer of India. Some Chinese
+pilgrims visited India before, several after, his time. Hiouen-thsang,
+however, is considered by the Chinese themselves as the most
+distinguished of these pilgrims, and M. Stanislas Julien has rightly
+assigned to him the first place in his collection.</p>
+
+<p>In order to understand what Hiouen-thsang was, and to appreciate his
+life and his labours, we must first cast a glance at the history of a
+religion which, however unattractive and even mischievous it may
+appear to ourselves, inspired her votary with the true spirit of
+devotion and self-sacrifice. That religion has now existed for exactly
+2,400 years. To millions and millions of human beings it has been the
+only preparation for a higher life placed within their reach. And even
+at the present day it counts among the hordes of Asia a more numerous
+array of believers than any other faith, not excluding Mohammedanism
+or Christianity. The religion of Buddha took its origin in India about
+the middle of the sixth century <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, but it did not assume its
+political importance till about the time of Alexander's invasion. We
+know little, therefore, of its first origin and spreading, because the
+canonical works on which we must chiefly rely for information belong
+to a much later period, and are strongly tinged with a legendary
+character. The very existence of such a being as Buddha, the son of
+<i>S</i>uddhodana, king of Kapilavastu, has been doubted. But what can
+never be doubted is this, that Buddhism, such as we find it in
+Russia<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>and Sweden<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> on the very threshold of European
+civilisation, in the north of Asia, in Mongolia, Tatary, China, Tibet,
+Nepal, Siam, Burmah, and Ceylon, had its origin in India. Doctrines
+similar to those of Buddha existed in that country long before his
+time. We can trace them like meandering roots below the surface long
+before we reach the point where the roots strike up into a stem, and
+the stem branches off again into fruit-bearing branches. What was
+original and new in Buddha was his changing a philosophical system
+into a practical doctrine; his taking the wisdom of the few, and
+coining as much of it as he thought genuine for the benefit of the
+many; his breaking with the traditional formalities of the past, and
+proclaiming for the first time, in spite of castes and creeds, the
+equality of the rich and the poor, the foolish and the wise, the
+'twice-born' and the outcast. Buddhism, as a religion and as a
+political fact, was a reaction against Brahmanism, though it retained
+much of that more primitive form of faith and worship. Buddhism, in
+its historical growth, presupposes Brahmanism, and, however hostile
+the mutual relation of these two religions may have been at different
+periods of Indian history, it can be shown, without much difficulty,
+that the latter was but a natural consequence of the former.</p>
+
+<p>The ancient religion of the Aryan inhabitants of India had started,
+like the religion of the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans, Slaves, and
+Celts, with a simple and intelligible mythological phraseology. In the
+Veda&mdash;for there is but one real Veda&mdash;the names of all the so-called
+gods or Devas betray their original physical character and meaning
+without disguise. The fire was praised and invoked by the name of
+"Agni" (<i>ignis</i>); the earth by the name of "P<i>r</i>ithv&icirc;" (the broad);
+the sky by the name of "Dyu" (Jupiter), and afterwards of "Indra;" the
+firmament and the waters by the name of "Varu<i>n</i>a," or &#927;&#8016;&#961;&#945;v&#8001;&#962;. The sun was invoked by many names, such as "S&ucirc;rya,"
+"Savit<i>r</i>i," "Vish<i>n</i>u," or "Mitra;" and the dawn rejoiced in such
+titles as "Ushas," "Urva<i>s</i>i," "Ahan&acirc;," and "S&ucirc;ry&acirc;." Nor was the moon
+forgotten. For though it is mentioned but rarely under its usual name
+of "<i>K</i>andra," it is alluded to under the more sacred appellation of
+"Soma;" and each of its four phases had received its own denomination.
+There is hardly any part of nature, if it could impress the human mind
+in any way with the ideas of a higher power, of order, eternity, or
+beneficence,&mdash;whether the winds, or the rivers, or the trees, or the
+mountains,&mdash;without a name and representative in the early Hindu
+Pantheon. No doubt there existed in the human mind, from the very
+beginning, something, whether we call it a suspicion, an innate idea,
+an intuition, or a sense of the Divine. What distinguishes man from
+the rest of the animal creation is chiefly that ineradicable feeling
+of dependence and reliance upon some higher power, a consciousness of
+bondage, from which the very name of "religion" was derived. "It is He
+that hath made us, and not we ourselves." The presence of that power
+was felt everywhere, and nowhere more clearly and strongly than in the
+rising and setting of the sun, in the change of day and night, of
+spring and winter, of birth and death. But, although the Divine
+presence was felt everywhere, it was impossible in that early period
+of thought, and with a language incapable as yet of expressing
+anything but material objects, to conceive the idea of God in its
+purity and fullness, or to assign to it an adequate and worthy
+expression. Children cannot think the thoughts of men, and the poets
+of the Veda could not speak the language of Aristotle. It was by a
+slow process that the human mind elaborated the idea of one absolute
+and supreme Godhead; and by a still slower process that the human
+language matured a word to express that idea. A period of growth was
+inevitable, and those who, from a mere guess of their own, do not
+hesitate to speak authoritatively of a primeval revelation, which
+imparted to the Pagan world the idea of the Godhead in all its purity,
+forget that, however pure and sublime and spiritual that revelation
+might have been, there was no language capable as yet of expressing
+the high and immaterial conceptions of that Heaven-sent message. The
+real history of religion, during the earliest mythological period,
+represents to us a slow process of fermentation in thought and
+language, with its various interruptions, its overflowings, its
+coolings, its deposits, and its gradual clearing from all extraneous
+and foreign admixture. This is not only the case among the
+Indo-European or Aryan races in India, in Greece, and in Germany. In
+Peru, and wherever the primitive formations of the intellectual world
+crop out, the process is exactly the same. "The religion of the sun,"
+as it has been boldly said by the author of the "Spanish Conquest in
+America," "was inevitable." It was like a deep furrow which that
+heavenly luminary drew, in its silent procession from east to west,
+over the virgin mind of the gazing multitude; and in the impression
+left there by the first rising and setting of the sun, there lay the
+dark seed of a faith in a more than human being, the first intimation
+of a life without beginning, of a world without end. Manifold seed
+fell afterwards into the soil once broken. Something divine was
+discovered in everything that moved and lived. Names were stammered
+forth in anxious haste, and no single name could fully express what
+lay hidden in the human mind and wanted expression&mdash;the idea of an
+absolute, and perfect, and supreme, and immortal Essence. Thus a
+countless host of nominal gods was called into being, and for a time
+seemed to satisfy the wants of a thoughtless multitude. But there were
+thoughtful men at all times, and their reason protested against the
+contradictions of a mythological phraseology, though it had been
+hallowed by sacred customs and traditions. That rebellious reason had
+been at work from the very first, always ready to break the yoke of
+names and formulas which no longer expressed what they were intended
+to express. The idea which had yearned for utterance was the idea of a
+supreme and absolute Power, and that yearning was not satisfied by
+such names as "Kronos," "Zeus," and "Apollon." The very sound of such
+a word as "God," used in the plural, jarred on the ear, as if we were
+to speak of two universes, or of a single twin. There are many words,
+as Greek and Latin grammarians tell us, which, if used in the plural,
+have a different meaning from what they have in the singular. The
+Latin "&aelig;edes" <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>means a temple; if used in the plural it means a house.
+"Deus" and &#920;&#949;&#8001;&#962; ought to be added to the same class of
+words. The idea of supreme perfection excluded limitation, and the
+idea of God excluded the possibility of many gods. This may seem
+language too abstract and metaphysical for the early times of which we
+are speaking. But the ancient poets of the Vedic hymns have expressed
+the same thought with perfect clearness and simplicity. In the
+Rig-veda (I. 164, 46) we read:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"That which is one the sages speak of in many ways&mdash;they call it
+'Agni,' 'Yama,' 'M&acirc;tari<i>s</i>van.'"</p>
+
+<p>Besides the plurality of gods, which was sure to lead to their
+destruction, there was a taint of mortality which they could not throw
+off. They all derived their being from the life of nature. The god who
+represented the sun was liable, in the mythological language of
+antiquity, to all the accidents which threatened the solar luminary.
+Though he might rise in immortal youth in the morning, he was
+conquered by the shadows of the night, and the powers of winter seemed
+to overthrow his heavenly throne. There is nothing in nature free from
+change, and the gods of nature fell under the thralldom of nature's
+laws. The sun must set, and the solar gods and heroes must die. There
+must be one God, there must be one unchanging Deity; this was the
+silent conviction of the human mind. There are many gods, liable to
+all the vicissitudes of life; this was everywhere the answer of
+mythological religion.</p>
+
+<p>It is curious to observe in how many various ways these two opposite
+principles were kept for a time from open conflict, and how long the
+heathen temples resisted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span> the enemy which was slowly and imperceptibly
+undermining their very foundations. In Greece this mortal element,
+inherent in all gods, was eliminated to a great extent by the
+conception of heroes. Whatever was too human in the ancient legends
+told of Zeus and Apollon was transfered to so-called half-gods or
+heroes, who were represented as the sons or favorites of the gods, and
+who bore their fate under a slightly altered name. The twofold
+character of Herakles as a god and as a hero is acknowledged even by
+Herodotus, and some of his epithets would have been sufficient to
+indicate his solar and originally divine character. But, in order to
+make some of the legends told of the solar deity possible or
+conceivable, it was necessary to represent Herakles as a more human
+being, and to make him rise to the seat of the Immortals only after he
+had endured toils and sufferings incompatible with the dignity of an
+Olympian god. We find the same idea in Peru, only that there it led to
+different results. A thinking, or, as he was called, a freethinking
+Inca<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> remarked that this perpetual travelling of the sun was a sign
+of servitude,<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> and he threw doubts upon the divine nature of such
+an unquiet thing as that great luminary appeared to him to be. And
+this misgiving led to a tradition which, even should it be unfounded
+in history, had some truth in itself, that there was in Peru an
+earlier worship, that of an invisible Deity, the Creator of the world,
+Pachacamac. In Greece, also, there are signs of a similar craving
+after the "Unknown God." A supreme God was wanted, and Zeus, the
+stripling of Creta, was raised to that rank. He became God above all
+gods&mdash;&#7937;&#960;&#7937;&#957;&#964;&#969;&#957; &#954;&#8017;&#961;&#953;&#959;&#962; as Pindar calls him. Yet more was
+wanted than a mere Zeus; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>and thus a supreme Fate or Spell was imagined
+before which all the gods, and even Zeus, had to bow. And even this
+Fate was not allowed to remain supreme, and there was something in the
+destinies of man which was called &#8017;&#960;&#7953;&#961;&#956;&#959;&#961;&#959;&#957;, or "beyond
+Fate." The most awful solution, however, of the problem belongs to
+Teutonic mythology. Here, also, some heroes were introduced; but their
+death was only the beginning of the final catastrophe. "All gods must
+die." Such is the last word of that religion which had grown up in the
+forests of Germany, and found a last refuge among the glaciers and
+volcanoes of Iceland. The death of Sigurd, the descendant of Odin,
+could not avert the death of Balder, the son of Odin; and the death of
+Balder was soon to be followed by the death of Odin himself, and of
+all the immortal gods.</p>
+
+<p>All this was inevitable, and Prometheus, the man of forethought, could
+safely predict the fall of Zeus. The struggles by which reason and
+faith overthrow tradition and superstition vary in different countries
+and at different times; but the final victory is always on their side.
+In India the same antagonism manifested itself, but what there seemed
+a victory of reason threatened to become the destruction of all
+religious faith. At first there was hardly a struggle. On the
+primitive mythological stratum of thought two new formations
+arose,&mdash;the Brahmanical philosophy and the Brahmanical ceremonial; the
+one opening the widest avenues of philosophical thought, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>the other
+fencing all religious feeling within the narrowest barriers. Both
+derived their authority from the same source. Both professed to carry
+out the meaning and purpose of the Veda. Thus we see on the one side,
+the growth of a numerous and powerful priesthood, and the
+establishment of a ceremonial which embraced every moment of a man's
+life from his birth to his death. There was no event which might have
+moved the heart to a spontaneous outpouring of praise or thanksgiving,
+which was not regulated by priestly formulas. Every prayer was
+prescribed, every sacrifice determined. Every god had his share, and
+the claims of each deity on the adoration of the faithful were set
+down with such punctiliousness, the danger of offending their pride
+was represented in such vivid colors, that no one would venture to
+approach their presence without the assistance of a well-paid staff of
+masters of divine ceremonies. It was impossible to avoid sin without
+the help of the Brahmans. They alone knew the food that might properly
+be eaten, the air which might properly be breathed, the dress which
+might properly be worn. They alone could tell what god should be
+invoked, what sacrifice be offered; and the slightest mistake of
+pronunciation, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>the slightest neglect about clarified butter, or the
+length of the ladle in which it was to be offered, might bring
+destruction upon the head of the unassisted worshipper. No nation was
+ever so completely priest-ridden as the Hindus under the sway of the
+Brahmanic law. Yet, on the other side, the same people were allowed to
+indulge in the most unrestrained freedom of thought, and in the
+schools of their philosophy the very names of their gods were never
+mentioned. Their existence was neither denied nor asserted; they were
+of no greater importance in the system of the world of thought than
+trees or mountains, men or animals; and to offer sacrifices to them
+with a hope of rewards, so far from being meritorious, was considered
+as dangerous to that emancipation to which a clear perception of
+philosophical truth was to lead the patient student. There was one
+system which taught that there existed but one Being, without a
+second; that everything else which seemed to exist was but a dream and
+illusion, and that this illusion might be removed by a true knowledge
+of the one Being. There was another system which admitted two
+principles,&mdash;one a subjective and self-existent mind, the other
+matter, endowed with qualities. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>Here the world, with its joys and
+sorrows, was explained as the result of the subjective Self,
+reflecting itself in the mirror of matter; and final emancipation was
+obtained by turning away the eyes from the play of nature, and being
+absorbed in the knowledge of the time and absolute Self. A third
+system started with the admission of atoms, and explained every
+effect, including the elements and the mind, animals, men, and gods,
+from the concurrence of these atoms. In fact, as M. Cousin remarked
+many years ago, the history of the philosophy of India is "un abr&eacute;g&eacute;
+de l'histoire de la philosophie." The germs of all these systems are
+traced back to the Vedas, Br&acirc;hma<i>n</i>as, and the Upanishads, and the man
+who believed in any of them was considered as orthodox as the devout
+worshipper of the gods; the one was saved by knowledge and faith, the
+other by works and faith.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the state of the Hindu mind when Buddhism arose; or, rather,
+such was the state of the Hindu mind which gave rise to Buddhism.
+Buddha himself went through the school of the Brahmans. He performed
+their penances, he studied their philosophy, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>and he at last claimed
+the name of "the Buddha," or "the Enlightened," when he threw away the
+whole ceremonial, with its sacrifices, superstitions, penances, and
+castes, as worthless, and changed the complicated systems of
+philosophy into a short doctrine of salvation. This doctrine of
+salvation has been called pure Atheism and Nihilism, and it no doubt
+was liable to both charges in its metaphysical character, and in that
+form in which we chiefly know it. It was Atheistic, not because it
+denied the existence of such gods as Indra and Brahma. Buddha did not
+even condescend to deny their existence. But it was called Atheistic,
+like the Sankhya philosophy, which admitted but one subjective Self,
+and considered creation as an illusion of that Self, imaging itself
+for a while in the mirror of nature. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>As there was no reality in
+creation, there could be no real Creator. All that seemed to exist was
+the result of ignorance. To remove that ignorance was to remove the
+cause of all that seemed to exist. How a religion which taught the
+annihilation of all existence, of all thought, of all individuality
+and personality, as the highest object of all endeavors, could have
+laid hold of the minds of millions of human beings, and how at the
+same time, by enforcing the duties of morality, justice, kindness, and
+self-sacrifice, it could have exercised a decided beneficial
+influence, not only on the natives of India, but on the lowest
+barbarians of Central Asia, is a riddle which no one has been able to
+solve. We must distinguish, it seems, between Buddhism as a religion,
+and Buddhism as a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>religion, and Buddhism as a philosophy.
+The former addressed itself to millions, the latter to a few isolated
+thinkers. It is from these isolated thinkers, however, and from their
+literary compositions, that we are apt to form our notions of what
+Buddhism was, while, as a matter of fact, not one in a thousand would
+have been capable of following these metaphysical speculations. To the
+people at large Buddhism was a moral and religious, not a
+philosophical reform. Yet even its morality has a metaphysical tinge.
+The morality which it teaches is not a morality of expediency and
+rewards. Virtue is not enjoined because it necessarily leads to
+happiness. No; virtue is to be practised, but happiness is to be
+shunned, and the only reward for virtue is that it subdues the
+passions, and thus prepares the human mind for that knowledge which is
+to end in complete annihilation. There are ten commandments which
+Buddha imposes on his disciples.<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> They are&mdash;</p>
+
+<ul><li>1. Not to kill.</li>
+<li>2. Not to steal.</li>
+<li>3. Not to commit adultery.</li>
+<li>4. Not to lie.</li>
+<li>5. Not to get intoxicated.</li>
+<li>6. To abstain from unseasonable meals.</li>
+<li>7. To abstain from public spectacles.</li>
+<li>8. To abstain from expensive dresses.</li>
+<li>9. Not to have a large bed.</li>
+<li>10. Not to receive silver or gold.</li></ul>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The duties of those who embraced a religious life were more severe.
+They were not allowed to wear any dress except rags collected in
+cemeteries, and these rags they had to sew together with their own
+hands. A yellow cloak was to be thrown over these rags. Their food was
+to be extremely simple, and they were not to possess anything, except
+what they could get by collecting alms from door to door in their
+wooden bowls. They had but one meal in the morning, and were not
+allowed to touch any food after midday. They were to live in forests,
+not in cities, and their only shelter was to be the shadow of a tree.
+There they were to sit, to spread their carpet, but not to lie down,
+even during sleep. They were allowed to enter the nearest city or
+village in order to beg, but they had to return to their forest before
+night, and the only change which was allowed, or rather prescribed,
+was when they had to spend some nights in the cemeteries, there to
+meditate on the vanity of all things. And what was the object of all
+this asceticism? Simply to guide each individual towards that path
+which would finally bring him to Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, to utter extinction or
+annihilation. The very definition of virtue was that it helped man to
+cross over to the other shore, and that other shore was not death, but
+cessation of all being. Thus charity was considered a virtue; modesty,
+patience, courage, contemplation, and science, all were virtues, but
+they were practised only as a means of arriving at deliverance. Buddha
+himself exhibited the perfection of all these virtues. His charity
+knew no bounds. When he saw a tigress<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span> starved, and unable to feed her
+cubs, he is said to have made a charitable oblation of his body to be
+devoured by them. Hiouen-thsang visited the place on the banks of the
+Indus where this miracle was supposed to have happened, and he remarks
+that the soil is still red there from the blood of Buddha, and that
+the trees and flowers have the same colour.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> As to the modesty of
+Buddha, nothing could exceed it. One day, king Prasena<i>g</i>it, the
+protector of Buddha, called on him to perform miracles, in order to
+silence his adversaries, the Brahmans. Buddha consented. He performed
+the required miracles; but he exclaimed, 'Great king, I do not teach
+the law to my pupils, telling them, Go, ye saints, and before the eyes
+of the Brahmans and householders perform, by means of your
+supernatural powers, miracles greater than any man can perform. I tell
+them, when I teach them the law, Live, ye saints, hiding your good
+works and showing your sins.' And yet, all this self-sacrificing
+charity, all this self-sacrificing humility, by which the life of
+Buddha was distinguished throughout, and which he preached to the
+multitudes that came to listen to him, had, we are told, but one
+object, and that object was final annihilation. It is impossible
+almost to believe it, and yet when we turn away our eyes from the
+pleasing picture of that high morality which Buddha preached for the
+first time to all classes of men, and look into the dark pages of his
+code of religious metaphysics, we can hardly find another explanation.
+Fortunately, the millions who embraced the doctrines of Buddha, and
+were saved by it from the depths of barbarism, brutality, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>selfishness, were unable to fathom the meaning of his metaphysical
+doctrines. With them the Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a to which they aspired, became only
+a relative deliverance from the miseries of human life; nay, it took
+the bright colours of a paradise, to be regained by the pious
+worshipper of Buddha. But was this the meaning of Buddha himself? In
+his 'Four Verities' he does not, indeed, define Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, except by
+cessation of all pain; but when he traces the cause of pain, and
+teaches the means of destroying not only pain itself, but the cause of
+pain, we shall see that his Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a assumes a very different
+meaning. His 'Four Verities' are very simple. The first asserts the
+existence of pain; the second asserts that the cause of pain lies in
+sin; the third asserts that pain may cease by Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a; the fourth
+shows the way that leads to Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a. This way to Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a consists
+in eight things&mdash;right faith (orthodoxy), right judgment (logic),
+right language (veracity), right purpose (honesty), right practice
+(religious life), right obedience (lawful life), right memory, and
+right meditation. All these precepts might be understood as part of a
+simply moral code, closing with a kind of mystic meditation on the
+highest object of thought, and with a yearning after deliverance from
+all worldly ties. Similar systems have prevailed in many parts of the
+world, without denying the existence of an absolute Being, or of a
+something towards which the human mind tends, in which it is absorbed
+or even annihilated. Awful as such a mysticism may appear, yet it
+leaves still something that exists, it acknowledges a feeling of
+dependence in man. It knows of a first cause, though it may have
+nothing to predicate of it except that it is &#964;&#8000; &#954;&#953;&#957;&#959;&#8166;&#957; &#7936;&#954;&#953;&#957;&#951;&#964;&#8001;&#957;. A return is possible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> from that desert. The first cause may
+be called to life again. It may take the names of Creator, Preserver,
+Ruler; and when the simplicity and helplessness of the child have
+re-entered the heart of man, the name of father will come back to the
+lips which had uttered in vain all the names of a philosophical
+despair. But from the Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a of the Buddhist metaphysician there is
+no return. He starts from the idea that the highest object is to
+escape pain. Life in his eyes is nothing but misery; birth the cause
+of all evil, from which even death cannot deliver him, because he
+believes in an eternal cycle of existence, or in transmigration. There
+is no deliverance from evil, except by breaking through the prison
+walls, not only of life, but of existence, and by extirpating the last
+cause of existence. What, then, is the cause of existence? The cause
+of existence, says the Buddhist metaphysician, is attachment&mdash;an
+inclination towards something; and this attachment arises from thirst
+or desire. Desire presupposes perception of the object desired;
+perception presupposes contact; contact, at least a sentient contact,
+presupposes the senses; and, as the senses can only perceive what has
+form and name, or what is distinct, distinction is the real cause of
+all the effects which end in existence, birth, and pain. Now, this
+distinction is itself the result of conceptions or ideas; but these
+ideas, so far from being, as in Greek philosophy, the true and
+everlasting forms of the Absolute, are here represented as mere
+illusions, the effects of ignorance (avidy&acirc;). Ignorance, therefore, is
+really the primary cause of all that seems to exist. To know that
+ignorance, as the root of all evil, is the same as to destroy it, and
+with it all effects that flowed from it. In order to see how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> this
+doctrine affects the individual, let us watch the last moments of
+Buddha as described by his disciples. He enters into the first stage
+of meditation when he feels freedom from sin, acquires a knowledge of
+the nature of all things, and has no desire except that of Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a.
+But he still feels pleasure; he even uses his reasoning and
+discriminating powers. The use of these powers ceases in the second
+stage of meditation, when nothing remains but a desire after
+Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, and a general feeling of satisfaction, arising from his
+intellectual perfection. That satisfaction, also, is extinguished in
+the third stage. Indifference succeeds; yet there is still
+self-consciousness, and a certain amount of physical pleasure. These
+last remnants are destroyed in the fourth stage; memory fades away,
+all pleasure and pain are gone, and the doors of Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a now open
+before him. After having passed these four stages once, Buddha went
+through them a second time, but he died before he attained again to
+the fourth stage. We must soar still higher, and though we may feel
+giddy and disgusted, we must sit out this tragedy till the curtain
+falls. After the four stages of meditation<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> are passed, the Buddha
+(and every being is to become a Buddha) enters into the infinity of
+space; then into the infinity of intelligence; and thence he passes
+into the region of nothing. But even here there is no rest. There is
+still something left&mdash;the idea of the nothing in which he rejoices.
+That also must be destroyed, and it is destroyed in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>the fourth and
+last region, where there is not even the idea of a nothing left, and
+where there is complete rest, undisturbed by nothing, or what is not
+nothing.<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> There are few persons who will take the trouble of
+reasoning out such hallucinations; least of all, persons who are
+accustomed to the sober language of Greek philosophy; and it is the
+more interesting to hear the opinion which one of the best
+Aristotelean scholars of the present day, after a patient examination
+of the authentic documents of Buddhism, has formed of its system of
+metaphysics. M. Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire, in a review on Buddhism,
+published in the 'Journal des Savants,' says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Buddhism has no God; it has not even the confused and vague
+notion of a Universal Spirit in which the human soul,
+according to the orthodox doctrine of Brahmanism, and the
+S&acirc;nkhya philosophy, may be absorbed. Nor does it admit
+nature, in the proper sense of the word, and it ignores that
+profound division between spirit and matter which forms the
+system and the glory of Kapila. It confounds man with all
+that surrounds him, all the while preaching to him the laws
+of virtue. Buddhism, therefore, cannot unite the human soul,
+which it does not even mention, with a God, whom it ignores;
+nor with nature, which it does not know better. Nothing
+remained but to annihilate the soul; and in order to be
+quite sure that the soul may not re-appear under some new
+form in this world, which has been cursed as the abode of
+illusion and misery, Buddhism destroys its very elements,
+and never gets tired of glorying in this achievement. What
+more is wanted?</p></div>
+
+<p>If this is not the absolute nothing, what is Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a?'</p>
+
+<p>Such religion, we should say, was made for a mad-house. But Buddhism
+was an advance, if compared with Brahmanism; it has stood its ground
+for centuries, and if truth could be decided by majorities, the show
+of hands, even at the present day, would be in favour of Buddha. The
+metaphysics of Buddhism, like the metaphysics of most religions, not
+excluding our own Gnosticism and Mysticism, were beyond the reach of
+all except a few hardened philosophers or ecstatic dreamers. Human
+nature could not be changed. Out of the very nothing it made a new
+paradise; and he who had left no place in the whole universe for a
+Divine Being, was deified himself by the multitudes who wanted a
+person whom they could worship, a king whose help they might invoke, a
+friend before whom they could pour out their most secret griefs. And
+there remained the code of a pure morality, proclaimed by Buddha.
+There remained the spirit of charity, kindness, and universal pity
+with which he had inspired his disciple.<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> There remained the
+simplicity of the ceremonial he had taught, the equality of all men
+which he had declared, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>religious toleration which he had preached
+from the beginning. There remained much, therefore, to account for the
+rapid strides which his doctrine made from the mountain peaks of
+Ceylon to the Tundras of the Samoyedes, and we shall see in the simple
+story of the life of Hiouen-thsang that Buddhism, with all its
+defects, has had its heroes, its martyrs, and its saints.</p>
+
+<p>Hiouen-thsang, born in China more than a thousand years after the
+death of Buddha, was a believer in Buddhism. He dedicated his whole
+life to the study of that religion; travelling from his native country
+to India, visiting every place mentioned in Buddhist history or
+tradition, acquiring the ancient language in which the canonical books
+of the Buddhists were written, studying commentaries, discussing
+points of difficulty, and defending the orthodox faith at public
+councils against disbelievers and schismatics. Buddhism had grown and
+changed since the death of its founder, but it had lost nothing of its
+vitality. At a very early period a proselytizing spirit awoke among
+the disciples of the Indian reformer, an element entirely new in the
+history of ancient religions. No Jew, no Greek, no Roman, no Brahman
+ever thought of converting people to his own national form of worship.
+Religion was looked upon as private or national property. It was to be
+guarded against strangers. The most sacred names of the gods, the
+prayers by which their favour could be gained, were kept secret. No
+religion, however, was more exclusive than that of the Brahmans. A
+Brahman was born, nay, twice-born. He could not be made. Not even the
+lowest caste, that of the <i>S</i>&ucirc;dras, would open its ranks to a
+stranger. Here lay the secret of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> Buddha's success. He addressed
+himself to castes and outcasts. He promised salvation to all; and he
+commanded his disciples to preach his doctrine in all places and to
+all men. A sense of duty, extending from the narrow limits of the
+house, the village, and the country to the widest circle of mankind, a
+feeling of sympathy and brotherhood towards all men, the idea, in
+fact, of humanity, were in India first pronounced by Buddha. In the
+third Buddhist Council, the acts of which have been preserved to us in
+the 'Mahavansa,'<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> we hear of missionaries being sent to the chief
+countries beyond India. This Council, we are told, took place 308
+<span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, 235 years after the death of Buddha, in the 17th year of the
+reign of the famous king A<i>s</i>oka, whose edicts have been preserved to
+us on rock inscriptions in various parts of India. There are sentences
+in these inscriptions of A<i>s</i>oka which might be read with advantage by
+our own missionaries, though they are now more than 2000 years old.
+Thus it is written on the rocks of Girnar, Dhauli, and Kapurdigiri&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Piyadasi, the king beloved of the gods, desires that the
+ascetics of all creeds might reside in all places. All these
+ascetics profess alike the command which people should
+exercise over themselves, and the purity of the soul. But
+people have different opinions, and different inclinations.'</p></div>
+
+<p>And again:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'A man ought to honour his own faith only; but he should
+never abuse the faith of others. It is thus that he will do
+no harm to anybody. There are even circumstances where the
+religion of others ought <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>to be honoured. And in acting
+thus, a man fortifies his own faith, and assists the faith
+of others. He who acts otherwise, diminishes his own faith,
+and hurts the faith of others.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Those who have no time to read the voluminous works of the late E.
+Burnouf on Buddhism, his 'Introduction &agrave; l'Histoire du Buddhisme,' and
+his translation of 'Le Lotus de la bonne Loi,' will find a very
+interesting and lucid account of these councils, and edicts, and
+missions, and the history of Buddhism in general, in a work lately
+published by Mrs. Speir, 'Life in Ancient India.' Buddhism spread in
+the south to Ceylon, in the north to Kashmir, the Himalayan countries,
+Tibet, and China. One Buddhist missionary is mentioned in the Chinese
+annals as early as 217 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>;<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> and about the year 120 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> a Chinese
+General, after defeating the barbarous tribes north of the Desert of
+Gobi, brought back as a trophy a golden statue, the statue of
+Buddha.<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> It was not, however, till the year 65 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> that Buddhism
+was officially recognised by the Emperor Ming-ti<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> as a third state
+religion in China. Ever since, it has shared equal honours with the
+doctrines of Confucius and Lao-tse, in the Celestial Empire, and it is
+but lately that these three established religions have had to fear the
+encroachments of a new rival in the creed of the Chief of the rebels.</p>
+
+<p>After Buddhism had been introduced into China, the first care of its
+teachers was to translate the sacred works from Sanskrit, in which
+they were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>originally written, into Chinese. We read of the Emperor
+Ming-ti,<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> of the dynasty of Han, sending Tsa&iuml;-in and other high
+officials to India, in order to study there the doctrine of Buddha.
+They engaged the services of two learned Buddhists, Mat&acirc;nga and
+Tchou-fa-lan, and some of the most important Buddhist works were
+translated by them into Chinese. 'The Life of Buddha,' the
+'Lalita-Vistara,'<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> a Sanskrit work which, on account of its style
+and language, had been referred by Oriental scholars to a much more
+modern period of Indian literature, can now safely be ascribed to an
+ante-Christian era, if, as we are told by Chinese scholars, it was
+translated from Sanskrit into Chinese, as one of the canonical books
+of Buddhism, as early as the year 76 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> The same work was translated
+also into Tibetan; and an edition of it&mdash;the first Tibetan work
+printed in Europe&mdash;published in Paris by M.E. Foucaux, reflects high
+credit on that distinguished scholar, and on the Government which
+supports these studies in the most liberal and enlightened spirit. The
+intellectual intercourse between the Indian peninsula and the northern
+continent of Asia remained uninterrupted for many centuries. Missions
+were sent from China to India, to report on the political and
+geographical state of the country, but the chief object of interest
+which attracted public embassies and private pilgrims across the
+Himalayan mountains was the religion of Buddha. About three hundred
+years after the public recognition of Buddhism by the Emperor Ming-ti,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>the great stream of Buddhist pilgrims began to flow from China to
+India. The first account which we possess of these pilgrimages refers
+to the travels of Fahian, who visited India towards the end of the
+fourth century. His travels have been translated by R&eacute;musat, but M.
+Julien promises a new and more correct translation. After Fahian, we
+have the travels of Hoei-seng and Song-yun, who were sent to India, in
+518, by command of the Empress, with a view of collecting sacred books
+and relics. Of Hiouen-thsang, who follows next in time, we possess, at
+present, eight out of twelve books; and there is reason to hope that
+the last four books of his Journal will soon follow in M. Julien's
+translation.<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> After Hiouen-thsang, the chief works of Chinese
+pilgrims are the 'Itineraries' of the fifty-six monks, published in
+730, and the travels of Khi-nie, who visited India in 964, at the head
+of three hundred pilgrims. India was for a time the Holy Land of
+China. There lay the scene of the life and death of the great teacher;
+there were the monuments commemorating the chief events of his life;
+there the shrines where his relics might be worshipped; there the
+monasteries where tradition had preserved his sayings and his doings;
+there the books where his doctrine might be studied in its original
+purity; there the schools where the tenets of different sects which
+had sprung up in the course of time might best be acquired.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the pilgrims and envoys have left us accounts of their
+travels, and, in the absence of anything like an historical literature
+in India itself, these Chinese works are of the utmost importance for
+gaining <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>an insight into the social, political, and religious history
+of that country from the beginning of our era to the time of the
+Mohammedan conquest. The importance of Mohammedan writers, so far as
+they treat on the history of India during the Middle Ages, was soon
+recognised, and in a memoir lately published by the most eminent
+Arabic scholar of France, M. Reinaud, new and valuable historical
+materials have been collected&mdash;materials doubly valuable in India,
+where no native historian has ever noted down the passing events of
+the day. But, although the existence of similar documents in Chinese
+was known, and although men of the highest literary eminence&mdash;such as
+Humboldt, Biot, and others&mdash;had repeatedly urged the necessity of
+having a translation of the early travels of the Chinese Pilgrims, it
+seemed almost as if our curiosity was never to be satisfied. France
+has been the only country where Chinese scholarship has ever
+flourished, and it was a French scholar, Abel R&eacute;musat, who undertook
+at last the translation of one of the Chinese Pilgrims. R&eacute;musat died
+before his work was published, and his translation of the travels of
+Fahian, edited by M. Landresse, remained for a long time without being
+followed up by any other. Nor did the work of that eminent scholar
+answer all expectations. Most of the proper names, the names of
+countries, towns, mountains, and rivers, the titles of books, and the
+whole Buddhistic phraseology, were so disguised in their Chinese dress
+that it was frequently impossible to discover their original form.</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese alphabet was never intended to represent the sound of
+words. It was in its origin a hieroglyphic system, each word having
+its own graphic representative. Nor would it have been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> possible to
+write Chinese in any other way. Chinese is a monosyllabic language. No
+word is allowed more than one consonant and one vowel,&mdash;the vowels
+including diphthongs and nasal vowels. Hence the possible number of
+words is extremely small, and the number of significative sounds in
+the Chinese language is said to be no more than 450. No language,
+however, could be satisfied with so small a vocabulary, and in
+Chinese, as in other monosyllabic dialects, each word, as it was
+pronounced with various accents and intonations, was made to convey a
+large number of meanings; so that the total number of words, or rather
+of ideas, expressed in Chinese, is said to amount to 43,496. Hence a
+graphic representation of the mere sound of words would have been
+perfectly useless, and it was absolutely necessary to resort to
+hieroglyphical writing, enlarged by the introduction of determinative
+signs. Nearly the whole immense dictionary of Chinese&mdash;at least
+twenty-nine thirtieths&mdash;consists of combined signs, one part
+indicating the general sound, the other determining its special
+meaning. With such a system of writing it was possible to represent
+Chinese, but impossible to convey either the sound or the meaning of
+any other language. Besides, some of the most common sounds&mdash;such as
+r, b, d, and the short a&mdash;are unknown in Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>How, then, were the translators to render Sanskrit names in Chinese?
+The most rational plan would have been to select as many Chinese signs
+as there were Sanskrit letters, and to express one and the same letter
+in Sanskrit always by one and the same sign in Chinese; or, if the
+conception of a consonant without a vowel, and of a vowel without a
+consonant, was too much for a Chinese understanding, to express at
+least<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span> the same syllabic sound in Sanskrit, by one and the same
+syllabic sign in Chinese. A similar system is adopted at the present
+day, when the Chinese find themselves under the necessity of writing
+the names of Lord Palmerston or Sir John Bowring; but, instead of
+adopting any definite system of transcribing, each translator seems to
+have chosen his own signs for rendering the sounds of Sanskrit words,
+and to have chosen them at random. The result is that every Sanskrit
+word as transcribed by the Chinese Buddhists is a riddle which no
+ingenuity is able to solve. Who could have guessed that 'Fo-to,' or
+more frequently 'Fo,' was meant for Buddha? 'Ko-lo-keou-lo' for
+R&acirc;hula, the son of Buddha? 'Po-lo-na&iuml;' for Benares? 'Heng-ho' for
+Ganges? 'Niepan' for Nirv<i>&acirc;na</i>? 'Chamen' for <i>S</i>rama<i>n</i>a? 'Fe&iuml;to' for
+Veda? 'Tcha-li' for Kshattriya? 'Siu-to-lo' for <i>S</i>&ucirc;dra? 'Fan' or
+'Fan-lon-mo' for Brahma? Sometimes, it is true, the Chinese
+endeavoured to give, besides the sounds, a translation of the meaning
+of the Sanskrit words. But the translation of proper names is always
+very precarious, and it required an intimate knowledge of Sanskrit and
+Buddhist literature to recognise from these awkward translations the
+exact form of the proper names for which they were intended. If, in a
+Chinese translation of 'Thukydides,' we read of a person called
+'Leader of the people,' we might guess his name to have been
+<span class="sp1">Demagogos</span>, or <span class="sp1">Laoegos</span>, as well as <span class="sp1">Agesilaos</span>. And when the name of the
+town of <i>S</i>ravasti was written Che-wei, which means in Chinese 'where
+one hears,' it required no ordinary power of combination to find that
+the name of <i>S</i>ravasti was derived from a Sanskrit noun, <span class="sp1"><i>s</i>ravas</span>
+(Greek &#954;&#955;&#7953;&#959;&#962;, Lat. <span class="sp1">cluo</span>), which means 'hearing' or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span> 'fame,'
+and that the etymological meaning of the name of <i>S</i>ravasti was
+intended by the Chinese 'Che-wei.' Besides these names of places and
+rivers, of kings and saints, there was the whole strange phraseology
+of Buddhism, of which no dictionary gives any satisfactory
+explanation. How was even the best Chinese scholar to know that the
+words which usually mean 'dark shadow' must be taken in the technical
+sense of Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, or becoming absorbed in the Absolute, that
+'return-purity' had the same sense, and that a third synonymous
+expression was to be recognised in a phrase which, in ordinary
+Chinese, would have the sense of 'transport-figure-crossing-age?' A
+monastery is called 'origin-door,' instead of 'black-door.' The voice
+of Buddha is called 'the voice of the dragon;' and his doctrine goes
+by the name of 'the door of expedients.'</p>
+
+<p>Tedious as these details may seem, it was almost a duty to state them,
+in order to give an idea of the difficulties which M. Stanislas Julien
+had to grapple with. Oriental scholars labour under great
+disadvantages. Few people take an interest in their works, or, if they
+do, they simply accept the results, but they are unable to appreciate
+the difficulty with which these results were obtained. Many persons
+who have read the translation of the cuneiform inscriptions are glad,
+no doubt, to have the authentic and contemporaneous records of Darius
+and Xerxes. But if they followed the process by which scholars such as
+Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and Rawlinson arrived at their results,
+they would see that the discovery of the alphabet, the language, the
+grammar, and the meaning of the inscriptions of the Ach&aelig;menian dynasty
+deserves to be classed with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> discoveries of a Kepler, a Newton, or
+a Faraday. In a similar manner, the mere translation of a Chinese work
+into French seems a very ordinary performance; but M. Stanislas
+Julien, who has long been acknowledged as the first Chinese scholar in
+Europe, had to spend twenty years of incessant labour in order to
+prepare himself for the task of translating the 'Travels of
+Hiouen-thsang.' He had to learn Sanskrit, no very easy language; he
+had to study the Buddhist literature written in Sanskrit, P&acirc;li,
+Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese. He had to make vast indices of every
+proper name connected with Buddhism. Thus only could he shape his own
+tools, and accomplish what at last he did accomplish. Most persons
+will remember the interest with which the travels of M.M. Huc and
+Gabet were read a few years ago, though these two adventurous
+missionaries were obliged to renounce their original intention of
+entering India by way of China and Tibet, and were not allowed to
+proceed beyond the famous capital of Lhassa. If, then, it be
+considered that there was a traveller who had made a similar journey
+twelve hundred years earlier&mdash;who had succeeded in crossing the
+deserts and mountain passes which separate China from India&mdash;who had
+visited the principal cities of the Indian Peninsula, at a time of
+which we have no information, from native or foreign sources, as to
+the state of that country&mdash;who had learned Sanskrit, and made a large
+collection of Buddhist works&mdash;who had carried on public disputations
+with the most eminent philosophers and theologians of the day&mdash;who had
+translated the most important works on Buddhism from Sanskrit into
+Chinese, and left an account of his travels, which still existed in
+the libraries of China&mdash;nay,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span> which had been actually printed and
+published&mdash;we may well imagine the impatience with which all scholars
+interested in the ancient history of India, and in the subject of
+Buddhism, looked forward to the publication of so important a work.
+Hiouen-thsang's name had first been mentioned in Europe by Abel
+R&eacute;musat and Klaproth. They had discovered some fragments of his
+travels in a Chinese work on foreign countries and foreign nations.
+R&eacute;musat wrote to China to procure, if possible, a complete copy of
+Hiouen-thsang's works. He was informed by Morrison that they were out
+of print. Still, the few specimens which he had given at the end of
+his translation of the 'Foe Koue Ki' had whetted the appetite of
+Oriental scholars. M. Stanislas Julien succeeded in procuring a copy
+of Hiouen-thsang in 1838; and after nearly twenty years spent in
+preparing a translation of the Chinese traveller, his version is now
+before us. If there are but few who know the difficulty of a work like
+that of M. Stanislas Julien, it becomes their duty to speak out,
+though, after all, perhaps the most intelligible eulogium would be,
+that in a branch of study where there are no monopolies and no
+patents, M. Stanislas Julien is acknowledged to be the only man in
+Europe who could produce the article which he has produced in the work
+before us.</p>
+
+<p>We shall devote the rest of our space to a short account of the life
+and travels of Hiouen-thsang. Hiouen-thsang was born in a provincial
+town of China, at a time when the empire was in a chronic state of
+revolution. His father had left the public service, and had given most
+of his time to the education of his four children. Two of them
+distinguished themselves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span> at a very early age&mdash;one of them was
+Hiouen-thsang, the future traveller and theologian. The boy was sent
+to school at a Buddhist monastery, and, after receiving there the
+necessary instruction, partly from his elder brother, he was himself
+admitted as a monk at the early age of thirteen. During the next seven
+years, the young monk travelled about with his brother from place to
+place, in order to follow the lectures of some of the most
+distinguished professors. The horrors of war frequently broke in upon
+his quiet studies, and forced him to seek refuge in the more distant
+provinces of the empire. At the age of twenty he took priest's orders,
+and had then already become famous by his vast knowledge. He had
+studied the chief canonical books of the Buddhist faith, the records
+of Buddha's life and teaching, the system of ethics and metaphysics;
+and he was versed in the works of Confucius and Lao-tse. But still his
+own mind was agitated by doubts. Six years he continued his studies in
+the chief places of learning in China, and where he came to learn he
+was frequently asked to teach. At last, when he saw that none, even
+the most eminent theologians, were able to give him the information he
+wanted, he formed his resolve of travelling to India. The works of
+earlier pilgrims, such as Fahian and others, were known to him. He
+knew that in India he should find the originals of the works which in
+their Chinese translation left so many things doubtful in his mind;
+and though he knew from the same sources the dangers of his journey,
+yet 'the glory,' as he says, 'of recovering the Law, which was to be a
+guide to all men and the means of their salvation, seemed to him
+worthy of imitation.' In common with several other priests, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>
+addressed a memorial to the Emperor to ask leave for their journey.
+Leave was refused, and the courage of his companions failed. Not that
+of Hiouen-thsang. His own mother had told him that, soon before she
+gave birth to him, she had seen her child travelling to the Far West
+in search of the Law. He was himself haunted by similar visions, and
+having long surrendered worldly desires, he resolved to brave all
+dangers, and to risk his life for the only object for which he thought
+it worth while to live. He proceeded to the Yellow River, the
+Hoang-ho, and to the place where the caravans bound for India used to
+meet, and, though the Governor had sent strict orders not to allow any
+one to cross the frontier, the young priest, with the assistance of
+his co-religionists, succeeded in escaping the vigilance of the
+Chinese 'douaniers.' Spies were sent after him. But so frank was his
+avowal, and so firm his resolution, which he expressed in the presence
+of the authorities, that the Governor himself tore his hue and cry to
+pieces, and allowed him to proceed. Hitherto he had been accompanied
+by two friends. They now left him, and Hiouen-thsang found himself
+alone, without a friend and without a guide. He sought for strength in
+fervent prayer. The next morning a person presented himself, offering
+his services as a guide. This guide conducted him safely for some
+distance, but left him when they approached the desert. There were
+still five watch-towers to be passed, and there was nothing to
+indicate the road through the desert, except the hoof-marks of horses,
+and skeletons. The traveller followed this melancholy track, and,
+though misled by the 'mirage' of the desert, he reached the first
+tower. Here the arrows of the watchmen would have put an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> end to his
+existence and his cherished expedition. But the officer in command,
+himself a zealous Buddhist, allowed the courageous pilgrim to proceed,
+and gave him letters of recommendation to the officers of the next
+towers. The last tower, however, was guarded by men inaccessible to
+bribes, and deaf to reasoning. In order to escape their notice,
+Hiouen-thsang had to make a long d&eacute;tour. He passed through another
+desert, and lost his way. The bag in which he carried his water burst,
+and then even the courage of Hiouen-thsang failed. He began to retrace
+his steps. But suddenly he stopped. 'I took an oath,' he said, 'never
+to make a step backward till I had reached India. Why, then, have I
+come here? It is better I should die proceeding to the West than
+return to the East and live.' Four nights and five days he travelled
+through the desert without a drop of water. He had nothing to refresh
+himself except his prayers&mdash;and what were they? Texts from a work
+which taught that there was no God, no Creator, no creation,&mdash;nothing
+but mind, minding itself. It is incredible in how exhausted an
+atmosphere the divine spark within us will glimmer on, and even warm
+the dark chambers of the human heart. Comforted by his prayers,
+Hiouen-thsang proceeded, and arrived after some time at a large lake.
+He was in the country of the O&iuml;gour Tatars. They received him well,
+nay, too well. One of the Tatar Khans, himself a Buddhist, sent for
+the Buddhist pilgrim, and insisted on his staying with him to instruct
+his people. Remonstrances proved of no avail. But Hiouen-thsang was
+not to be conquered. 'I know,' he said, 'that the king, in spite of
+his power, has no power over my mind and my will;'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> and he refused all
+nourishment, in order to put an end to his life. &#920;&#945;&#957;&#959;&#8166;&#956;&#945;&#953; &#954;&#945;&#7984; &#7952;&#955;&#949;&#965;&#952;&#949;&#961;&#8053;&#963;&#959;&#956;&#945;&#953;. Three days he persevered, and at last the Khan,
+afraid of the consequences, was obliged to yield to the poor monk. He
+made him promise to visit him on his return to China, and then to stay
+three years with him. At last, after a delay of one month, during
+which the Khan and his Court came daily to hear the lessons of their
+pious guest, the traveller continued his journey with a numerous
+escort, and with letters of introduction from the Khan to twenty-four
+Princes whose territories the little caravan had to pass. Their way
+lay through what is now called Dsungary, across the Musur-dabaghan
+mountains, the northern portion of the Belur-tag, the Yaxartes valley,
+Bactria, and Kabulist&acirc;n. We cannot follow them through all the places
+they passed, though the accounts which he gives of their adventures
+are most interesting, and the description of the people most
+important. Here is a description of the Musur-dabaghan mountains:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The top of the mountain rises to the sky. Since the
+beginning of the world the snow has been accumulating, and
+is now transformed into vast masses of ice, which never
+melt, either in spring or summer. Hard and brilliant sheets
+of snow are spread out till they are lost in the infinite,
+and mingle with the clouds. If one looks at them, the eyes
+are dazzled by the splendour. Frozen peaks hang down over
+both sides of the road, some hundred feet high, and twenty
+feet or thirty feet thick. It is not without difficulty and
+danger that the traveller can clear them or climb over them.
+Besides, there are squalls of wind, and tornadoes of snow
+which attack the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> pilgrims. Even with double shoes, and in
+thick furs, one cannot help trembling and shivering.'</p></div>
+
+<p>During the seven days that Hiouen-thsang crossed these Alpine passes
+he lost fourteen of his companions.</p>
+
+<p>What is most important, however, in this early portion of the Chinese
+traveller is the account which he gives of the high degree of
+civilisation among the tribes of Central Asia. We had gradually
+accustomed ourselves to believe in an early civilisation of Egypt, of
+Babylon, of China, of India; but now that we find the hordes of Tatary
+possessing in the seventh century the chief arts and institutions of
+an advanced society, we shall soon have to drop the name of barbarians
+altogether. The theory of M. Oppert, who ascribes the original
+invention of the cuneiform letters and a civilisation anterior to that
+of Babylon and Nineveh to a Turanian or Scythian race, will lose much
+of its apparent improbability; for no new wave of civilisation had
+reached these countries between the cuneiform period of their
+literature and history and the time of Hiouen-thsang's visit. In the
+kingdom of Okini, on the western frontier of China, Hiouen-thsang
+found an active commerce, gold, silver, and copper coinage;
+monasteries, where the chief works of Buddhism were studied, and an
+alphabet, derived from Sanskrit. As he travelled on he met with mines,
+with agriculture, including pears, plums, peaches, almonds, grapes,
+pomegranates, rice, and wheat. The inhabitants were dressed in silk
+and woollen materials. There were musicians in the chief cities who
+played on the flute and the guitar. Buddhism was the prevailing
+religion, but there were traces of an earlier worship, the Bactrian
+fire-worship.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span> The country was everywhere studded with halls,
+monasteries, monuments, and statues. Samarkand formed at that early
+time a kind of Athens, and its manners were copied by all the tribes
+in the neighbourhood. Balkh, the old capital of Bactria, was still an
+important place on the Oxus, well fortified, and full of sacred
+buildings. And the details which our traveller gives of the exact
+circumference of the cities, the number of their inhabitants, the
+products of the soil, the articles of trade, can leave no doubt in our
+minds that he relates what he had seen and heard himself. A new page
+in the history of the world is here opened, and new ruins pointed out,
+which would reward the pickaxe of a Layard.</p>
+
+<p>But we must not linger. Our traveller, as we said, had entered India
+by way of Kabul. Shortly before he arrived at Pou-lou-cha-pou-lo, i.
+e. the Sanskrit Purushapura, the modern Peshawer, Hiouen-thsang heard
+of an extraordinary cave, where Buddha had formerly converted a
+dragon, and had promised his new pupil to leave him his shadow, in
+order that, whenever the evil passions of his dragon-nature should
+revive, the aspect of his master's shadowy features might remind him
+of his former vows. This promise was fulfilled, and the dragon-cave
+became a famous place of pilgrimage. Our traveller was told that the
+roads leading to the cave were extremely dangerous, and infested by
+robbers&mdash;that for three years none of the pilgrims had ever returned
+from the cave. But he replied, 'It would be difficult during a hundred
+thousand Kalpas to meet one single time with the true shadow of
+Buddha; how could I, having come so near, pass on without going to
+adore it?' He left his companions behind, and after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span> asking in vain
+for a guide, he met at last with a boy who showed him to a farm
+belonging to a convent. Here he found an old man who undertook to act
+as his guide. They had hardly proceeded a few miles when they were
+attacked by five robbers. The monk took off his cap and displayed his
+ecclesiastical robes. 'Master,' said one of the robbers, 'where are
+you going?' Hiouen-thsang replied, 'I desire to adore the shadow of
+Buddha.' 'Master,' said the robber, 'have you not heard that these
+roads are full of bandits?' 'Robbers are men,' Hiouen-thsang
+exclaimed, 'and at present, when I am going to adore the shadow of
+Buddha, even though the roads were full of wild beasts, I should walk
+on without fear. Surely, then, I ought not to fear you, as you are men
+whose heart is possessed of pity.' The robbers were moved by these
+words, and opened their hearts to the true faith. After this little
+incident, Hiouen-thsang proceeded with his guide. He passed a stream
+rushing down between two precipitous walls of rock. In the rock itself
+there was a door which opened. All was dark. But Hiouen-thsang
+entered, advanced towards the east, then moved fifty steps backwards,
+and began his devotions. He made one hundred salutations, but he saw
+nothing. He reproached himself bitterly with his former sins, he
+cried, and abandoned himself to utter despair, because the shadow of
+Buddha would not appear before him. At last, after many prayers and
+invocations, he saw on the eastern wall a dim light, of the size of a
+saucepan, such as the Buddhist monks carry in their hands. But it
+disappeared. He continued praying full of joy and pain, and again he
+saw a light, which vanished like lightning. Then he vowed, full of
+devotion and love,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span> that he would never leave the place till he had
+seen the shadow of the 'Venerable of the age.' After two hundred
+prayers, the cave was suddenly bathed in light, and the shadow of
+Buddha, of a brilliant white colour, rose majestically on the wall, as
+when the clouds suddenly open and, all at once, display the marvellous
+image of the 'Mountain of Light.' A dazzling splendour lighted up the
+features of the divine countenance. Hiouen-thsang was lost in
+contemplation and wonder, and would not turn his eyes away from the
+sublime and incomparable object.... After he awoke from his trance, he
+called in six men, and commanded them to light a fire in the cave, in
+order to burn incense; but, as the approach of the light made the
+shadow of Buddha disappear, the fire was extinguished. Then five of
+the men saw the shadow, but the sixth saw nothing. The old man who had
+acted as guide was astounded when Hiouen-thsang told him the vision.
+'Master,' he said, 'without the sincerity of your faith, and the
+energy of your vows, you could not have seen such a miracle.'</p>
+
+<p>This is the account given by Hiouen-thsang's biographers. But we must
+say, to the credit of Hiouen-thsang himself, that in the 'Si-yu-ki,'
+which contains his own diary, the story is told in a different way.
+The cave is described with almost the same words. But afterwards, the
+writer continues: 'Formerly, the shadow of Buddha was seen in the
+cave, bright, like his natural appearance, and with all the marks of
+his divine beauty. One might have said, it was Buddha himself. For
+some centuries, however, it can no longer be seen completely. Though
+one does see something, it is only a feeble and doubtful resemblance.
+If a man prays with sincere faith, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> if he has received from above
+a hidden impression, he sees the shadow clearly, but he cannot enjoy
+the sight for any length of time.'</p>
+
+<p>From Peshawer, the scene of this extraordinary miracle, Hiouen-thsang
+proceeded to Kashmir, visited the chief towns of Central India, and
+arrived at last in Magadha, the Holy Land of the Buddhists. Here he
+remained five years, devoting all his time to the study of Sanskrit
+and Buddhist literature, and inspecting every place hallowed by the
+recollections of the past. He then passed through Bengal, and
+proceeded to the south, with a view of visiting Ceylon, the chief seat
+of Buddhism. Baffled in that wish, he crossed the peninsula from east
+to west, ascended the Malabar coast, reached the Indus, and, after
+numerous excursions to the chief places of North-Western India,
+returned to Magadha, to spend there, with his old friends, some of the
+happiest years of his life. The route of his journeyings is laid down
+in a map drawn with exquisite skill by M. Vivien de Saint-Martin. At
+last he was obliged to return to China, and, passing through the
+Penjab, Kabulistan, and Bactria, he reached the Oxus, followed its
+course nearly to its sources on the plateau of Pamir, and, after
+staying some time in the three chief towns of Turkistan, Khasgar,
+Yarkand, and Khoten, he found himself again, after sixteen years of
+travels, dangers, and studies, in his own native country. His fame had
+spread far and wide, and the poor pilgrim, who had once been hunted by
+imperial spies and armed policemen, was now received with public
+honours by the Emperor himself. His entry into the capital was like a
+triumph. The streets were covered with carpets, flowers were
+scattered, and banners flying. Soldiers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span> were drawn up, the
+magistrates went out to meet him, and all the monks of the
+neighbourhood marched along in solemn procession. The trophies that
+adorned this triumph, carried by a large number of horses, were of a
+peculiar kind. First, 150 grains of the dust of Buddha; secondly, a
+golden statue of the great Teacher; thirdly, a similar statue of
+sandal-wood; fourthly, a statue of sandal-wood, representing Buddha as
+descending from heaven; fifthly, a statue of silver; sixthly, a golden
+statue of Buddha conquering the dragons; seventhly, a statue of
+sandal-wood, representing Buddha as a preacher; lastly, a collection
+of 657 works in 520 volumes. The Emperor received the traveller in the
+Phoenix Palace, and, full of admiration for his talents and wisdom,
+invited him to accept a high office in the Government. This
+Hiouen-thsang declined. 'The soul of the administration,' he said, 'is
+still the doctrine of Confucius;' and he would dedicate the rest of
+his life to the Law of Buddha. The Emperor thereupon asked him to
+write an account of his travels, and assigned him a monastery where he
+might employ his leisure in translating the works he had brought back
+from India. His travels were soon written and published, but the
+translation of the Sanskrit MSS. occupied he whole rest of his life.
+It is said that the number of works translated by him, with the
+assistance of a large staff of monks, amounted to 740, in 1,335
+volumes. Frequently he might be seen meditating on a difficult
+passage, when suddenly it seemed as if a higher spirit had enlightened
+his mind. His soul was cheered, as when a man walking in darkness sees
+all at once the sun piercing the clouds and shining in its full
+brightness; and, unwilling to trust to his own understanding,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span> he used
+to attribute his knowledge to a secret inspiration of Buddha and the
+Bodhisattvas. When he found that the hour of death approached, he had
+all his property divided among the poor. He invited his friends to
+come and see him, and to take a cheerful leave of that impure body of
+Hiouen-thsang. 'I desire,' he said, 'that whatever merits I may have
+gained by good works may fall upon other people. May I be born again
+with them in the heaven of the blessed, be admitted to the family of
+Mi-le, and serve the Buddha of the future, who is full of kindness and
+affection. When I descend again upon earth to pass through other forms
+of existence, I desire at every new birth to fulfil my duties towards
+Buddha, and arrive at the last at the highest and most perfect
+intelligence. He died in the year 664&mdash;about the same time that
+Mohammedanism was pursuing its bloody conquests in the East, and
+Christianity began to shed its pure light over the dark forests of
+Germany.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to do justice to the character of so extraordinary a
+man as Hiouen-thsang in so short a sketch as we have been able to
+give. If we knew only his own account of his life and travels&mdash;the
+volume which has just been published at Paris&mdash;we should be ignorant
+of the motives which guided him and of the sufferings which he
+underwent. Happily, two of his friends and pupils had left an account
+of their teacher, and M. Stanislas Julien has acted wisely in
+beginning his collection of the Buddhist Pilgrims with the translation
+of that biography. There we learn something of the man himself and of
+that silent enthusiasm which supported him in his arduous work. There
+we see him braving the dangers of the desert, scrambling along
+glaciers, crossing over torrents, and quietly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> submitting to the
+brutal violence of Indian Thugs. There we see him rejecting the
+tempting invitations of Khans, Kings, and Emperors, and quietly
+pursuing among strangers, within the bleak walls of the cell of a
+Buddhist college, the study of a foreign language, the key to the
+sacred literature of his faith. There we see him rising to eminence,
+acknowledged as an equal by his former teachers, as a superior by the
+most distinguished scholars of India; the champion of the orthodox
+faith, an arbiter at councils, the favourite of Indian kings. In his
+own work there is hardly a word about all this. We do not wish to
+disguise his weaknesses, such as they appear in the same biography. He
+was a credulous man, easily imposed upon by crafty priests, still more
+easily carried away by his own superstitions; but he deserved to have
+lived in better times, and we almost grudge so high and noble a
+character to a country not our own, and to a religion unworthy of such
+a man. Of selfishness we find no trace in him. His whole life belonged
+to the faith in which he was born, and the objects of his labour was
+not so much to perfect himself as to benefit others. He was an honest
+man. And strange, and stiff, and absurd, and outlandish as his outward
+appearance may seem, there is something in the face of that poor
+Chinese monk, with his yellow skin and his small oblique eyes, that
+appeals to our sympathy&mdash;something in his life, and the work of his
+life, that places him by right among the heroes of Greece, the martyrs
+of Rome, the knights of the crusades, the explorers of the Arctic
+regions&mdash;something that makes us feel it a duty to inscribe his name
+on the roll of the 'forgotten worthies' of the human race. There is a
+higher consanguinity than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> that of the blood which runs through our
+veins&mdash;that of the blood which makes our hearts beat with the same
+indignation and the same joy. And there is a higher nationality than
+that of being governed by the same imperial dynasty&mdash;that of our
+common allegiance to the Father and Ruler of all mankind.</p>
+
+<p>It is but right to state that we owe the publication, at least of the
+second volume of M. Julien's work, to the liberality of the Court of
+Directors of the East-India Company. We have had several opportunities
+of pointing out the creditable manner in which that body has
+patronized literary and scientific works connected with the East, and
+we congratulate the Chairman, Colonel Sykes, and the President of the
+Board of Control, Mr. Vernon Smith, on the excellent choice they have
+made in this instance. Nothing can be more satisfactory than that
+nearly the whole edition of a work which would have remained
+unpublished without their liberal assistance, has been sold in little
+more than a month.</p>
+
+<p class="f3"><i>April, 1857.</i></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> 'Voyages des P&egrave;lerins Bouddhistes.' Vol. I. Histoire de
+la Vie de Hiouen-thsang, et de ses Voyages dans l'Inde, depuis l'an
+629 jusqu'en 645, par Hoeili et Yen-thsong; traduite du Chinois par
+Stanislas Julien.
+</p><p>
+Vol. II. M&eacute;moires sur les Contr&eacute;es Occidentales, traduits du Sanscrit
+en Chinois, en l'an 648, par Hiouen-thsang, et du Chinois en Fran&ccedil;ais,
+pas Stanislas Julien. Paris, 1853-1857: B. Duprat. London and
+Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> See W. Spottiswoode's 'Tarantasse Journey,' p. 220,
+Visit to the Buddhist Temple.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> The only trace of the influence of Buddhism among the
+<i>K</i>udic races, the Fins, Laps, &amp;c., is found in the name of their
+priests and sorcerers, the Shamans. <span class="sp1">Shaman</span> is supposed to be a
+corruption of <span class="sp1"><i>S</i>rama<i>n</i>a</span>, a name applied to Buddha, and to Buddhist
+priests in general. The ancient mythological religion of the <i>K</i>udic
+races has nothing in common with Buddhism. See Castren's 'Lectures on
+Finnish Mythology,' 1853. Finland was ceded by Sweden to Russia in
+1809, See the Author's 'Survey of Languages,' second edition, p. 116.
+Shamanism found its way from India to Siberia vi&acirc; Tibet, China, and
+Mongolia. Rules on the formation of magic figures, on the treatment of
+diseases by charms, on the worship of evil spirits, on the acquisition
+of supernatural powers, on charms, incantations, and other branches of
+Shaman witchcraft, are found in the Stan-gyour, or the second part of
+the Tibetan canon, and in some of the late Tantras of the Nepalese
+collection.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> Helps, <i>The Spanish Conquest</i>, vol. iii. p. 503: "Que
+cosa tam inquieta non le parescia ser Dios."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> On the servitude of the gods, see the "Essay on
+Comparative Mythology," <i>Oxford Essays</i>, 1856, p. 69.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 444. Barth&eacute;lemy
+Saint-Hilaire, 'Du Bouddhisme,' p. 132. Ch.F.Neumann, 'Catechism of
+the Shamans.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> Vol. i. p. 89, vol. ii. p. 167.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> These 'four stages' are described in the same manner in
+the canonical books of Ceylon and Nepal, and may therefore safely be
+ascribed to that original form of Buddhism from which the Southern and
+the Northern schools branched off at a later period. See Burnouf,
+'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 800.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 814.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> See the 'Dhammapadam,' a P&acirc;li work on Buddhist ethics,
+lately edited by V. Fausb&ouml;ll, a distinguished pupil of Professor
+Westergaard, at Copenhagen. The Rev. Spence Hardy ('Eastern
+Monachism,' p. 169) writes: 'A collection might be made from the
+precepts of this work, that in the purity of its ethics could scarcely
+be equalled from any other heathen author.' Mr. Knighton, when
+speaking of the same work in his 'History of Ceylon' (p. 77), remarks:
+'In it we have exemplified a code of morality, and a list of precepts,
+which, for pureness, excellence, and wisdom, is only second to that of
+the Divine Lawgiver himself.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> 'Mahavanso,' ed. G. Turnour, Ceylon, 1837, p. 71.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> See 'Foe Koue Ki,' p. 41, and xxxviii. preface.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> See 'Foe Koue Ki,' p. 41.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> 'Lalita-Vistara,' ed. Foucaux, p. xvii. n.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> 'Lalita-Vistara,' p. 17.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Two parts of the Sanskrit text have been published in
+the 'Bibliotheca Indica.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> They have since been published.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE MEANING OF NIRV&Acirc;NA.</h2>
+<p class="center"><i>To the Editor of</i> <span class="smcap">The Times</span>.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+<p>ir,&mdash;Mr. Francis Barham, of Bath, has protested in a letter, printed
+in 'The Times' of the 24th of April, against my interpretations of
+Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, or the <span class="sp1">summum bonum</span> of the Buddhists. He maintains that the
+Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a in which the Buddhists believe, and which they represent as
+the highest goal of their religion and philosophy, means union and
+communion with God, or absorption of the individual soul by the divine
+essence, and not, as I tried to show in my articles on the 'Buddhist
+Pilgrims,' utter annihilation.</p>
+
+<p>I must not take up much more of your space with so abstruse a subject
+as Buddhist metaphysics; but at the same time I cannot allow Mr.
+Barham's protest to pass unnoticed. The authorities which he brings
+forward against my account of Buddhism, and particularly against my
+interpretation of Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, seem formidable enough. There is Neander,
+the great church historian, Creuzer, the famous scholar, and Hue, the
+well-known traveller and missionary,&mdash;all interpreting, as Mr. Barham
+says, the Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a of the Buddhists in the sense of an apotheosis of
+the human soul, as it was taught in the Ved&acirc;nta philosophy of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span> the
+Brahmans, the Sufiism of the Persians, and the Christian mysticism of
+Eckhart and Tauler, and not in the sense of absolute annihilation.</p>
+
+<p>Now, with regard to Neander and Creuzer, I must observe that their
+works were written before the canonical books of the Buddhists,
+composed in Sanskrit, had been discovered, or at least before they had
+been sent to Europe, and been analysed by European scholars. Besides,
+neither Neander nor Creuzer was an Oriental scholar, and their
+knowledge of the subject could only be second-hand. It was in 1824
+that Mr. Brian Houghton Hodgson, then resident at the Court of Nepal,
+gave the first intimation of the existence of a large religious
+literature written in Sanskrit, and preserved by the Buddhists of
+Nepal as the canonical books of their faith. It was in 1830 and 1835
+that the same eminent scholar and naturalist presented the first set
+of these books to the Royal Asiatic Society in London. In 1837 he made
+a similar gift to the Soci&eacute;t&eacute; Asiatique of Paris, and some of the most
+important works were transmitted by him to the Bodleian Library at
+Oxford. It was in 1844 that the late Eug&egrave;ne Burnouf published, after a
+careful study of these documents, his classical work, 'Introduction &agrave;
+l'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien,' and it is from this book that our
+knowledge of Buddhism may be said to date. Several works have since
+been published, which have added considerably to the stock of
+authentic information on the doctrine of the great Indian reformer.
+There is Burnouf's translation of 'Le Lotus de la bonne Loi,'
+published after the death of that lamented scholar, together with
+numerous essays, in 1852. There are two interesting works by the Rev.
+Spence Hardy&mdash;'Eastern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span> Monachism,' London, 1850, and 'A Manual of
+Buddhism,' London, 1853; and there are the publications of M.
+Stanislas Julien, E. Foucaux, the Honourable George Turnour, Professor
+H. H. Wilson, and others, alluded to in my article on the 'Buddhist
+Pilgrims.' It is from these works alone that we can derive correct and
+authentic information on Buddhism, and not from Neander's 'History of
+the Christian Church' or from Creuzer's 'Symbolik.'</p>
+
+<p>If any one will consult these works, he will find that the discussions
+on the true meaning of Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a are not of modern date, and that, at
+a very early period, different philosophical schools among the
+Buddhists of India, and different teachers who spread the doctrine of
+Buddhism abroad, propounded every conceivable opinion as to the
+orthodox explanation of this term. Even in one and the same school we
+find different parties maintaining different views on the meaning of
+Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a. There is the school of the Sv&acirc;bh&acirc;vikas, which still exists
+in Nepal. The Sv&acirc;bh&acirc;vikas maintain that nothing exists but nature, or
+rather substance, and that this substance exists by itself
+(<span class="sp1">svabh&acirc;v&acirc;t</span>), without a Creator or a Ruler. It exists, however, under
+two forms: in the state of Prav<i>r</i>itti, as active, or in the state of
+Nirv<i>r</i>itti, as passive. Human beings, who, like everything else,
+exist <span class="sp1">svabh&acirc;v&acirc;t</span>, 'by themselves,' are supposed to be capable of
+arriving at Nirv<i>r</i>itti, or passiveness, which is nearly synonymous
+with Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a. But here the Sv&acirc;bh&acirc;vikas branch off into two sects.
+Some believe that Nirv<i>r</i>itti is repose, others that it is
+annihilation; and the former add, 'were it even annihilation
+(<span class="sp1">s&ucirc;nyat&acirc;</span>), it would still be good, man being otherwise doomed to an
+eternal migration through all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span> forms of nature; the more desirable
+of which are little to be wished for; and the less so, at any price to
+be shunned.'<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a></p>
+
+<p>What was the original meaning of Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a may perhaps best be seen
+from the etymology of this technical term. Every Sanskrit scholar
+knows that Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a means originally the blowing out, the extinction
+of light, and not absorption. The human soul, when it arrives at its
+perfection, is blown out,<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> if we use the phraseology of the
+Buddhists, like a lamp; it is not absorbed, as the Brahmans say, like
+a drop in the ocean. Neither in the system of Buddhist philosophy, nor
+in the philosophy from which Buddha is supposed to have borrowed, was
+there any place left for a Divine Being by which the human soul could
+be absorbed. S&acirc;nkhya philosophy, in its original form, claims the name
+of <span class="sp1">an-&icirc;<i>s</i>vara</span>, 'lordless' or 'atheistic' as its distinctive title.
+Its final object is not absorption in God, whether personal or
+impersonal, but Moksha, deliverance of the soul from all pain and
+illusion, and recovery by the soul of its true nature. It is doubtful
+whether the term Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a was coined by Buddha. It occurs in the
+literature of the Brahmans as a synonyme of Moksha, deliverance;
+Nirv<i>r</i>itti, cessation; Apavarga, release; Ni<i>hs</i>reyas, <span class="sp1">summum bonum</span>.
+It is used in this sense in the Mah&acirc;bh&acirc;rata, and it is explained in
+the Amara-Kosha as having the meaning of 'blowing out, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>applied to a
+fire and to a sage.'<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a> Unless, however, we succeed in tracing this
+term in works anterior to Buddha, we may suppose that it was invented
+by him in order to express that meaning of the <span class="sp1">summum bonum</span> which he
+was the first to preach, and which some of his disciples explained in
+the sense of absolute annihilation.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest authority to which we can go back, if we want to know the
+original character of Buddhism, is the Buddhist Canon, as settled
+after the death of Buddha at the first Council. It is called
+Tripi<i>t</i>aka, or the Three Baskets, the first containing the S&ucirc;tras, or
+the discourses of Buddha; the second, the Vinaya, or his code of
+morality; the third, the Abhidharma, or the system of metaphysics. The
+first was compiled by &Acirc;nanda, the second by Up&acirc;li, the third by
+K&acirc;<i>s</i>yapa&mdash;all of them the pupils and friends of Buddha. It may be
+that these collections, as we now possess them, were finally arranged,
+not at the first, but at the third Council. Yet, even then, we have no
+earlier, no more authentic, documents from which we could form an
+opinion as to the original teaching of Buddha; and the Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, as
+taught in the metaphysics of K&acirc;<i>s</i>yapa, and particularly in the
+Pra<i>gn</i>&acirc;-p&acirc;ramit&acirc;, is annihilation, not absorption. Buddhism,
+therefore, if tested by its own canonical books, cannot be freed from
+the charge of Nihilism, whatever may have been its character in the
+mind of its founder, and whatever changes it may have undergone in
+later times, and among races less inured to metaphysical discussions
+than the Hindus.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span></p><p>The ineradicable feeling of dependence on something else, which is
+the life-spring of all religion, was completely numbed in the early
+Buddhist metaphysicians, and it was only after several generations had
+passed away, and after Buddhism had become the creed of millions, that
+this feeling returned with increased warmth, changing, as I said in my
+article, the very Nothing into a paradise, and deifying the very
+Buddha who had denied the existence of a Deity. That this has been the
+case in China we know from the interesting works of the Abb&eacute; Huc, and
+from other sources, such as the 'Catechism of the Shamans, or the Laws
+and Regulations of the Priesthood of Buddha in China,' translated by
+Ch. F. Neumann, London, 1831. In India, also, Buddhism, as soon as it
+became a popular religion, had to speak a more human language than
+that of metaphysical Pyrrhonism. But, if it did so, it was because it
+was shamed into it. This we may see from the very nicknames which the
+Brahmans apply to their opponents, the Bauddhas. They call them
+N&acirc;stikas&mdash;those who maintain that there is nothing;
+<i>S</i>&ucirc;nyavadins-those who maintain that there is a universal void.</p>
+
+<p>The only ground, therefore, on which we may stand, if we wish to
+defend the founder of Buddhism against the charges of Nihilism and
+Atheism, is this, that, as some of the Buddhists admit, the 'Basket of
+Metaphysics' was rather the work of his pupils, not of Buddha
+himself.<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> This distinction between <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>the authentic words of Buddha
+and the canonical books in general, is mentioned more than once. The
+priesthood of Ceylon, when the manifest errors with which their
+canonical commentaries abound, were brought to their notice, retreated
+from their former position, and now assert that it is only the express
+words of Buddha that they receive as undoubted truth.<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> There is a
+passage in a Buddhist work which reminds us somewhat of the last page
+of Dean Milman's 'History of Christianity,' and where we read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The words of the priesthood are good; those of the Rahats
+(saints) are better; but those of the All-knowing are the
+best of all.'</p></div>
+
+<p>This is an argument which Mr. Francis Barham might have used with more
+success, and by which he might have justified, if not the first
+disciples, at least the original founder of Buddhism. Nay, there is a
+saying of Buddha's which tends to show that all metaphysical
+discussion was regarded by him as vain and useless. It is a saying
+mentioned in one of the MSS. belonging to the Bodleian Library. As it
+has never been published before, I may be allowed to quote it in the
+original: <span class="sp1">Sadasad vi<i>k</i>&acirc;ram na sahate</span>,&mdash;'The ideas of being and not
+being do not admit of discussion,'&mdash;a tenet which, if we consider that
+it was enunciated before the time of the Eleatic philosophers of
+Greece, and long before Hegel's Logic, might certainly have saved us
+many an intricate and indigestible argument.</p>
+
+<p>A few passages from the Buddhist writings of Nepal and Ceylon will
+best show that the horror <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span><span class="sp1">nihili</span> was not felt by the metaphysicians
+of former ages in the same degree as it is felt by ourselves. The
+famous hymn which resounds in heaven when the luminous rays of the
+smile of Buddha penetrate through the clouds, is 'All is transitory,
+all is misery, all is void, all is without substance.' Again, it is
+said in the Pra<i>gn</i>&acirc;-p&acirc;ramit&acirc;,<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> that Buddha began to think that he
+ought to conduct all creatures to perfect Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a. But he reflected
+that there are really no creatures which ought to be conducted, nor
+creatures that conduct; and, nevertheless, he did conduct all
+creatures to perfect Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a. Then, continues the text, why is it
+said that there are neither creatures which arrive at complete
+Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, nor creatures which conduct there? Because it is illusion
+which makes creatures what they are. It is as if a clever juggler, or
+his pupil, made an immense number of people to appear on the high
+road, and after having made them to appear, made them to disappear
+again. Would there be anybody who had killed, or murdered, or
+annihilated, or caused them to vanish? No. And it is the same with
+Buddha. He conducts an immense, innumerable, infinite number of
+creatures to complete Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, and yet there are neither creatures
+which are conducted, nor creatures that conduct. If a Bodhisattva, on
+hearing this explanation of the Law, is not frightened, then it may be
+said that he has put on the great armour.<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a></p>
+
+<p>Soon after, we read: 'The name of Buddha is nothing but a word. The
+name of Bodhisattva is nothing but a word. The name of Perfect Wisdom
+(Pra<i>gn</i>&acirc;-p&acirc;ramit&acirc;) is nothing but a word. The name <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>is indefinite, as
+if one says "I," for "I" is something indefinite, because it has no
+limits.'</p>
+
+<p>Burnouf gives the gist of the whole Pra<i>gn</i>&acirc;-p&acirc;ramit&acirc; in the following
+words: 'The highest Wisdom, or what is to be known, has no more real
+existence than he who has to know, or the Bodhisattva; no more than he
+who does know, or the Buddha.' But Burnouf remarks that nothing of
+this kind is to be found in the S&ucirc;tras, and that Gautama <i>S</i>&acirc;kya-muni,
+the son of <i>S</i>uddhodana, would never have become the founder of a
+popular religion if he had started with similar absurdities. In the
+S&ucirc;tras the reality of the objective world is denied; the reality of
+form is denied; the reality of the individual, or the 'I,' is equally
+denied. But the existence of a subject, of something like the Purusha,
+the thinking substance of the S&acirc;nkhya philosophy, is spared. Something
+at least exists with respect to which everything else may be said not
+to exist. The germs of the ideas, developed in the Pra<i>gn</i>&acirc;-p&acirc;ramit&acirc;,
+may indeed be discovered here and there in the S&ucirc;tras.<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a> But they
+had not yet ripened into that poisonous plant which soon became an
+indispensable narcotic in the schools of the later Buddhists. Buddha
+himself, however, though, perhaps, not a Nihilist, was certainly an
+Atheist. He does not deny distinctly either the existence of gods, or
+that of God; but he ignores the former, and he is ignorant of the
+latter. Therefore, if Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a in his mind was not yet complete
+annihilation, still less could it have been absorption into a Divine
+essence. It was nothing but selfishness, in the metaphysical sense of
+the word&mdash;a relapse into <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>that being which is nothing but itself. This
+is the most charitable view which we can take of the Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, even
+as conceived by Buddha himself, and it is the view which Burnouf
+derived from the canonical books of the Northern Buddhists. On the
+other hand, Mr. Spence Hardy, who in his works follows exclusively the
+authority of the Southern Buddhists, the P&acirc;li and Singhalese works of
+Ceylon, arrives at the same result. We read in his work: 'The Rahat
+(Arhat), who has reached Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, but is not yet a Pratyeka-buddha,
+or a Supreme Buddha, says: "I await the appointed time for the
+cessation of existence. I have no wish to live; I have no wish to die.
+Desire is extinct."'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In a very interesting dialogue between Milinda and N&acirc;gasena,
+communicated by Mr. Spence Hardy, Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a is represented as
+something which has no antecedent cause, no qualities, no locality. It
+is something of which the utmost we may assert is, that it is:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>N&acirc;gasena.</i> Can a man, by his natural strength, go from the
+city of S&acirc;gal to the forest of Him&acirc;la?</p>
+
+<p><i>Milinda.</i> Yes.</p>
+
+<p><i>N&acirc;gasena.</i> But could any man, by his natural strength,
+bring the forest of Him&acirc;la to this city of S&acirc;gal?</p>
+
+<p><i>Milinda.</i> No.</p>
+
+<p><i>N&acirc;gasena.</i> In like manner, though the fruition of the paths
+may cause the accomplishment of Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, no cause by which
+Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a is produced can be declared. The path that leads
+to Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a may be pointed out, but not any cause for its
+production. Why? because that which constitutes Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a is
+beyond all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>computation,&mdash;a mystery, not to be
+understood.... It cannot be said that it is produced, nor
+that it is not produced; that it is past or future or
+present. Nor can it be said that it is the seeing of the
+eye, or the hearing of the ear, or the smelling of the nose,
+or the tasting of the tongue, or the feeling of the body.</p>
+
+<p><i>Milinda.</i> Then you speak of a thing that is not; you merely
+say that Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a is Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a;&mdash;therefore there is no
+Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a.</p>
+
+<p><i>N&acirc;gasena.</i> Great king, Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a is.</p></div>
+
+<p>Another question also, whether Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a is something different from
+the beings that enter into it, has been asked by the Buddhists
+themselves:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Milinda.</i> Does the being who acquires it, attain something
+that has previously existed?&mdash;or is it his own product, a
+formation peculiar to himself?</p>
+
+<p><i>N&acirc;gasena.</i> Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a does not exist previously to its
+reception; nor is it that which was brought into existence.
+Still to the being who attains it, there is Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a.</p></div>
+
+<p>In opposition, therefore, to the more advanced views of the Nihilistic
+philosophers of the North, N&acirc;gasena maintains the existence of
+Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, and of the being that has entered Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a. He does not
+say that Buddha is a mere word. When asked by king Milinda, whether
+the all-wise Buddha exists, he replies:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>N&acirc;gasena.</i> He who is the most meritorious (Bhagavat) does
+exist.</p>
+
+<p><i>Milinda.</i> Then can you point out to me the place in which
+he exists?</p>
+
+<p><i>N&acirc;gasena.</i> Our Bhagavat has attained Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, where there
+is no repetition of birth. We cannot say <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>that he is here,
+or that he is there. When a fire is extinguished, can it be
+said that it is here, or that it is there? Even so, our
+Buddha has attained extinction (Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a). He is like the
+sun that has set behind the Astagiri mountain. It cannot be
+said that he is here, or that he is there: but we can point
+him out by the discourses he delivered. In them he lives.</p></div>
+
+<p>At the present moment, the great majority of Buddhists would probably
+be quite incapable of understanding the abstract speculation of their
+ancient masters. The view taken of Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a in China, Mongolia, and
+Tatary may probably be as gross as that which most of the Mohammedans
+form of their paradise. But, in the history of religion, the historian
+must go back to the earliest and most original documents that are to
+be obtained. Thus only may he hope to understand the later
+developments which, whether for good or evil, every form of faith has
+had to undergo.</p>
+
+<p class="f3"><i>April, 1857.</i></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> See Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 441; Hodgson, 'Asiatic
+Researches,' vol. xvi.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> 'Calm,' 'without wind,' as Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a is sometimes
+explained, is expressed in Sanskrit by Nirv&acirc;ta. See Amara-Kosha, sub
+voce.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> Different views of the Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a, as conceived by the
+T&icirc;rthakas or the Brahmans, may be seen in an extract from the
+Lank&acirc;vat&acirc;ra, translated by Burnouf, p. 514.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> See Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 41. 'Abuddhoktam
+abhidharma-<i>s</i>&acirc;stram.' Ibid. p. 454. According to the Tibetan
+Buddhists, however, Buddha propounded the Abhidharma when he was
+fifty-one years old. 'Asiatic Researches,' vol. xx. p. 339.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> 'Eastern Monachism,' p. 171.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 462.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> Ibid. p. 478.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 520.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII.</h2>
+
+<h2>CHINESE TRANSLATIONS</h2>
+<h4>OF</h4>
+<h2>SANSKRIT TEXTS.<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a></h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+<p>ell might M. Stanislas Julien put &#949;&#8021;&#961;&#951;&#954;&#945; on the title-page
+of his last work, in which he explains his method of deciphering the
+Sanskrit words which occur in the Chinese translations of the Buddhist
+literature of India. We endeavoured to explain the laborious character
+and the important results of his researches on this subject on a
+former occasion, when reviewing his translation of the 'Life and
+Travels of the Buddhist Pilgrim Hiouen-thsang.' At that time, however,
+M. Julien kept the key of his discoveries to himself. He gave us the
+results of his labours without giving us more than a general idea of
+the process by which those results had been obtained. He has now
+published his 'M&eacute;thode pour d&eacute;chiffrer et transcrire les noms
+sanscrits qui se rencontrent dans les livres chinois,' and he has
+given to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>the public his Chinese-Sanskrit dictionary, the work of
+sixteen years of arduous labour, containing all the Chinese characters
+which are used for representing phonetically the technical terms and
+proper names of the Buddhist literature of India.</p>
+
+<p>In order fully to appreciate the labours and discoveries of M. Julien
+in this remote field of Oriental literature, we must bear in mind that
+the doctrine of Buddha arose in India about two centuries before
+Alexander's invasion. It became the state religion of India soon after
+Alexander's conquest, and it produced a vast literature, which was
+collected into a canon at a council held about 246 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> Very soon
+after that council, Buddhism assumed a proselytizing character. It
+spread in the south to Ceylon, in the north to Kashmir, the Himalayan
+countries, Tibet, and China. In the historical annals of China, on
+which, in the absence of anything like historical literature in
+Sanskrit, we must mainly depend for information on the spreading of
+Buddhism, one Buddhist missionary is mentioned as early as 217 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>;
+and about the year 120 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> a Chinese general, after defeating the
+barbarous tribes north of the desert of Gobi, brought back as a trophy
+a golden statue&mdash;the statue of Buddha. It was not, however, till the
+year 65 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> that Buddhism was officially recognised by the Chinese
+Emperor as a third state religion. Ever since, it has shared equal
+honours with the doctrines of Confucius and Lao-tse in the Celestial
+Empire; and it is but lately that these three established religions
+have had to fear the encroachments of a new rival in the creed of the
+Chief of the rebels.</p>
+
+<p>Once established in China, and well provided with monasteries and
+benefices, the Buddhist priesthood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span> seems to have been most active in
+its literary labours. Immense as was the Buddhist literature of India,
+the Chinese swelled it to still more appalling proportions. The first
+thing to be done was to translate the canonical books. This seems to
+have been the joint work of Chinese who had acquired a knowledge of
+Sanskrit during their travels in India, and of Hindus who settled in
+Chinese monasteries in order to assist the native translators. The
+translation of books which profess to contain a new religious doctrine
+is under all circumstances a task of great difficulty. It was so
+particularly when the subtle abstractions of the Buddhist religion had
+to be clothed in the solid, matter-of-fact idiom of the Chinese. But
+there was another difficulty which it seemed almost impossible to
+overcome. Many words, not only proper names, but the technical terms
+also of the Buddhist creed, had to be preserved in Chinese. They were
+not to be translated, but to be transliterated. But how was this to be
+effected with a language which, like Chinese, had no phonetic
+alphabet? Every Chinese character is a word; it has both sound and
+meaning; and it is unfit, therefore, for the representation of the
+sound of foreign words. In modern times, certain characters have been
+set apart for the purpose of writing the proper names and titles of
+foreigners; but such is the peculiar nature of the Chinese system of
+writing, that even with this alphabet it is only possible to represent
+approximatively the pronunciation of foreign words. In the absence,
+however, of even such an alphabet, the translators of the Buddhist
+literature seem to have used their own discretion&mdash;or rather
+indiscretion&mdash;in appropriating, without any system, whatever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span> Chinese
+characters seemed to them to come nearest to the sound of Sanskrit
+words. Now the whole Chinese language consists in reality of about
+four hundred words, or significative sounds, all monosyllabic. Each of
+these monosyllabic sounds embraces a large number of various meanings,
+and each of these various meanings is represented by its own sign.
+Thus it has happened that the Chinese Dictionary contains 43,496
+signs, whereas the Chinese language commands only four hundred
+distinct utterances. Instead of being restricted, therefore, to one
+character which always expresses the same sound, the Buddhist
+translators were at liberty to express one and the same sound in a
+hundred different ways. Of this freedom they availed themselves to the
+fullest extent. Each translator, each monastery, fixed on its own
+characters for representing the pronunciation of Sanskrit words. There
+are more than twelve hundred Chinese characters employed by various
+writers in order to represent the forty-two simple letters of the
+Sanskrit alphabet. The result has been that even the Chinese were
+after a time unable to read&mdash;i. e. to pronounce&mdash;these random
+transliterations. What, then, was to be expected from Chinese scholars
+in Europe? Fortunately, the Chinese, to save themselves from their own
+perplexities, had some lists drawn up, exhibiting the principles
+followed by the various translators in representing the proper names,
+the names of places, and the technical terms of philosophy and
+religion which they had borrowed from the Sanskrit. With the help of
+these lists, and after sixteen years consecrated to the study of the
+Chinese translations of Sanskrit works and of other original
+compositions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span> of Buddhist authors, M. Julien at last caught up the
+thread that was to lead him through this labyrinth; and by means of
+his knowledge of Sanskrit, which he acquired solely for that purpose,
+he is now able to do what not even the most learned among the
+Buddhists in China could accomplish&mdash;he is able to restore the exact
+form and meaning of every word transferred from Sanskrit into the
+Buddhist literature of China.</p>
+
+<p>Without this laborious process, which would have tired out the
+patience and deadened the enthusiasm of most scholars, the treasures
+of the Buddhist literature preserved in Chinese were really useless.
+Abel R&eacute;musat, who during his lifetime was considered the first Chinese
+scholar in Europe, attempted indeed a translation of the travels of
+Fahian, a Buddhist pilgrim, who visited India about the end of the
+fourth century after Christ. It was in many respects a most valuable
+work, but the hopelessness of reducing the uncouth Chinese terms to
+their Sanskrit originals made it most tantalising to look through its
+pages. Who was to guess that <span class="sp1">Ho-kia-lo</span> was meant for the Sanskrit
+<span class="sp1">Vy&acirc;kara<i>n</i>a</span>, in the sense of sermons; <span class="sp1">Po-to</span> for the Sanskrit <span class="sp1">Avad&acirc;na</span>,
+parables; <span class="sp1">Kia-ye-i</span> for the Sanskrit <span class="sp1">K&acirc;<i>s</i>yap&icirc;yas</span>, the followers of
+<span class="sp1">K&acirc;<i>s</i>yapa</span>? In some instances, Abel R&eacute;musat, assisted by Ch&eacute;zy, guessed
+rightly; and later Sanskrit scholars, such as Burnouf, Lassen, and
+Wilson, succeeded in re-establishing, with more or less certainty, the
+original form of a number of Sanskrit words, in spite of their Chinese
+disguises. Still there was no system, and therefore no certainty, in
+these guesses, and many erroneous conclusions were drawn from
+fragmentary translations of Chinese<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span> writers on Buddhism, which even
+now are not yet entirely eliminated from the works of Oriental
+scholars. With M. Julien's method, mathematical certainty seems to
+have taken the place of learned conjectures; and whatever is to be
+learnt from the Chinese on the origin, the history, and the true
+character of Buddha's doctrine may now be had in an authentic and
+unambiguous form.</p>
+
+<p>But even after the principal difficulties have been cleared away
+through the perseverance of M. Stanislas Julien, and after we have
+been allowed to reap the fruits of his labours in his masterly
+translation of the 'Voyages des P&egrave;lerins Bouddhistes,' there still
+remains one point that requires some elucidation. How was it that the
+Chinese, whose ears no doubt are of the same construction as our own,
+should have made such sad work of the Sanskrit names which they
+transcribed with their own alphabet? Much may be explained by the
+defects of their language. Such common sounds as v, g, r, b, d, and
+short a, are unknown in Chinese as initials; no compound consonants
+are allowed, every consonant being followed by a vowel; and the final
+letters are limited to a very small number. This, no doubt, explains,
+to a great extent, the distorted appearance of many Sanskrit words
+when written in Chinese. Thus, <span class="sp1">Buddha</span> could only be written <span class="sp1">Fo to</span>.
+There was no sign for an initial b, nor was it possible to represent a
+double consonant, such as ddh. <span class="sp1">Fo to</span> was the nearest approach to
+<span class="sp1">Buddha</span> of which Chinese, when written, was capable. But was it so in
+speaking? Was it really impossible for Fahian and Hiouen-thsang, who
+had spent so many years in India, and who were acquainted with all the
+intricacies of Sanskrit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span> grammar, to distinguish between the sounds of
+<span class="sp1">Buddha</span> and <span class="sp1">Fo to</span>? We cannot believe this. We are convinced that
+Hiouen-thsang, though he wrote, and could not but write, <span class="sp1">Fo to</span> with
+the Chinese characters, pronounced <span class="sp1">Buddha</span> just as we pronounce it, and
+that it was only among the unlearned that <span class="sp1">Fo to</span> became at last the
+recognised name of the founder of Buddhism, abbreviated even to the
+monosyllabic <span class="sp1">Fo</span>, which is now the most current appellation of 'the
+Enlightened.' In the same manner the Chinese pilgrims wrote <span class="sp1">Niepan</span>,
+but they pronounced <span class="sp1">Nirv&acirc;<i>n</i>a</span>; they wrote <span class="sp1">Fan-lon-mo</span>, and pronounced
+<span class="sp1">Brahma</span>.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is it necessary that we should throw all the blame of these
+distortions on the Chinese. On the contrary, it is almost certain that
+some of the discrepancies between the Sanskrit of their translations
+and the classical Sanskrit of P&acirc;<i>n</i>ini were due to the corruption
+which, at the time when Buddhism arose, and still more at the time
+when Buddhism spread to China, had crept into the spoken language of
+India. Sanskrit had ceased to be the spoken language of the people
+previous to the time of A<i>s</i>oka. The edicts which are still preserved
+on the rocks of Dhauli, Girnar, and Kapurdigiri are written in a
+dialect which stands to Sanskrit in the same relation as Italian to
+Latin. Now it is true, no doubt, that the canonical books of the
+Buddhists are written in a tolerably correct Sanskrit, very different
+from the Italianized dialect of A<i>s</i>oka. But that Sanskrit was, like
+the Greek of Alexandria, like the Latin of Hungary, a learned idiom,
+written by the learned for the learned; it was no longer the living
+speech of India. Now it is curious that in many of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span> canonical
+Buddhist works which we still possess, the text which is written in
+Sanskrit prose is from time to time interrupted by poetical portions,
+called <span class="sp1">G&acirc;th&acirc;s</span> or ballads, in which the same things are told in verse
+which had before been related in prose. The dialect of these songs or
+ballads is full of what grammarians would call irregularities, that is
+to say, full of those changes which every language undergoes in the
+mouths of the people. In character these corruptions are the same as
+those which have been observed in the inscriptions of A<i>s</i>oka, and
+which afterwards appear in P&acirc;li and the modern Pr&acirc;krit dialects of
+India. Various conjectures have been started to explain the
+amalgamation of the correct prose text and the free and easy poetical
+version of the same events, as embodied in the sacred literature of
+the Buddhists. Burnouf, the first who instituted a critical inquiry
+into the history and literature of Buddhism, supposed that there was,
+besides the canon fixed by the three convocations, another digest of
+Buddhist doctrines composed in the popular style, which may have
+developed itself, as he says, subsequently to the preaching of
+<i>S</i>&acirc;kya, and which would thus be intermediate between the regular
+Sanskrit and the P&acirc;li. He afterwards, however, inclines to another
+view&mdash;namely, that these G&acirc;th&acirc;s were written out of India by men to
+whom Sanskrit was no longer familiar, and who endeavoured to write in
+the learned language, which they ill understood, with the freedom
+which is imparted by the habitual use of a popular but imperfectly
+determined dialect. Other Sanskrit scholars have proposed other
+solutions of this strange mixture of correct prose and incorrect
+poetry in the Buddhist literature; but none of them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> was satisfactory.
+The problem seems to have been solved at last by a native scholar,
+Babu Rajendralal, a curious instance of the reaction of European
+antiquarian research on the native mind of India. Babu Rajendralal
+reads Sanskrit of course with the greatest ease. He is a pandit by
+profession, but he is at the same time a scholar and critic in our
+sense of the word. He has edited Sanskrit texts after a careful
+collation of MSS., and in his various contributions to the 'Journal of
+the Asiatic Society of Bengal,' he has proved himself completely above
+the prejudices of his class, freed from the erroneous views on the
+history and literature of India in which every Brahman is brought up,
+and thoroughly imbued with those principles of criticism which men
+like Colebrooke, Lassen, and Burnouf have followed in their researches
+into the literary treasures of his country. His English is remarkably
+clear and simple, and his arguments would do credit to any Sanskrit
+scholar in England. We quote from his remarks on Burnouf's account of
+the G&acirc;th&acirc;s, as given in that scholar's 'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien:'</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Burnouf's opinion on the origin of the G&acirc;th&acirc;s, we venture
+to think, is founded on a mistaken estimate of Sanskrit
+style. The poetry of the G&acirc;th&acirc; has much artistic elegance
+which at once indicates that it is not the composition of
+men who were ignorant of the first principles of grammar.
+The authors display a great deal of learning, and discuss
+the subtlest questions of logic and metaphysics with much
+tact and ability, and it is difficult to conceive that men
+who were perfectly familiar with the most intricate forms of
+Sanskrit logic, who have expressed the most abstruse
+metaphysical ideas in precise and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span> often in beautiful
+language, who composed with ease and elegance in &Acirc;rya,
+To<i>t</i>aka, and other difficult measures, were unacquainted
+with the rudiments of the language in which they wrote, and
+were unable to conjugate the verb to be in all its forms....
+The more reasonable conjecture appears to be that the G&acirc;th&acirc;
+is the production of bards who were contemporaries or
+immediate successors of <i>S</i>&acirc;kya, who recounted to the devout
+congregations of the prophet of Magadha, the sayings and
+doings of their great teacher in popular and easy-flowing
+verses, which in course of time came to be regarded as the
+most authentic source of all information connected with the
+founder of Buddhism. The high estimation in which the
+ballads and improvisations of bards are held in India and
+particularly in the Buddhist writings, favours this
+supposition; and the circumstance that the poetical portions
+are generally introduced in corroboration of the narration
+of the prose, with the words "Thereof this may be said,"
+affords a strong presumptive evidence.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Now this, from the pen of a native scholar, is truly remarkable. The
+spirit of Niebuhr seems to have reached the shores of India, and this
+ballad theory comes out more successfully in the history of Buddha
+than in the history of Romulus. The absence of anything like cant in
+the mouth of a Brahman speaking of Buddhism, the <i>b&ecirc;te noire</i> of all
+orthodox Brahmans, is highly satisfactory, and our Sanskrit scholars
+in Europe will have to pull hard if, with such men as Babu Rajendralal
+in the field, they are not to be distanced in the race of scholarship.</p>
+
+<p>We believe, then, that Babu Rajendralal is right, and we look upon the
+dialect of the G&acirc;th&acirc;s as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span> specimen of the Sanskrit spoken by the
+followers of Buddha about the time of A<i>s</i>oka and later. And this will
+help us to understand some of the peculiar changes which the Sanskrit
+of the Chinese Buddhists must have undergone, even before it was
+disguised in the strange dress of the Chinese alphabet. The Chinese
+pilgrims did not hear the Sanskrit pronounced as it was pronounced in
+the Parishads according to the strict rules of their <i>S</i>iksh&acirc; or
+phonetics. They heard it as it was spoken in Buddhist monasteries, as
+it was sung in the G&acirc;th&acirc;s of Buddhist minstrels, as it was preached in
+the Vy&acirc;kara<i>n</i>as or sermons of Buddhist friars. For instance. In the
+G&acirc;th&acirc;s a short a is frequently lengthened. We find <span class="sp1">n&acirc;</span> instead of <span class="sp1">na</span>,
+'no.' The same occurs in the Sanskrit of the Chinese Buddhists. (See
+Julien, 'M&eacute;thode,' p. 18; p. 21.) We find there also <span class="sp1">vist&acirc;ra</span> instead
+of <span class="sp1">vistara</span>, &amp;c. In the dialect of the G&acirc;th&acirc;s nouns ending in
+consonants, and therefore irregular, are transferred to the easier
+declension in a. The same process takes place in modern Greek and in
+the transition of Latin into Italian; it is, in fact, a general
+tendency of all languages which are carried on by the stream of living
+speech. Now this transition from one declension to another had taken
+place before the Chinese had appropriated the Sanskrit of the Buddhist
+books. The Sanskrit <span class="sp1">nabhas</span> becomes <span class="sp1">nabha</span> in the G&acirc;th&acirc;s; locative
+<span class="sp1">nabhe</span>, instead of <span class="sp1">nabhasi</span>. If, therefore, we find in Chinese <span class="sp1">lo-che</span>
+for the Sanskrit <span class="sp1">ra<i>g</i>as</span>, dust, we may ascribe the change of r into l
+to the inability of the Chinese to pronounce or to write an r. We may
+admit that the Chinese alphabet offered nothing nearer to the sound of
+<span class="sp1"><i>g</i>a</span> than <span class="sp1">tche</span>; but the dropping of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span> final s has no excuse in
+Chinese, and finds its real explanation in the nature of the G&acirc;th&acirc;
+dialect. Thus the Chinese <span class="sp1">Fan-lan-mo</span> does not represent the correct
+Sanskrit <span class="sp1">Brahman</span>, but the vulgar form <span class="sp1">Brahma</span>. The Chinese <span class="sp1">so-po</span> for
+<span class="sp1">sarva</span>, all, <span class="sp1">thomo</span> for <span class="sp1">dharma</span>, law, find no explanation in the dialect
+of the G&acirc;th&acirc;s, but the suppression of the r before v and m, is of
+frequent occurrence in the inscriptions of A<i>s</i>oka. The omission of
+the initial s in words like <span class="sp1">sth&acirc;na</span>, place, <span class="sp1">sthavira</span>, an elder, is
+likewise founded on the rules of P&acirc;li and Pr&acirc;krit, and need not be
+placed to the account of the Chinese translators. In the inscription
+of Girnar <span class="sp1">sthavira</span> is even reduced to <span class="sp1">thaira</span>. The s of the nominative
+is frequently dropped in the dialect of the G&acirc;th&acirc;s, or changed into o.
+Hence we might venture to doubt whether it is necessary to give to the
+character 1780 of M. Julien's list, which generally has the value of
+<span class="sp1">ta</span>, a second value <span class="sp1">sta</span>. This s is only wanted to supply the final s of
+<span class="sp1">kas</span>, the interrogative pronoun, in such a sentence as <span class="sp1">kas
+tadgu<i>n</i>a<i>h</i>?</span> what is the use of this? Now here we are inclined to
+believe that the final s of <span class="sp1">kas</span> had long disappeared in the popular
+language of India, before the Chinese came to listen to the strange
+sounds and doctrines of the disciples of Buddha. They probably heard
+<span class="sp1">ka tadgu<i>n</i>a</span>, or <span class="sp1">ka taggu<i>n</i>a</span>, and this they represented as best they
+could by the Chinese <span class="sp1">kia-to-kieou-na</span>.</p>
+
+<p>With these few suggestions we leave the work of M. Stanislas Julien.
+It is in reality a work done once for all&mdash;one huge stone and
+stumbling-block effectually rolled away which for years had barred the
+approach to some most valuable documents of the history of the East.
+Now that the way is clear, let<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span> us hope that others will follow, and
+that we shall soon have complete and correct translations of the
+travels of Fahian and other Buddhist pilgrims whose works are like so
+many Murray's 'Handbooks of India,' giving us an insight into the
+social, political, and religious state of that country at a time when
+we look in vain for any other historical documents.</p>
+
+<p class="f3"><i>March, 1861.</i></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> 'M&eacute;thode pour d&eacute;chiffrer et transcrire les noms
+sanscrits qui se rencontrent dans les livres chinois.' Par M.
+Stanislas Julien, Membre de l'Institut. Paris, 1861.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII.</h2>
+
+<h2>THE WORKS OF CONFUCIUS.<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a></h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>n reviewing the works of missionaries, we have repeatedly dwelt on
+the opportunities of scientific usefulness which are open to the
+messengers of the Gospel in every part of the world. We are not afraid
+of the common objection that missionaries ought to devote their whole
+time and powers to the one purpose for which they are sent out and
+paid by our societies. Missionaries cannot always be engaged in
+teaching, preaching, converting, and baptising the heathen. A
+missionary, like every other human creature, ought to have his leisure
+hours; and if those leisure hours are devoted to scientific pursuits,
+to the study of the languages or the literature of the people among
+whom he lives, to a careful description of the scenery and antiquities
+of the country, the manners, laws, and customs of its inhabitants,
+their legends, their national poetry, or popular stories, or, again,
+to the cultivation of any branch of natural science, he may rest
+assured that he is not neglecting the sacred trust which he accepted,
+but is only bracing and invigorating his mind, and keeping it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span>from
+that stagnation which is the inevitable result of a too monotonous
+employment. The staff of missionaries which is spread over the whole
+globe supplies the most perfect machinery that could be devised for
+the collection of all kinds of scientific knowledge. They ought to be
+the pioneers of science. They should not only take out&mdash;they should
+also bring something home; and there is nothing more likely to
+increase and strengthen the support on which our missionary societies
+depend, nothing more sure to raise the intellectual standard of the
+men selected for missionary labour, than a formal recognition of this
+additional duty. There may be exceptional cases where missionaries are
+wanted for constant toil among natives ready to be instructed, and
+anxious to be received as members of a Christian community. But, as a
+general rule, the missionary abroad has more leisure than a clergyman
+at home, and time sits heavy on the hands of many whose congregations
+consist of no more than ten or twenty souls. It is hardly necessary to
+argue this point, when we can appeal to so many facts. The most
+successful missionaries have been exactly those whose names are
+remembered with gratitude, not only by the natives among whom they
+laboured, but also by the savants of Europe; and the labours of the
+Jesuit missionaries in India and China, of the Baptist missionaries at
+Serampore, of Gogerly and Spence Hardy in Ceylon, of Caldwell in
+Tinnevelly, of Wilson in Bombay, of Moffat, Krapf, and last, but not
+least, of Livingstone, will live not only in the journals of our
+academies, but likewise in the annals of the missionary Church.</p>
+
+<p>The first volume of an edition of the Chinese Classics, which we have
+just received from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span> Rev. Dr. J. Legge, of the London Missionary
+Society, is a new proof of what can be achieved by missionaries, if
+encouraged to devote part of their time and attention to scientific
+and literary pursuits. We do not care to inquire whether Dr. Legge has
+been successful as a missionary. Even if he had not converted a single
+Chinese, he would, after completing the work which he has just begun,
+have rendered most important aid to the introduction of Christianity
+into China. He arrived in the East towards the end of 1839, having
+received only a few months' instruction in Chinese from Professor Kidd
+in London. Being stationed at Malacca, it seemed to him then&mdash;and he
+adds 'that the experience of twenty-one years has given its sanction
+to the correctness of the judgment'&mdash;that he could not consider
+himself qualified for the duties of his position until he had
+thoroughly mastered the classical books of the Chinese, and
+investigated for himself the whole field of thought through which the
+sages of China had ranged, and in which were to be found the
+foundations of the moral, social, and political life of the people. He
+was not able to pursue his studies without interruption, and it was
+only after some years, when the charge of the Anglo-Chinese College
+had devolved upon him, that he could procure the books necessary to
+facilitate his progress. After sixteen years of assiduous study, Dr.
+Legge had explored the principal works of Chinese literature; and he
+then felt that he could render the course of reading through which he
+had passed more easy to those who were to follow after him, by
+publishing, on the model of our editions of the Greek and Roman
+Classics, a critical text of the Classics of China, together with a
+translation and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span> explanatory notes. His materials were ready, but
+there was the difficulty of finding the funds necessary for so costly
+an undertaking. Scarcely, however, had Dr. Legge's wants become known
+among the British and other foreign merchants in China, than one of
+them, Mr. Joseph Jardine, sent for the Doctor, and said to him, 'I
+know the liberality of the merchants in China, and that many of them
+would readily give their help to such an undertaking; but you need not
+have the trouble of canvassing the community. If you are prepared to
+undertake the toil of the publication, I will bear the expense of it.
+We make our money in China, and we should be glad to assist in
+whatever promises to be a benefit to it.' The result of this
+combination of disinterested devotion on the part of the author, and
+enlightened liberality on the part of his patron, lies now before us
+in a splendid volume of text, translation, and commentary, which, if
+the life of the editor is spared (and the sudden death of Mr. Jardine
+from the effects of the climate is a warning how busily death is at
+work among the European settlers in those regions), will be followed
+by at least six other volumes.</p>
+
+<p>The edition is to comprise the books now recognised as of highest
+authority by the Chinese themselves. These are the five King's and the
+four Shoo's. <span class="sp1">King</span> means the warp threads of a web, and its application
+to literary compositions rests on the same metaphor as the Latin word
+<span class="sp1">textus</span>, and the Sanskrit <span class="sp1">S&ucirc;tra</span>, meaning a yarn, and a book. <span class="sp1">Shoo</span>
+simply means writings. The five King's are, 1. the Yih, or the Book of
+Changes; 2. the Shoo, or the Book of History; 3. the She, or the Book
+of Poetry; 4. the Le Ke, or Record of Rites; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span> 5. the Chun Tsew, or
+Spring and Autumn; a chronicle extending from 721 to 480 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> The four
+Shoo's consist of, 1. the Lun Yu, or Digested Conversations between
+Confucius and his disciples; 2. Ta H&euml;o, or Great Learning, commonly
+attributed to one of his disciples; 3. the Chung Yung, or Doctrine of
+the Mean, ascribed to the grandson of Confucius; 4. of the works of
+Mencius, who died 288 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span></p>
+
+<p>The authorship of the five King's is loosely attributed to Confucius;
+but it is only the fifth, or 'the Spring and Autumn,' which can be
+claimed as the work of the philosopher. The Yih, the Shoo, and the She
+King were not composed, but only compiled by him, and much of the Le
+Ke is clearly from later hands. Confucius, though the founder of a
+religion and a reformer, was thoroughly conservative in his
+tendencies, and devotedly attached to the past. He calls himself a
+transmitter, not a maker, believing in and loving the ancients (p.
+59). 'I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge,' he
+says, 'I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it
+there' (p. 65). The most frequent themes of his discourses were the
+ancient songs, the history, and the rules of propriety established by
+ancient sages (p. 64). When one of his contemporaries wished to do
+away with the offering of a lamb as a meaningless formality, Confucius
+reproved him with the pithy sentence, 'You love the sheep, I love the
+ceremony.' There were four things, we are told, which Confucius
+taught&mdash;letters, ethics, devotion of soul, and truthfulness (p. 66).
+When speaking of himself, he said, 'At fifteen, I had my mind bent on
+learning. At thirty, I stood firm. At forty, I had no doubt. At fifty,
+I knew the decrees of heaven.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span> At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ
+for the reception of truth. At seventy, I could follow what my heart
+desired, without transgressing what was right' (p. 10). Though this
+may sound like boasting, it is remarkable how seldom Confucius himself
+claims any superiority above his fellow-creatures. He offers his
+advice to those who are willing to listen, but he never speaks
+dogmatically; he never attempts to tyrannize over the minds or hearts
+of his friends. If we read his biography, we can hardly understand how
+a man whose life was devoted to such tranquil pursuits, and whose
+death scarcely produced a ripple on the smooth and silent surface of
+the Eastern world, could have left the impress of his mind on millions
+and millions of human beings&mdash;an impress which even now, after 2339
+years, is clearly discernible in the national character of the largest
+empire of the world. Confucius died in 478 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, complaining that of
+all the princes of the empire there was not one who would adopt his
+principles and obey his lessons. After two generations, however, his
+name had risen to be a power&mdash;the rallying point of a vast movement of
+national and religious regeneration. His grandson speaks of him as the
+ideal of a sage, as the sage is the ideal of humanity at large. Though
+Tze-tze claims no divine honour for his grandsire, he exalts his
+wisdom and virtue beyond the limits of human nature. This is a
+specimen of the language which he applies to Confucius:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'He may be compared to heaven and earth in their supporting
+and containing, their overshadowing and curtaining all
+things; he may be compared to the four seasons in their
+alternating progress, and to the sun and moon in their
+successive shining....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span> Quick in apprehension, clear in
+discernment, of far-reaching intellect and all-embracing
+knowledge, he was fitted to exercise rule; magnanimous,
+generous, benign, and mild, he was fitted to exercise
+forbearance; impulsive, energetic, firm, and enduring, he
+was fitted to maintain a firm hold; self-adjusted, grave,
+never swerving from the Mean, and correct, he was fitted to
+command reverence; accomplished, distinctive, concentrative,
+and searching, he was fitted to exercise discrimination....
+All-embracing and vast, he was like heaven; deep and active
+as a fountain, he was like the abyss.... Therefore his fame
+overspreads the Middle Kingdom and extends to all barbarous
+tribes. Wherever ships and carriages reach, wherever the
+strength of man penetrates, wherever the heavens overshadow
+and the earth sustains, wherever the sun and moon shine,
+wherever frost and dews fall, all who have blood and breath
+unfeignedly honour and love him. Hence it is said&mdash;He is the
+equal of Heaven' (p. 53).</p></div>
+
+<p>This is certainly very magnificent phraseology, but it will hardly
+convey any definite impression to the minds of those who are not
+acquainted with the life and teaching of the great Chinese sage. These
+may be studied now by all who can care for the history of human
+thought, in the excellent work of Dr. Legge. The first volume, just
+published, contains the Confucian Analects, the Great Learning, and
+the Doctrine of the Mean, or the First, Second, and Third Shoo's, and
+will, we hope, soon be followed by the other Chinese Classics.<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> We
+must here <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>confine ourselves to giving a few of the sage's sayings,
+selected from thousands that are to be found in the Confucian
+Analects. Their interest is chiefly historical, as throwing light on
+the character of one of the most remarkable men in the history of the
+human race. But there is besides this a charm in the simple
+enunciation of simple truths; and such is the fear of truism in our
+modern writers that we must go to distant times and distant countries
+if we wish to listen to that simple Solomonic wisdom which is better
+than the merchandize of silver and the gain thereof than fine gold.</p>
+
+<p>Confucius shows his tolerant spirit when he says, 'The superior man is
+catholic, and no partisan. The mean man is a partisan, and not
+catholic' (p. 14).</p>
+
+<p>There is honest manliness in his saying, 'To see what is right, and
+not to do it, is want of courage' (p. 18).</p>
+
+<p>His definition of knowledge, though less profound than that of
+Socrates, is nevertheless full of good sense:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The Master said, "Shall I teach you what knowledge is? When
+you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do
+not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it&mdash;this is
+knowledge"' (p. 15).</p></div>
+
+<p>Nor was Confucius unacquainted with the secrets of the heart: 'It is
+only the truly virtuous man,' he says in one place, 'who can love or
+who can hate others' (p. 30). In another place he expresses his belief
+in the irresistible charm of virtue: 'Virtue is not left to stand
+alone,' he says; 'he who practises it will have neighbours.' He bears
+witness to the hidden connection between intellectual and moral
+excellence: 'It is not easy,' he remarks, 'to find a man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span> who has
+learned for three years without coming to be good' (p. 76). In his
+ethics, the golden rule of the Gospel, 'Do ye unto others as ye would
+that others should do to you,' is represented as almost unattainable.
+Thus we read, 'Tsze-Kung said, "What I do not wish men to do to me, I
+also wish not to do to men." The Master said, "Tsze, you have not
+attained to that,"' The Brahmans, too, had a distant perception of the
+same truth, which is expressed, for instance, in the Hitopadesa in the
+following words: 'Good people show mercy unto all beings, considering
+how like they are to themselves.' On subjects which transcend the
+limits of human understanding, Confucius is less explicit; but his
+very reticence is remarkable, when we consider the recklessness with
+which Oriental philosophers launch into the depths of religious
+metaphysics. Thus we read (p. 107):</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Ke Loo asked about serving the spirits of the dead. The
+Master said, "While you are not able to serve men, how can
+you serve their spirits?"</p>
+
+<p>Ke Loo added, "I venture to ask about death." He was
+answered, "While you do not know life, how can you know
+about death?"'</p></div>
+
+<p>And again (p. 190):</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The Master said, "I would prefer not speaking."</p>
+
+<p>Tsze-Kung said, "If you, Master, do not speak, what shall
+we, your disciples, have to record?"</p>
+
+<p>The Master said, "Does Heaven speak? The four seasons pursue
+their courses, and all things are continually being
+produced; but does Heaven say anything?"'</p></div>
+
+<p class="f3"><i>November, 1861.</i></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> 'The Chinese Classics;' with a Translation, Critical and
+Exegetical Notes. By James Legge, D.D., of the London Missionary
+Society. Hong Kong, 1861.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> Dr. Legge has since published: vol. ii. containing the
+works of Mencius; vol. iii. part 1. containing the first part of the
+Shoo King; vol. iii. part 2. containing the fifth part of the Shoo
+King.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV.</h2>
+
+<h2>POPOL VUH.</h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;book called 'Popol Vuh,'<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> and pretending to be the original text
+of the sacred writings of the Indians of Central America, will be
+received by most people with a sceptical smile. The Aztec children who
+were shown all over Europe as descendants of a race to whom, before
+the Spanish conquest, divine honours were paid by the natives of
+Mexico, and who turned out to be unfortunate creatures that had been
+tampered with by heartless speculators, are still fresh in the memory
+of most people; and the 'Livre des Sauvages,'<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> lately published by
+the Abb&eacute; Domenech, under the auspices of Count Walewsky, has somewhat
+lowered the dignity of American studies in general. Still, those who
+laugh at the 'Manuscrit Pictographique Am&eacute;ricain' discovered by the
+French Abb&eacute; in the library of the French Ars&eacute;nal, and edited by him
+with so much care as a precious relic of the old Red-skins of North
+America, ought not to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span>forget that there would be nothing at all
+surprising in the existence of such a MS., containing genuine
+pictographic writing of the Red Indians. The German critic of Abb&eacute;
+Domenech, M. Petzholdt,<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> assumes much too triumphant an air in
+announcing his discovery that the 'Manuscrit Pictographique' was the
+work of a German boy in the backwoods of America. He ought to have
+acknowledged that the Abb&eacute; himself had pointed out the German scrawls
+on some of the pages of his MS.; that he had read the names of Anna
+and Maria; and that he never claimed any great antiquity for the book
+in question. Indeed, though M. Petzholdt tells us very confidently
+that the whole book is the work of a naughty, nasty, and profane
+little boy, the son of German settlers in the backwoods of America, we
+doubt whether anybody who takes the trouble to look through all the
+pages will consider this view as at all satisfactory, or even as more
+probable than that of the French Abb&eacute;. We know what boys are capable
+of in pictographic art from the occasional defacements of our walls
+and railings; but we still feel a little sceptical when M. Petzholdt
+assures us that there is nothing extraordinary in a boy filling a
+whole volume with these elaborate scrawls. If M. Petzholdt had taken
+the trouble to look at some of the barbarous hieroglyphics that have
+been collected in North America, he would have understood more readily
+how the Abb&eacute; Domenech, who had spent many years among the Red Indians,
+and had himself copied several of their inscriptions, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>should have
+taken the pages preserved in the library of the Ars&eacute;nal at Paris as
+genuine specimens of American pictography. There is a certain
+similarity between these scrawls and the figures scratched on rocks,
+tombstones, and trees by the wandering tribes of North America; and
+though we should be very sorry to endorse the opinion of the
+enthusiastic Abb&eacute;, or to start any conjecture of our own as to the
+real authorship of the 'Livre des Sauvages,' we cannot but think that
+M. Petzholdt would have written less confidently, and certainly less
+scornfully, if he had been more familiar than he seems to be with the
+little that is known of the picture-writing of the Indian tribes. As a
+preliminary to the question of the authenticity of the 'Popol Vuh,' a
+few words on the pictorial literature of the Red Indians of North
+America will not be considered out of place. The 'Popol Vuh' is not
+indeed a 'Livre des Sauvages,' but a literary composition in the true
+sense of the word. It contains the mythology and history of the
+civilised races of Central America, and comes before us with
+credentials that will bear the test of critical inquiry. But we shall
+be better able to appreciate the higher achievements of the South
+after we have examined, however cursorily, the rude beginnings in
+literature among the savage races of the North.</p>
+
+<p>Colden, in his 'History of the Five Nations,' informs us that when, in
+1696, the Count de Frontenac marched a well-appointed army into the
+Iroquois country, with artillery and all other means of regular
+military offence, he found, on the banks of the Onondaga, now called
+Oswego River, a tree, on the trunk of which the Indians had depicted
+the French army, and deposited two bundles of cut rushes at its foot,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>
+consisting of 1434 pieces; an act of symbolical defiance on their
+part, which was intended to warn their Gallic invaders that they would
+have to encounter this number of warriors.</p>
+
+<p>This warlike message is a specimen of Indian picture-writing. It
+belongs to the lowest stage of graphic representation, and hardly
+differs from the primitive way in which the Persian ambassadors
+communicated with the Greeks, or the Romans with the Carthaginians.
+Instead of the lance and the staff of peace between which the
+Carthaginians were asked to choose, the Red Indians would have sent an
+arrow and a pipe, and the message would have been equally understood.
+This, though not yet <i>peindre la parole</i>, is nevertheless a first
+attempt at <i>parler aux yeux</i>. It is a first beginning which may lead
+to something more perfect in the end. We find similar attempts at
+pictorial communication among other savage tribes, and they seem to
+answer every purpose. In Freycinet and Arago's 'Voyage to the Eastern
+Ocean' we are told of a native of the Carolina Islands, a Tamor of
+Sathoual, who wished to avail himself of the presence of a ship to
+send to a trader at Botta, M. Martinez, some shells which he had
+promised to collect in exchange for a few axes and some other
+articles. This he expressed to the captain, who gave him a piece of
+paper to make the drawing, and satisfactorily executed the commission.
+The figure of a man at the top denoted the ship's captain, who by his
+outstretched hands represented his office as a messenger between the
+parties. The rays or ornaments on his head denote rank or authority.
+The vine beneath him is a type of friendship. In the left column are
+depicted the number and kinds of shells<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span> sent; in the right column the
+things wished for in exchange&mdash;namely, seven fish-hooks, three large
+and four small, two axes, and two pieces of iron.</p>
+
+<p>The inscriptions which are found on the Indian graveboards mark a step
+in advance. Every warrior has his crest, which is called his <span class="sp1">totem</span>,
+and is painted on his tombstone. A celebrated war-chief, the Adjetatig
+of Wabojeeg, died on Lake Superior, about 1793. He was of the clan of
+the Addik, or American reindeer. This fact is symbolized by the figure
+of the deer. The reversed position denotes death. His own personal
+name, which was White Fisher, is not noticed. But there are seven
+transverse strokes on the left, and these have a meaning&mdash;namely, that
+he had led seven war parties. Then there are three perpendicular lines
+below his crest, and these again are readily understood by every
+Indian. They represent the wounds received in battle. The figure of a
+moose's head is said to relate to a desperate conflict with an enraged
+animal of this kind; and the symbols of the arrow and the pipe are
+drawn to indicate the chief's influence in war and peace.</p>
+
+<p>There is another graveboard of the ruling chief of Sandy Lake on the
+Upper Mississippi. Here the reversed bird denotes his family name or
+clan, the Crane. Four transverse lines above it denote that he had
+killed four of his enemies in battle. An analogous custom is mentioned
+by Aristotle ('Politica,' vii. 2, p. 220, ed. G&ouml;ttling). Speaking of
+the Iberians, he states that they placed as many obelisks round the
+grave of a warrior as he had killed enemies in battle.</p>
+
+<p>But the Indians went further; and though they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span> never arrived at the
+perfection of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, they had a number of
+symbolic emblems which were perfectly understood by all their tribes.
+<span class="sp1">Eating</span> is represented by a man's hand lifted to his mouth. <span class="sp1">Power over
+man</span> is symbolized by a line drawn in the figure from the mouth to the
+heart; <span class="sp1">power</span> in general by a head with two horns. A circle drawn
+around the body at the abdomen denotes <span class="sp1">full means of subsistence</span>. A
+boy drawn with waved lines from each ear and lines leading to the
+heart represents a <span class="sp1">pupil</span>. A figure with a plant as head, and two
+wings, denotes a <span class="sp1">doctor</span> skilled in medicine, and endowed with the
+power of ubiquity. A tree with human legs, a <span class="sp1">herbalist</span> or <span class="sp1">professor of
+botany</span>. <span class="sp1">Night</span> is represented by a finely crossed or barred sun, or a
+circle with human legs. <span class="sp1">Rain</span> is figured by a dot or semicircle filled
+with water and placed on the head. The heaven with three disks of the
+sun is understood to mean three days' journey, and a landing after a
+voyage is represented by a tortoise. Short sentences, too, can be
+pictured in this manner. A prescription ordering abstinence from food
+for two, and rest for four, days is written by drawing a man with two
+bars on the stomach and four across the legs. We are told even of
+war-songs and love-songs composed in this primitive alphabet; but it
+would seem as if, in these cases, the reader required even greater
+poetical imagination than the writer. There is one war-song consisting
+of four pictures&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>1. The sun rising.</p>
+
+<p>2. A figure pointing with one hand to the earth and the
+other extended to the sky.</p>
+
+<p>3. The moon with two human legs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>4. A figure personifying the Eastern woman, i. e. the
+evening star.</p></div>
+
+<p>These four symbols are said to convey to the Indian the following
+meaning:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am rising to seek the war path;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The earth and the sky are before me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I walk by day and by night;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the evening star is my guide.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The following is a specimen of a love-song:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>1. Figure representing a god (monedo) endowed with magic
+power.</p>
+
+<p>2. Figure beating the drum and singing; lines from his
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>3. Figure surrounded by a secret lodge.</p>
+
+<p>4. Two bodies joined with one continuous arm.</p>
+
+<p>5. A woman on an island.</p>
+
+<p>6. A woman asleep; lines from his ear towards her.</p>
+
+<p>7. A red heart in a circle.</p></div>
+
+<p>This poem is intended to express these sentiments:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>1. It is my form and person that make me great&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>2. Hear the voice of my song, it is my voice.</p>
+
+<p>3. I shield myself with secret coverings.</p>
+
+<p>4. All your thoughts are known to me, blush!</p>
+
+<p>5. I could draw you hence were you ever so far&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>6. Though you were on the other hemisphere&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>7. I speak to your naked heart.</p></div>
+
+<p>All we can say is, that if the Indians can read this writing, they are
+greater adepts in the mysteries of love than the judges of the old
+<i>Cours d'amour</i>. But it is much more likely that these war-songs and
+love-songs are known to the people beforehand, and that their writings
+are only meant to revive what exists in the memory of the reader. It
+is a kind of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span> mnemonic writing, and it has been used by missionaries
+for similar purposes, and with considerable success. Thus, in a
+translation of the Bible in the Massachusetts language by Eliot, the
+verses from 25 to 32 in the thirtieth chapter of Proverbs, are
+expressed by 'an ant, a coney, a locust, a spider, a river (symbol of
+motion), a lion, a greyhound, a he-goat and king, a man foolishly
+lifting himself to take hold of the heavens.' No doubt these symbols
+would help the reader to remember the proper order of the verses, but
+they would be perfectly useless without a commentary or without a
+previous knowledge of the text.</p>
+
+<p>We are told that the famous Test&eacute;ra, brother of the chamberlain of
+Fran&ccedil;ois I, who came to America eight or nine years after the taking
+of Mexico, finding it impossible to learn the language of the natives,
+taught them the Bible history and the principal doctrines of the
+Christian religion, by means of pictures, and that these diagrams
+produced a greater effect on the minds of the people, who were
+accustomed to this style of representation, than all other means
+employed by the missionaries. But here again, unless these pictures
+were explained by interpreters, they could by themselves convey no
+meaning to the gazing crowds of the natives. The fullest information
+on this subject is to be found in a work by T. Baptiste, 'Hi&eacute;roglyphes
+de la conversion, o&ugrave; par des estampes et des figures on apprend aux
+naturels &agrave; desirer le ciel.'</p>
+
+<p>There is no evidence to show that the Indians of the North ever
+advanced beyond the rude attempts which we have thus described, and of
+which numerous specimens may be found in the voluminous work of
+Schoolcraft, published by authority of Congress, 'Historical and
+Statistical Information respecting the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span> History, Condition, and
+Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States,' Philadelphia,
+1851-1855. There is no trace of anything like literature among the
+wandering tribes of the North, and until a real 'Livre des Sauvages'
+turns up to fill this gap, they must continue to be classed among the
+illiterate races.<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is very different if we turn our eyes to the people of Central and
+South America, to the races who formed the population of Mexico,
+Guatemala, and Peru, when conquered by the Spaniards. The Mexican
+hieroglyphics published by Lord Kingsborough are not to be placed in
+the same category with the totems and the pictorial scratches of the
+Red-skins. They are, first of all, of a much more artistic character,
+more conventional in their structure, and hence more definite in their
+meaning. They are coloured, written on paper, and in many respects
+quite on a level with the hieroglyphic inscriptions and hieratic
+papyri of Egypt. Even the conception of speaking to the ear through
+the eye, of expressing sound by means of outlines, was familiar to the
+Mexicans, though they seem to have applied their phonetic signs to the
+writing of the names of places and persons only. The principal object,
+indeed, of the Mexican hieroglyphic manuscripts was not to convey new
+information, but rather to remind the reader by means of mnemonic
+artifices of what he had learnt beforehand. This is acknowledged by
+the best authorities, by men who knew the Indians shortly after their
+first intercourse with Europeans, and whom we may safely trust in what
+they tell us of the oral literature and hieroglyphic writings of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span>the
+natives. Acosta, in his 'Historia natural y moral,' vi. 7, tells us
+that the Indians were still in the habit of reciting from memory the
+addresses and speeches of their ancient orators, and numerous songs
+composed by their national poets. As it was impossible to acquire
+these by means of hieroglyphics or written characters such as were
+used by the Mexicans, care was taken that those speeches and poems
+should be learnt by heart. There were colleges and schools for that
+purpose, where these and other things were taught to the young by the
+aged in whose memory they seemed to be engraved. The young men who
+were brought up to be orators themselves had to learn the ancient
+compositions word by word; and when the Spaniards came and taught them
+to read and write the Spanish language, the Indians soon began to
+write for themselves, a fact attested by many eye-witnesses.</p>
+
+<p>Las Casas, the devoted friend of the Indians, writes as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'It ought to be known that in all the republics of this
+country, in the kingdoms of New Spain and elsewhere, there
+was amongst other professions, that of the chroniclers and
+historians. They possessed a knowledge of the earliest
+times, and of all things concerning religion, the gods, and
+their worship. They knew the founders of cities, and the
+early history of their kings and kingdoms. They knew the
+modes of election and the right of succession; they could
+tell the number and characters of their ancient kings, their
+works, and memorable achievements whether good or bad, and
+whether they had governed well or ill. They knew the men
+renowned for virtue and heroism in former days, what wars
+they had waged,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span> and how they had distinguished themselves;
+who had been the earliest settlers, what had been their
+ancient customs, their triumphs and defeats. They knew, in
+fact, whatever belonged to history; and were able to give an
+account of all the events of the past.... These chroniclers
+had likewise to calculate the days, months, and years; and
+though they had no writing like our own, they had their
+symbols and characters through which they understood
+everything; they had their great books, which were composed
+with such ingenuity and art that our alphabet was really of
+no great assistance to them.... Our priests have seen those
+books, and I myself have seen them likewise, though many
+were burnt at the instigation of the monks, who were afraid
+that they might impede the work of conversion. Sometimes
+when the Indians who had been converted had forgotten
+certain words, or particular points of the Christian
+doctrine, they began&mdash;as they were unable to read our
+books&mdash;to write very ingeniously with their own symbols and
+characters, drawing the figures which corresponded either to
+the ideas or to the sounds of our words. I have myself seen
+a large portion of the Christian doctrine written in figures
+and images, which they read as we read the characters of a
+letter; and this is a very extraordinary proof of their
+genius.... There never was a lack of those chroniclers. It
+was a profession which passed from father to son, highly
+respected in the whole republic; each historian instructed
+two or three of his relatives. He made them practise
+constantly, and they had recourse to him whenever a doubt
+arose on a point of history.... But not these young
+historians only went to consult him; kings, princes, and
+priests came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span> to ask his advice. Whenever there was a doubt
+as to ceremonies, precepts of religion, religious festivals,
+or anything of importance in the history of the ancient
+kingdoms, every one went to the chroniclers to ask for
+information.'</p></div>
+
+<p>In spite of the religious zeal of Dominican and Franciscan friars, a
+few of these hieroglyphic MSS. escaped the flames, and may now be seen
+in some of our public libraries, as curious relics of a nearly extinct
+and forgotten literature. The first collection of these MSS. and other
+American antiquities was due to the zeal of the Milanese antiquarian,
+Boturini, who had been sent by the Pope in 1736 to regulate some
+ecclesiastical matters, and who devoted the eight years of his stay in
+the New World to rescuing whatever could be rescued from the scattered
+ruins of ancient America. Before, however, he could bring these
+treasures safe to Europe, he was despoiled of his valuables by the
+Spanish Viceroy; and when at last he made his escape with the remnants
+of his collection, he was taken prisoner by an English cruiser, and
+lost everything. The collection, which remained at Mexico, became the
+subject of several lawsuits, and after passing through the hands of
+Veytia and Gama, who both added to it considerably, it was sold at
+last by public auction. Humboldt, who was at that time passing through
+Mexico, acquired some of the MSS., which he gave to the Royal Museum
+at Berlin. Others found their way into private hands, and after many
+vicissitudes they have mostly been secured by the public libraries or
+private collectors of Europe. The most valuable part of that
+unfortunate shipwreck is now in the hands of M. Aubin, who was sent to
+Mexico in 1830 by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span> the French Government, and who devoted nearly
+twenty years to the same work which Boturini had commenced a hundred
+years before. He either bought the dispersed fragments of the
+collections of Boturini, Gama, and Pichardo, or procured accurate
+copies; and he has brought to Europe, what is, if not the most
+complete, at least the most valuable and most judiciously arranged
+collection of American antiquities. We likewise owe to M. Aubin the
+first accurate knowledge of the real nature of the ancient Mexican
+writing; and we look forward with confident hope to his still
+achieving in his own field as great a triumph as that of Champollion,
+the decipherer of the hieroglyphics of Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most important helps towards the deciphering of the
+hieroglyphic MSS. of the Americans is to be found in certain books
+which, soon after the conquest of Mexico, were written down by natives
+who had learnt the art of alphabetic writing from their conquerors,
+the Spaniards. Ixtlilxochitl, descended from the royal family of
+Tetzcuco, and employed as interpreter by the Spanish Government, wrote
+the history of his own country from the earliest time to the arrival
+of Cortez. In writing this history he followed the hieroglyphic
+paintings as they had been explained to him by the old chroniclers.
+Some of these very paintings, which formed the text-book of the
+Mexican historian, have been recovered by M. Aubin; and as they helped
+the historian in writing his history, that history now helps the
+scholar in deciphering their meaning. It is with the study of works
+like that of Ixtlilxochitl that American philology ought to begin.
+They are to the student of American antiquities what Manetho is to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span>
+the student of Egyptian hieroglyphics, or Berosus to the decipherer of
+the cuneiform inscriptions. They are written in dialects not more than
+three hundred years old, and still spoken by large numbers of natives,
+with such modifications as three centuries are certain to produce.
+They give us whatever was known of history, mythology, and religion
+among the people whom the Spaniards found in Central and South America
+in the possession of most of the advantages of a long-established
+civilisation. Though we must not expect to find in them what we are
+accustomed to call history, they are nevertheless of great historical
+interest, as supplying the vague outlines of a distant past, filled
+with migrations, wars, dynasties, and revolutions, such as were
+cherished in the memory of the Greeks at the time of Solon, and
+believed in by the Romans at the time of Cato. They teach us that the
+New World which was opened to Europe a few centuries ago, was in its
+own eyes an old world, not so different in character and feelings from
+ourselves as we are apt to imagine when we speak of the Red-skins of
+America, or when we read the accounts of the Spanish conquerors, who
+denied that the natives of America possessed human souls, in order to
+establish their own right of treating them like wild beasts.</p>
+
+<p>The 'Popol Vuh,' or the sacred book of the people of Guatemala, of
+which the Abb&eacute; Brasseur de Bourbourg has just published the original
+text, together with a literal French translation, holds a very
+prominent rank among the works composed by natives in their own native
+dialects, and written down by them with the letters of the Roman
+alphabet. There are but two works that can be compared to it in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span> their
+importance to the student of American antiquities and American
+languages, namely, the 'Codex Chimalpopoca' in Nahuatl, the ancient
+written language of Mexico, and the 'Codex Cakchiquel' in the dialect
+of Guatemala. These, together with the work published by the Abb&eacute;
+Brasseur de Bourbourg under the title of 'Popol Vuh,' must form the
+starting-point of all critical inquiries into the antiquities of the
+American people.</p>
+
+<p>The first point which has to be determined with regard to books of
+this kind is whether they are genuine or not: whether they are what
+they pretend to be&mdash;compositions about three centuries old, founded on
+the oral traditions and the pictographic documents of the ancient
+inhabitants of America, and written in the dialects as spoken at the
+time of Columbus, Cortez, and Pizarro. What the Abb&eacute; Brasseur de
+Bourbourg has to say on this point amounts to this:&mdash;The manuscript
+was first discovered by Father Francisco Ximenes towards the end of
+the seventeenth century. He was cur&eacute; of Santo-Tomas Chichicastenango,
+situated about three leagues south of Santa-Cruz del Quich&eacute;, and
+twenty-two leagues north-east of Guatemala. He was well acquainted
+with the languages of the natives of Guatemala, and has left a
+dictionary of their three principal dialects, his 'Tesoro de las
+Lenguas Quich&eacute;, Cakchiquel y Tzutohil.' This work, which has never
+been printed, fills two volumes, the second of which contains the copy
+of the MS. discovered by Ximenes. Ximenes likewise wrote a history of
+the province of the preachers of San-Vincente de Chiapas y Guatemala,
+in four volumes. Of this he left two copies. But three volumes only
+were still in existence when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span> Abb&eacute; Brasseur de Bourbourg visited
+Guatemala, and they are said to contain valuable information on the
+history and traditions of the country. The first volume contains the
+Spanish translation of the manuscript which occupies us at present.
+The Abb&eacute; Brasseur de Bourbourg copied that translation in 1855. About
+the same time a German traveller, Dr. Scherzer, happened to be at
+Guatemala, and had copies made of the works of Ximenes. These were
+published at Vienna, in 1856.<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> The French Abb&eacute;, however, was not
+satisfied with a mere reprint of the text and its Spanish translation
+by Ximenes, a translation which he qualifies as untrustworthy and
+frequently unintelligible. During his travels in America he acquired a
+practical knowledge of several of the native dialects, particularly of
+the Quich&eacute;, which is still spoken in various dialects by about six
+hundred thousand people. As a priest he was in daily intercourse with
+these people; and it was while residing among them and able to consult
+them like living dictionaries, that, with the help of the MSS. of
+Ximenes, he undertook his own translation of the ancient chronicles of
+the Quich&eacute;s. From the time of the discovery of Ximenes, therefore, to
+the time of the publication of the Abb&eacute; Brasseur de Bourbourg, all
+seems clear and satisfactory. But there is still a century to be
+accounted for, from the end of the sixteenth century, when the
+original is supposed to have been written, to the end of the
+seventeenth, when it was first discovered by Ximenes at
+Chichicastenango.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These years are not bridged over. We may appeal, however, to the
+authority of the MS. itself, which carries the royal dynasties down to
+the Spanish Conquest, and ends with the names of the two princes, Don
+Juan de Rojas and Don Juan Cortes, the sons of Tecum and Tepepul.
+These princes, though entirely subject to the Spaniards, were allowed
+to retain the insignia of royalty to the year 1558, and it is shortly
+after their time that the MS. is supposed to have been written. The
+author himself says in the beginning that he wrote 'after the word of
+God (<span class="sp1">chabal Dios</span>) had been preached, in the midst of Christianity; and
+that he did so because people could no longer see the 'Popol Vuh,'
+wherein it was clearly shown that they came from the other side of the
+sea, the account of our living in the land of shadow, and how we saw
+light and life.' There is no attempt at claiming for his work any
+extravagant age or mysterious authority. It is acknowledged to have
+been written when the Castilians were the rulers of the land; when
+bishops were preaching the word of Dios, the new God; when the ancient
+traditions of the people were gradually dying out. Even the title of
+'Popol Vuh,' which the Abb&eacute; Brasseur de Bourbourg has given to this
+work, is not claimed for it by its author. He says that he wrote when
+the 'Popol Vuh' was no longer to be seen. Now 'Popol Vuh' means the
+book of the people, and referred to the traditional literature in
+which all that was known about the early history of the nation, their
+religion and ceremonies, was handed down from age to age.</p>
+
+<p>It is to be regretted that the Abb&eacute; Brasseur de Bourbourg should have
+sanctioned the application of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span> this name to the Quich&eacute; MS. discovered
+by Father Ximenes, and that he should apparently have translated it by
+'Livre sacr&eacute;' instead of 'Livre national,' or 'Libro del comun,' as
+proposed by Ximenes. Such small inaccuracies are sure to produce great
+confusion. Nothing but a desire to have a fine sounding title could
+have led the editor to commit this mistake, for he himself confesses
+that the work published by him has no right to the title 'Popol Vuh,'
+and that 'Popol Vuh' does not mean 'Livre sacr&eacute;.' Nor is there any
+more reason to suppose, with the learned Abb&eacute;, that the first two
+books of the Quich&eacute; MS. contain an almost literal transcript of the
+'Popol Vuh,' or that the 'Popol Vuh; was the original of the
+'Teo-Amoxtli,' or the sacred book of the Toltecs. All we know is, that
+the author wrote his anonymous work because the 'Popol Vuh'&mdash;the
+national book, or the national tradition&mdash;was dying out, and that he
+comprehended in the first two sections the ancient traditions common
+to the whole race, while he devoted the last two to the historical
+annals of the Quich&eacute;s, the ruling nation at the time of the Conquest
+in what is now the republic of Guatemala. If we look at the MS. in
+this light, there is nothing at all suspicious in its character and
+its contents. The author wished to save from destruction the stories
+which he had heard as a child of his gods and his ancestors. Though
+the general outline of these stories may have been preserved partly in
+the schools, partly in the pictographic MSS., the Spanish Conquest had
+thrown everything into confusion, and the writer had probably to
+depend chiefly on his own recollections. To extract consecutive
+history from these recollections, is simply impossible. All is vague,
+contradictory,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span> miraculous, absurd. Consecutive history is altogether
+a modern idea, of which few only of the ancient nations had any
+conception. If we had the exact words of the 'Popol Vuh,' we should
+probably find no more history there than we find in the Quich&eacute; MS. as
+it now stands. Now and then, it is true, one imagines one sees certain
+periods and landmarks, but in the next page all is chaos again. It may
+be difficult to confess that with all the traditions of the early
+migrations of Cecrops and Danaus into Greece, with the Homeric poems
+of the Trojan war, and the genealogies of the ancient dynasties of
+Greece, we know nothing of Greek history before the Olympiads, and
+very little even then. Yet the true historian does not allow himself
+to indulge in any illusions on this subject, and he shuts his eyes
+even to the most plausible reconstructions.</p>
+
+<p>The same applies with a force increased a hundredfold to the ancient
+history of the aboriginal races of America, and the sooner this is
+acknowledged, the better for the credit of American scholars. Even the
+traditions of the migrations of the Chichimecs, Colhuas, and Nahuas,
+which form the staple of all American antiquarians, are no better than
+the Greek traditions about Pelasgians, &AElig;olians, and Ionians; and it
+would be a mere waste of time to construct out of such elements a
+systematic history, only to be destroyed again sooner or later by some
+Niebuhr, Grote, or Lewis.</p>
+
+<p>But if we do not find history in the stories of the ancient races of
+Guatemala, we do find materials for studying their character, for
+analysing their religion and mythology, for comparing their principles
+of morality, their views of virtue, beauty, and heroism,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span> to those of
+other races of mankind. This is the charm, the real and lasting charm,
+of such works as that presented to us for the first time in a
+trustworthy translation by the Abb&eacute; Brasseur de Bourbourg.
+Unfortunately there is one circumstance which may destroy even this
+charm. It is just possible that the writers of this and other American
+MSS. may have felt more or less consciously the influence of European
+and Christian ideas, and if so, we have no sufficient guarantee that
+the stories they tell represent to us the American mind in its
+pristine and genuine form. There are some coincidences between the Old
+Testament and the Quich&eacute; MS. which are certainly startling. Yet even
+if a Christian influence has to be admitted, much remains in these
+American traditions which is so different from anything else in the
+national literatures of other countries, that we may safely treat it
+as the genuine growth of the intellectual soil of America. We shall
+give, in conclusion, some extracts to bear out our remarks; but we
+ought not to part with Abb&eacute; Brasseur de Bourbourg without expressing
+to him our gratitude for his excellent work, and without adding a hope
+that he may be able to realise his plan of publishing a 'Collection of
+documents written in the indigenous languages, to assist the student
+of the history and philology of ancient America,' a collection of
+which the work now published is to form the first volume.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>Extracts from the 'Popol Vuh.'</i></p>
+
+<p>The Quich&eacute; MS. begins with an account of the creation. If we read it
+in the literal translation of the Abb&eacute; Brasseur de Bourbourg, with all
+the uncouth names of divine and other beings that have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span> to act their
+parts in it, it does not leave any very clear impression on our minds.
+Yet after reading it again and again, some salient features stand out
+more distinctly, and make us feel that there was a groundwork of noble
+conceptions which has been covered and distorted by an aftergrowth of
+fantastic nonsense. We shall do best for the present to leave out all
+proper names, which only bewilder the memory and which convey no
+distinct meaning even to the scholar. It will require long-continued
+research before it can be determined whether the names so profusely
+applied to the Deity were intended as the names of so many distinct
+personalities, or as the names of the various manifestations of one
+and the same Power. At all events, they are of no importance to us
+till we can connect more distinct ideas than it is possible to gather
+from the materials now at hand, with such inharmonious sounds as
+Tzakol, Bitol, Alom, Qaholom, Hun-Ahpu-Vuch, Gucumatz, Quax-Cho, &amp;c.
+Their supposed meanings are in some cases very appropriate, such as
+the Creator, the Fashioner, the Begetter, the Vivifier, the Ruler, the
+Lord of the green planisphere, the Lord of the azure surface, the
+Heart of heaven; in other cases we cannot fathom the original
+intention of names such as the feathered serpent, the white boar, <i>le
+tireur de sarbacane au sarigue</i>, and others; and they therefore sound
+to our ears simply absurd. Well, the Quich&eacute;s believed that there was a
+time when all that exists in heaven and earth was made. All was then
+in suspense, all was calm and silent; all was immovable, all peaceful,
+and the vast space of the heavens was empty. There was no man, no
+animal, no shore, no trees; heaven alone existed. The face of the
+earth was not to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span> seen; there was only the still expanse of the sea
+and the heaven above. Divine Beings were on the waters like a growing
+light. Their voice was heard as they meditated and consulted, and when
+the dawn rose, man appeared. Then the waters were commanded to retire,
+the earth was established that she might bear fruit and that the light
+of day might shine on heaven and earth.</p>
+
+<p>'For, they said, we shall receive neither glory nor honour from all we
+have created until there is a human being&mdash;a being endowed with
+reason. "Earth," they said, and in a moment the earth was formed. Like
+a vapour it rose into being, mountains appeared from the waters like
+lobsters, and the great mountains were made. Thus was the creation of
+the earth, when it was fashioned by those who are the Heart of heaven,
+the Heart of the earth; for thus were they called who first gave
+fertility to them, heaven and earth being still inert and suspended in
+the midst of the waters.'</p>
+
+<p>Then follows the creation of the brute world, and the disappointment
+of the gods when they command the animals to tell their names and to
+honour those who had created them. Then the gods said to the animals:</p>
+
+<p>'You will be changed, because you cannot speak. We have changed your
+speech. You shall have your food and your dens in the woods and crags;
+for our glory is not perfect, and you do not invoke us. There will be
+beings still that can salute us; we shall make them capable of
+obeying. Do your task; as to your flesh, it will be broken by the
+tooth.'</p>
+
+<p>Then follows the creation of man. His flesh was made of earth (<i>terre
+glaise</i>). But man was without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span> cohesion or power, inert and aqueous;
+he could not turn his head, his sight was dim, and though he had the
+gift of speech, he had no intellect. He was soon consumed again in the
+water.</p>
+
+<p>And the gods consulted a second time how to create beings that should
+adore them, and after some magic ceremonies, men were made of wood,
+and they multiplied. But they had no heart, no intellect, no
+recollection of their Creator; they did not lift up their heads to
+their Maker, and they withered away and were swallowed up by the
+waters.</p>
+
+<p>Then follows a third creation, man being made of a tree called <span class="sp1">tzit&eacute;</span>,
+woman of the marrow of a reed called <span class="sp1">sibac</span>. They, too, did neither
+think nor speak before him who had made them, and they were likewise
+swept away by the waters and destroyed. The whole nature&mdash;animals,
+trees, and stones&mdash;turned against men to revenge the wrongs they had
+suffered at their hands, and the only remnant of that early race is to
+be found in small monkeys which still live in the forests.</p>
+
+<p>Then follows a story of a very different character, and which
+completely interrupts the progress of events. It has nothing to do
+with the creation, though it ends with two of its heroes being changed
+into sun and moon. It is a story very much like the fables of the
+Brahmans or the German <span class="sp1">M&auml;hrchen</span>. Some of the principal actors in it
+are clearly divine beings who have been brought down to the level of
+human nature, and who perform feats and tricks so strange and
+incredible that in reading them we imagine ourselves in the midst of
+the Arabian Nights. In the struggles of the two favourite heroes
+against the cruel princes of Xibalba, there may be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span> reminiscences of
+historical events; but it would be perfectly hopeless to attempt to
+extricate these from the mass of fable by which they are surrounded.
+The chief interest of the American tale consists in the points of
+similarity which it exhibits with the tales of the Old World. We shall
+mention two only&mdash;the repeated resuscitation of the chief heroes, who,
+even when burnt and ground to powder and scattered on the water, are
+born again as fish and changed into men; and the introduction of
+animals endowed with reason and speech. As in the German tales,
+certain peculiarities in the appearance and natural habits of animals
+are frequently accounted for by events that happened 'once upon a
+time'&mdash;for instance, the stumpy tail of the bear, by his misfortune
+when he went out fishing on the ice&mdash;so we find in the American tales,
+'that it was when the two principal heroes (Hun-Ahpu and Xbalanqu&eacute;)
+had caught the rat and were going to strangle it over the fire, that
+<i>le rat commen&ccedil;a &agrave; porter une queue sans poil</i>. Thus, because a
+certain serpent swallowed a frog who was sent as a messenger,
+therefore <i>aujourd'hui encore les serpents engloutissent les
+crapauds</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>The story, which well deserves the attention of those who are
+interested in the origin and spreading of popular tales, is carried on
+to the end of the second book, and it is only in the third that we
+hear once more of the creation of man.</p>
+
+<p>Three attempts, as we saw, had been made and had failed. We now hear
+again that before the beginning of dawn, and before the sun and moon
+had risen, man had been made, and that nourishment was provided for
+him which was to supply his blood, namely, yellow and white maize.
+Four men are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span> mentioned as the real ancestors of the human race, or
+rather of the race of the Quich&eacute;s. They were neither begotten by the
+gods nor born of woman, but their creation was a wonder wrought by the
+Creator. They could reason and speak, their sight was unlimited, and
+they knew all things at once. When they had rendered thanks to their
+Creator for their existence, the gods were frightened and they
+breathed a cloud over the eyes of men that they might see a certain
+distance only, and not be like the gods themselves. Then while the
+four men were asleep, the gods gave them beautiful wives, and these
+became the mothers of all tribes, great and small. These tribes, <span class="sp1">both
+black and white</span>, lived and spread in the East. They did not yet
+worship the gods, but only turned their faces up to heaven, hardly
+knowing what they were meant to do here below. Their features were
+sweet, so was their language, and their intellect was strong.</p>
+
+<p>We now come to a most interesting passage, which is intended to
+explain the confusion of tongues. No nation, except the Jews, has
+dwelt much on the problem why there should be many languages instead
+of one. Grimm, in his 'Essay on the Origin of Language,' remarks: 'It
+may seem surprising that neither the ancient Greeks nor the ancient
+Indians attempted to propose or to solve the question as to the origin
+and the multiplicity of human speech. Holy Writ strove to solve at
+least one of these riddles, that of the multiplicity of languages, by
+means of the tower of Babel. I know only one other poor Esthonian
+legend which might be placed by the side of this biblical solution.
+"The old god," they say, "when men found their first seats too narrow,
+resolved to spread<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span> them over the whole earth, and to give to each
+nation its own language. For this purpose he placed a caldron of water
+on the fire, and commanded the different races to approach it in
+order, and to select for themselves the sounds which were uttered by
+the singing of the water in its confinement and torture.'"</p>
+
+<p>Grimm might have added another legend which is current among the
+Thlinkithians, and was clearly framed in order to account for the
+existence of different languages. The Thlinkithians are one of the
+four principal races inhabiting Russian America. They are called
+Kaljush, Koljush, or Kolosh by the Russians, and inhabit the coast
+from about 60&deg; to 45&deg; N.L., reaching therefore across the Russian
+frontier as far as the Columbia River, and they likewise hold many of
+the neighbouring islands. Weniaminow estimates their number, both in
+the Russian and English colonies, at 20 to 25,000. They are evidently
+a decreasing race, and their legends, which seem to be numerous and
+full of original ideas, would well deserve the careful attention of
+American ethnologists. Wrangel suspected a relationship between them
+and the Aztecs of Mexico. These Thlinkithians believe in a general
+flood or deluge, and that men saved themselves in a large floating
+building. When the waters fell, the building was wrecked on a rock,
+and by its own weight burst into two pieces. Hence arose the
+difference of languages. The Thlinkithians with their language
+remained on one side; on the other side were all the other races of
+the earth.<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span></p>
+<p>Neither the Esthonian nor the Thlinkithian legend, however, offers any
+striking points of coincidence with the Mosaic accounts. The
+analogies, therefore, as well as the discrepancies, between the ninth
+chapter of Genesis and the chapter here translated from the Quich&eacute; MS.
+require special attention:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'All had but one language, and they did not invoke as yet
+either wood or stones; they only remembered the word of the
+Creator, the Heart of heaven and earth.</p>
+
+<p>'And they spoke while meditating on what was hidden by the
+spring of day; and full of the sacred word, full of love,
+obedience, and fear, they made their prayers, and lifting
+their eyes up to heaven, they asked for sons and daughters:</p>
+
+<p>'"Hail! O Creator and Fashioner, thou who seest and hearest
+us! do not forsake us, O God, who art in heaven and earth,
+Heart of the sky, Heart of the earth! Give us offspring and
+descendants as long as the sun and dawn shall advance. Let
+there be seed and light. Let us always walk on open paths,
+on roads where there is no ambush. Let us always be quiet
+and in peace with those who are ours. May our lives run on
+happily. Give us a life secure from reproach. Let there be
+seed for harvest, and let there be light."</p>
+
+<p>'They then proceeded to the town of Tulan, where they
+received their gods.</p>
+
+<p>'And when all the tribes were there gathered together, their
+speech was changed, and they did not understand each other
+after they arrived at Tulan. It was there that they
+separated, and some went to the East, others came here. Even
+the language of the four ancestors of the human race became
+different.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span> "Alas," they said, "we have left our language.
+How has this happened? We are ruined! How could we have been
+led into error? We had but one language when we came to
+Tulan; our form of worship was but one. What we have done is
+not good," replied all the tribes in the woods and under the
+lianas.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The rest of the work, which consists altogether of four books, is
+taken up with an account of the migrations of the tribes from the
+East, and their various settlements. The four ancestors of the race
+seem to have had a long life, and when at last they came to die, they
+disappeared in a mysterious manner, and left to their sons what is
+called the Hidden Majesty, which was never to be opened by human
+hands. What it was we do not know. There are many subjects of interest
+in the chapters which follow, only we must not look there for history,
+although the author evidently accepts as truly historical what he
+tells us about the successive generations of kings. But when he brings
+us down at last, after sundry migrations, wars, and rebellions, to the
+arrival of the Castilians, we find that between the first four
+ancestors of the human or of the Quich&eacute; race and the last of their
+royal dynasties, there intervene only fourteen generations, and the
+author, whoever he was, ends with the confession:</p>
+
+<p>'This is all that remains of the existence of Quich&eacute;; for it is
+impossible to see the book in which formerly the kings could read
+everything, as it has disappeared. It is over with all those of
+Quich&eacute;! It is now called Santa-Cruz!'</p>
+
+<p class="f3"><i>March, 1862.</i></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> 'Popol Vuh:' le Livre Sacr&eacute; et les Mythes de l'Antiquit&eacute;
+Am&eacute;ricaine, avec les Livres H&eacute;ro&iuml;ques et Historiques des Quich&eacute;s. Par
+l'Abb&eacute; Brasseur de Bourbourg. Paris: Durand, 1861.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> 'Manuscrit Pictographique Am&eacute;ricain,' pr&eacute;c&eacute;d&eacute; d'une
+Notice sur l'Id&eacute;ographie des Peaux-Rouges. Par l'Abb&eacute; Em. Domenech.
+Ouvrage publi&eacute; sous les auspices de M. le Ministre d'Etat et de la
+Maison de l'Empereur. Paris, 1860.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> 'Das Buch der Wilden im Lichte Franz&ouml;sischer
+Civilisation.' Mit Proben aus dem in Paris als 'Manuscrit
+Pictographique Am&eacute;ricain,' ver&ouml;ffentlichten Schmierbuche eines
+Deutsch-Amerikanischen Hinterw&auml;lder Jungen. Von J. Petzholdt. Dresden,
+1861.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> 'Manuscrit Pictographique,' pp. 26, 29.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> Mr. A. Helps was the first to point out the importance
+of this work in his excellent 'History of the Spanish Conquest in
+America.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> Holmberg, 'Ethnographische Skizzen &uuml;ber die V&ouml;lker des
+Russischen Amerika,' Helsingfors, 1855.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV.</h2>
+
+<h2>SEMITIC MONOTHEISM.<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a></h2>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;work such as M. Renan's 'Histoire G&eacute;n&eacute;rale et Syst&egrave;me Compar&eacute; des
+Langues S&eacute;mitiques' can only be reviewed chapter by chapter. It
+contains a survey not only, as its title would lead us to suppose, of
+the Semitic languages, but of the Semitic languages and nations; and,
+considering that the whole history of the civilised world has hitherto
+been acted by two races only, the Semitic and the Aryan, with
+occasional interruptions produced by the inroads of the Turanian race,
+M. Renan's work comprehends in reality half of the history of the
+ancient world. We have received as yet the first volume only of this
+important work, and before the author had time to finish the second,
+he was called upon to publish a second edition of the first, which
+appeared in 1858, with important additions and alterations.</p>
+
+<p>In writing the history of the Semitic race it is necessary to lay down
+certain general characteristics <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span>common to all the members of that
+race, before we can speak of nations so widely separated from each
+other as the Jews, the Babylonians, Phenicians, Carthaginians, and
+Arabs, as one race or family. The most important bond which binds
+these scattered tribes together into one ideal whole is to be found in
+their language. There can be as little doubt that the dialects of all
+the Semitic nations are derived from one common type as there is about
+the derivation of French, Spanish, and Italian from Latin, or of
+Latin, Greek, German, Celtic, Slavonic, and Sanskrit from the
+primitive idiom of the ancestors of the Aryan race. The evidence of
+language would by itself be quite sufficient to establish the fact
+that the Semitic nations descended from common ancestors, and
+constitute what, in the science of language, may be called a distinct
+race. But M. Renan was not satisfied with this single criterion of the
+relationship of the Semitic tribes, and he has endeavoured to draw,
+partly from his own observations, partly from the suggestions of other
+scholars, such as Ewald and Lassen, a more complete portrait of the
+Semitic man. This was no easy task. It was like drawing the portrait
+of a whole family, omitting all that is peculiar to each individual
+member, and yet preserving the features which, constitute the general
+family likeness. The result has been what might be expected. Critics
+most familiar with one or the other branch of the Semitic family have
+each and all protested that they can see no likeness in the portrait.
+It seems to some to contain features which it ought not to contain,
+whereas others miss the very expression which appears to them most
+striking.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The following is a short abstract of what M. Renan considers the
+salient points in the Semitic character:</p>
+
+<p>'Their character,' he says, 'is religious rather than political, and
+the mainspring of their religion is the conception of the unity of
+God. Their religious phraseology is simple, and free from mythological
+elements. Their religious feelings are strong, exclusive, intolerant,
+and sustained by a fervour which finds its peculiar expression in
+prophetic visions. Compared to the Aryan nations, they are found
+deficient in scientific and philosophical originality. Their poetry is
+chiefly subjective or lyrical, and we look in vain among their poets
+for excellence in epic and dramatic compositions. Painting and the
+plastic arts have never arrived at a higher than the decorative stage.
+Their political life has remained patriarchal and despotic, and their
+inability to organise on a large scale has deprived them of the means
+of military success. Perhaps the most general feature of their
+character is a negative one,&mdash;their inability to perceive the general
+and the abstract, whether in thought, language, religion, poetry, or
+politics; and, on the other hand, a strong attraction towards the
+individual and personal, which makes them monotheistic in religion,
+lyrical in poetry, monarchical in politics, abrupt in style, and
+impractical for speculation.'</p>
+
+<p>One cannot look at this bold and rapid outline of the Semitic
+character without perceiving how many points it contains which are
+open to doubt and discussion. We shall confine our remarks to one
+point, which, in our mind, and, as far as we can see, in M. Renan's
+mind likewise, is the most important of all&mdash;namely, the supposed
+monotheistic tendency of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span> the Semitic race. M. Renan asserts that this
+tendency belongs to the race by instinct,&mdash;that it forms the rule, not
+the exception; and he seems to imply that without it the human race
+would never have arrived at the knowledge or worship of the One God.</p>
+
+<p>If such a remark had been made fifty years ago, it would have roused
+little or no opposition. 'Semitic' was then used in a more restricted
+sense, and hardly comprehended more than the Jews and Arabs. Of this
+small group of people it might well have been said, with such
+limitations as are tacitly implied in every general proposition on the
+character of individuals or nations, that the work set apart for them
+by a Divine Providence in the history of the world was the preaching
+of a belief in one God. Three religions have been founded by members
+of that more circumscribed Semitic family&mdash;the Jewish, the Christian,
+the Mohammedan; and all three proclaim, with the strongest accent, the
+doctrine that there is but one God.</p>
+
+<p>Of late, however, not only have the limits of the Semitic family been
+considerably extended, so as to embrace several nations notorious for
+their idolatrous worship, but the history of the Jewish and Arab
+tribes has been explored so much more fully, that even there traces of
+a wide-spread tendency to polytheism have come to light.</p>
+
+<p>The Semitic family is divided by M. Renan into two great branches,
+differing from each other in the form of their monotheistic belief,
+yet both, according to their historian, imbued from the beginning with
+the instinctive faith in one God:</p>
+
+<p>1. The nomad branch, consisting of Arabs, Hebrews,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span> and the
+neighbouring tribes of Palestine, commonly called the descendants of
+Terah; and</p>
+
+<p>2. The political branch, including the nations of Phenicia, of Syria,
+Mesopotamia, and Yemen.</p>
+
+<p>Can it be said that all these nations, comprising the worshippers of
+Elohim, Jehovah, Sabaoth, Moloch, Nisroch, Rimmon, Nebo, Dagon,
+Ashtaroth, Baal or Bel, Baal-peor, Baal-zebub, Chemosh, Milcom,
+Adrammelech, Annamelech, Nibhaz and Tartak, Ashima, Nergal,
+Succoth-benoth, the Sun, Moon, planets, and all the host of heaven,
+were endowed with a monotheistic instinct? M. Renan admits that
+monotheism has always had its principal bulwark in the nomadic branch,
+but he maintains that it has by no means been so unknown among the
+members of the political branch as is commonly supposed. But where are
+the criteria by which, in the same manner as their dialects, the
+religions of the Semitic races could be distinguished from the
+religions of the Aryan and Turanian races? We can recognise any
+Semitic dialect by the triliteral character of its roots. Is it
+possible to discover similar radical elements in all the forms of
+faith, primary or secondary, primitive or derivative, of the Semitic
+tribes? M. Renan thinks that it is. He imagines that he hears the
+key-note of a pure monotheism through all the wild shoutings of the
+priests of Baal and other Semitic idols, and he denies the presence of
+that key-note in any of the religious systems of the Aryan nations,
+whether Greeks or Romans, Germans or Celts, Hindus or Persians. Such
+an assertion could not but rouse considerable opposition, and so
+strong seems to have been the remonstrances addressed to M. Renan by
+several of his colleagues in the French Institute<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span> that, without
+awaiting the publication of the second volume of his great work, he
+has thought it right to publish part of it as a separate pamphlet. In
+his 'Nouvelles Consid&eacute;rations sur le Caract&egrave;re G&eacute;n&eacute;ral des Peuples
+S&eacute;mitiques, et en particulier sur leur Tendance au Monoth&eacute;isme,' he
+endeavours to silence the objections raised against the leading idea
+of his history of the Semitic race. It is an essay which exhibits not
+only the comprehensive knowledge of the scholar, but the warmth and
+alacrity of the advocate. With M. Renan the monotheistic character of
+the descendants of Shem is not only a scientific tenet, but a moral
+conviction. He wishes that his whole work should stand or fall with
+this thesis, and it becomes, therefore, all the more the duty of the
+critic, to inquire whether the arguments which he brings forward in
+support of his favourite idea are valid or not.</p>
+
+<p>It is but fair to M. Renan that, in examining his statements, we
+should pay particular attention to any slight modifications which he
+may himself have adopted in his last memoir. In his history he asserts
+with great confidence, and somewhat broadly, that 'le monoth&eacute;isme
+r&eacute;sume et explique tous les caract&egrave;res de la race S&eacute;mitique.' In his
+later pamphlet he is more captious. As an experienced pleader he is
+ready to make many concessions in order to gain all the more readily
+our assent to his general proposition. He points out himself with
+great candour the weaker points of his argument, though, of course,
+only in order to return with unabated courage to his first
+position,&mdash;that of all the races of mankind the Semitic race alone was
+endowed with the instinct of monotheism. As it is impossible to deny
+the fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span> that the Semitic nations, in spite of this supposed
+monotheistic instinct, were frequently addicted to the most degraded
+forms of a polytheistic idolatry, and that even the Jews, the most
+monotheistic of all, frequently provoked the anger of the Lord by
+burning incense to other gods, M. Renan remarks that when he speaks of
+a nation in general he only speaks of the intellectual aristocracy of
+that nation. He appeals in self-defence to the manner in which
+historians lay down the character of modern nations. 'The French,' he
+says, 'are repeatedly called "<i>une nation spirituelle</i>," and yet no
+one would wish to assert either that every Frenchman is <i>spirituel</i>,
+or that no one could be <i>spirituel</i> who is not a Frenchman.' Now, here
+we may grant to M. Renan that if we speak of '<i>esprit</i>' we naturally
+think of the intellectual minority only, and not of the whole bulk of
+a nation; but if we speak of religion, the case is different. If we
+say that the French believe in one God only, or that they are
+Christians, we speak not only of the intellectual aristocracy of
+France but of every man, woman, and child born and bred in France.
+Even if we say that the French are Roman Catholics, we do so only
+because we know that there is a decided majority in France in favour
+of the unreformed system of Christianity. But if, because some of the
+most distinguished writers of France have paraded their contempt for
+all religious dogmas, we were to say broadly that the French are a
+nation without religion, we should justly be called to order for
+abusing the legitimate privileges of generalization. The fact that
+Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and Jeremiah were firm believers in one God
+could not be considered sufficient to support the general proposition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span>
+that the Jewish nation was monotheistic by instinct. And if we
+remember that among the other Semitic races we should look in vain for
+even four such names, the case would seem to be desperate to any one
+but M. Renan.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot believe that M. Renan would be satisfied with the admission
+that there had been among the Jews a few leading men who believed in
+one God, or that the existence of but one God was an article of faith
+not quite unknown among the other Semitic races; yet he has hardly
+proved more. He has collected, with great learning and ingenuity, all
+traces of monotheism in the annals of the Semitic nations; but he has
+taken no pains to discover the traces of polytheism, whether faint or
+distinct, which are disclosed in the same annals. In acting the part
+of an advocate he has for a time divested himself of the nobler
+character of the historian.</p>
+
+<p>If M. Renan had looked with equal zeal for the scattered vestiges both
+of a monotheistic and of a polytheistic worship, he would have drawn,
+perhaps, a less striking, but we believe a more faithful, portrait of
+the Semitic man. We may accept all the facts of M. Renan, for his
+facts are almost always to be trusted; but we cannot accept his
+conclusions, because they would be in contradiction to other facts
+which M. Renan places too much in the background, or ignores
+altogether. Besides, there is something in the very conclusions to
+which he is driven by his too partial evidence which jars on our ears,
+and betrays a want of harmony in the premises on which he builds.
+Taking his stand on the fact that the Jewish race was the first of all
+the nations of the world to arrive at the knowledge of one God,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span> M.
+Renan proceeds to argue that, if their monotheism had been the result
+of a persevering mental effort&mdash;if it had been a discovery like the
+philosophical or scientific discoveries of the Greeks, it would be
+necessary to admit that the Jews surpassed all other nations of the
+world in intellect and vigour of speculation. This, he admits, is
+contrary to fact:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Apart la sup&eacute;riorit&eacute; de son culte, le peuple juif n'en a
+aucune autre; c'est un des peuples les moins dou&eacute;s pour la
+science et la philosophie parmi les peuples de l'antiquit&eacute;;
+il n'a une grande position ni politique ni militaire. Ses
+institutions sont purement conservatrices; les proph&egrave;tes,
+qui repr&eacute;sentent excellemment son g&eacute;nie, sont des hommes
+essentiellement r&eacute;actionnaires, se reportant toujours vers
+un id&eacute;al ant&eacute;rieur. Comment expliquer, au sein d'une soci&eacute;t&eacute;
+aussi &eacute;troite et aussi peu d&eacute;velopp&eacute;e, une r&eacute;volution
+d'id&eacute;es qu'Ath&egrave;nes et Alexandrie n'ont pas r&eacute;ussi &agrave;
+accomplir?'</p></div>
+
+<p>M. Renan then defines the monotheism of the Jews, and of the Semitic
+nations in general, as the result of a low, rather than of a high
+state of intellectual cultivation: 'Il s'en faut,' he writes (p. 40),
+'que le monoth&eacute;isme soit le produit d'une race qui a des id&eacute;es
+exalt&eacute;es en fait de religion; c'est en r&eacute;alit&eacute; le fruit d'une race qui
+a peu de besoins religieux. C'est comme <i>minimum</i> de religion, en fait
+de dogmes et en fait de pratiques ext&eacute;rieures, que le monoth&eacute;isme est
+surtout accommod&eacute; aux besoins des populations nomades.'</p>
+
+<p>But even this <i>minimum</i> of religious reflection which is required,
+according to M. Renan, for the perception of the unity of God, he
+grudges to the Semitic nations, and he is driven in the end (p. 73)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span>
+to explain the Semitic Monotheism as the result of a <span class="sp1">religious
+instinct</span>, analogous to the instinct which led each race to the
+formation of its own language.</p>
+
+<p>Here we miss the usual clearness and precision which distinguish most
+of M. Renan's works. It is always dangerous to transfer expressions
+from one branch of knowledge to another. The word 'instinct' has its
+legitimate application in natural history, where it is used of the
+unconscious acts of unconscious beings. We say that birds build their
+nests by instinct, that fishes swim by instinct, that cats catch mice
+by instinct; and, though no natural philosopher has yet explained what
+instinct is, yet we accept the term as a conventional expression for
+an unknown power working in the animal world.</p>
+
+<p>If we transfer this word to the unconscious acts of conscious beings,
+we must necessarily alter its definition. We may speak of an
+instinctive motion of the arm, but we only mean a motion which has
+become so habitual as to require no longer any special effort of the
+will.</p>
+
+<p>If, however, we transfer the word to the conscious thoughts of
+conscious beings, we strain the word beyond its natural capacities, we
+use it in order to avoid other terms which would commit us to the
+admission either of innate ideas or inspired truths. We use a word in
+order to avoid a definition. It may sound more scientific to speak of
+a monotheistic instinct rather than of the inborn image or the
+revealed truth of the One living God; but is instinct less mysterious
+than revelation? Can there be an instinct without an instigation or an
+instigator? And whose hand was it that instigated the Semitic mind to
+the worship of one God? Could the same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span> hand have instigated the Aryan
+mind to the worship of many gods? Could the monotheistic instinct of
+the Semitic race, if an instinct, have been so frequently obscured, or
+the polytheistic instinct of the Aryan race, if an instinct, so
+completely annihilated, as to allow the Jews to worship on all the
+high places round Jerusalem, and the Greeks and Romans to become
+believers in Christ? Fishes never fly, and cats never catch frogs.
+These are the difficulties into which we are led; and they arise
+simply and solely from our using words for their sound rather than for
+their meaning. We begin by playing with words, but in the end the
+words will play with us.</p>
+
+<p>There are, in fact, various kinds of monotheism, and it becomes our
+duty to examine more carefully what they mean and how they arise.
+There is one kind of monotheism, though it would more properly be
+called theism, or henotheism, which forms the birthright of every
+human being. What distinguishes man from all other creatures, and not
+only raises him above the animal world, but removes him altogether
+from the confines of a merely natural existence, is the feeling of
+sonship inherent in and inseparable from human nature. That feeling
+may find expression in a thousand ways, but there breathes through all
+of them the inextinguishable conviction, 'It is He that hath made us,
+and not we ourselves.' That feeling of sonship may with some races
+manifest itself in fear and trembling, and it may drive whole
+generations into religious madness and devil worship. In other
+countries it may tempt the creature into a fatal familiarity with the
+Creator, and end in an apotheosis of man, or a headlong plunging of
+the human into the divine. It may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span> take, as with the Jews, the form of
+a simple assertion that 'Adam was the son of God,' or it may be
+clothed in the mythological phraseology of the Hindus, that Manu, or
+man, was the descendant of Svayambhu, the Self-existing. But, in some
+form or other, the feeling of dependence on a higher Power breaks
+through in all the religions of the world, and explains to us the
+meaning of St. Paul, 'that God, though in times past He suffered all
+nations to walk in their own ways, nevertheless He left not Himself
+without witness, in that He did good and gave us rain from heaven, and
+fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.'</p>
+
+<p>This primitive intuition of God and the ineradicable feeling of
+dependence on God, could only have been the result of a primitive
+revelation, in the truest sense of that word. Man, who owed his
+existence to God, and whose being centred and rested in God, saw and
+felt God as the only source of his own and of all other existence. By
+the very act of the creation, God had revealed Himself. There He was,
+manifested in His works, in all His majesty and power, before the face
+of those to whom He had given eyes to see and ears to hear, and into
+whose nostrils He had breathed the breath of life, even the Spirit of
+God.</p>
+
+<p>This primitive intuition of God, however, was in itself neither
+monotheistic nor polytheistic, though it might become either,
+according to the expression which it took in the languages of man. It
+was this primitive intuition which supplied either the subject or the
+predicate in all the religions of the world, and without it no
+religion, whether true or false, whether revealed or natural, could
+have had even its first beginning. It is too often forgotten by those
+who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span> believe that a polytheistic worship was the most natural
+unfolding of religious life, that polytheism must everywhere have been
+preceded by a more or less conscious theism. In no language does the
+plural exist before the singular. No human mind could have conceived
+the idea of gods without having previously conceived the idea of a
+god. It would be, however, quite as great a mistake to imagine,
+because the idea of a god must exist previously to that of gods, that
+therefore a belief in One God preceded everywhere the belief in many
+gods. A belief in God as exclusively One, involves a distinct negation
+of more than one God, and that negation is possible only after the
+conception, whether real or imaginary, of many gods.</p>
+
+<p>The primitive intuition of the Godhead is neither monotheistic nor
+polytheistic, and it finds its most natural expression in the simplest
+and yet the most important article of faith&mdash;that God is God. This
+must have been the faith of the ancestors of mankind previously to any
+division of race or confusion of tongues. It might seem, indeed, as if
+in such a faith the oneness of God, though not expressly asserted, was
+implied, and that it existed, though latent, in the first revelation
+of God. History, however, proves that the question of oneness was yet
+undecided in that primitive faith, and that the intuition of God was
+not yet secured against the illusions of a double vision. There are,
+in reality, two kinds of oneness which, when we enter into
+metaphysical discussions, must be carefully distinguished, and which
+for practical purposes are well kept separate by the definite and
+indefinite articles. There is one kind of oneness which does not
+exclude the idea of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span> plurality; there is another which does. When we
+say that Cromwell was a Protector of England, we do not assert that he
+was the only protector. But if we say that he was the Protector of
+England, it is understood that he was the only man who enjoyed that
+title. If, therefore, an expression had been given to that primitive
+intuition of the Deity, which is the mainspring of all later religion,
+it would have been&mdash;'There is a God,' but not yet 'There is but "One
+God."' The latter form of faith, the belief in One God, is properly
+called monotheism, whereas the term of henotheism would best express
+the faith in a single god.</p>
+
+<p>We must bear in mind that we are here speaking of a period in the
+history of mankind when, together with the awakening of ideas, the
+first attempts only were being made at expressing the simplest
+conceptions by means of a language most simple, most sensuous, and
+most unwieldy. There was as yet no word sufficiently reduced by the
+wear and tear of thought to serve as an adequate expression for the
+abstract idea of an immaterial and supernatural Being. There were
+words for walking and shouting, for cutting and burning, for dog and
+cow, for house and wall, for sun and moon, for day and night. Every
+object was called by some quality which had struck the eye as most
+peculiar and characteristic. But what quality should be predicated of
+that Being of which man knew as yet nothing but its existence?
+Language possessed as yet no auxiliary verbs. The very idea of being
+without the attributes of quality or action, had never entered into
+the human mind. How then was that Being to be called which had
+revealed its existence, and continued to make itself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span> felt by
+everything that most powerfully impressed the awakening mind, but
+which as yet was known only like a subterraneous spring by the waters
+which it poured forth with inexhaustible strength? When storm and
+lightning drove a father with his helpless family to seek refuge in
+the forests, and the fall of mighty trees crushed at his side those
+who were most dear to him, there were, no doubt, feelings of terror
+and awe, of helplessness and dependence, in the human heart which
+burst forth in a shriek for pity or help from the only Being that
+could command the storm. But there was no name by which He could be
+called. There might be names for the storm-wind and the thunderbolt,
+but these were not the names applicable to Him that rideth upon the
+heavens of heavens, which were of old. Again, when after a wild and
+tearful night the sun dawned in the morning, smiling on man&mdash;when
+after a dreary and deathlike winter spring came again with its
+sunshine and flowers, there were feelings of joy and gratitude, of
+love and adoration in the heart of every human being; but though there
+were names for the sun and the spring, for the bright sky and the
+brilliant dawn, there was no word by which to call the source of all
+this gladness, the giver of light and life.</p>
+
+<p>At the time when we may suppose that the first attempts at finding a
+name for God were made, the divergence of the languages of mankind had
+commenced. We cannot dwell here on the causes which led to the
+multiplicity of human speech; but whether we look on the confusion of
+tongues as a natural or supernatural event, it was an event which the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span>
+science of language has proved to have been inevitable. The ancestors
+of the Semitic and the Aryan nations had long become unintelligible to
+each other in their conversations on the most ordinary topics, when
+they each in their own way began to look for a proper name for God.
+Now one of the most striking differences between the Aryan and the
+Semitic forms of speech was this:&mdash;In the Semitic languages the roots
+expressive of the predicates which were to serve as the proper names
+of any subjects, remained so distinct within the body of a word, that
+those who used the word were unable to forget its predicative meaning,
+and retained in most cases a distinct consciousness of its appellative
+power. In the Aryan languages, on the contrary, the significative
+element, or the root of a word, was apt to become so completely
+absorbed by the derivative elements, whether prefixes or suffixes,
+that most substantives ceased almost immediately to be appellative,
+and were changed into mere names or proper names. What we mean can
+best be illustrated by the fact that the dictionaries of Semitic
+languages are mostly arranged according to their roots. When we wish
+to find the meaning of a word in Hebrew or Arabic we first look for
+its root, whether triliteral or biliteral, and then look in the
+dictionary for that root and its derivatives. In the Aryan languages,
+on the contrary, such an arrangement would be extremely inconvenient.
+In many words it is impossible to detect the radical element. In
+others, after the root is discovered, we find that it has not given
+birth to any other derivatives which would throw their converging rays
+of light on its radical meaning. In other cases, again, such seems to
+have been the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span> boldness of the original name-giver that we can hardly
+enter into the idiosyncrasy which assigned such a name to such an
+object.</p>
+
+<p>This peculiarity of the Semitic and Aryan languages must have had the
+greatest influence on the formation of their religious phraseology.
+The Semitic man would call on God in adjectives only, or in words
+which always conveyed a predicative meaning. Every one of his words
+was more or less predicative, and he was therefore restricted in his
+choice to such words as expressed some one or other of the abstract
+qualities of the Deity. The Aryan man was less fettered in his choice.
+Let us take an instance. Being startled by the sound of thunder, he
+would at first express his impression by the single phrase, <span class="sp1">It
+thunders</span>,&mdash;&#946;&#961;&#959;&#965;&#964;&#8118;. Here the idea of God is understood rather
+than expressed, very much in the same manner as the Semitic proper
+names <span class="sp1">Zabd</span> (present), <span class="sp1">Abd</span> (servant), <span class="sp1">Aus</span> (present), are habitually
+used for <span class="sp1">Zabd-allah</span>, <span class="sp1">Abd-allah</span>, <span class="sp1">Aus-allah</span>,&mdash;the servant of God, the
+gift of God. It would be more in accordance with the feelings and
+thoughts of those who first used these so-called impersonal verbs to
+translate them by <span class="sp1">He thunders</span>, <span class="sp1">He rains</span>, <span class="sp1">He snows</span>. Afterwards, instead
+of the simple impersonal verb <span class="sp1">He thunders</span>, another expression
+naturally suggested itself. The thunder came from the sky, the sky was
+frequently called <span class="sp1">Dyaus</span> (the bright one), in Greek &#918;&#949;&#8017;&#962;; and
+though it was not the bright sky which thundered, but the dark, yet
+<span class="sp1">Dyaus</span> had already ceased to be an expressive predicate, it had become
+a traditional name, and hence there was nothing to prevent an Aryan
+man from saying <span class="sp1">Dyaus</span>, or <span class="sp1">the sky thunders</span>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span> in Greek &#918;&#949;&#8017;&#962; &#946;&#961;&#959;&#965;&#964;&#8118;. Let us here mark the almost irresistible influence of
+language on the mind. The word <span class="sp1">Dyaus</span>, which at first meant <span class="sp1">bright</span>, had
+lost its radical meaning, and now meant simply <span class="sp1">sky</span>. It then entered
+into a new stage. The idea which had first been expressed by the
+pronoun or the termination of the third person, <span class="sp1">He thunders</span>, was taken
+up into the word <span class="sp1">Dyaus</span>, or <span class="sp1">sky</span>. <span class="sp1">He thunders</span>, and <span class="sp1">Dyaus thunders</span>,
+became synonymous expressions, and by the mere habit of speech <span class="sp1">He</span>
+became <span class="sp1">Dyaus</span>, and <span class="sp1">Dyaus</span> became <span class="sp1">He</span>. Henceforth <span class="sp1">Dyaus</span> remained as an
+appellative of that unseen though ever present Power, which had
+revealed its existence to man from the beginning, but which remained
+without a name long after every beast of the field and every fowl of
+the air had been named by Adam.</p>
+
+<p>Now, what happened in this instance with the name of <span class="sp1">Dyaus</span>, happened
+again and again with other names. When men felt the presence of God in
+the great and strong wind, in the earthquake, or the fire, they said
+at first, <span class="sp1">He storms</span>, <span class="sp1">He shakes</span>, <span class="sp1">He burns</span>. But they likewise said, the
+storm (<span class="sp1">Marut</span>) blows, the fire (<span class="sp1">Agni</span>) burns, the subterraneous fire
+(<span class="sp1">Vulcanus</span>) upheaves the earth. And after a time the result was the
+same as before, and the words meaning originally wind or fire were
+used, under certain restrictions, as names of the unknown God. As long
+as all these names were remembered as mere names or attributes of one
+and the same Divine Power, there was as yet no polytheism, though, no
+doubt, every new name threatened to obscure more and more the
+primitive intuition of God. At first, the names of God, like fetishes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span>
+or statues, were honest attempts at expressing or representing an idea
+which could never find an adequate expression or representation. But
+the <span class="sp1">eidolon</span>, or likeness, became an <span class="sp1">idol</span>; the <span class="sp1">nomen</span>, or name, lapsed
+into a <span class="sp1">numen</span>, or demon, as soon as they were drawn away from their
+original intention. If the Greeks had remembered that Zeus was but a
+name or symbol of the Deity, there would have been no more harm in
+calling God by that name than by any other. If they had remembered
+that Kronos, and Uranos, and Apollon were all but so many attempts at
+naming the various sides, or manifestations, or aspects, or persons of
+the Deity, they might have used these names in the hours of their
+various needs, just as the Jews called on Jehovah, Elohim, and
+Sabaoth, or as Roman Catholics implore the help of Nunziata, Dolores,
+and Notre-Dame-de-Grace.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, is the difference between the Aryan and Semitic
+nomenclature for the Deity? Why are we told that the pious invocations
+of the Aryan world turned into a blasphemous mocking of the Deity,
+whereas the Semitic nations are supposed to have found from the first
+the true name of God? Before we look anywhere else for an answer to
+the question, we must look to language itself, and here we see that
+the Semitic dialects could never, by any possibility, have produced
+such names as the Sanskrit <span class="sp1">Dyaus</span> (Zeus), <span class="sp1">Varu<i>n</i>a</span> (Uranos), <span class="sp1">Marut</span>
+(Storm, Mars), or <span class="sp1">Ushas</span> (Eos). They had no doubt names for the bright
+sky, for the tent of heaven, and for the dawn. But these names were so
+distinctly felt as appellatives, that they could never be thought of
+as proper names, whether as names of the Deity, or as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span> names of
+deities. This peculiarity has been illustrated with great skill by M.
+Renan. We differ from him when he tries to explain the difference
+between the mythological phraseology of the Aryan and the theological
+phraseology of the Semitic races, by assigning to each a peculiar
+theological instinct. We cannot, in fact, see how the admission of
+such an instinct, i. e. of an unknown and incomprehensible power,
+helps us in any way whatsoever to comprehend this curious mental
+process. His problem, however, is exactly the same as ours, and it
+would be impossible to state that problem in a more telling manner
+than he has done.</p>
+
+<p>'The rain,' he says (p. 79), 'is represented, in all the primitive
+mythologies of the Aryan race, as the fruit of the embraces of Heaven
+and Earth.' 'The bright sky,' says &AElig;schylus, in a passage which one
+might suppose was taken from the Vedas, 'loves to penetrate the earth;
+the earth on her part aspires to the heavenly marriage. Rain falling
+from the loving sky impregnates the earth, and she produces for
+mortals pastures of the flocks and the gifts of Ceres.' In the Book of
+Job,<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> on the contrary, it is God who tears open the waterskins of
+Heaven (xxxviii. 37), who opens the courses for the floods (ibid. 25),
+who engenders the drops of dew (ibid. 28):</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'He draws towards Him the mists from the waters,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which pour down as rain, and form their vapours.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Afterwards the clouds spread them out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They fall as drops on the crowds of men.' (Job xxxvi. 27, 28.)<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span></p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'He charges the night with damp vapours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He drives before Him the thunder-bearing cloud.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is driven to one side or the other by His command.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To execute all that He ordains<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the face of the universe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether it be to punish His creatures<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or to make thereof a proof of His mercy,' (Job xxxvii. 11-13.)<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Or, again, Proverbs xxx. 4:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Who hath gathered the wind in His fists? Who hath bound the
+waters in a garment? Who hath established all the ends of
+the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son's name, if
+thou canst tell?'</p></div>
+
+<p>It has been shown by ample evidence from the Rig-veda how many mythes
+were suggested to the Aryan world by various names of the dawn, the
+day-spring of life. The language of the ancient Aryans of India had
+thrown out many names for that heavenly apparition, and every name, as
+it ceased to be understood, became, like a decaying seed, the germ of
+an abundant growth of mythe and legend. Why should not the same have
+happened to the Semitic names for the dawn? Simply and solely because
+the Semitic words had no tendency to phonetic corruption; simply and
+solely because they continued to be felt as appellatives, and would
+inevitably have defeated every attempt at mythological phraseology
+such as we find in India and Greece. When the dawn is mentioned in the
+Book of Job (ix. 11), it is God 'who commandeth the sun and it riseth
+not, and sealeth up the stars.' It is His power which causeth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span> the
+day-spring to know its place, that it might take hold of the ends of
+the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it (Job xxxviii. 12,
+13; Renan, 'Livre de Job,' pref. 71). <span class="sp1">Shahar</span>, the dawn, never becomes
+an independent agent; she is never spoken of as Eos rising from the
+bed of her husband Tithonos (the setting sun), solely and simply
+because the word retained its power as an appellative, and thus could
+not enter into any mythological metamorphosis.</p>
+
+<p>Even in Greece there are certain words which have remained so pellucid
+as to prove unfit for mythological refraction. <span class="sp1">Selene</span> in Greek is so
+clearly the moon that her name would pierce through the darkest clouds
+of mythe and fable. Call her <span class="sp1">Hecate</span>, and she will bear any disguise,
+however fanciful. It is the same with the Latin <span class="sp1">Luna</span>. She is too
+clearly the moon to be mistaken for anything else, but call her
+<span class="sp1">Lucina</span>, and she will readily enter into various mythological phases.
+If, then, the names of sun and moon, of thunder and lightning, of
+light and day, of night and dawn could not yield to the Semitic races
+fit appellatives for the Deity, where were they to be found? If the
+names of Heaven or Earth jarred on their ears as names unfit for the
+Creator, where could they find more appropriate terms? They would not
+have objected to real names such as <span class="sp1">Jupiter Optimus Maximus</span>, or
+&#918;&#949;&#8016;&#962; &#954;&#8017;&#948;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#959;&#962; &#956;&#7953;&#947;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#959;&#962;, if such words could have been framed
+in their dialects, and the names of Jupiter and Zeus could have been
+so ground down as to become synonymous with the general term for
+'God.' Not even the Jews could have given a more exalted definition of
+the Deity than that of <span class="sp1">Optimus Maximus</span>&mdash;the Best and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span> Greatest;
+and their very name of God, Jehovah, is generally supposed to mean no
+more than what the Peleiades of Dodona said of Zeus, &#918;&#949;&#8016;&#962; &#7974;&#957;, &#918;&#949;&#8016;&#962; &#7952;&#963;&#964;&#7985;&#957;, &#918;&#949;&#8016;&#962; &#7955;&#963;&#963;&#949;&#964;&#945;&#953; &#8038; &#956;&#949;&#947;&#7937;&#955;&#949; &#918;&#949;&#8166;, 'He was, He is, He will be, Oh
+great Zeus!' Not being able to form such substantives as Dyaus, or
+Varu<i>n</i>a, or Indra, the descendants of Shem fixed on the predicates
+which in the Aryan prayers follow the name of the Deity, and called
+Him the Best and the Greatest, the Lord and King. If we examine the
+numerous names of the Deity in the Semitic dialects we find that they
+are all adjectives, expressive of moral qualities. There is <span class="sp1">El</span>,
+strong; <span class="sp1">Bel</span> or <span class="sp1">Baal</span>, Lord; <span class="sp1">Beel-samin</span>, Lord of Heaven; <span class="sp1">Adonis</span> (in
+Phenicia), Lord; <span class="sp1">Marnas</span> (at Gaza), our Lord; <span class="sp1">Shet</span>, Master, afterwards
+a demon; <span class="sp1">Moloch</span>, <span class="sp1">Milcom</span>, <span class="sp1">Malika</span>, King; <span class="sp1">Eliun</span>, the Highest (the God of
+Melchisedek); <span class="sp1">Ram</span> and <span class="sp1">Rimmon</span>, the Exalted; and many more names, all
+originally adjectives and expressive of certain general qualities of
+the Deity, but all raised by one or the other of the Semitic tribes to
+be the names of God or of that idea which the first breath of life,
+the first sight of this world, the first consciousness of existence,
+had for ever impressed and implanted in the human mind.</p>
+
+<p>But do these names prove that the people who invented them had a clear
+and settled idea of the unity of the Deity? Do we not find among the
+Aryan nations that the same superlatives, the same names of Lord and
+King, of Master and Father, are used when the human mind is brought
+face to face with the Divine, and the human heart pours out in prayer
+and thanksgiving the feelings inspired by the presence of God?
+<span class="sp1">Brahman</span>, in Sanskrit, meant originally Power,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span> the same as El. It
+resisted for a long time the mythological contagion, but at last it
+yielded like all other names of God, and became the name of one God.
+By the first man who formed or fixed these names, <span class="sp1">Brahman</span>, like El,
+and like every name of God, was meant, no doubt, as the best
+expression that could be found for the image reflected from the
+Creator upon the mind of the creature. But in none of these words can
+we see any decided proof that those who framed them had arrived at the
+clear perception of One God, and were thus secured against the danger
+of polytheism. Like Dyaus, like Indra, like Brahman, Baal and El and
+Moloch were names of God, but not yet of the One God.</p>
+
+<p>And we have only to follow the history of these Semitic names in order
+to see that, in spite of their superlative meaning, they proved no
+stronger bulwark against polytheism than the Latin <span class="sp1">Optimus Maximus</span>.
+The very names which we saw explained before as meaning the Highest,
+the Lord, the Master, are represented in the Phenician mythology as
+standing to each other in the relation of Father and Son. (Renan, p.
+60.) There is hardly one single Semitic tribe which did not at times
+forget the original meaning of the names by which they called on God.
+If the Jews had remembered the meaning of El, the Omnipotent, they
+could not have worshipped Baal, the Lord, as different from El. But as
+the Aryan tribes bartered the names of their gods, and were glad to
+add the worship of Zeus to that of Uranos, the worship of Apollon to
+that of Zeus, the worship of Hermes to that of Apollon, the Semitic
+nations likewise were ready to try the gods of their neighbours. If
+there had been in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span> Semitic race a truly monotheistic instinct, the
+history of those nations would become perfectly unintelligible.
+Nothing is more difficult to overcome than an instinct: <span class="sp1">naturam furc&acirc;
+expellas, tamen usque recurret</span>. But the history even of the Jews is
+made up of an almost uninterrupted series of relapses into polytheism.
+Let us admit, on the contrary, that God had in the beginning revealed
+Himself the same to the ancestors of the whole human race. Let us then
+observe the natural divergence of the languages of man, and consider
+the peculiar difficulties that had to be overcome in framing names for
+God, and the peculiar manner in which they were overcome in the
+Semitic and Aryan languages, and everything that follows will be
+intelligible. If we consider the abundance of synonymes into which all
+ancient languages burst out at their first starting&mdash;if we remember
+that there were hundreds of names for the earth and the sky, the sun
+and the moon, we shall not be surprised at meeting with more than one
+name for God both among the Semitic and the Aryan nations. If we
+consider how easily the radical or significative elements of words
+were absorbed and obscured in the Aryan, and how they stood out in
+bold relief in the Semitic languages, we shall appreciate the
+difficulty which the Shemites experienced in framing any name that
+should not seem to take too one-sided a view of the Deity by
+predicating but one quality, whether strength, dominion, or majesty;
+and we shall equally perceive the snare which their very language laid
+for the Aryan nations, by supplying them with a number of words which,
+though they seemed harmless as meaning nothing except what by
+tradition or definition they were made to mean, yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span> were full of
+mischief owing to the recollections which, at any time, they might
+revive. <span class="sp1">Dyaus</span> in itself was as good a name as any for God, and in some
+respects more appropriate than its derivative <span class="sp1">deva</span>, the Latin <span class="sp1">deus</span>,
+which the Romance nations still use without meaning any harm. But
+<span class="sp1">Dyaus</span> had meant sky for too long a time to become entirely divested of
+all the old mythes or sayings which were true of <span class="sp1">Dyaus</span>, the sky, but
+could only be retained as fables if transferred to <span class="sp1">Dyaus</span>, God. <span class="sp1">Dyaus</span>,
+the Bright, might be called the husband of the earth; but, when the
+same mythe was repeated of <span class="sp1">Zeus</span>, the god, then <span class="sp1">Zeus</span> became the husband
+of <span class="sp1">Demeter</span>, <span class="sp1">Demeter</span> became a goddess, a daughter sprang from their
+union, and all the sluices of mythological madness were opened. There
+were a few men, no doubt, at all times, who saw through this
+mythological phraseology, who called on God, though they called him
+Zeus, or Dyaus, or Jupiter. Xenophanes, one of the earliest Greek
+heretics, boldly maintained that there was but 'one God, and that He
+was not like unto men, either in body or mind.'<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> A poet in the
+Veda asserts distinctly, 'They call Him Indra, Mitra, Varu<i>n</i>a, Agni;
+then He is the well-winged heavenly Garutmat; that which is One the
+wise call it many ways&mdash;they call it Agni, Yama, M&acirc;tari<i>s</i>van.'<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a></p>
+
+<p>But, on the whole, the charm of mythology prevailed among the Aryan
+nations, and a return to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span>primitive intuition of God and a total
+negation of all gods, wore rendered more difficult to the Aryan than
+to the Semitic man. The Semitic man had hardly ever to resist the
+allurements of mythology. The names with which he invoked the Deity
+did not trick him by their equivocal character. Nevertheless, these
+Semitic names, too, though predicative in the beginning, became
+subjective, and from being the various names of One Being, lapsed into
+names of various beings. Hence arose a danger which threatened
+well-nigh to bar to the Semitic race the approach to the conception
+and worship of the One God.</p>
+
+<p>Nowhere can we see this danger more clearly than in the history of the
+Jews. The Jews had, no doubt, preserved, from the beginning the idea
+of God, and their names of God contained nothing but what might by
+right be ascribed to Him. They worshipped a single God, and, whenever
+they fell into idolatry, they felt that they had fallen away from God.
+But that God, under whatever name they invoked Him, was especially
+their God, their own national God, and His existence did not exclude
+the existence of other gods or demons. Of the ancestors of Abraham and
+Nachor, even of their father Terah, we know that in old time, when
+they dwelt on the other side of the flood, they served other gods
+(Joshua xxiv. 2). At the time of Joshua these gods were not yet
+forgotten, and instead of denying their existence altogether, Joshua
+only exhorts the people to put away the gods which their fathers
+served on the other side of the flood and in Egypt, and to serve the
+Lord: 'Choose ye this day,' he says, 'whom you will serve; whether the
+gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the
+flood, or the gods<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span> of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell; but as
+for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.'</p>
+
+<p>Such a speech, exhorting the people to make their choice between
+various gods, would have been unmeaning if addressed to a nation which
+had once conceived the unity of the Godhead. Even images of the gods
+were not unknown to the family of Abraham, for, though we know nothing
+of the exact form of the <span class="sp1">teraphim</span>, or images which Rachel stole from
+her father, certain it is that Laban calls them his gods (Genesis
+xxxi. 19, 30). But what is much more significant than these traces of
+polytheism and idolatry is the hesitating tone in which some of the
+early patriarchs speak of their God. When Jacob flees before Esau into
+Padan-Aram and awakes from his vision at Bethel, he does not profess
+his faith in the One God, but he bargains, and says, 'If God will be
+with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me
+bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my
+father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God: and this
+stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house: and of all
+that thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee'
+(Genesis xxviii. 20-22). Language of this kind evinces not only a
+temporary want of faith in God, but it shows that the conception of
+God had not yet acquired that complete universality which alone
+deserves to be called monotheism, or belief in the One God. To him who
+has seen God face to face there is no longer any escape or doubt as to
+who is to be his god; God is his god, whatever befall. But this Jacob
+learnt not until he had struggled and wrestled with God, and committed
+himself to His care at the very time when no one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span> else could have
+saved him. In that struggle Jacob asked for the true name of God, and
+he learnt from God that His name was secret (Genesis xxxii. 29). After
+that, his God was no longer one of many gods. His faith was not like
+the faith of Jethro (Exodus xxvii. 11), the priest of Midian, the
+father-in-law of Moses, who when he heard of all that God had done for
+Moses acknowledged that God (Jehovah) was greater than all gods
+(Elohim). This is not yet faith in the One God. It is a faith hardly
+above the faith of the people who were halting between Jehovah and
+Baal, and who only when they saw what the Lord did for Elijah, fell on
+their faces and said, 'The Lord He is the God.'</p>
+
+<p>And yet this limited faith in Jehovah as the God of the Jews, as a God
+more powerful than the gods of the heathen, as a God above all gods,
+betrays itself again and again in the history of the Jews. The idea of
+many gods is there, and wherever that idea exists, wherever the plural
+of god is used in earnest, there is polytheism. It is not so much the
+names of Zeus, Hermes, &amp;c., which constitute the polytheism of the
+Greeks; it is the plural &#952;&#949;&#959;&#7985;, gods, which contains the
+fatal spell. We do not know what M. Renan means when he says that
+Jehovah with the Jews 'n'est pas le plus grand entre plusieurs dieux;
+c'est le Dieu unique.' It was so with Abraham, it was so after Jacob
+had been changed into Israel, it was so with Moses, Elijah, and
+Jeremiah. But what is the meaning of the very first commandment, 'Thou
+shalt have no other gods before me?' Could this command have been
+addressed to a nation to whom the plural of God was a nonentity? It
+might be answered that the plural of God was to the Jews as revolting
+as it is to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span> us, that it was revolting to their faith, if not to their
+reason. But how was it that their language tolerated the plural of a
+word which excludes plurality as much as the word for the centre of a
+sphere? No man who had clearly perceived the unity of God, could say
+with the Psalmist (lxxxvi. 8), 'Among the gods there is none like unto
+Thee, O Lord, neither are there any works like unto Thy works.' Though
+the same poet says, 'Thou art God alone,' he could not have compared
+God with other gods, if his idea of God had really reached that
+all-embracing character which it had with Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and
+Jeremiah. Nor would God have been praised as the 'great king above all
+gods' by a poet in whose eyes the gods of the heathen had been
+recognised as what they were&mdash;mighty shadows, thrown by the mighty
+works of God, and intercepting for a time the pure light of the
+Godhead.</p>
+
+<p>We thus arrive at a different conviction from that which M. Renan has
+made the basis of the history of the Semitic race. We can see nothing
+that would justify the admission of a monotheistic instinct, granted
+to the Semitic, and withheld from the Aryan race. They both share in
+the primitive intuition of God, they are both exposed to dangers in
+framing names for God, and they both fall into polytheism. What is
+peculiar to the Aryan race is their mythological phraseology,
+superadded to their polytheism; what is peculiar to the Semitic race
+is their belief in a national god&mdash;in a god chosen by his people as
+his people had been chosen by him.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt, M. Renan might say that we ignored his problem, and that we
+have not removed the difficulties which drove him to the admission of
+a monotheistic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span> instinct. How is the fact to be explained, he might
+ask, that the three great religions of the world in which the unity of
+the Deity forms the key-note, are of Semitic origin, and that the
+Aryan nations, wherever they have been brought to a worship of the One
+God, invoke Him with names borrowed from the Semitic languages?</p>
+
+<p>But let us look more closely at the facts before we venture on
+theories. Mohammedanism, no doubt, is a Semitic religion, and its very
+core is monotheism. But did Mohammed invent monotheism? Did he invent
+even a new name of God? (Renan, p. 23.) Not at all. His object was to
+destroy the idolatry of the Semitic tribes of Arabia, to dethrone the
+angels, the Jin, the sons and daughters who had been assigned to
+Allah, and to restore the faith of Abraham in one God. (Renan, p. 37.)</p>
+
+<p>And how is it with Christianity? Did Christ come to preach a faith in
+a new God? Did He or His disciples invent a new name of God? No,
+Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil; and the God whom He
+preached was the God of Abraham.</p>
+
+<p>And who is the God of Jeremiah, of Elijah, and of Moses? We answer
+again, the God of Abraham.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the faith in the One living God, which seemed to require the
+admission of a monotheistic instinct, grafted in every member of the
+Semitic family, is traced back to one man, to him 'in whom all
+families of the earth shall be blessed' (Genesis xii. 3, Acts iii. 25,
+Galatians iii. 8). If from our earliest childhood we have looked upon
+Abraham, the friend of God, with love and veneration; if our first
+impressions of a truly god-fearing life were taken from him, who left
+the land of his fathers to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span> live a stranger in the land whither God
+had called him, who always listened to the voice of God, whether it
+conveyed to him the promise of a son in his old age, or the command to
+sacrifice that son, his only son Isaac, his venerable figure will
+assume still more majestic proportions when we see in him the
+life-spring of that faith which was to unite all the nations of the
+earth, and the author of that blessing which was to come on the
+Gentiles through Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>And if we are asked how this one Abraham possessed not only the
+primitive intuition of God as He had revealed Himself to all mankind,
+but passed through the denial of all other gods to the knowledge of
+the one God, we are content to answer that it was by a special Divine
+Revelation. We do not indulge in theological phraseology, but we mean
+every word to its fullest extent. The Father of Truth chooses His own
+prophets, and He speaks to them in a voice stronger than the voice of
+thunder. It is the same inner voice through which God speaks to all of
+us. That voice may dwindle away, and become hardly audible; it may
+lose its Divine accent, and sink into the language of worldly
+prudence; but it may also, from time to time, assume its real nature,
+with the chosen of God, and sound into their ears as a voice from
+Heaven. A 'divine instinct' may sound more scientific, and less
+theological; but in truth it would neither be an appropriate name for
+what is a gift or grace accorded to but few, nor would it be a more
+scientific, i. e. a more intelligible word than 'special revelation.'</p>
+
+<p>The important point, however, is not whether the faith of Abraham
+should be called a divine instinct<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span> or a revelation; what we wish here
+to insist on is that that instinct, or that revelation, was special,
+granted to one man, and handed down from him to Jews, Christians, and
+Mohammedans, to all who believe in the God of Abraham. Nor was it
+granted to Abraham entirely as a free gift. Abraham was tried and
+tempted before he was trusted by God. He had to break with the faith
+of his fathers; he had to deny the gods who were worshipped by his
+friends and neighbours. Like all the friends of God, he had to hear
+himself called an infidel and atheist, and in our own days he would
+have been looked upon as a madman for attempting to slay his son. It
+was through special faith that Abraham received his special
+revelation, not through instinct, not through abstract meditation, not
+through ecstatic visions. We want to know more of that man than we do;
+but, even with the little we know of him, he stands before us as a
+figure second only to one in the whole history of the world. We see
+his zeal for God, but we never see him contentious. Though Melchisedek
+worshipped God under a different name, invoking Him as Eliun, the Most
+High, Abraham at once acknowledged in Melchisedek a worshipper and
+priest of the true God, or Elohim, and paid him tithes. In the very
+name of Elohim we seem to trace the conciliatory spirit of Abraham.
+Elohim is a plural, though it is followed by the verb in the singular.
+It is generally said that the genius of the Semitic languages
+countenances the use of plurals for abstract conceptions, and that
+when Jehovah is called Elohim, the plural should be translated by 'the
+Deity.' We do not deny the fact, but we wish for an explanation, and
+an explanation is suggested by the various phases through which, as
+we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span> saw, the conception of God passed in the ancient history of the
+Semitic mind. Eloah was at first the name for God, and as it is found
+in all the dialects of the Semitic family except the Phenician (Renan,
+p. 61), it may probably be considered as the most ancient name of the
+Deity, sanctioned at a time when the original Semitic speech had not
+yet branched off into national dialects. When this name was first used
+in the plural, it could only have signified, like every plural, many
+Eloahs, and such a plural could only have been formed after the
+various names of God had become the names of independent deities, i.
+e. during a polytheistic stage. The transition from this into the
+monotheistic stage could be effected in two ways&mdash;either by denying
+altogether the existence of the Elohim, and changing them into devils,
+as the Zoroastrians did with the Devas of their Brahmanic ancestors;
+or by taking a higher view, and looking upon the Elohim as so many
+names, invented with the honest purpose of expressing the various
+aspects of the Deity, though in time diverted from their original
+purpose. This is the view taken by St. Paul of the religion of the
+Greeks when he came to declare unto them 'Him whom they <span class="sp1">ignorantly</span>
+worshipped,' and the same view was taken by Abraham. Whatever the
+names of the Elohim, worshipped by the numerous clans of his race,
+Abraham saw that all the Elohim were meant for God, and thus Elohim,
+comprehending by one name everything that ever had been or could be
+called divine, became the name with which the monotheistic age was
+rightly inaugurated,&mdash;a plural, conceived and construed as a singular.
+Jehovah was all the Elohim, and therefore there could be no other God.
+From this point of view the Semitic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span> name of the Deity, Elohim, which
+seemed at first not only ungrammatical but irrational, becomes
+perfectly clear and intelligible, and it proves better than anything
+else that the true monotheism could not have risen except on the ruins
+of a polytheistic faith. It is easy to scoff at the gods of the
+heathen, but a cold-hearted philosophical negation of the gods of the
+ancient world is more likely to lead to Deism or Atheism than to a
+belief in the One living God, the Father of all mankind, 'who hath
+made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of
+the earth; and hath determined the times before appointed, and the
+bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply
+they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from
+every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as
+certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also His
+offspring.'</p>
+
+<p>Taking this view of the historical growth of the idea of God, many of
+the difficulties which M. Renan has to overcome by most elaborate and
+sometimes hair-splitting arguments, disappear at once. M. Renan, for
+instance, dwells much on Semitic proper names in which the names of
+the Deity occur, and he thinks that, like the Greek names <span class="sp1">Theodorus</span> or
+<span class="sp1">Theodotus</span>, instead of <span class="sp1">Zenodotus</span>, they prove the existence of a faith
+in one God. We should say they may or may not. As <span class="sp1">Devadatta</span>, in
+Sanskrit, may mean either 'given by God,' or 'given by the gods,' so
+every proper name which M. Renan quotes, whether of Jews, or Edomites,
+Ishmaelites, Ammonites, Moabites, and Themanites, whether from the
+Bible, or from Arab historians, from Greek authors, Greek
+inscriptions, the Egyptian papyri, the Himyaritic and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span> Sinaitic
+inscriptions and ancient coins, are all open to two interpretations.
+'The servant of Baal' may mean the servant of the Lord, but it may
+also mean the servant of Baal, as one of many lords, or even the
+servant of the Baalim or the Lords. The same applies to all other
+names. 'The gift of El' may mean 'the gift of the only strong God;'
+but it may likewise mean 'the gift of the El,' as one of many gods, or
+even 'the gift of the Els,' in the sense of the strong gods. Nor do we
+see why M. Renan should take such pains to prove that the name of
+<span class="sp1">Orotal</span> or <span class="sp1">Orotulat</span>, mentioned by Herodotos (III. 8), may be
+interpreted as the name of a supreme deity; and that <span class="sp1">Alilat</span>, mentioned
+by the same traveller, should be taken, not as the name of a goddess,
+but as a feminine noun expressive of the abstract sense of the deity.
+Herodotos says distinctly that <span class="sp1">Orotal</span> was a deity like Bacchus; and
+<span class="sp1">Alilat</span>, as he translates her name by &#927;&#8016;&#961;&#945;&#957;&#7985;&#951;, must have
+appeared to him as a goddess, and not as the Supreme Deity. One verse
+of the Koran is sufficient to show that the Semitic inhabitants of
+Arabia worshipped not only gods, but goddesses also. 'What think ye of
+<span class="sp1">Allat</span>, <span class="sp1">al Uzza</span>, and <span class="sp1">Manah</span>, that other third goddess?'</p>
+
+<p>If our view of the development of the idea of God be correct, we can
+perfectly understand how, in spite of this polytheistic phraseology,
+the primitive intuition of God should make itself felt from time to
+time, long before Mohammed restored the belief of Abraham in one God.
+The old Arabic prayer mentioned by Abulfarag may be perfectly genuine:
+'I dedicate myself to thy service, O God! Thou hast no companion,
+except thy companion, of whom thou art absolute master, and of
+whatever is his.' The verse pointed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</a></span> out to M. Renan by M. Caussin de
+Perceval from the Moallaka of Zoheyr, was certainly anterior to
+Mohammed: 'Try not to hide your secret feelings from the sight of
+Allah; Allah knows all that is hidden.' But these quotations serve no
+more to establish the universality of the monotheistic instinct in the
+Semitic race than similar quotations from the Veda would prove the
+existence of a conscious monotheism among the ancestors of the Aryan
+race. There too we read, 'Agni knows what is secret among mortals'
+(Rig-veda VIII. 39, 6): and again, 'He, the upholder of order,
+Varu<i>n</i>a, sits down among his people; he, the wise, sits there to
+govern. From thence perceiving all wondrous things, he sees what has
+been and what will be done.'<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a> But in these very hymns, better than
+anywhere else, we learn that the idea of supremacy and omnipotence
+ascribed to one god did by no means exclude the admission of other
+gods, or names of God. All the other gods disappear from the vision of
+the poet while he addresses his own God, and he only who is to fulfil
+his desires stands in full light before the eyes of the worshipper as
+the supreme and only God.</p>
+
+<p>The Science of Religion is only just beginning, and we must take care
+how we impede its progress by preconceived notions or too hasty
+generalizations. During the last fifty years the authentic documents
+of the most important religions of the world have been recovered in a
+most unexpected and almost miraculous manner. We have now before us
+the canonical books of Buddhism; the Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster is no
+longer a sealed book; and the hymns of the Rig-veda <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[378]</a></span>have revealed a
+state of religion anterior to the first beginnings of that mythology
+which in Homer and Hesiod stands before us as a mouldering ruin. The
+soil of Mesopotamia has given back the very images once worshipped by
+the most powerful of the Semitic tribes, and the cuneiform
+inscriptions of Babylon and Nineveh have disclosed the very prayers
+addressed to Baal or Nisroch. With the discovery of these documents a
+new era begins in the study of religion. We begin to see more clearly
+every day what St. Paul meant in his sermon at Athens. But as the
+excavator at Babylon or Nineveh, before he ventures to reconstruct the
+palaces of these ancient kingdoms, sinks his shafts into the ground
+slowly and circumspectly lest he should injure the walls of the
+ancient palaces which he is disinterring; as he watches every
+corner-stone lest he mistake their dark passages and galleries, and as
+he removes with awe and trembling the dust and clay from the brittle
+monuments lest he destroy their outlines, and obliterate their
+inscriptions, so it behoves the student of the history of religion to
+set to work carefully, lest he should miss the track, and lose himself
+in an inextricable maze. The relics which he handles are more precious
+than the ruins of Babylon; the problems he has to solve are more
+important than the questions of ancient chronology; and the
+substructions which he hopes one day to lay bare are the world-wide
+foundations of the eternal kingdom of God.</p>
+
+<p>We look forward with the highest expectations to the completion of M.
+Renan's work, and though English readers will differ from many of the
+author's views, and feel offended now and then at his blunt and
+unguarded language, we doubt not that they will find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[379]</a></span> his volumes both
+instructive and suggestive. They are written in that clear and
+brilliant style which has secured to M. Renan the rank of one of the
+best writers of French, and which throws its charm even over the dry
+and abstruse inquiries into the grammatical forms and radical elements
+of the Semitic languages.</p>
+
+<p class="f3"><i>April, 1860.</i></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> 'Histoire G&eacute;n&eacute;rale et Syst&egrave;me Compar&eacute; des Langues
+S&eacute;mitiques.' Par Ernest Renan, Membre de l'Institut. Seconde &eacute;dition,
+Paris, 1858.
+</p><p>
+'Nouvelles Consid&eacute;rations sur le Caract&egrave;re G&eacute;n&eacute;ral des Peuples
+S&eacute;mitiques, et en particulier sur leur Tendance au Monoth&eacute;isme,' Par
+Ernest Renan. Paris, 1859.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> We give the extracts according to M. Renan's
+translation of the Book of Job (Paris, 1859, Michel L&eacute;vy).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> Xenophanes, about contemporary with Cyrus, as quoted by
+Clemens Alex., Strom. v, p. 601,&mdash;&#949;&#7986;&#987; &#952;&#949;&#8000;&#962; &#7954;&#957; &#964;&#949; &#952;&#949;&#959;&#8150;&#963;&#953; &#954;&#945;&#7984;
+&#7936;&#957;&#952;&#961;&#8033;&#960;&#959;&#953;&#963;&#953; &#956;&#7953;&#947;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#959;&#962;, &#959;&#8020;&#964;&#949; &#948;&#7953;&#956;&#945;&#962; &#952;&#957;&#951;&#964;&#959;&#8150;&#963;&#953;&#957; &#8001;&#956;&#959;&#7987;&#7985;&#959;&#962; &#959;&#8016;&#948;&#7952; &#957;&#959;&#7969;&#956;&#945;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' by M. M., p.
+567.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' by M. M., p.
+536.</p></div>
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="tr"><p class="center"><b>Note: List of corrections.</b></p>
+
+<p>Duplication of paragraphs.<br />
+
+Page xix</p>
+
+<p>Duplication of pages.<br />
+
+3 pages after 236</p>
+
+<p>Missing text<br />
+
+Page xviii - last paragraph<br />
+
+Page xxviii - last paragraph<br />
+
+Page 18<br />
+
+Page 46<br />
+
+Page 89<br />
+
+Page 91<br />
+
+Page 99<br />
+
+Page 116</p>
+
+<p>Pages missing <br />
+
+3 pages after 233</p>
+
+
+
+<p>The page numbers have gone awry because of the corrections. Any reference to page numbers may be made to the Internet Archive edition.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I, by 
+Friedrich Max  M�ller
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,11867 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I, by
+Friedrich Max  Mueller
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I
+       Essays on the Science of Religion
+
+Author: Friedrich Max  Mueller
+
+Release Date: February 26, 2008 [EBook #24686]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Geetu Melwani, Thierry
+Alberto, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's Note:
+
+This book had a number of typesetting errors such as missing text,
+pages, duplicate pages, and text. The text has been verified with the
+etext available with the Internet Archives
+(http://www.archive.org/details/germanwork01mulluoft) and corrected
+with the addition of missing text and removal of duplicate text. The
+Internet archive edition is a 1872 edition whereas this is a 1867
+edition.
+
+Details of corrections and additions are given at the end of the book.
+
+
+
+                                CHIPS
+
+                       FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                           MAX MUeLLER, M.A.
+
+                 FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD.
+
+
+
+
+
+                              VOLUME I.
+
+                  Essays on the Science of Religion.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                LONDON
+
+                       LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
+
+                                 1867
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+_To the Memory_
+
+OF
+
+BARON BUNSEN,
+
+MY FRIEND AND BENEFACTOR.
+
+
+
+
+                      _et quanto diutius
+    Abes, magis cupio tanto et magis desidero._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+More than twenty years have passed since my revered friend Bunsen
+called me one day into his library at Carlton House Terrace, and
+announced to me with beaming eyes that the publication of the Rig-veda
+was secure. He had spent many days in seeing the Directors of the
+East-India Company, and explaining to them the importance of this
+work, and the necessity of having it published in England. At last his
+efforts had been successful, the funds for printing my edition of the
+text and commentary of the Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans had been
+granted, and Bunsen was the first to announce to me the happy result
+of his literary diplomacy. 'Now,' he said, 'you have got a work for
+life--a large block that will take years to plane and polish.' 'But
+mind,' he added, 'let us have from time to time some chips from your
+workshop.'
+
+I have tried to follow the advice of my departed friend, and I have
+published almost every year a few articles on such subjects as had
+engaged my attention, while prosecuting at the same time, as far as
+altered circumstances would allow, my edition of the Rig-veda, and of
+other Sanskrit works connected with it. These articles were chiefly
+published in the 'Edinburgh' and 'Quarterly Reviews,' in the 'Oxford
+Essays,' in 'Macmillan's' and 'Fraser's Magazines,' in the 'Saturday
+Review,' and in the 'Times.' In writing them my principal endeavour
+has been to bring out even in the most abstruse subjects the points of
+real interest that ought to engage the attention of the public at
+large, and never to leave a dark nook or corner without attempting to
+sweep away the cobwebs of false learning, and let in the light of real
+knowledge. Here, too, I owe much to Bunsen's advice, and when last
+year I saw in Cornwall the large heaps of copper ore piled up around
+the mines, like so many heaps of rubbish, while the poor people were
+asking for coppers to buy bread, I frequently thought of Bunsen's
+words, 'Your work is not finished when you have brought the ore from
+the mine: it must be sifted, smelted, refined, and coined before it
+can be of real use, and contribute towards the intellectual food of
+mankind.' I can hardly hope that in this my endeavour to be clear and
+plain, to follow the threads of every thought to the very ends, and to
+place the web of every argument clearly and fully before my readers, I
+have always been successful. Several of the subjects treated in these
+essays are, no doubt, obscure and difficult: but there is no subject,
+I believe, in the whole realm of human knowledge, that cannot be
+rendered clear and intelligible, if we ourselves have perfectly
+mastered it. And now while the two last volumes of my edition of the
+Rig-veda are passing through the press, I thought the time had come
+for gathering up a few armfulls of these chips and splinters, throwing
+away what seemed worthless, and putting the rest into some kind of
+shape, in order to clear my workshop for other work.
+
+The first and second volumes which I am now publishing contain essays
+on the early thoughts of mankind, whether religious or mythological,
+and on early traditions and customs. There is to my mind no subject
+more absorbing than the tracing the origin and first growth of human
+thought;--not theoretically, or in accordance with the Hegelian laws
+of thought, or the Comtian epochs; but historically, and like an
+Indian trapper, spying for every footprint, every layer, every broken
+blade that might tell and testify of the former presence of man in his
+early wanderings and searchings after light and truth.
+
+In the languages of mankind, in which everything new is old and
+everything old is new, an inexhaustible mine has been discovered for
+researches of this kind. Language still bears the impress of the
+earliest thoughts of man, obliterated, it may be, buried under new
+thoughts, yet here and there still recoverable in their sharp original
+outline. The growth of language is continuous, and by continuing our
+researches backward from the most modern to the most ancient strata,
+the very elements and roots of human speech have been reached, and
+with them the elements and roots of human thought. What lies beyond
+the beginnings of language, however interesting it may be to the
+physiologist, does not yet belong to the history of man, in the true
+and original sense of that word. Man means the thinker, and the first
+manifestation of thought is speech.
+
+But more surprising than the continuity in the growth of language, is
+the continuity in the growth of religion. Of religion, too, as of
+language, it may be said that in it everything new is old, and
+everything old is new, and that there has been no entirely new
+religion since the beginning of the world. The elements and roots of
+religion were there, as far back as we can trace the history of man;
+and the history of religion, like the history of language, shows us
+throughout a succession of new combinations of the same radical
+elements. An intuition of God, a sense of human weakness and
+dependence, a belief in a Divine government of the world, a
+distinction between good and evil, and a hope of a better life, these
+are some of the radical elements of all religions. Though sometimes
+hidden, they rise again and again to the surface. Though frequently
+distorted, they tend again and again to their perfect form. Unless
+they had formed part of the original dowry of the human soul, religion
+itself would have remained an impossibility, and the tongues of
+angels would have been to human ears but as sounding brass or a
+tinkling cymbal. If we once understand this clearly, the words of St.
+Augustine which have seemed startling to many of his admirers, become
+perfectly clear and intelligible, when he says:[1] 'What is now called
+the Christian religion, has existed among the ancients, and was not
+absent from the beginning of the human race, until Christ came in the
+flesh: from which time the true religion, which existed already, began
+to be called Christian.' From this point of view the words of Christ
+too, which startled the Jews, assume their true meaning, when He said
+to the centurion of Capernaum: 'Many shall come from the east and the
+west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the
+kingdom of heaven.'
+
+[Footnote 1: August. Retr. 1, 13. 'Res ipsa, quae nunc religio
+Christiana nuncupatur, erat apud antiquos, nec defuit ab initio
+generis humani, quousque Christus veniret in carnem, unde vera
+religio, quae jam erat, coepit appellari Christiana.']
+
+During the last fifty years the accumulation of new and authentic
+materials for the study of the religions of the world, has been most
+extraordinary; but such are the difficulties in mastering these
+materials that I doubt whether the time has yet come for attempting to
+trace, after the model of the Science of Language, the definite
+outlines of the Science of Religion. By a succession of the most
+fortunate circumstances, the canonical books of three of the
+principal religions of the ancient world have lately been recovered,
+the Veda, the Zend-Avesta, and the Tripi_t_aka. But not only have we
+thus gained access to the most authentic documents from which to study
+the ancient religion of the Brahmans, the Zoroastrians, and the
+Buddhists, but by discovering the real origin of Greek, Roman, and
+likewise of Teutonic, Slavonic, and Celtic mythology, it has become
+possible to separate the truly religious elements in the sacred
+traditions of these nations from the mythological crust by which they
+are surrounded, and thus to gain a clearer insight into the real faith
+of the ancient Aryan world.
+
+If we turn to the Semitic world, we find that although no new
+materials have been discovered from which to study the ancient
+religion of the Jews, yet a new spirit of inquiry has brought new life
+into the study of the sacred records of Abraham, Moses, and the
+Prophets; and the recent researches of Biblical scholars, though
+starting from the most opposite points, have all helped to bring out
+the historical interest of the Old Testament, in a manner not dreamt
+of by former theologians. The same may be said of another Semitic
+religion, the religion of Mohammed, since the Koran and the literature
+connected with it were submitted to the searching criticism of real
+scholars and historians. Some new materials for the study of the
+Semitic religions have come from the monuments of Babylon and
+Nineveh. The very images of Bel and Nisroch now stand before our
+eyes, and the inscriptions on the tablets may hereafter tell us even
+more of the thoughts of those who bowed their knees before them. The
+religious worship of the Phenicians and Carthaginians has been
+illustrated by Movers from the ruins of their ancient temples, and
+from scattered notices in classical writers; nay, even the religious
+ideas of the Nomads of the Arabian peninsula, previous to the rise of
+Mohammedanism, have been brought to light by the patient researches of
+Oriental scholars.
+
+There is no lack of idols among the ruined and buried temples of Egypt
+with which to reconstruct the pantheon of that primeval country: nor
+need we despair of recovering more and more of the thoughts buried
+under the hieroglyphics of the inscriptions, or preserved in hieratic
+and demotic MSS., if we watch the brilliant discoveries that have
+rewarded the patient researches of the disciples of Champollion.
+
+Besides the Aryan and Semitic families of religion, we have in China
+three recognised forms of public worship, the religion of Confucius,
+that of Lao-tse, and that of Fo (Buddha); and here, too, recent
+publications have shed new light, and have rendered an access to the
+canonical works of these religions, and an understanding of their
+various purports, more easy, even to those who have not mastered the
+intricacies of the Chinese language.
+
+Among the Turanian nations, a few only, such as the Finns, and the
+Mongolians, have preserved some remnants of their ancient worship and
+mythology, and these too have lately been more carefully collected and
+explained by d'Ohson, Castren, and others.
+
+In America the religions of Mexico and Peru had long attracted the
+attention of theologians; and of late years the impulse imparted to
+ethnological researches has induced travellers and missionaries to
+record any traces of religious life that could be discovered among the
+savage inhabitants of Africa, America, and the Polynesian islands.
+
+It will be seen from these few indications, that there is no lack of
+materials for the student of religion; but we shall also perceive how
+difficult it is to master such vast materials. To gain a full
+knowledge of the Veda, or the Zend-Avesta, or the Tripi_t_aka, of the
+Old Testament, the Koran, or the sacred books of China, is the work of
+a whole life. How then is one man to survey the whole field of
+religious thought, to classify the religions of the world according to
+definite and permanent criteria, and to describe their characteristic
+features with a sure and discriminating hand?
+
+Nothing is more difficult to seize than the salient features, the
+traits that constitute the permanent expression and real character of
+a religion. Religion seems to be the common property of a large
+community, and yet it not only varies in numerous sects, as language
+does in its dialects, but it really escapes our firm grasp till we can
+trace it to its real habitat, the heart of one true believer. We speak
+glibly of Buddhism and Brahmanism, forgetting that we are generalizing
+on the most intimate convictions of millions and millions of human
+souls, divided by half the world and by thousands of years.
+
+It may be said that at all events where a religion possesses canonical
+books, or a definite number of articles, the task of the student of
+religion becomes easier, and this, no doubt, is true to a certain
+extent. But even then we know that the interpretation of these
+canonical books varies, so much so that sects appealing to the same
+revealed authorities, as, for instance, the founders of the Vedanta
+and the Sankhya systems, accuse each other of error, if not of wilful
+error or heresy. Articles too, though drawn up with a view to define
+the principal doctrines of a religion, lose much of their historical
+value by the treatment they receive from subsequent schools; and they
+are frequently silent on the very points which make religion what it
+is.
+
+A few instances may serve to show what difficulties the student of
+religion has to contend with, before he can hope firmly to grasp the
+facts on which his theories are to be based.
+
+Roman Catholic missionaries who had spent their lives in China, who
+had every opportunity, while staying at the court of Pekin, of
+studying in the original the canonical works of Confucius and their
+commentaries, who could consult the greatest theologians then living,
+and converse with the crowds that thronged the temples of the capital,
+differed diametrically in their opinions as to the most vital points
+in the state religion of China. Lecomte, Fouquet, Premare, and Bouvet
+thought it undeniable that Confucius, his predecessors and his
+disciples, had entertained the noblest ideas on the constitution of
+the universe, and had sacrificed to the true God in the most ancient
+temple of the earth. According to Maigrot, Navarette, on the contrary,
+and even according to the Jesuit Longobardi, the adoration of the
+Chinese was addressed to inanimate tablets, meaningless inscriptions,
+or, in the best case, to coarse ancestral spirits and beings without
+intelligence.[2] If we believe the former, the ancient deism of China
+approached the purity of the Christian religion; if we listen to the
+latter, the absurd fetichism of the multitude degenerated amongst the
+educated, into systematic materialism and atheism. In answer to the
+peremptory texts quoted by one party, the other adduced the glosses of
+accredited interpreters, and the dispute of the missionaries who had
+lived in China and knew Chinese, had to be settled in the last
+instance by a decision of the see of Rome.
+
+[Footnote 2: Abel Remusat, 'Melanges,' p. 162.]
+
+There is hardly any religion that has been studied in its sacred
+literature, and watched in its external worship with greater care
+than the modern religion of the Hindus, and yet it would be extremely
+hard to give a faithful and intelligible description of it. Most
+people who have lived in India would maintain that the Indian
+religion, as believed in and practised at present by the mass of the
+people, is idol worship and nothing else. But let us hear one of the
+mass of the people, a Hindu of Benares, who in a lecture delivered
+before an English and native audience defends his faith and the faith
+of his forefathers against such sweeping accusations. 'If by
+idolatry,' he says, "is meant a system of worship which confines our
+ideas of the Deity to a mere image of clay or stone, which prevents
+our hearts from being expanded and elevated with lofty notions of the
+attributes of God, if this is what is meant by idolatry, we disclaim
+idolatry, we abhor idolatry, and deplore the ignorance or
+uncharitableness of those that charge us with this grovelling system
+of worship.... But if, firmly believing, as we do, in the omnipresence
+of God, we behold, by the aid of our imagination, in the form of an
+image any of his glorious manifestations, ought we to be charged with
+identifying them with the matter of the image, whilst during those
+moments of sincere and fervent devotion, we do not even think of
+matter? If at the sight of a portrait of a beloved and venerated
+friend no longer existing in this world, our heart is filled with
+sentiments of love and reverence; if we fancy him present in the
+picture, still looking upon us with his wonted tenderness and
+affection, and then indulge our feelings of love and gratitude, should
+we be charged with offering the grossest insult to him--that of
+fancying him to be no other than a piece of painted paper?... We
+really lament the ignorance or uncharitableness of those who confound
+our representative worship with the Phenician, Grecian, or Roman
+idolatry as represented by European writers, and then charge us with
+polytheism in the teeth of thousands of texts in the Pura_n_as
+declaring in clear and unmistakable terms that there is but one God
+who manifests Himself as Brahma, Vish_n_u, and Rudra (Siva), in His
+functions of creation, preservation, and destruction."[3]
+
+[Footnote 3: The modern pandit's reply to the missionary who accuses
+him of polytheism is: "O, these are only various manifestations of the
+one God; the same as, though the sun be one in the heavens, yet he
+appears in multi-form reflections upon the lake. The various sects are
+only different entrances to the one city." See W. W. Hunter, _Annals
+of Rural Bengal_, p. 116.]
+
+In support of these statements, this eloquent advocate quotes numerous
+passages from the sacred literature of the Brahmans, and he sums up
+his view of the three manifestations of the Deity in the words of
+their great poet Kalidasa, as translated by Mr. Griffith:--
+
+    "In those Three Persons the One God was shown:
+    Each First in place, each Last,--not one alone;
+    Of Siva, Vish_n_u, Brahma, each may be
+    First, second, third, among the Blessed Three."
+
+If such contradictory views can be held and defended with regard to
+religious systems still prevalent amongst us, where we can
+cross-examine living witnesses, and appeal to chapter and verse in
+their sacred writings, what must the difficulty be when we have to
+deal with the religions of the past? I do not wish to disguise these
+difficulties which are inherent in a comparative study of the
+religions of the world. I rather dwell on them strongly, in order to
+show how much care and caution is required in so difficult a subject,
+and how much indulgence should be shown in judging of the shortcomings
+and errors that are unavoidable in so comprehensive a study. It was
+supposed at one time that a comparative analysis of the languages of
+mankind must transcend the powers of man: and yet by the combined and
+well directed efforts of many scholars, great results have here been
+obtained, and the principles that must guide the student of the
+Science of Language are now firmly established. It will be the same
+with the Science of Religion. By a proper division of labor, the
+materials that are still wanting will be collected and published and
+translated, and when that is done, surely man will never rest till he
+has discovered the purpose that runs through the religions of mankind,
+and till he has reconstructed the true _Civitas Dei_ on foundations as
+wide as the ends of the world. The Science of Religion may be the last
+of the sciences which man is destined to elaborate; but when it is
+elaborated, it will change the aspect of the world, and give a new
+life to Christianity itself.
+
+The Fathers of the Church, though living in much more dangerous
+proximity to the ancient religions of the Gentiles, admitted freely
+that a comparison of Christianity and other religions was useful. "If
+there is any agreement," Basilius remarked, "between their (the
+Greeks') doctrines and our own, it may benefit us to know them: if
+not, then to compare them and to learn how they differ, will help not
+a little towards confirming that which is the better of the two."[4]
+
+[Footnote 4: Basilius, _De legendis Graec._ libris, c. v. [Greek: Ei men oun
+esti tis oikeiotes pros allelous tois logois, prourgou an hemin auton he
+gnosis genoito. ei de me, alla to ge parallela thentas katamathein to
+diaphoron, ou mikron eis bebaiosis beltionos.]]
+
+But this is not the only advantage of a comparative study of
+religions. The Science of Religion will for the first time assign to
+Christianity its right place among the religions of the world; it will
+show for the first time fully what was meant by the fulness of time;
+it will restore to the whole history of the world, in its unconscious
+progress towards Christianity, its true and sacred character.
+
+Not many years ago great offence was given by an eminent writer who
+remarked that the time had come when the history of Christianity
+should be treated in a truly historical spirit, in the same spirit in
+which we treat the history of other religions, such as Brahmanism,
+Buddhism, or Mohammedanism. And yet what can be truer? He must be a
+man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the
+same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other
+religions. We need not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment
+for that faith which we hold to be the only true one. We should rather
+challenge for it the severest tests and trials, as the sailor would
+for the good ship to which he entrusts his own life, and the lives of
+those who are most dear to him. In the Science of Religion, we can
+decline no comparisons, nor claim any immunities for Christianity, as
+little as the missionary can, when wrestling with the subtle Brahman,
+or the fanatical Mussulman, or the plain speaking Zulu. And if we send
+out our missionaries to every part of the world to face every kind of
+religion, to shrink from no contest, to be appalled by no objections,
+we must not give way at home or within our own hearts to any
+misgivings, that a comparative study of the religions of the world
+could shake the firm foundations on which we must stand or fall.
+
+To the missionary more particularly a comparative study of the
+religions of mankind will be, I believe, of the greatest assistance.
+Missionaries are apt to look upon all other religions as something
+totally distinct from their own, as formerly they used to describe the
+languages of barbarous nations as something more like the twittering
+of birds than the articulate speech of men. The Science of Language
+has taught us that there is order and wisdom in all languages, and
+that even the most degraded jargons contain the ruins of former
+greatness and beauty. The Science of Religion, I hope, will produce a
+similar change in our views of barbarous forms of faith and worship;
+and missionaries, instead of looking only for points of difference,
+will look out more anxiously for any common ground, any spark of the
+true light that may still be revived, any altar that may be dedicated
+afresh to the true God.
+
+And even to us at home, a wider view of the religious life of the
+world may teach many a useful lesson. Immense as is the difference
+between our own and all other religions of the world--and few can know
+that difference who have not honestly examined the foundations of
+their own as well as of other religions--the position which believers
+and unbelievers occupy with regard to their various forms of faith is
+very much the same all over the world. The difficulties which trouble
+us, have troubled the hearts and minds of men as far back as we can
+trace the beginnings of religious life. The great problems touching
+the relation of the Finite to the Infinite, of the human mind as the
+recipient, and of the Divine Spirit as the source of truth, are old
+problems indeed; and while watching their appearance in different
+countries, and their treatment under varying circumstances, we shall
+be able, I believe, to profit ourselves, both by the errors which
+others committed before us, and by the truth which they discovered. We
+shall know the rocks that threaten every religion in this changing and
+shifting world of ours, and having watched many a storm of religious
+controversy and many a shipwreck in distant seas, we shall face with
+greater calmness and prudence the troubled waters at home.
+
+If there is one thing which a comparative study of religions places in
+the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion
+is exposed. It may seem almost like a truism, that no religion can
+continue to be what it was during the lifetime of its founder and its
+first apostles. Yet it is but seldom borne in mind that without
+constant reformation, i. e. without a constant return to its
+fountain-head, every religion, even the most perfect, nay the most
+perfect on account of its very perfection, more even than others,
+suffers from its contact with the world, as the purest air suffers
+from the mere fact of its being breathed.
+
+Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first beginnings, we find
+it free from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases.
+The founders of the ancient religions of the world, as far as we can
+judge, were minds of a high stamp, full of noble aspirations, yearning
+for truth, devoted to the welfare of their neighbours, examples of
+purity and unselfishness. What they desired to found upon earth was
+but seldom realised, and their sayings, if preserved in their original
+form, offer often a strange contrast to the practice of those who
+profess to be their disciples. As soon as a religion is established,
+and more particularly when it has become the religion of a powerful
+state, the foreign and worldly elements encroach more and more on the
+original foundation, and human interests mar the simplicity and purity
+of the plan which the founder had conceived in his own heart, and
+matured in his communings with his God. Even those who lived with
+Buddha, misunderstood his words, and at the Great Council which had to
+settle the Buddhist canon, Asoka, the Indian Constantine, had to
+remind the assembled priests that 'what had been said by Buddha, that
+alone was well said;' and that certain works ascribed to Buddha, as,
+for instance, the instruction given to his son, Rahula, were
+apocryphal, if not heretical.[5] With every century, Buddhism, when it
+was accepted by nations, differing as widely as Mongols and Hindus,
+when its sacred writings were translated into languages as wide apart
+as Sanskrit and Chinese, assumed widely different aspects, till at
+last the Buddhism of the Shamans in the steppes of Tatary is as
+different from the teaching of the original _S_ama_n_a, as the
+Christianity of the leader of the Chinese rebels is from the teaching
+of Christ. If missionaries could show to the Brahmans, the Buddhists,
+the Zoroastrians, nay, even to the Mohammedans, how much their present
+faith differs from the faith of their forefathers and founders, if
+they could place into their hands and read with them in a kindly
+spirit the original documents in which these various religions
+profess to be founded, and enable them to distinguish between the
+doctrines of their own sacred books and the additions of later ages,
+an important advantage would be gained, and the choice between Christ
+and other Masters would be rendered far more easy to many a
+truth-seeking soul. But for that purpose it is necessary that we too
+should see the beam in our own eyes, and learn to distinguish between
+the Christianity of the nineteenth century and the religion of Christ.
+If we find that the Christianity of the nineteenth century does not
+win as many hearts in India and China as it ought, let us remember
+that it was the Christianity of the first century in all its dogmatic
+simplicity, but with its overpowering love of God and man, that
+conquered the world and superseded religions and philosophies, more
+difficult to conquer than the religious and philosophical systems of
+Hindus and Buddhists. If we can teach something to the Brahmans in
+reading with them their sacred hymns, they too can teach us something
+when reading with us the Gospel of Christ. Never shall I forget the
+deep despondency of a Hindu convert, a real martyr to his faith, who
+had pictured to himself from the pages of the New Testament what a
+Christian country must be, and who when he came to Europe found
+everything so different from what he had imagined in his lonely
+meditations at Benares! It was the Bible only that saved him from
+returning to his old religion, and helped him to discern beneath
+theological futilities, accumulated during nearly two thousand years,
+beneath pharisaical hypocrisy, infidelity, and want of charity, the
+buried, but still living seed, committed to the earth by Christ and
+his Apostles. How can a missionary in such circumstances meet the
+surprise and questions of his pupils, unless he may point to that
+seed, and tell them what Christianity was meant to be; unless he may
+show that like all other religions, Christianity, too, has had its
+history; that the Christianity of the nineteenth century is not the
+Christianity of the Middle Ages, that the Christianity of the Middle
+Ages was not that of the early Councils, that the Christianity of the
+early Councils was not that of the Apostles, and 'that what has been
+said by Christ that alone was well said?'
+
+[Footnote 5: See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' Appendice, No. x. Sec.
+4.]
+
+The advantages, however, which missionaries and other defenders of the
+faith will gain from a comparative study of religions, though
+important hereafter, are not at present the chief object of these
+researches. In order to maintain their scientific character, they must
+be independent of all extraneous considerations: they must aim at
+truth, trusting that even unpalatable truths, like unpalatable
+medicine, will reinvigorate the system into which they enter. To
+those, no doubt, who value the tenets of their religion as the miser
+values his pearls and precious stones, thinking their value lessened
+if pearls and stones of the same kind are found in other parts of the
+world, the Science of Religion will bring many a rude shock; but to
+the true believer, truth, wherever it appears, is welcome, nor will
+any doctrine seem to be less true or less precious, because it was
+seen, not only by Moses or Christ, but likewise by Buddha or Lao-tse.
+Nor should it be forgotten that while a comparison of ancient
+religions will certainly show that some of the most vital articles of
+faith are the common property of the whole of mankind, at least of all
+who seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him,
+the same comparison alone can possibly teach us what is peculiar to
+Christianity, and what has secured to it that pre-eminent position
+which now it holds in spite of all obloquy. The gain will be greater
+than the loss, if loss there be, which I, at least, shall never admit.
+
+There is a strong feeling, I know, in the minds of all people against
+any attempt to treat their own religion as a member of a class, and,
+in one sense, that feeling is perfectly justified. To each individual,
+his own religion, if he really believes in it, is something quite
+inseparable from himself, something unique, that cannot be compared to
+anything else, or replaced by anything else. Our own religion is, in
+that respect, something like our own language. In its form it may be
+like other languages; in its essence and in its relation to ourselves,
+it stands alone and admits of no peer or rival.
+
+But in the history of the world, our religion, like our own language,
+is but one out of many; and in order to understand fully the position
+of Christianity in the history of the world, and its true place among
+the religions of mankind, we must compare it, not with Judaeism only,
+but with the religious aspirations of the whole world, with all, in
+fact, that Christianity came either to destroy or to fulfil. From this
+point of view Christianity forms part, no doubt, of what people call
+profane history, but by that very fact, profane history ceases to be
+profane, and regains throughout that sacred character of which it had
+been deprived by a false distinction. The ancient Fathers of the
+Church spoke on these subjects with far greater freedom than we
+venture to use in these days. Justin Martyr, in his 'Apology' (A.D
+139), has this memorable passage ('Apol.' i. 46): 'One article of our
+faith then is, that Christ is the first begotten of God, and we have
+already proved Him to be the very Logos (or universal Reason), of
+which mankind are all partakers; and therefore those who live
+according to the Logos are Christians, notwithstanding they may pass
+with you for Atheists; such among the Greeks were Sokrates and
+Herakleitos and the like; and such among the Barbarians were Abraham,
+and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, and Elias, and many others,
+whose actions, nay whose very names, I know, would be tedious to
+relate, and therefore shall pass them over. So, on the other side,
+those who have lived in former times in defiance of the Logos or
+Reason, were evil, and enemies to Christ and murderers of such as
+lived according to the Logos; but _they who have made or make the
+Logos or Reason the rule of their actions are Christians_, and men
+without fear and trembling.'[5_1]
+
+[Footnote 5_1:
+[Greek: Ton christon prothotokon tou Theou einai edidhachthemen, kai
+proemenhysamen Lhogon onta, ou pan ghenos anthrhopon methesche kai oi
+meta Lhogou bihosantes christianohi eisi, kan atheoi enomhisthesan,
+oion en Ellesi men Sokrhates kai Erhakleitos kai oi homoioi autois, en
+barbarois de Abraam kai Ananias kai Asarias kai Misael kai Elhias kai
+alloi polloi, on tas praxets e ta onomata katalegein makron einai
+epistamenoi, tanyn paraitoymetha. oste kai oi progenomenoi aneu Ldgou
+bihosantes, acrestoi ka.]]
+
+'God,' says Clement,[6] 'is the cause of all that is good: only of
+some good gifts He is the primary cause, as of the Old and New
+Testaments, of others the secondary, as of (Greek) philosophy. But
+even philosophy may have been given primarily by Him to the Greeks,
+before the Lord had called the Greeks also. For that philosophy, like
+a teacher, has guided the Greeks also, as the Law did the Hebrews,
+towards Christ. Philosophy, therefore, prepares and opens the way to
+those who are made perfect by Christ.'
+
+[Footnote 6: Clem. Alex. Strom, lib. I, cap. v, Sec. 28.
+[Greek: Panton
+men gar aitios ton kalon d theos, alla ton men kata proegoumenon, hos
+tes te diathekes tes palaias kai tes neas, ton de kat epakolouthema, hos
+tes philosophias tacha de kai proegoumenos tois Ellesin edothe tote
+prin e ton kurion kalesai kai tous Elleuas. Epaidagogei gar kai aute
+to Ellenikon hos o nomos tous Ebraious eis Christon. proparaskeuixei
+toinun e philosophia proodopoiousa ton hupo Christou teleioumenon.]]
+
+And again: 'It is clear that the same God to whom we owe the Old and
+New Testaments, gave also to the Greeks their Greek philosophy by
+which the Almighty is glorified among the Greeks.'[7]
+
+[Footnote 7: Strom, lib. VI, cap. V, Sec. 42.
+[Greek: Eros de kai oti o
+autos theos amphoin tain diathekain choregos, o kai tes Ellenikes
+philosophias doter tois Ellesin, di es o pantokrator par Ellesi
+doxazetai, parestesen, delon de kanthede.]]
+
+And Clement was by no means the only one who spoke thus freely and
+fearlessly, though, no doubt, his knowledge of Greek philosophy
+qualified him better than many of his contemporaries to speak with
+authority on such subjects.
+
+St. Augustine writes: 'If the Gentiles also had possibly something
+divine and true in their doctrines, our Saints did not find fault with
+it, although for their superstition, idolatry, and pride, and other
+evil habits, they had to be detested, and, unless they improved, to be
+punished by divine judgment. For the apostle Paul, when he said
+something about God among the Athenians, quoted the testimony of some
+of the Greeks who had said something of the same kind: and this, if
+they came to Christ, would be acknowledged in them, and not blamed.
+Saint Cyprian, too, uses such witnesses against the Gentiles. For when
+he speaks of the Magians, he says that the chief among them, Hostanes,
+maintains that the true God is invisible, and that true angels sit at
+His throne; and that Plato agrees with this, and believes in One God,
+considering the others to be angels or demons; and that Hermes
+Trismegistus also speaks of One God, and confesses that He is
+incomprehensible.' (Augustinus, 'De Baptismo contra Donatistas,' lib.
+VI, cap. xliv.)
+
+Every religion, even the most imperfect and degraded, has something
+that ought to be sacred to us, for there is in all religions a secret
+yearning after the true, though unknown, God. Whether we see the Papua
+squatting in dumb meditation before his fetish, or whether we listen
+to Firdusi exclaiming: 'The heighth and the depth of the whole world
+have their centre in Thee, O my God! I do not know Thee what Thou art:
+but I know that Thou art what Thou alone canst be,'--we ought to feel
+that the place whereon we stand is holy ground. There are
+philosophers, no doubt, to whom both Christianity and all other
+religions are exploded errors, things belonging to the past, and to be
+replaced by more positive knowledge. To them the study of the
+religions of the world could only have a pathological interest, and
+their hearts could never warm at the sparks of truth that light up,
+like stars, the dark yet glorious night of the ancient world. They
+tell us that the world has passed through the phases of religious and
+metaphysical errors, in order to arrive at the safe haven of positive
+knowledge of facts. But if they would but study positive facts, if
+they would but read, patiently and thoughtfully, the history of the
+world, as it is, not as it might have been: they would see that, as in
+geology, so in the history of human thought, theoretic uniformity does
+not exist, and that the past is never altogether lost. The oldest
+formations of thought crop out everywhere, and if we dig but deep
+enough, we shall find that even the sandy desert in which we are asked
+to live, rests everywhere on the firm foundation of that primeval, yet
+indestructible granite of the human soul,--religious faith.
+
+There are other philosophers again who would fain narrow the limits of
+the Divine government of the world to the history of the Jewish and of
+the Christian nations, who would grudge the very name of religion to
+the ancient creeds of the world, and to whom the name of natural
+religion has almost become a term of reproach. To them, too, I should
+like to say that if they would but study positive facts, if they would
+but read their own Bible, they would find that the greatness of Divine
+Love cannot be measured by human standards, and that God has never
+forsaken a single human soul that has not first forsaken Him. 'He hath
+made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of
+the earth; and hath determined the times before appointed, and the
+bounds of their habitation: that they should seek the Lord, if haply
+they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from
+every one of us,' If they would but dig deep enough, they too would
+find that what they contemptuously call natural religion, is in
+reality the greatest gift that God has bestowed on the children of
+man, and that without it, revealed religion itself would have no firm
+foundation, no living roots in the heart of man.
+
+If by the essays here collected I should succeed in attracting more
+general attention towards an independent, yet reverent study of the
+ancient religions of the world, and in dispelling some of the
+prejudices with which so many have regarded the yearnings after truth
+embodied in the sacred writings of the Brahmans, the Zoroastrians, and
+the Buddhists, in the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, nay, even in
+the wild traditions and degraded customs of Polynesian savages, I
+shall consider myself amply rewarded for the labour which they have
+cost me. That they are not free from errors, in spite of a careful
+revision to which they have been submitted before I published them in
+this collection, I am fully aware, and I shall be grateful to any one
+who will point them out, little concerned whether it is done in a
+seemly or unseemly manner, as long as some new truth is elicited, or
+some old error effectually exploded. Though I have thought it right in
+preparing these essays for publication, to alter what I could no
+longer defend as true, and also, though rarely, to add some new facts
+that seemed essential for the purpose of establishing what I wished to
+prove, yet in the main they have been left as they were originally
+published. I have added to each the dates when they were written,
+these dates ranging over the last fifteen years, and I must beg my
+readers to bear these dates in mind when judging both of the form and
+the matter of these contributions towards a better knowledge of the
+creeds and prayers, the legends and customs of the ancient world.
+
+M. M.
+
+PARKS END, OXFORD:
+
+_October_, 1867.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF FIRST VOLUME.
+
+
+
+I.      LECTURE ON THE VEDAS OR THE SACRED BOOKS OF THE BRAHMANS,
+          DELIVERED AT LEEDS, 1865
+
+II.     CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS, 1858
+
+III.    THE VEDA AND ZEND-AVESTA, 1853
+
+IV.     THE AITAREYA-BRAHMANA, 1864
+
+V.      ON THE STUDY OF THE ZEND-AVESTA IN INDIA, 1862
+
+VI.     PROGRESS OF ZEND SCHOLARSHIP, 1865
+
+VII.    GENESIS AND THE ZEND-AVESTA, 1864
+
+VIII.   THE MODERN PARSIS, 1862
+
+IX.     BUDDHISM, 1862
+
+X.      BUDDHIST PILGRIMS, 1857
+
+XI.     THE MEANING OF NIRVANA, 1857
+
+XII.    CHINESE TRANSLATIONS OF SANSKRIT TEXTS, 1861
+
+XIII.   THE WORKS OF CONFUCIUS, 1861
+
+XIV.    POPOL VUH, 1862
+
+XV.     SEMITIC MONOTHEISM, 1860
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+LECTURE ON THE VEDAS
+
+OR THE
+
+SACRED BOOKS OF THE BRAHMANS,[8]
+
+DELIVERED AT THE
+
+PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION, LEEDS, MARCH, 1865.
+
+
+I have brought with me one volume of my edition of the Veda, and I
+should not wonder if it were the first copy of the work which has ever
+reached this busy town of Leeds. Nay, I confess I have some misgivings
+whether I have not undertaken a hopeless task, and I begin to doubt
+whether I shall succeed in explaining to you the interest which I feel
+for this ancient collection of sacred hymns, an interest which has
+never failed me while devoting to the publication of this voluminous
+work the best twenty years of my life. Many times have I been asked,
+But what is the Veda? Why should it be published? What are we likely
+to learn from a book composed nearly four thousand years ago, and
+intended from the beginning for an uncultivated race of mere heathens
+and savages,--a book which the natives of India have never published
+themselves, although, to the present day, they profess to regard it as
+the highest authority for their religion, morals, and philosophy? Are
+we, the people of England or of Europe, in the nineteenth century,
+likely to gain any new light on religious, moral, or philosophical
+questions from the old songs of the Brahmans? And is it so very
+certain that the whole book is not a modern forgery, without any
+substantial claims to that high antiquity which is ascribed to it by
+the Hindus, so that all the labour bestowed upon it would not only be
+labour lost, but throw discredit on our powers of discrimination, and
+make us a laughing-stock among the shrewd natives of India? These and
+similar questions I have had to answer many times when asked by
+others, and some of them when asked by myself, before embarking on so
+hazardous an undertaking as the publication of the Rig-veda and its
+ancient commentary. And, I believe, I am not mistaken in supposing
+that many of those who to-night have honoured me with their presence
+may have entertained similar doubts and misgivings when invited to
+listen to a Lecture 'On the Vedas or the Sacred Books of the
+Brahmans.'
+
+[Footnote 8: Some of the points touched upon in this Lecture have been
+more fully treated in my 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature.' As
+the second edition of this work has been out of print for several
+years, I have here quoted a few passages from it in full.]
+
+I shall endeavour, therefore, as far as this is possible within the
+limits of one Lecture, to answer some of these questions, and to
+remove some of these doubts, by explaining to you, first, what the
+Veda really is, and, secondly, what importance it possesses, not only
+to the people of India, but to ourselves in Europe,--and here again,
+not only to the student of Oriental languages, but to every student of
+history, religion, or philosophy; to every man who has once felt the
+charm of tracing that mighty stream of human thought on which we
+ourselves are floating onward, back to its distant mountain-sources;
+to every one who has a heart for whatever has once filled the hearts
+of millions of human beings with their noblest hopes, and fears, and
+aspirations;--to every student of mankind in the fullest sense of that
+full and weighty word. Whoever claims that noble title must not
+forget, whether he examines the highest achievements of mankind in our
+own age, or the miserable failures of former ages, what man is, and in
+whose image and after whose likeness man was made. Whether listening
+to the shrieks of the Shaman sorcerers of Tatary, or to the odes of
+Pindar, or to the sacred songs of Paul Gerhard: whether looking at the
+pagodas of China, or the Parthenon of Athens, or the cathedral of
+Cologne: whether reading the sacred books of the Buddhists, of the
+Jews, or of those who worship God in spirit and in truth, we ought to
+be able to say, like the Emperor Maximilian, 'Homo sum, humani nihil a
+me alienum puto,' or, translating his words somewhat freely, 'I am a
+man, nothing pertaining to man I deem foreign to myself.' Yes, we must
+learn to read in the history of the whole human race something of our
+own history; and as in looking back on the story of our own life, we
+all dwell with a peculiar delight on the earliest chapters of our
+childhood, and try to find there the key to many of the riddles of our
+later life, it is but natural that the historian, too, should ponder
+with most intense interest over the few relics that have been
+preserved to him of the childhood of the human race. These relics are
+few indeed, and therefore very precious, and this I may venture to
+say, at the outset and without fear of contradiction, that there
+exists no literary relic that carries us back to a more primitive, or,
+if you like, more child-like state in the history of man[9] than the
+Veda. As the language of the Veda, the Sanskrit, is the most ancient
+type of the English of the present day, (Sanskrit and English are but
+varieties of one and the same language,) so its thoughts and feelings
+contain in reality the first roots and germs of that intellectual
+growth which by an unbroken chain connects our own generation with the
+ancestors of the Aryan race,--with those very people who at the rising
+and setting of the sun listened with trembling hearts to the songs of
+the Veda, that told them of bright powers above, and of a life to come
+after the sun of their own lives had set in the clouds of the evening.
+Those men were the true ancestors of our race; and the Veda is the
+oldest book we have in which to study the first beginnings of our
+language, and of all that is embodied in language. We are by nature
+Aryan, Indo-European, not Semitic: our spiritual kith and kin are to
+be found in India, Persia, Greece, Italy, Germany; not in Mesopotamia,
+Egypt, or Palestine. This is a fact that ought to be clearly
+perceived, and constantly kept in view, in order to understand the
+importance which the Veda has for us, after the lapse of more than
+three thousand years, and after ever so many changes in our language,
+thought, and religion.
+
+[Footnote 9: 'In the sciences of law and society, old means not old in
+chronology, but in structure: that is most archaic which lies nearest
+to the beginning of human progress considered as a development, and
+that is most modern which is farthest removed from that
+beginning.'--J. F. McLennan, 'Primitive Marriage,' p. 8.]
+
+Whatever the intrinsic value of the Veda, if it simply contained the
+names of kings, the description of battles, the dates of famines, it
+would still be, by its age alone, the most venerable of books. Do we
+ever find much beyond such matters in Egyptian hieroglyphics, or in
+Cuneiform inscriptions? In fact, what does the ancient history of the
+world before Cyrus, before 500 B.C., consist of, but meagre lists of
+Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian dynasties? What do the tablets of
+Karnak, the palaces of Nineveh, and the cylinders of Babylon tell us
+about the thoughts of men? All is dead and barren, nowhere a sigh,
+nowhere a jest, nowhere a glimpse of humanity. There has been but one
+oasis in that vast desert of ancient Asiatic history, the history of
+the Jews. Another such oasis is the Veda. Here, too, we come to a
+stratum of ancient thought, of ancient feelings, hopes, joys, and
+fears,--of ancient religion. There is perhaps too little of kings and
+battles in the Veda, and scarcely anything of the chronological
+framework of history. But poets surely are better than kings, hymns
+and prayers are more worth listening to than the agonies of butchered
+armies, and guesses at truth more valuable than unmeaning titles of
+Egyptian or Babylonian despots. It will be difficult to settle whether
+the Veda is 'the oldest of books,' and whether some of the portions of
+the Old Testament may not be traced back to the same or even an
+earlier date than the oldest hymns of the Veda. But, in the Aryan
+world, the Veda is certainly the oldest book, and its preservation
+amounts almost to a marvel.
+
+It is nearly twenty years ago that my attention was first drawn to
+the Veda, while attending, in the years 1846 and 1847, the lectures of
+Eugene Burnouf at the College de France. I was then looking out, like
+most young men at that time of life, for some great work, and without
+weighing long the difficulties which had hitherto prevented the
+publication of the Veda, I determined to devote all my time to the
+collection of the materials necessary for such an undertaking. I had
+read the principal works of the later Sanskrit literature, but had
+found little there that seemed to be more than curious. But to publish
+the Veda, a work that had never before been published in India or in
+Europe, that occupied in the history of Sanskrit literature the same
+position which the Old Testament occupies in the history of the Jews,
+the New Testament in the history of modern Europe, the Koran in the
+history of Mohammedanism,--a work which fills a gap in the history of
+the human mind, and promises to bring us nearer than any other work to
+the first beginnings of Aryan language and Aryan thought,--this seemed
+to me an undertaking not altogether unworthy a man's life. What added
+to the charm of it was that it had once before been undertaken by
+Frederick Rosen, a young German scholar, who died in England before he
+had finished the first book, and that after his death no one seemed
+willing to carry on his work. What I had to do, first of all, was to
+copy not only the text, but the commentary of the Rig-veda, a work
+which when finished will fill six of these large volumes. The author
+or rather the compiler of this commentary, Saya_n_a A_k_arya, lived
+about 1400 after Christ, that is to say, about as many centuries
+after, as the poets of the Veda lived before, the beginning of our
+era. Yet through the 3000 years which separate the original poetry of
+the Veda from the latest commentary, there runs an almost continuous
+stream of tradition, and it is from it, rather than from his own
+brain, that Saya_n_a draws his explanations of the sacred texts.
+Numerous MSS., more or less complete, more or less inaccurate, of
+Saya_n_a's classical work, existed in the then Royal Library at Paris,
+in the Library of the East-India House, then in Leadenhall Street, and
+in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. But to copy and collate these MSS.
+was by no means all. A number of other works were constantly quoted in
+Saya_n_a's commentary, and these quotations had all to be verified. It
+was necessary first to copy these works, and to make indexes to all of
+them, in order to be able to find any passage that might be referred
+to in the larger commentary. Many of these works have since been
+published in Germany and France, but they were not to be procured
+twenty years ago. The work, of course, proceeded but slowly, and many
+times I doubted whether I should be able to carry it through. Lastly
+came the difficulty,--and by no means the smallest,--who was to
+publish a work that would occupy about six thousand pages in quarto,
+all in Sanskrit, and of which probably not a hundred copies would ever
+be sold. Well, I came to England in order to collect more materials at
+the East-India House and at the Bodleian Library, and thanks to the
+exertions of my generous friend Baron Bunsen, and of the late
+Professor Wilson, the Board of Directors of the East-India Company
+decided to defray the expenses of a work which, as they stated in
+their letter, 'is in a peculiar manner deserving of the patronage of
+the East-India Company, connected as it is with the early religion,
+history, and language of the great body of their Indian subjects.' It
+thus became necessary for me to take up my abode in England, which has
+since become my second home. The first volume was published in 1849,
+the second in 1853, the third in 1856, the fourth in 1862. The
+materials for the remaining volumes are ready, so that, if I can but
+make leisure, there is little doubt that before long the whole work
+will be complete.
+
+Now, first, as to the name. Veda means originally knowing or
+knowledge, and this name is given by the Brahmans not to one work, but
+to the whole body of their most ancient sacred literature. Veda is the
+same word which appears in the Greek [Greek: oida], I know, and in the
+English wise, wisdom, to wit.[10] The name of Veda is commonly given
+to four collections of hymns, which are respectively known by the
+names of Rig-veda, Ya_g_ur-veda, Sama-veda, and Atharva-veda; but for
+our own purposes, namely for tracing the earliest growth of religious
+ideas in India, the only important, the only real Veda, is the
+Rig-veda.
+
+[Footnote 10:
+
+Sanskrit      Greek           Gothic     Anglo-Saxon     German
+
+veda          [Greek: oida]     vait       wat           ich weiss
+vettha        [Greek: oistha]   vaist      wast          du weisst
+veda          [Greek: oide]     vait       wat           er weiss
+vidva         --                vitu       --            --
+vidathu_h_    [Greek: iston]    vituts     --            --
+vidatu_h_     [Greek: iston]    --         --            --
+vidma         [Greek: ismen]    vitum      witon         wir wissen
+vida          [Greek: iste]     vituth     wite          ihr wisset
+vidu_h_       [Greek: isasi]    vitun      witan         sie wissen.
+]
+
+The other so-called Vedas, which deserve the name of Veda no more than
+the Talmud deserves the name of Bible, contain chiefly extracts from
+the Rig-veda, together with sacrificial formulas, charms, and
+incantations, many of them, no doubt, extremely curious, but never
+likely to interest any one except the Sanskrit scholar by profession.
+
+The Ya_g_ur-veda and Sama-veda may be described as prayer-books,
+arranged according to the order of certain sacrifices, and intended to
+be used by certain classes of priests.
+
+Four classes of priests were required in India at the most solemn
+sacrifices:
+
+     1. The officiating priests, manual labourers, and acolytes;
+     who have chiefly to prepare the sacrificial ground, to dress
+     the altar, slay the victims, and pour out the libations.
+
+     2. The choristers, who chant the sacred hymns.
+
+     3. The reciters or readers, who repeat certain hymns.
+
+     4. The overseers or bishops, who watch and superintend the
+     proceedings of the other priests, and ought to be familiar
+     with all the Vedas.
+
+The formulas and verses to be muttered by the first class are
+contained in the Ya_g_ur-veda-sanhita. The hymns to be sung by the
+second class are in the Sama-veda-sanhita.
+
+The Atharva-veda is said to be intended for the Brahman or overseer,
+who is to watch the proceedings of the sacrifice, and to remedy any
+mistake that may occur.[11]
+
+[Footnote 11: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. 449.]
+
+Fortunately, the hymns to be recited by the third class were not
+arranged in a sacrificial prayer-book, but were preserved in an old
+collection of hymns, containing all that had been saved of ancient,
+sacred, and popular poetry, more like the Psalms than like a ritual; a
+collection made for its own sake, and not for the sake of any
+sacrificial performances.
+
+I shall, therefore, confine my remarks to the Rig-veda, which in the
+eyes of the historical student is the Veda _par excellence_. Now
+Rig-veda means the Veda of hymns of praise, for _R_ich, which before
+the initial soft letter of Veda is changed to _R_ig, is derived from a
+root which in Sanskrit means to celebrate.
+
+In the Rig-veda we must distinguish again between the original collection
+of the hymns or Mantras, called the Sanhita or the collection, being
+entirely metrical and poetical, and a number of prose works, called
+Brahma_n_as and Sutras, written in prose, and giving information on the
+proper use of the hymns at sacrifices, on their sacred meaning, on their
+supposed authors, and similar topics. These works, too, go by the name of
+Rig-veda: but though very curious in themselves, they are evidently of a
+much later period, and of little help to us in tracing the beginnings of
+religious life in India. For that purpose we must depend entirely on the
+hymns, such as we find them in the Sanhita or the collection of the
+Rig-veda.
+
+Now this collection consists of ten books, and contains altogether
+1028 hymns. As early as about 600 B.C. we find that in the theological
+schools of India every verse, every word, every syllable of the Veda
+had been carefully counted. The number of verses as computed in
+treatises of that date, varies from 10,402 to 10,622; that of the
+words is 153,826, that of the syllables 432,000.[12] With these
+numbers, and with the description given in these early treatises of
+each hymn, of its metre, its deity, its number of verses, our modern
+MSS. of the Veda correspond as closely as could be expected.
+
+[Footnote 12: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' second
+edition, p. 219 seq.]
+
+I say, our modern MSS., for all our MSS. are modern, and very modern.
+Few Sanskrit MSS. are more than four or five hundred years old, the
+fact being that in the damp climate of India no paper will last for
+more than a few centuries. How then, you will naturally ask, can it be
+proved that the original hymns were composed between 1200 and 1500
+before the Christian era, if our MSS. only carry us back to about the
+same date after the Christian era? It is not very easy to bridge over
+this gulf of nearly three thousand years, but all I can say is that,
+after carefully examining every possible objection that can be made
+against the date of the Vedic hymns, their claim to that high
+antiquity which is ascribed to them, has not, as far as I can judge,
+been shaken. I shall try to explain on what kind of evidence these
+claims rest.
+
+You know that we possess no MS. of the Old Testament in Hebrew older
+than about the tenth century after the Christian era; yet the
+Septuagint translation by itself would be sufficient to prove that the
+Old Testament, such as we now read it, existed in MS. previous, at
+least, to the third century before our era. By a similar train of
+argument, the works to which I referred before, in which we find every
+hymn, every verse, every word and syllable of the Veda accurately
+counted by native scholars about five or six hundred years before
+Christ, guarantee the existence of the Veda, such as we now read it,
+as far back at least as five or six hundred years before Christ. Now
+in the works of that period, the Veda is already considered, not only
+as an ancient, but as a sacred book; and, more than this, its language
+had ceased to be generally intelligible. The language of India had
+changed since the Veda was composed, and learned commentaries were
+necessary in order to explain to the people, then living, the true
+purport, nay, the proper pronunciation, of their sacred hymns. But
+more than this. In certain exegetical compositions, which are
+generally comprised under the name of Sutras, and which are
+contemporary with, or even anterior to, the treatises on the
+theological statistics just mentioned, not only are the ancient hymns
+represented as invested with sacred authority, but that other class of
+writings, the Brahma_n_as, standing half-way between the hymns and the
+Sutras, have likewise been raised to the dignity of a revealed
+literature. These Brahma_n_as, you will remember, are prose treatises,
+written in illustration of the ancient sacrifices and of the hymns
+employed at them. Such treatises would only spring up when some kind
+of explanation began to be wanted both for the ceremonial and for the
+hymns to be recited at certain sacrifices, and we find, in
+consequence, that in many cases the authors of the Brahma_n_as had
+already lost the power of understanding the text of the ancient hymns
+in its natural and grammatical meaning, and that they suggested the
+most absurd explanations of the various sacrificial acts, most of
+which, we may charitably suppose, had originally some rational
+purpose. Thus it becomes evident that the period during which the
+hymns were composed must have been separated by some centuries, at
+least, from the period that gave birth to the Brahma_n_as, in order to
+allow time for the hymns growing unintelligible and becoming invested
+with a sacred character. Secondly, the period during which the
+Brahma_n_as were composed must be separated by some centuries from the
+authors of the Sutras, in order to allow time for further changes in
+the language, and more particularly for the growth of a new theology,
+which ascribed to the Brahma_n_as the same exceptional and revealed
+character which the Brahma_n_as themselves ascribed to the hymns. So
+that we want previously to 600 B.C., when every syllable of the Veda
+was counted, at least two strata of intellectual and literary growth,
+of two or three centuries each; and are thus brought to 1100 or 1200
+B.C. as the earliest time when we may suppose the collection of the
+Vedic hymns to have been finished. This collection of hymns again
+contains, by its own showing, ancient and modern hymns, the hymns of
+the sons together with the hymns of their fathers and earlier
+ancestors; so that we cannot well assign a date more recent than 1200
+to 1500 before our era, for the original composition of those simple
+hymns which up to the present day are regarded by the Brahmans with
+the same feelings with which a Mohammedan regards the Koran, a Jew the
+Old Testament, a Christian his Gospel.
+
+That the Veda is not quite a modern forgery can be proved, however, by more
+tangible evidence. Hiouen-thsang, a Buddhist pilgrim, who travelled from
+China to India in the years 629-645, and who, in his diary translated from
+Chinese into French by M. Stanislas Julien, gives the names of the four
+Vedas, mentions some grammatical forms peculiar to the Vedic Sanskrit, and
+states that at his time young Brahmans spent all their time, from the
+seventh to the thirtieth year of their age, in learning these sacred texts.
+At the time when Hiouen-thsang was travelling in India, Buddhism was
+clearly on the decline. But Buddhism was originally a reaction against
+Brahmanism, and chiefly against the exclusive privileges which the Brahmans
+claimed, and which from the beginning were represented by them as based on
+their revealed writings, the Vedas, and hence beyond the reach of human
+attacks. Buddhism, whatever the date of its founder, became the state
+religion of India under A_s_oka, the Constantine of India, in the middle of
+the third century B.C. This A_s_oka was the third king of a new dynasty
+founded by _K_andragupta, the well-known contemporary of Alexander and
+Seleucus, about 315 B.C. The preceding dynasty was that of the Nandas, and
+it is under this dynasty that the traditions of the Brahmans place a number
+of distinguished scholars whose treatises on the Veda we still possess,
+such as _S_aunaka, Katyayana, A_s_valayana, and others. Their works, and
+others written with a similar object and in the same style, carry us back
+to about 600 B.C. This period of literature, which is called the Sutra
+period, was preceded, as we saw, by another class of writings, the
+Brahma_n_as, composed in a very prolix and tedious style, and containing
+lengthy lucubrations on the sacrifices and on the duties of the different
+classes of priests. Each of the three or four Vedas, or each of the three
+or four classes of priests, has its own Brahma_n_as and its own Sutras;
+and as the Brahma_n_as are presupposed by the Sutras, while no Sutra is
+ever quoted by the Brahma_n_as, it is clear that the period of the
+Brahma_n_a literature must have preceded the period of the Sutra
+literature. There are, however, old and new Brahma_n_as, and there are in
+the Brahma_n_as themselves long lists of teachers who handed down old
+Brahma_n_as or composed new ones, so that it seems impossible to
+accommodate the whole of that literature in less than two centuries, from
+about 800 to 600 B.C. Before, however, a single Brahma_n_a could have been
+composed, it was not only necessary that there should have been one
+collection of ancient hymns, like that contained in the ten books of the
+Rig-veda, but the three or four classes of priests must have been
+established, the officiating priests and the choristers must have had their
+special prayer-books, nay, these prayer-books must have undergone certain
+changes, because the Brahma_n_as presuppose different texts, called sakhas,
+of each of these prayer-books, which are called the Ya_g_ur-veda-sanhita,
+the Sama-veda-sanhita, and the Atharva-veda-sanhita. The work of collecting
+the prayers for the different classes of priests, and of adding new hymns
+and formulas for purely sacrificial purposes, belonged probably to the
+tenth century B.C., and three generations more would, at least, be required
+to account for the various readings adopted in the prayer-books by
+different sects, and invested with a kind of sacred authority, long before
+the composition of even the earliest among the Brahma_n_as. If, therefore,
+the years from about 1000 to 800 B.C. are assigned to this collecting age,
+the time before 1000 B.C. must be set apart for the free and natural
+growth of what was then national and religious, but not yet sacred and
+sacrificial poetry. How far back this period extends it is impossible to
+tell; it is enough if the hymns of the Rig-veda can be traced to a period
+anterior to 1000 B.C.
+
+Much in the chronological arrangement of the three periods of Vedic
+literature that are supposed to have followed the period of the
+original growth of the hymns, must of necessity be hypothetical, and
+has been put forward rather to invite than to silence criticism. In
+order to discover truth, we must be truthful ourselves, and must
+welcome those who point out our errors as heartily as those who
+approve and confirm our discoveries. What seems, however, to speak
+strongly in favour of the historical character of the three periods of
+Vedic literature is the uniformity of style which marks the
+productions of each. In modern literature we find, at one and the same
+time, different styles of prose and poetry cultivated by one and the
+same author. A Goethe writes tragedy, comedy, satire, lyrical poetry,
+and scientific prose; but we find nothing like this in primitive
+literature. The individual is there much less prominent, and the
+poet's character disappears in the general character of the layer of
+literature to which he belongs. It is the discovery of such large
+layers of literature following each other in regular succession which
+inspires the critical historian with confidence in the truly
+historical character of the successive literary productions of ancient
+India. As in Greece there is an epic age of literature, where we
+should look in vain for prose or dramatic poetry; as in that country
+we never meet with real elegiac poetry before the end of the eighth
+century, nor with iambics before the same date; as even in more
+modern times rhymed heroic poetry appears in England with the Norman
+conquest, and in Germany the Minnesaenger rise and set with the Swabian
+dynasty--so, only in a much more decided manner, we see in the ancient
+and spontaneous literature of India, an age of poets followed by an
+age of collectors and imitators, that age to be succeeded by an age of
+theological prose writers, and this last by an age of writers of
+scientific manuals. New wants produced new supplies, and nothing
+sprang up or was allowed to live, in prose or poetry, except what was
+really wanted. If the works of poets, collectors, imitators,
+theologians, and teachers were all mixed up together--if the
+Brahma_n_as quoted the Sutras, and the hymns alluded to the
+Brahma_n_as--an historical restoration of the Vedic literature of
+India would be almost an impossibility. We should suspect artificial
+influences, and look with small confidence on the historical character
+of such a literary agglomerate. But he who would question the
+antiquity of the Veda must explain how the layers of literature were
+formed that are super-imposed over the original stratum of the poetry
+of the Rishis; he who would suspect a literary forgery must show how,
+when, and for what purpose the 1000 hymns of the Rig-veda could have
+been forged, and have become the basis of the religious, moral,
+political, and literary life of the ancient inhabitants of India.
+
+The idea of revelation, and I mean more particularly book-revelation,
+is not a modern idea, nor is it an idea peculiar to Christianity.
+Though we look for it in vain in the literature of Greece and Rome, we
+find the literature of India saturated with this idea from beginning
+to end. In no country, I believe, has the theory of revelation been
+so minutely elaborated as in India. The name for revelation in
+Sanskrit is _S_ruti, which means hearing; and this title distinguishes
+the Vedic hymns and, at a later time, the Brahma_n_as also, from all
+other works, which, however sacred, and authoritative to the Hindu
+mind, are admitted to have been composed by human authors. The Laws of
+Manu, for instance, according to the Brahmanic theology, are not
+revelation; they are not _S_ruti, but only Sm_r_iti, which means
+recollection or tradition. If these laws or any other work of
+authority can be proved on any point to be at variance with a single
+passage of the Veda, their authority is at once overruled. According
+to the orthodox views of Indian theologians, not a single line of the
+Veda was the work of human authors. The whole Veda is in some way or
+other the work of the Deity; and even those who received the
+revelation, or, as they express it, those who saw it, were not
+supposed to be ordinary mortals, but beings raised above the level of
+common humanity, and less liable therefore to error in the reception
+of revealed truth. The views entertained of revelation by the orthodox
+theologians of India are far more minute and elaborate than those of
+the most extreme advocates of verbal inspiration in Europe. The human
+element, called paurusheyatva in Sanskrit, is driven out of every
+corner or hiding-place, and as the Veda is held to have existed in the
+mind of the Deity before the beginning of time, every allusion to
+historical events, of which there are not a few, is explained away
+with a zeal and ingenuity worthy of a better cause.
+
+But let me state at once that there is nothing in the hymns themselves
+to warrant such extravagant theories. In many a hymn the author says
+plainly that he or his friends made it to please the gods; that he
+made it, as a carpenter makes a chariot (Rv. I. 130, 6; V. 2, 11), or
+like a beautiful vesture (Rv. V. 29, 15); that he fashioned it in his
+heart and kept it in his mind (Rv. I. 171, 2); that he expects, as his
+reward, the favour of the god whom he celebrates (Rv. IV. 6, 21). But
+though the poets of the Veda know nothing of the artificial theories
+of verbal inspiration, they were not altogether unconscious of higher
+influences: nay, they speak of their hymns as god-given ('devattam,'
+Rv. III. 37, 4). One poets says (Rv. VI. 47, 10): 'O god (Indra) have
+mercy, give me my daily bread! Sharpen my mind, like the edge of iron.
+Whatever I now may utter, longing for thee, do thou accept it; make me
+possessed of God!' Another utters for the first time the famous hymn,
+the Gayatri, which now for more than three thousand years has been the
+daily prayer of every Brahman, and is still repeated every morning by
+millions of pious worshippers: 'Let us meditate on the adorable light
+of the divine Creator: may he rouse our minds.'[13] This consciousness
+of higher influences, or of divine help in those who uttered for the
+first time the simple words of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, is
+very different, however, from the artificial theories of verbal
+inspiration which we find in the later theological writings; it is
+indeed but another expression of that deepfelt dependence on the
+Deity, of that surrender and denial of all that seems to be self,
+which was felt more or less by every nation, but by none, I believe,
+more strongly, more constantly, than by the Indian. "It is He that has
+made it,"--namely, the prayer in which the soul of the poet has thrown
+off her burden,--is but a variation of, "It is He that has made us,"
+which is the key-note of all religion, whether ancient or modern,
+whether natural or revealed.
+
+I must say no more to-night of what the Veda is, for I am very anxious
+to explain to you, as far as it is possible, what I consider to be the
+real importance of the Veda to the student of history, to the student
+of religion, to the student of mankind.
+
+[Footnote 13: 'Tat Savitur vare_n_yam bhargo devasya dhimahi, dhiyo yo
+na_h_ pra_k_odayat.'--Colebrooke, 'Miscellaneous Essays,' i. 30. Many
+passages bearing on this subject have been collected by Dr. Muir in
+the third volume of his 'Sanskrit Texts,' p. 114 seq.]
+
+In the study of mankind there can hardly be a subject more deeply
+interesting than the study of the different forms of religion; and
+much as I value the Science of Language for the aid which it lends us
+in unraveling some of the most complicated tissues of the human
+intellect, I confess that to my mind there is no study more absorbing
+than that of the Religions of the World,--the study, if I may so call
+it, of the various languages in which man has spoken to his Maker, and
+of that language in which his Maker "at sundry times and in divers
+manners" spake to man.
+
+To my mind the great epochs in the world's history are marked not by
+the foundation or the destruction of empires, by the migrations of
+races, or by French revolutions. All this is outward history, made up
+of events that seem gigantic and overpowering to those only who cannot
+see beyond and beneath. The real history of man is the history of
+religion--the wonderful ways by which the different families of the
+human race advanced towards a truer knowledge and a deeper love of
+God. This is the foundation that underlies all profane history: it is
+the light, the soul, and life of history, and without it all history
+would indeed be profane.
+
+On this subject there are some excellent works in English, such as Mr.
+Maurice's "Lectures on the Religions of the World," or Mr. Hardwick's
+"Christ and other Masters;" in German, I need only mention Hegel's
+"Philosophy of Religion," out of many other learned treatises on the
+different systems of religion in the East and the West. But in all
+these works religions are treated very much as languages were treated
+during the last century. They are rudely classed, either according to
+the different localities in which they prevailed, just as in Adelung's
+"Mithridates" you find the languages of the world classified as
+European, African, American, Asiatic, etc.; or according to their age,
+as formerly languages used to be divided into ancient and modern; or
+according to their respective dignity, as languages used to be treated
+as sacred or profane, as classical or illiterate. Now you know that
+the Science of Language has sanctioned a totally different system of
+classification; and that the Comparative Philologist ignores
+altogether the division of languages according to their locality, or
+according to their age, or according to their classical or illiterate
+character. Languages are now classified genealogically, _i. e._
+according to their real relationship; and the most important languages
+of Asia, Europe, and Africa,--that is to say, of that part of the
+world on which what we call the history of man has been acted,--have
+been grouped together into three great divisions, the Aryan or
+Indo-European Family, the Semitic Family, and the Turanian Class.
+According to that division you are aware that English, together with
+all the Teutonic languages of the Continent, Celtic, Slavonic, Greek,
+Latin with its modern offshoots, such as French and Italian, Persian,
+and Sanskrit, are so many varieties of one common type of speech: that
+Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Veda, is no more distinct from
+the Greek of Homer, or from the Gothic of Ulfilas, or from the
+Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, than French is from Italian. All these
+languages together form one family, one whole, in which every member
+shares certain features in common with all the rest, and is at the
+same time distinguished from the rest by certain features peculiarly
+its own. The the world on which what we call the history of man has
+been acted, have been grouped together into three great divisions, the
+Aryan or Indo-European Family, the Semitic Family, and the Turanian
+Class. According to that division you are aware that English together
+with all the Teutonic languages of the Continent, Celtic, Slavonic,
+Greek, Latin with its modern offshoots, such as French and Italian,
+Persian, and Sanskrit, are so many varieties of one common type of
+speech: that Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Veda, is no more
+distinct from the Greek of Homer, or from the Gothic of Ulfilas, or
+from the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, than French is from Italian. All these
+languages together form one family, one whole, in which every member
+shares certain features in common with all the rest, and is at the
+same time distinguished from the rest by certain features peculiarly
+its own. The same applies to the Semitic Family, which comprises, as
+its most important members, the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the
+Arabic of the Koran, and the ancient languages on the monuments of
+Phenicia and Carthage, of Babylon and Assyria. These languages, again,
+form a compact family, and differ entirely from the other family,
+which we called Aryan or Indo-European. The third group of languages,
+for we can hardly call it a family, comprises most of the remaining
+languages of Asia, and counts among its principal members the
+Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, Samoyedic, and Finnic, together with the
+languages of Siam, the Malay islands, Tibet, and Southern India.
+Lastly, the Chinese language stands by itself, as monosyllabic, the
+only remnant of the earliest formation of human speech.
+
+Now I believe that the same division which has introduced a new and
+natural order into the history of languages, and has enabled us to
+understand the growth of human speech in a manner never dreamt of in
+former days, will be found applicable to a scientific study of
+religions. I shall say nothing to-night of the Semitic or Turanian or
+Chinese religions, but confine my remarks to the religions of the
+Aryan family. These religions, though more important in the ancient
+history of the world, as the religions of the Greeks and Romans, of
+our own Teutonic ancestors, and of the Celtic and Slavonic races, are
+nevertheless of great importance even at the present day. For although
+there are no longer any worshippers of Zeus, or Jupiter, of Wodan,
+Esus,[14] or Perkunas,[15] the two religions of Aryan origin which
+still survive, Brahmanism and Buddhism, claim together a decided
+majority among the inhabitants of the globe. Out of the whole
+population of the world,
+
+31.2 per cent are Buddhists,
+13.4 per cent are Brahmanists,
+----
+44.6
+
+which together gives us 44 per cent for what may be called living
+Aryan religions. Of the remaining 56 per cent, 15.7 are Mohammedans,
+8.7 per cent non-descript Heathens, 30.7 per cent Christians, and only
+O.3 per cent Jews.
+
+[Footnote 14: Mommsen, 'Inscriptiones Helveticae,' 40. Becker, 'Die
+inschriftlichen Ueberreste der Keltischen Sprache,' in 'Beitraege zur
+Vergleichenden Sprachforschung,' vol. iii. p. 341. Lucau, Phars. 1,
+445, 'horrensque feris altaribus Hesus.']
+
+[Footnote 15: Cf. G. Buehler, 'Ueber Parjanya,' in Benfey's 'Orient und
+Occident,' vol. i. p. 214.]
+
+Now, as a scientific study of the Aryan languages became possible only
+after the discovery of Sanskrit, a scientific study of the Aryan
+religion dates really from the discovery of the Veda. The study of
+Sanskrit brought to light the original documents of three religions,
+the Sacred Books of the Brahmans, the Sacred Books of the Magians, the
+followers of Zoroaster, and the Sacred Books of the Buddhists. Fifty
+years ago, these three collections of sacred writings were all but
+unknown, their very existence was doubted, and there was not a single
+scholar who could have translated a line of the Veda, a line of the
+Zend-Avesta, or a line of the Buddhist Tripi_t_aka. At present large
+portions of these, the canonical writings of the most ancient and most
+important religions of the Aryan race, are published and deciphered,
+and we begin to see a natural progress, and almost a logical
+necessity, in the growth of these three systems of worship. The
+oldest, most primitive, most simple form of Aryan faith finds its
+expression in the Veda. The Zend-Avesta represents in its language, as
+well as in its thoughts, a branching off from that more primitive
+stem; a more or less conscious opposition to the worship of the gods
+of nature, as adored in the Veda, and a striving after a more
+spiritual, supreme, moral deity, such as Zoroaster proclaimed under
+the name of Ahura mazda, or Ormuzd. Buddhism, lastly, marks a decided
+schism, a decided antagonism against the established religion of the
+Brahmans, a denial of the true divinity of the Vedic gods, and a
+proclamation of new philosophical and social doctrines.
+
+Without the Veda, therefore, neither the reforms of Zoroaster nor the
+new teaching of Buddha would have been intelligible: we should not
+know what was behind them, or what forces impelled Zoroaster and
+Buddha to the founding of new religions; how much they received, how
+much they destroyed, how much they created. Take but one word in the
+religious phraseology of these three systems. In the Veda the gods are
+called Deva. This word in Sanskrit means bright,--brightness or light
+being one of the most general attributes shared by the various
+manifestations of the Deity, invoked in the Veda, as Sun, or Sky, or
+Fire, or Dawn, or Storm. We can see, in fact, how in the minds of the
+poets of the Veda, deva from meaning bright, came gradually to mean
+divine. In the Zend-Avesta the same word daeva means evil spirit. Many
+of the Vedic gods, with Indra at their head, have been degraded to the
+position of daevas, in order to make room for Ahura mazda, the Wise
+Spirit, as the supreme deity of the Zoroastrians. In his confession of
+faith the follower of Zoroaster declares: 'I cease to be a worshipper
+of the daevas.' In Buddhism, again, we find these ancient Devas, Indra
+and the rest, as merely legendary beings, carried about at shows, as
+servants of Buddha, as goblins or fabulous heroes; but no longer
+either worshipped or even feared by those with whom the name of Deva
+had lost every trace of its original meaning. Thus this one word Deva
+marks the mutual relations of these three religions. But more than
+this. The same word deva is the Latin deus, thus pointing to that
+common source of language and religion, far beyond the heights of the
+Vedic Olympus, from which the Romans, as well as the Hindus, draw the
+names of their deities, and the elements of their language as well as
+of their religion.
+
+The Veda, by its language and its thoughts, supplies that distant
+background in the history of all the religions of the Aryan race,
+which was missed indeed by every careful observer, but which formerly
+could be supplied by guess-work only. How the Persians came to worship
+Ormuzd, how the Buddhists came to protest against temples and
+sacrifices, how Zeus and the Olympian gods came to be what they are in
+the mind of Homer, or how such beings as Jupiter and Mars came to be
+worshipped by the Italian peasant:--all these questions, which used to
+yield material for endless and baseless speculations, can now be
+answered by a simple reference to the hymns of the Veda. The religion
+of the Veda is not the source of all the other religions of the Aryan
+world, nor is Sanskrit the mother of all the Aryan languages.
+Sanskrit, as compared to Greek and Latin, is an elder sister, not a
+parent: Sanskrit is the earliest deposit of Aryan speech, as the Veda
+is the earliest deposit of Aryan faith. But the religion and incipient
+mythology of the Veda possess the same simplicity and transparency
+which distinguish the grammar of Sanskrit from Greek, Latin, or German
+grammar. We can watch in the Veda ideas and their names growing, which
+in Persia, Greece, and Rome we meet with only as full-grown or as fast
+decaying. We get one step nearer to that distant source of religious
+thought and language which has fed the different national streams of
+Persia, Greece, Rome, and Germany; and we begin to see clearly, what
+ought never to have been doubted, that there is no religion without
+God, or, as St. Augustine expressed, that 'there is no false religion
+which does not contain some elements of truth.'
+
+I do not wish by what I have said to raise any exaggerated
+expectations as to the worth of these ancient hymns of the Veda, and
+the character of that religion which they indicate rather than fully
+describe. The historical importance of the Veda can hardly be
+exaggerated, but its intrinsic merit, and particularly the beauty or
+elevation of its sentiments, have by many been rated far too high.
+Large numbers of the Vedic hymns are childish in the extreme: tedious,
+low, common-place. The gods are constantly invoked to protect their
+worshippers, to grant them food, large flocks, large families, and a
+long life; for all which benefits they are to be rewarded by the
+praises and sacrifices offered day after day, or at certain seasons of
+the year. But hidden in this rubbish there are precious stones. Only
+in order to appreciate them justly, we must try to divest ourselves of
+the common notions about Polytheism, so repugnant not only to our
+feelings, but to our understanding. No doubt, if we must employ
+technical terms, the religion of the Veda is Polytheism, not
+Monotheism. Deities are invoked by different names, some clear and
+intelligible, such as Agni, fire; Surya, the sun; Ushas, dawn; Maruts,
+the storms; P_r_ithivi, the earth; Ap, the waters; Nadi, the rivers;
+others such as Varu_n_a, Mitra, Indra, which have become proper names,
+and disclose but dimly their original application to the great aspects
+of nature, the sky, the sun, the day. But whenever one of these
+individual gods is invoked, they are not conceived as limited by the
+powers of others, as superior or inferior in rank. Each god is to the
+mind of the supplicant as good as all gods. He is felt, at the time,
+as a real divinity,--as supreme and absolute,--without a suspicion of
+those limitations which, to our mind, a plurality of gods _must_
+entail on every single god. All the rest disappear for a moment from
+the vision of the poet, and he only who is to fulfill their desires
+stands in full light before the eyes of the worshippers. In one hymn,
+ascribed to Manu, the poet says: "Among you, O gods, there is none
+that is small, none that is young; you are all great indeed." And this
+is indeed the key-note of the ancient Aryan worship. Yet it would be
+easy to find in the numerous hymns of the Veda, passages in which
+almost every important deity is represented as supreme and absolute.
+Thus in one hymn, Agni (fire) is called "the ruler of the universe,"
+"the lord of men," "the wise king, the father, the brother, the son,
+the friend of man;" nay, all the powers and names of the other gods
+are distinctly ascribed to Agni. But though Agni is thus highly
+exalted, nothing is said to disparage the divine character of the
+other gods. In another hymn another god, Indra, is said to be greater
+than all: "The gods," it is said, "do not reach thee, Indra, nor men;
+thou overcomest all creatures in strength." Another god, Soma, is
+called the king of the world, the king of heaven and earth, the
+conqueror of all. And what more could human language achieve, in
+trying to express the idea of a divine and supreme power, than what
+another poet says of another god, Varu_n_a: "Thou art lord of all, of
+heaven and earth; thou art the king of all, of those who are gods, and
+of those who are men!"
+
+This surely is not what is commonly understood by Polytheism. Yet it
+would be equally wrong to call it Monotheism. If we must have a name
+for it, I should call it Kathenotheism. The consciousness that all the
+deities are but different names of one and the same godhead, breaks
+forth indeed here and there in the Veda. But it is far from being
+general. One poet, for instance, says (Rv. I. 164, 46): "They call him
+Indra, Mitra, Varu_n_a, Agni; then he is the beautiful-winged heavenly
+Garutmat: that which is One the wise call it in divers manners: they
+call it Agni, Yama, Matari_s_van." And again (Rv. X. 114, 5): "Wise
+poets make the beautiful-winged, though he is one, manifold by words."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I shall read you a few Vedic verses, in which the religious sentiment
+predominates, and in which we perceive a yearning after truth, and
+after the true God, untrammeled as yet by any names or any
+traditions[16] (Rv. X. 121):--
+
+[Footnote 16: _History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature_, p. 569.]
+
+     1. In the beginning there arose the golden Child--He was the
+     one born lord of all that is. He stablished the earth, and
+     this sky;--Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
+     sacrifice?
+
+     2. He who gives life, He who gives strength; whose command
+     all the bright gods revere; whose shadow is immortality,
+     whose shadow is death;--Who is the God to whom we shall
+     offer our sacrifice?
+
+     3. He who through His power is the one king of the breathing
+     and awakening world--He who governs all, man and beast;--Who
+     is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
+
+     4. He whose greatness these snowy mountains, whose greatness
+     the sea proclaims, with the distant river--He whose these
+     regions are, as it were His two arms;--Who is the God to
+     whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
+
+     5. He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm--He
+     through whom the heaven was stablished,--nay, the highest
+     heaven,--He who measured out the light in the air;--Who is
+     the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
+
+     6. He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His will,
+     look up, trembling inwardly--He over whom the rising sun
+     shines forth;--Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
+     sacrifice?
+
+     7. Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they placed
+     the seed and lit the fire, thence arose He who is the sole
+     life of the bright gods;--Who is the God to whom we shall
+     offer our sacrifice?
+
+     8. He who by His might looked even over the water-clouds,
+     the clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice; He who
+     alone is God above all gods;--
+
+     9. May He not destroy us--He the creator of the earth; or
+     He, the righteous, who created the heaven; He also created
+     the bright and mighty waters;--Who is the God to whom we
+     shall offer our sacrifice?[17]
+
+The following may serve as specimens of hymns addressed to individual
+deities whose names have become the centres of religious thought and
+legendary traditions; deities, in fact, like Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, or
+Minerva, no longer mere germs, but fully developed forms of early
+thought and language:
+
+[Footnote 17: A last verse is added, which entirely spoils the
+poetical beauty and the whole character of the hymn. Its later origin
+seems to have struck even native critics, for the author of the Pada
+text did not receive it. 'O Pra_g_apati, no other than thou hast
+embraced all these created things; may what we desired when we called
+on thee, be granted to us, may we be lords of riches.']
+
+     HYMN TO INDRA (Rv. I. 53).[18]
+
+     1. Keep silence well![19] we offer praises to the great
+     Indra in the house of the sacrificer. Does he find treasure
+     for those who are like sleepers? Mean praise is not valued
+     among the munificent.
+
+     2. Thou art the giver of horses, Indra, thou art the giver
+     of cows, the giver of corn, the strong lord of wealth: the
+     old guide of man, disappointing no desires, a friend to
+     friends:--to him we address this song.
+
+     3. O powerful Indra, achiever of many works, most brilliant
+     god--all this wealth around here is known to be thine alone:
+     take from it, conqueror! bring it hither! Do not stint the
+     desire of the worshipper who longs for thee!
+
+     4. On these days thou art gracious, and on these
+     nights,[20] keeping off the enemy from our cows and from
+     our stud. Tearing[21] the fiend night after night with the
+     help of Indra, let us rejoice in food, freed from haters.
+
+     5. Let us rejoice, Indra, in treasure and food, in wealth of
+     manifold delight and splendour. Let us rejoice in the
+     blessing of the gods, which gives us the strength of
+     offspring, gives us cows first and horses.
+
+     6. These draughts inspired thee, O lord of the brave! these
+     were vigour, these libations, in battles, when for the sake
+     of the poet, the sacrificer, thou struckest down
+     irresistibly ten thousands of enemies.
+
+     7. From battle to battle thou advancest bravely, from town
+     to town thou destroyest all this with might, when thou,
+     Indra, with Nami as thy friend, struckest down from afar the
+     deceiver Namu_k_i.
+
+     8. Thou hast slain Karanga and Par_n_aya with the
+     brightest spear of Atithigva. Without a helper thou didst
+     demolish the hundred cities of Vang_r_ida, which were
+     besieged by _R_i_g_i_s_van.
+
+     9. Thou hast felled down with the chariot-wheel these twenty
+     kings of men, who had attacked the friendless
+     Su_s_ravas,[22] and gloriously the sixty thousand and
+     ninety-nine forts.
+
+     10. Thou, Indra, hast succoured Su_s_ravas with thy
+     succours, Turvaya_n_a with thy protections. Thou hast made
+     Kutsa, Atithigva, and Ayu subject to this mighty youthful
+     king.
+
+     11. We who in future, protected by the gods, wish to be thy
+     most blessed friends, we shall praise thee, blessed by thee
+     with offspring, and enjoying henceforth a longer life.
+
+[Footnote 18: I subjoin for some of the hymns here translated, the
+translation of the late Professor Wilson, in order to show what kind
+of difference there is between the traditional rendering of the Vedic
+hymns, as adopted by him, and their interpretation according to the
+rules of modern scholarship:
+
+1. We ever offer fitting praise to the mighty Indra, in the dwelling
+of the worshipper, by which he (the deity) has quickly acquired
+riches, as (a thief) hastily carries (off the property) of the
+sleeping. Praise ill expressed is not valued among the munificent.
+
+2. Thou, Indra, art the giver of horses, of cattle, of barley, the
+master and protector of wealth, the foremost in liberality, (the
+being) of many days; thou disappointest not desires (addressed to
+thee); thou art a friend to our friends: such an Indra we praise.
+
+3. Wise and resplendent Indra, the achiever of great deeds, the riches
+that are spread around are known to be thine: having collected them,
+victor (over thy enemies), bring them to us: disappoint not the
+expectation of the worshipper who trusts in thee.
+
+4. Propitiated by these offerings, by these libations, dispel poverty
+with cattle and horses: may we, subduing our adversary, and relieved
+from enemies by Indra, (pleased) by our libations, enjoy together
+abundant food.
+
+5. Indra, may we become possessed of riches, and of food; and with
+energies agreeable to many, and shining around, may we prosper through
+thy divine favour, the source of prowess, of cattle, and of horses.
+
+6. Those who were thy allies, (the Maruts,) brought thee joy:
+protector of the pious, those libations and oblations (that were
+offered thee on slaying V_r_itra), yielded thee delight, when thou,
+unimpeded by foes, didst destroy the ten thousand obstacles opposed to
+him who praised thee and offered thee libations.
+
+7. Humiliator (of adversaries), thou goest from battle to battle, and
+destroyest by thy might city after city: with thy foe-prostrating
+associate, (the thunderbolt,) thou, Indra, didst slay afar off the
+deceiver named Namu_k_i.
+
+8. Thou hast slain Karanga and Par_n_aya with thy bright gleaming
+spear, in the cause of Atithigva: unaided, thou didst demolish the
+hundred cities of Vang_r_ida, when besieged by _R_i_g_i_s_van.
+
+9. Thou, renowned Indra, overthrewest by thy not-to-be-overtaken
+chariot-wheel, the twenty kings of men, who had come against
+Su_s_ravas, unaided, and their sixty thousand and ninety and nine
+followers.
+
+10. Thou, Indra, hast preserved Su_s_ravas by thy succour,
+Turvaya_n_a, by thy assistance: thou hast made Kutsa, Atithigva, and
+Ayu subject to the mighty though youthful Su_s_ravas.
+
+11. Protected by the gods, we remain, Indra, at the close of the
+sacrifice, thy most fortunate friends: we praise thee, as enjoying
+through thee excellent offspring, and a long and prosperous life.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Favete linguis.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Cf. Rv. I. 112, 25, 'dyubhir aktubhi_h_,' by day and by
+night; also Rv. III. 31, 16. M. M., 'Todtenbestattung,' p. v.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Professor Benfey reads durayanta_h_, but all MSS. that I
+know, without exception, read darayanta_h_.]
+
+The next hymn is one of many addressed to Agni as the god of fire, not
+only the fire as a powerful element, but likewise the fire of the
+hearth and the altar, the guardian of the house, the minister of the
+sacrifice, the messenger between gods and men:
+
+[Footnote 22: See Spiegel, 'Eran,' p. 269, on Khai Khosru =
+Su_s_ravas.]
+
+     HYMN TO AGNI (Rv. II. 6).
+
+     1. Agni, accept this log which I offer to thee, accept this
+     my service; listen well to these my songs.
+
+     2. With this log, O Agni, may we worship thee, thou son of
+     strength, conqueror of horses! and with this hymn, thou
+     high-born!
+
+     3. May we thy servants serve thee with songs, O granter of
+     riches, thou who lovest songs and delightest in riches.
+
+     4. Thou lord of wealth and giver of wealth, be thou wise and
+     powerful; drive away from us the enemies!
+
+     5. He gives us rain from heaven, he gives us inviolable
+     strength, he gives us food a thousandfold.
+
+     6. Youngest of the gods, their messenger, their invoker,
+     most deserving of worship, come, at our praise, to him who
+     worships thee and longs for thy help.
+
+     7. For thou, O sage, goest wisely between these two
+     creations (heaven and earth, gods and men), like a friendly
+     messenger between two hamlets.
+
+     8. Thou art wise, and thou hast been pleased; perform thou,
+     intelligent Agni, the sacrifice without interruption, sit
+     down on this sacred grass!
+
+The following hymn, partly laudatory, partly deprecatory, is addressed
+to the Maruts or Rudras, the Storm-gods:
+
+     HYMN TO THE MARUTS (Rv. I. 39).[23]
+
+     1. When you thus from afar cast forward your measure, like a
+     blast of fire, through whose wisdom is it, through whose
+     design? To whom do you go, to whom, ye shakers (of the
+     earth)?
+
+     2. May your weapons be firm to attack, strong also to
+     withstand! May yours be the more glorious strength, not that
+     of the deceitful mortal!
+
+     3. When you overthrow what is firm, O ye men, and whirl
+     about what is heavy, ye pass through the trees of the earth,
+     through the clefts of the rocks.
+
+     4. No real foe of yours is known in heaven, nor in earth, ye
+     devourers of enemies! May strength be yours, together with
+     your race, O Rudras, to defy even now.
+
+     5. They make the rocks to tremble, they tear asunder the
+     kings of the forest. Come on, Maruts, like madmen, ye gods,
+     with your whole tribe.
+
+     6. You have harnessed the spotted deer to your chariots, a
+     red deer draws as leader. Even the earth listened at your
+     approach, and men were frightened.
+
+     7. O Rudras, we quickly desire your help for our race. Come
+     now to us with help, as of yore, thus for the sake of the
+     frightened Ka_n_va.
+
+     8. Whatever fiend, roused by you or roused by mortals,
+     attacks us, tear him from us by your power, by your
+     strength, by your aid.
+
+     9. For you, worshipful and wise, have wholly protected
+     Ka_n_va. Come to us, Maruts, with your whole help, as
+     quickly as lightnings come after the rain.
+
+     10. Bounteous givers, ye possess whole strength, whole
+     power, ye shakers (of the earth). Send, O Maruts, against
+     the proud enemy of the poets, an enemy, like an arrow.
+
+[Footnote 23: Professor Wilson translates as follows:
+
+     1. When, Maruts, who make (all things) tremble, you direct
+     your awful (vigour) downwards from afar, as light (descends
+     from heaven), by whose worship, by whose praise (are you
+     attracted)? To what (place of sacrifice), to whom, indeed,
+     do you repair?
+
+     2. Strong be your weapons for driving away (your) foes, firm
+     in resisting them: yours be the strength that merits praise,
+     not (the strength) of a treacherous mortal.
+
+     3. Directing Maruts, when you demolish what is stable, when
+     you scatter what is ponderous, then you make your way
+     through the forest (trees) of earth and the defiles of the
+     mountains.
+
+     4. Destroyers of foes, no adversary of yours is known above
+     the heavens, nor (is any) upon earth: may your collective
+     strength be quickly exerted, sons of Rudra, to humble (your
+     enemies).
+
+     5. They make the mountains tremble, they drive apart the
+     forest trees. Go, divine Maruts, whither you will, with all
+     your progeny, like those intoxicated.
+
+     6. You have harnessed the spotted deer to your chariot; the
+     red deer yoked between them, (aids to) drag the car: the
+     firmament listens for your coming, and men are alarmed.
+
+     7. Rudras, we have recourse to your assistance for the sake
+     of our progeny: come quickly to the timid Ka_n_va, as you
+     formerly came, for our protection.
+
+     8. Should any adversary, instigated by you, or by man,
+     assail us, withhold from him food and strength and your
+     assistance.
+
+     9. Pra_k_etasas, who are to be unreservedly worshipped,
+     uphold (the sacrificer) Ka_n_va: come to us, Maruts, with
+     undivided protective assistances, as the lightnings (bring)
+     the rain.
+
+     10. Bounteous givers, you enjoy unimpaired vigour: shakers
+     (of the earth), you possess undiminished strength: Maruts,
+     let loose your anger, like an arrow, upon the wrathful enemy
+     of the Rishis.
+]
+
+The following is a simple prayer addressed to the Dawn:
+
+     HYMN TO USHAS (Rv. VII. 77).
+
+     1. She shines upon us, like a young wife, rousing every
+     living being to go to his work. When the fire had to be
+     kindled by men, she made the light by striking down
+     darkness.
+
+     2. She rose up, spreading far and wide, and moving
+     everywhere. She grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant
+     garment. The mother of the cows, (the mornings) the leader
+     of the days, she shone gold-coloured, lovely to behold.
+
+     3. She, the fortunate, who brings the eye of the gods, who
+     leads the white and lovely steed (of the sun), the Dawn was
+     seen revealed by her rays, with brilliant treasures,
+     following every one.
+
+     4. Thou who art a blessing where thou art near, drive far
+     away the unfriendly; make the pasture wide, give us safety!
+     Scatter the enemy, bring riches! Raise up wealth to the
+     worshipper, thou mighty Dawn.
+
+     5. Shine for us with thy best rays, thou bright Dawn, thou
+     who lengthenest our life, thou the love of all, who givest
+     us food, who givest us wealth in cows, horses, and chariots.
+
+     6. Thou, daughter of the sky, thou high-born Dawn, whom the
+     Vasish_t_has magnify with songs, give us riches high and
+     wide: all ye gods, protect us always with your blessings.
+
+I must confine myself to shorter extracts, in order to be able to show
+to you that all the principal elements of real religion are present in
+the Veda. I remind you again that the Veda contains a great deal of
+what is childish and foolish, though very little of what is bad and
+objectionable. Some of its poets ascribe to the gods sentiments and
+passions unworthy of the deity, such as anger, revenge, delight in
+material sacrifices; they likewise represent human nature on a low
+level of selfishness and worldliness. Many hymns are utterly unmeaning
+and insipid, and we must search patiently before we meet, here and
+there, with sentiments that come from the depth of the soul, and with
+prayers in which we could join ourselves. Yet there are such
+passages, and they are the really important passages, as marking the
+highest points to which the religious life of the ancient poets of
+India had reached; and it is to these that I shall now call your
+attention.
+
+First of all, the religion of the Veda knows of no idols. The worship
+of idols in India is a secondary formation, a later degradation of the
+more primitive worship of ideal gods.
+
+The gods of the Veda are conceived as immortal: passages in which the
+birth of certain gods is mentioned have a physical meaning: they refer
+to the birth of the day, the rising of the sun, the return of the
+year.
+
+The gods are supposed to dwell in heaven, though several of them, as,
+for instance, Agni, the god of fire, are represented as living among
+men, or as approaching the sacrifice, and listening to the praises of
+their worshippers.
+
+Heaven and earth are believed to have been made or to have been
+established by certain gods. Elaborate theories of creation, which
+abound in the later works, the Brahma_n_as, are not to be found in the
+hymns. What we find are such passages as:
+
+'Agni held the earth, he stablished the heaven by truthful words' (Rv.
+I. 67, 3).
+
+'Varu_n_a stemmed asunder the wide firmaments; he lifted on high the
+bright and glorious heaven; he stretched out apart the starry sky and
+the earth' (Rv. VII. 86, 1).
+
+More frequently, however, the poets confess their ignorance of the
+beginning of all things, and one of them exclaims:
+
+'Who has seen the first-born? Where was the life, the blood, the soul
+of the world? Who went to ask this from any that knew it? (Rv. I. 164,
+4).[24]
+
+Or again, Rv. X. 81, 4: 'What was the forest, what was the tree out of
+which they shaped heaven and earth? Wise men, ask this indeed in your
+mind, on what he stood when he held the worlds?'
+
+I now come to a more important subject. We find in the Veda, what few
+would have expected to find there, the two ideas, so contradictory to
+the human understanding, and yet so easily reconciled in every human
+heart: God has established the eternal laws of right and wrong, he
+punishes sin and rewards virtue, and yet the same God is willing to
+forgive; just, yet merciful; a judge, and yet a father. Consider, for
+instance, the following lines, Rv. I. 41, 4: 'His path is easy and
+without thorns, who does what is right.'
+
+And again, Rv. I. 41, 9: 'Let man fear Him who holds the four (dice),
+before he throws them down (i. e. God who holds the destinies of men
+in his hand); let no man delight in evil words!'
+
+And then consider the following hymns, and imagine the feelings which
+alone could have prompted them:
+
+     HYMN TO VARU_N_A (Rv. VII. 89).
+
+     1. Let me not yet, O Varu_n_a, enter into the house of clay;
+     have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
+
+     2. If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind;
+     have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
+
+     3. Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god,
+     have I gone wrong; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
+
+     4. Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in the
+     midst of the waters; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
+
+     5. Whenever we men, O Varu_n_a, commit an offence before the
+     heavenly host, whenever we break the law through
+     thoughtlessness; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
+
+[Footnote 24: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. 20 note.]
+
+And again, Rv. VII. 86:
+
+     1. Wise and mighty are the works of him who stemmed asunder
+     the wide firmaments (heaven and earth). He lifted on high
+     the bright and glorious heaven; he stretched out apart the
+     starry sky and the earth.
+
+     2. Do I say this to my own self? How can I get unto
+     Varu_n_a? Will he accept my offering without displeasure?
+     When shall I, with a quiet mind, see him propitiated?
+
+     3. I ask, O Varu_n_a, wishing to know this my sin. I go to
+     ask the wise. The sages all tell me the same: Varu_n_a it is
+     who is angry with thee.
+
+     4. Was it an old sin, O Varu_n_a, that thou wishest to
+     destroy thy friend, who always praises thee? Tell me, thou
+     unconquerable lord, and I will quickly turn to thee with
+     praise, freed from sin.
+
+     5. Absolve us from the sins of our fathers, and from those
+     which we committed with our own bodies. Release Vasish_t_ha,
+     O king, like a thief who has feasted on stolen oxen; release
+     him like a calf from the rope.
+
+     6. It was not our own doing, O Varu_n_a, it was necessity
+     (or temptation), an intoxicating draught, passion, dice,
+     thoughtlessness. The old is there to mislead the young; even
+     sleep brings unrighteousness.
+
+     7. Let me without sin give satisfaction to the angry god,
+     like a slave to the bounteous lord. The lord god enlightened
+     the foolish; he, the wisest, leads his worshipper to wealth.
+
+     8. O lord Varu_n_a, may this song go well to thy heart! May
+     we prosper in keeping and acquiring! Protect us, O gods,
+     always with your blessings!
+
+The consciousness of sin is a prominent feature in the religion of the
+Veda, so is likewise the belief that the gods are able to take away
+from man the heavy burden of his sins. And when we read such passages
+as 'Varu_n_a is merciful even to him who has committed sin' (Rv. VII.
+87, 7), we should surely not allow the strange name of Varu_n_a to jar
+on our ears, but should remember that it is but one of the many names
+which men invented in their helplessness to express their ideas of the
+Deity, however partial and imperfect.
+
+The next hymn, which is taken from the Atharva-veda (IV. 16), will
+show how near the language of the ancient poets of India may approach
+to the language of the Bible:[25]
+
+     1. The great lord of these worlds sees as if he were near.
+     If a man thinks he is walking by stealth, the gods know it
+     all.
+
+     2. If a man stands or walks or hides, if he goes to lie down
+     or to get up, what two people sitting together whisper, king
+     Varu_n_a knows it, he is there as the third.
+
+     3. This earth, too, belongs to Varu_n_a, the king, and this
+     wide sky with its ends far apart. The two seas (the sky and
+     the ocean) are Varu_n_a's loins; he is also contained in
+     this small drop of water.
+
+     4. He who should flee far beyond the sky, even he would not
+     be rid of Varu_n_a, the king. His spies proceed from heaven
+     towards this world; with thousand eyes they overlook this
+     earth.
+
+     5. King Varu_n_a sees all this, what is between heaven and
+     earth, and what is beyond. He has counted the twinklings of
+     the eyes of men. As a player throws the dice, he settles all
+     things.
+
+     6. May all thy fatal nooses, which stand spread out seven by
+     seven and threefold, catch the man who tells a lie, may they
+     pass by him who tells the truth.
+
+[Footnote 25: This hymn was first pointed out by Professor Roth in a
+dissertation on the Atharva-veda (Tuebingen, 1856), and it has since
+been translated and annotated by Dr. Muir, in his article on the
+'Vedic Theogony and Cosmogony,' p. 31.]
+
+Another idea which we find in the Veda is that of faith: not only in
+the sense of trust in the gods, in their power, their protection,
+their kindness, but in that of belief in their existence. The Latin
+word credo, I believe, is the same as the Sanskrit _s_raddha, and this
+_s_raddha occurs in the Veda:
+
+Rv. I. 102, 2. 'Sun and moon go on in regular succession, that we may
+see, Indra, and believe.'
+
+Rv. I. 104, 6. 'Destroy not our future offspring, O Indra, for we have
+believed in thy great power.'
+
+Rv. I. 55, 5. 'When Indra hurls again and again his thunderbolt, then
+they believe in the brilliant god.'[26]
+
+[Footnote 26: During violent thunderstorms the natives of New Holland
+are so afraid of War-ru-gu-ra, the evil spirit, that they seek shelter
+even in caves haunted by Ingnas, subordinate demons, which at other
+times they would enter on no account. There, in silent terror, they
+prostrate themselves with their faces to the ground, waiting until the
+spirit, having expended his fury, shall retire to Uta (hell) without
+having discovered their hiding-place.--'Transactions of Ethnological
+Society,' vol. iii. p. 229. Oldfield, 'The Aborigines of Australia.']
+
+A similar sentiment, namely, that men only believe in the gods when
+they see their signs and wonders in the sky, is expressed by another
+poet (Rv. VIII. 21, 14):
+
+     'Thou, Indra, never findest a rich man to be thy friend;
+     wine-swillers despise thee. But when thou thunderest, when
+     thou gatherest (the clouds), then thou art called, like a
+     father.'
+
+And with this belief in god, there is also coupled that doubt, that
+true scepticism, if we may so call it, which is meant to give to faith
+its real strength. We find passages even in these early hymns where
+the poet asks himself, whether there is really such a god as Indra,--a
+question immediately succeeded by an answer, as if given to the poet
+by Indra himself. Thus we read Rv. VIII. 89, 3:
+
+     'If you wish for strength, offer to Indra a hymn of praise:
+     a true hymn, if Indra truly exist; for some one says, Indra
+     does not exist! Who has seen him? Whom shall we praise?'
+
+Then Indra answers through the poet:
+
+     'Here I am, O worshipper, behold me here! in might I surpass
+     all things.'
+
+Similar visions occur elsewhere, where the poet, after inviting a god
+to a sacrifice, or imploring his pardon for his offences, suddenly
+exclaims that he has seen the god, and that he feels that his prayer
+is granted. For instance:
+
+     HYMN TO VARU_N_A (Rv. I. 25).
+
+     1. However we break thy laws from day to day, men as we are,
+     O god, Varu_n_a,
+
+     2. Do not deliver us unto death, nor to the blow of the
+     furious; nor to the wrath of the spiteful!
+
+     3. To propitiate thee, O Varu_n_a, we unbend thy mind with
+     songs, as the charioteer a weary steed.
+
+     4. Away from me they flee dispirited, intent only on gaining
+     wealth; as birds to their nests.
+
+     5. When shall we bring hither the man, who is victory to the
+     warriors; when shall we bring Varu_n_a, the wide-seeing, to
+     be propitiated?
+
+     [6. This they (Mitra and Varu_n_a) take in common; gracious,
+     they never fail the faithful giver.]
+
+     7. He who knows the place of the birds that fly through the
+     sky, who on the waters knows the ships;--
+
+     8. He, the upholder of order, who knows the twelve months
+     with the offspring of each, and knows the month that is
+     engendered afterwards;--
+
+     9. He who knows the track of the wind, of the wide, the
+     bright, the mighty; and knows those who reside on high;--
+
+     10. He, the upholder of order, Varu_n_a, sits down among his
+     people; he, the wise, sits there to govern.
+
+     11. From thence perceiving all wondrous things, he sees what
+     has been and what will be done.
+
+     12. May he, the wise Aditya, make our paths straight all our
+     days; may he prolong our lives!
+
+     13. Varu_n_a, wearing golden mail, has put on his shining
+     cloak; the spies sat down around him.
+
+     14. The god whom the scoffers do not provoke, nor the
+     tormentors of men, nor the plotters of mischief;--
+
+     15. He, who gives to men glory, and not half glory, who
+     gives it even to our own selves;--
+
+     16. Yearning for him, the far-seeing, my thoughts move
+     onwards, as kine move to their pastures.
+
+     17. Let us speak together again, because my honey has been
+     brought: that thou mayst eat what thou likest, like a
+     friend.
+
+     18. Did I see the god who is to be seen by all, did I see
+     the chariot above the earth? He must have accepted my
+     prayers.
+
+     19. O hear this my calling, Varu_n_a, be gracious now;
+     longing for help, I have called upon thee.
+
+     20. Thou, O wise god, art lord of all, of heaven and earth:
+     listen on thy way.
+
+     21. That I may live, take from me the upper rope, loose the
+     middle, and remove the lowest!
+
+In conclusion, let me tell you that there is in the Veda no trace of
+metempsychosis or that transmigration of souls from human to animal
+bodies which is generally supposed to be a distinguishing feature of
+Indian religion. Instead of this, we find what is really the sine qua
+non of all real religion, a belief in immortality, and in personal
+immortality. Without a belief in personal immortality, religion surely
+is like an arch resting on one pillar, like a bridge ending in an
+abyss. We cannot wonder at the great difficulties felt and expressed
+by bishop Warburton and other eminent divines, with regard to the
+supposed total absence of the doctrine of immortality or personal
+immortality in the Old Testament; and it is equally startling that the
+Sadducees who sat in the same council with the high-priest, openly
+denied the resurrection.[27] However, though not expressly asserted
+anywhere, a belief in personal immortality is taken for granted in
+several passages of the Old Testament, and we can hardly think of
+Abraham or Moses as without a belief in life and immortality. But
+while this difficulty, so keenly felt with regard to the Jewish
+religion, ought to make us careful in the judgments which we form of
+other religions, and teach us the wisdom of charitable interpretation,
+it is all the more important to mark that in the Veda passages occur
+where immortality of the soul, personal immortality and personal
+responsibility after death, are clearly proclaimed. Thus we read:
+
+[Footnote 27: Acts xxii. 30, xxiii. 6.]
+
+     'He who gives alms goes to the highest place in heaven; he
+     goes to the gods' (Rv. I. 125, 56).
+
+Another poet, after rebuking those who are rich and do not
+communicate, says:
+
+     'The kind mortal is greater than the great in heaven!'
+
+Even the idea, so frequent in the later literature of the Brahmans,
+that immortality is secured by a son, seems implied, unless our
+translation deceives us, in one passage of the Veda (VII. 56, 24):
+'Asme (iti) vira_h_ maruta_h_ sushmi astu _g_ananam ya_h_ asura_h_ vi
+dharta, apa_h_ yena su-kshitaye tarema, adha svam oka_h_ abhi vah
+syama.' 'O Maruts, may there be to us a strong son, who is a living
+ruler of men: through whom we may cross the waters on our way to the
+happy abode; then may we come to your own house!'
+
+One poet prays that he may see again his father and mother after death
+(Rv. I. 24, 1); and the fathers (Pit_r_is) are invoked almost like
+gods, oblations are offered to them, and they are believed to enjoy,
+in company with the gods, a life of never ending felicity (Rv. X. 15,
+16).
+
+We find this prayer addressed to Soma (Rv. IX. 113, 7):
+
+     'Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is
+     placed, in that immortal imperishable world place me, O
+     Soma!'
+
+     'Where king Vaivasvata reigns, where the secret place of
+     heaven is, where these mighty waters are, there make me
+     immortal!
+
+     'Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, where
+     the worlds are radiant, there make me immortal!'
+
+     'Where wishes and desires are, where the place of the bright
+     sun is, where there is freedom and delight, there make me
+     immortal!
+
+     'Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and
+     pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire are
+     attained, there make me immortal!'[28]
+
+Whether the old Rishis believed likewise in a place of punishment for
+the wicked, is more doubtful, though vague allusions to it occur in
+the Rig-veda, and more distinct descriptions are found in the
+Atharva-veda. In one verse it is said that the dead is rewarded for
+his good deeds, that he leaves or casts off all evil, and glorified
+takes his body (Rv. X. 14, 8).[29] The dogs of Yama, the king of the
+departed, present some terrible aspects, and Yama is asked to protect
+the departed from them (Rv. X. 14, 11). Again, a pit (karta) is
+mentioned into which the lawless are said to be hurled down (Rv. IX.
+73, 8), and into which Indra casts those who offer no sacrifices (Rv.
+I. 121, 13). One poet prays that the Adityas may preserve him from the
+destroying wolf, and from falling into the pit (Rv. II. 29, 6). In one
+passage we read that 'those who break the commandments of Varu_n_a and
+who speak lies are born for that deep place' (Rv. IV. 5, 5).[30]
+
+[Footnote 28: Professor Roth, after quoting several passages from the
+Veda in which a belief in immortality is expressed, remarks with great
+truth: 'We here find, not without astonishment, beautiful conceptions
+on immortality expressed in unadorned language with child-like
+conviction. If it were necessary, we might here find the most powerful
+weapons against the view which has lately been revived, and proclaimed
+as new, that Persia was the only birthplace of the idea of
+immortality, and that even the nations of Europe had derived it from
+that quarter. As if the religious spirit of every gifted race was not
+able to arrive at it by its own strength.'--('Journal of the German
+Oriental Society,' vol. iv. p. 427.) See Dr. Muir's article on Yama,
+in the 'Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,' p. 10.]
+
+[Footnote 29: M. M., Die Todtenbestattung bei den Brahmanen
+'Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft,' vol. ix. p.
+xii.]
+
+[Footnote 30: Dr. Muir, article on Yama, p. 18.]
+
+Surely the discovery of a religion like this, as unexpected as the
+discovery of the jaw-bone of Abbeville, deserves to arrest our
+thoughts for a moment, even in the haste and hurry of this busy life.
+No doubt for the daily wants of life, the old division of religions
+into true and false is quite sufficient; as for practical purposes we
+distinguish only between our own mother-tongue on the one side, and
+all other foreign languages on the other. But, from a higher point of
+view, it would not be right to ignore the new evidence that has come
+to light; and as the study of geology has given us a truer insight
+into the stratification of the earth, it is but natural to expect that
+a thoughtful study of the original works of three of the most
+important religions of the world, Brahmanism, Magism, and Buddhism,
+will modify our views as to the growth or history of religion, as to
+the hidden layers of religious thought beneath the soil on which we
+stand. Such inquires should be undertaken without prejudice and
+without fear: the evidence is placed before us; our duty is to sift it
+critically, to weigh it honestly, and to wait for the results.
+
+Three of these results, to which, I believe, a comparative study of
+religions is sure to lead, I may state before I conclude this Lecture:
+
+     1. We shall learn that religions in their most ancient form,
+     or in the minds of their authors, are generally free from
+     many of the blemishes that attach to them in later times.
+
+     2. We shall learn that there is hardly one religion which
+     does not contain some truth, some important truth; truth
+     sufficient to enable those who seek the Lord and feel after
+     Him, to find Him in their hour of need.
+
+     3. We shall learn to appreciate better than ever what we
+     have in our own religion. No one who has not examined
+     patiently and honestly the other religions of the world, can
+     know what Christianity really is, or can join with such
+     truth and sincerity in the words of St. Paul: 'I am not
+     ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.'
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS.[31]
+
+
+In so comprehensive a work as Mr. Hardwick's 'Christ and other
+Masters,' the number of facts stated, of topics discussed, of
+questions raised, is so considerable that in reviewing it we can
+select only one or two points for special consideration. Mr. Hardwick
+intends to give in his work, of which the third volume has just been
+published, a complete panorama of ancient religion. After having
+discussed in the first volume what he calls the religious tendencies
+of our age, he enters upon an examination of the difficult problem of
+the unity of the human race, and proceeds to draw, in a separate
+chapter, the characteristic features of religion under the Old
+Testament. Having thus cleared his way, and established some of the
+principles according to which the religions of the world should be
+judged, Mr. Hardwick devotes the whole of the second volume to the
+religions of India. We find there, first of all, a short but very
+clear account of the religion of the Veda, as far as it is known at
+present. We then come to a more matter-of-fact representation of
+Brahmanism, or the religion of the Hindus, as represented in the
+so-called Laws of Manu, and in the ancient portions of the two epic
+poems, the Ramaya_n_a and Mahabharata. The next chapter is devoted to
+the various systems of Indian philosophy, which all partake more or
+less of a religious character, and form a natural transition to the
+first subjective system of faith in India, the religion of Buddha. Mr.
+Hardwick afterwards discusses, in two separate chapters, the apparent
+and the real correspondences between Hinduism and revealed religion,
+and throws out some hints how we may best account for the partial
+glimpses of truth which exist in the Vedas, the canonical books of
+Buddhism, and the later Pura_n_as. All these questions are handled
+with such ability, and discussed with so much elegance and eloquence,
+that the reader becomes hardly aware of the great difficulties of the
+subject, and carries away, if not quite a complete and correct, at
+least a very lucid, picture of the religious life of ancient India.
+The third volume, which was published in the beginning of this year,
+is again extremely interesting, and full of the most varied
+descriptions. The religions of China are given first, beginning with
+an account of the national traditions, as collected and fixed by
+Confucius. Then follows the religious system of Lao-tse, or the
+Tao-ism of China, and lastly Buddhism again, only under that modified
+form which it assumed when introduced from India into China. After
+this sketch of the religious life of China, the most ancient centre of
+Eastern civilisation, Mr. Hardwick suddenly transports us to the New
+World, and introduces us to the worship of the wild tribes of America,
+and to the ruins of the ancient temples in which the civilised races
+of that continent, especially the Mexicans, once bowed themselves down
+before their god or gods. Lastly, we have to embark on the South Sea,
+and to visit the various islands which form a chain between the west
+coast of America and the east coast of Africa, stretching over half of
+the globe, and inhabited by the descendants of the once united race of
+the Malayo-Polynesians.
+
+[Footnote 31: 'Christ and other Masters.' An Historical Inquiry into
+some of the chief Parallelisms and Contrasts between Christianity and
+the Religious Systems of the Ancient World, with special reference to
+prevailing Difficulties and Objections. By Charles Hardwick, M.A.,
+Christian Advocate in the University of Cambridge. Parts I, II, III.
+Cambridge, 1858.]
+
+The account which Mr. Hardwick can afford to give of the various
+systems of religion in so short a compass as he has fixed for himself,
+must necessarily be very general; and his remarks on the merits and
+defects peculiar to each, which were more ample in the second volume,
+have dwindled down to much smaller dimensions in the third. He
+declares distinctly that he does not write for missionaries. 'It is
+not my leading object,' he says, 'to conciliate the more thoughtful
+minds of heathendom in favour of the Christian faith. However laudable
+that task may be, however fitly it may occupy the highest and the
+keenest intellect of persons who desire to further the advance of
+truth and holiness among our heathen fellow-subjects, there are
+difficulties nearer home which may in fairness be regarded as
+possessing prior claims on the attention of a Christian Advocate.'
+
+We confess that we regret that Mr. Hardwick should have taken this
+line. If, in writing his criticism on the ancient or modern systems of
+Pagan religion, he had placed himself face to face with a poor
+helpless creature, such as the missionaries have to deal with--a man
+brought up in the faith of his fathers, accustomed to call his god or
+gods by names sacred to him from his first childhood--a man who had
+derived much real help and consolation from his belief in these
+gods--who had abstained from committing crime, because he was afraid
+of the anger of a Divine Being--who had performed severe penance,
+because he hoped to appease the anger of the gods--who had given, not
+only the tenth part of all he valued most, but the half, nay, the
+whole of his property, as a free offering to his priests, that they
+might pray for him or absolve him from his sin--if, in discussing any
+of the ancient or modern systems of Pagan religion, Mr. Hardwick had
+tried to address his arguments to such a person, we believe he would
+himself have felt a more human, real, and hearty interest in his
+subject. He would more earnestly have endeavoured to find out the good
+elements in every form of religious belief. No sensible missionary
+could bring himself to tell a man who has done all that he could do,
+and more than many who have received the true light of the Gospel,
+that he was excluded from all hope of salvation, and by his very birth
+and colour handed over irretrievably to eternal damnation. It is
+possible to put a charitable interpretation on many doctrines of
+ancient heathenism, and the practical missionary is constantly obliged
+to do so. Let us only consider what these doctrines are. They are not
+theories devised by men who wish to keep out the truth of
+Christianity, but sacred traditions which millions of human beings are
+born and brought up to believe in, as we are born and brought up to
+believe in Christianity. It is the only spiritual food which God in
+his wisdom has placed within their reach. But if we once begin to
+think of modern heathenism, and how certain tenets of Lao-tse resemble
+the doctrines of Comte or Spinoza, our equanimity, our historical
+justice, our Christian charity, are gone. We become advocates
+wrangling for victory--we are no longer tranquil observers,
+compassionate friends and teachers. Mr. Hardwick sometimes addresses
+himself to men like Lao-tse or Buddha, who are now dead and gone more
+than two thousand years, in a tone of offended orthodoxy, which may or
+may not be right in modern controversy, but which entirely disregards
+the fact that it has pleased God to let these men and millions of
+human beings be born on earth without a chance of ever hearing of the
+existence of the Gospel. We cannot penetrate into the secrets of the
+Divine wisdom, but we are bound to believe that God has His purpose in
+all things, and that He will know how to judge those to whom so little
+has been given. Christianity does not require of us that we should
+criticise, with our own small wisdom, that Divine policy which has
+governed the whole world from the very beginning. We pity a man who is
+born blind--we are not angry with him; and Mr. Hardwick, in his
+arguments against the tenets of Buddha or Lao-tse, seems to us to
+treat these men too much in the spirit of a policeman who tells a poor
+blind beggar that he is only shamming blindness. However, if, as a
+Christian Advocate, Mr. Hardwick found it impossible to entertain, or
+at least express, any sympathy with the Pagan world, even the cold
+judgment of the historian would have been better than the excited
+pleading of a partisan. Surely it is not necessary, in order to prove
+that our religion is the only true religion, that we should insist on
+the utter falseness of all other forms of belief. We need not be
+frightened if we discover traces of truth, traces even of Christian
+truth, among the sages and lawgivers of other nations. St. Augustine
+was not frightened by this discovery, and every thoughtful Christian
+will feel cheered by the words of that pious philosopher, when he
+boldly declares, that there is no religion which, among its many
+errors, does not contain some real and divine truth. It shows a want
+of faith in God, and in His inscrutable wisdom in the government of
+the world, if we think we ought to condemn all ancient forms of faith,
+except the religion of the Jews. A true spirit of Christianity will
+rather lead us to shut our eyes against many things which are
+revolting to us in the religion of the Chinese, or the wild Americans,
+or the civilised Hindus, and to try to discover, as well as we can,
+how even in these degraded forms of worship a spark of light lies
+hidden somewhere--a spark which may lighten and warm the heart of the
+Gentiles, 'who by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory,
+and honour, and immortality.' There is an undercurrent of thought in
+Mr. Hardwick's book which breaks out again and again, and which has
+certainly prevented him from discovering many a deep lesson which may
+be learnt in the study of ancient religions. He uses harsh language,
+because he is thinking, not of the helpless Chinese, or the dreaming
+Hindu whose tenets he controverts, but of modern philosophers; and he
+is evidently glad of every opportunity where he can show to the latter
+that their systems are mere _rechauffes_ of ancient heathenism. Thus
+he says, in his introduction to the third volume:
+
+     'I may also be allowed to add, that, in the present
+     chapters, the more thoughtful reader will not fail to
+     recognise the proper tendency of certain current
+     speculations, which are recommended to us on the ground that
+     they accord entirely with the last discoveries of science,
+     and embody the deliberate verdicts of the oracle within us.
+     Notwithstanding all that has been urged in their behalf,
+     those theories are little more than a return to
+     long-exploded errors, a resuscitation of extinct volcanoes;
+     or at best, they merely offer to introduce among us an array
+     of civilising agencies, which, after trial in other
+     countries, have been all found wanting. The governing class
+     of China, for example, have long been familiar with the
+     metaphysics of Spinoza. They have also carried out the
+     social principles of M. Comte upon the largest possible
+     scale. For ages they have been what people of the present
+     day are wishing to become in Europe, with this difference
+     only, that the heathen legislator who had lost all faith in
+     God attempted to redress the wrongs and elevate the moral
+     status of his subjects by the study of political science, or
+     devising some new scheme of general sociology; while the
+     positive philosopher of the present day, who has relapsed
+     into the same positions, is in every case rejecting a
+     religious system which has proved itself the mightiest of
+     all civilisers, and the constant champion of the rights and
+     dignity of men. He offers in the stead of Christianity a
+     specious phase of paganism, by which the nineteenth century
+     after Christ may be assimilated to the golden age of Mencius
+     and Confucius; or, in other words, may consummate its
+     religious freedom, and attain the highest pinnacle of human
+     progress, by reverting to a state of childhood and of moral
+     imbecility.'
+
+Few serious-minded persons will like the temper of this paragraph. The
+history of ancient religion is too important, too sacred a subject to
+be used as a masked battery against modern infidelity. Nor should a
+Christian Advocate ever condescend to defend his cause by arguments
+such as a pleader who is somewhat sceptical as to the merits of his
+case, may be allowed to use, but which produce on the mind of the
+Judge the very opposite effect of that which they are intended to
+produce. If we want to understand the religions of antiquity, we must
+try, as well as we can, to enter into the religious, moral, and
+political atmosphere of the ancient world. We must do what the
+historian does. We must become ancients ourselves, otherwise we shall
+never understand the motives and meaning of their faith. Take one
+instance. There are some nations who have always regarded death with
+the utmost horror. Their whole religion may be said to be a fight
+against death, and the chief object of their prayers seems to be a
+long life on earth. The Persian clings to life with intense tenacity,
+and the same feeling exists among the Jews. Other nations, on the
+contrary, regard death in a different light. Death is to them a
+passage from one life to another. No misgiving has ever entered their
+minds as to a possible extinction of existence, and at the first call
+of the priest--nay, sometimes from a mere selfish yearning after a
+better life--they are ready to put an end to their existence on earth.
+Feelings of this kind can hardly be called convictions arrived at by
+the individual. They are national peculiarities, and they exercise an
+irresistible sway over all who belong to the same nation. The loyal
+devotion which the Slavonic nations feel for their sovereign will
+make the most brutalized Russian peasant step into the place where
+his comrade has just been struck down, without a thought of his wife,
+or his mother, or his children, whom he is never to see again. He does
+not do this because, by his own reflection, he has arrived at the
+conclusion that he is bound to sacrifice himself for his emperor or
+for his country--he does it because he knows that every one would do
+the same; and the only feeling of satisfaction in which he would allow
+himself to indulge is, that he was doing his duty. If, then, we wish
+to understand the religions of the ancient nations of the world, we
+must take into account their national character. Nations who value
+life so little as the Hindus, and some of the American and Malay
+nations, could not feel the same horror of human sacrifices, for
+instance, which would be felt by a Jew; and the voluntary death of the
+widow would inspire her nearest relations with no other feeling but
+that of compassion and regret at seeing a young bride follow her
+husband into a distant land. She herself would feel that, in following
+her husband into death, she was only doing what every other widow
+would do--she was only doing her duty. In India, where men in the
+prime of life throw themselves under the car of Jaggernath, to be
+crushed to death by the idol they believe in--where the plaintiff who
+cannot get redress starves himself to death at the door of his
+judge--where the philosopher who thinks he has learnt all which this
+world can teach him, and who longs for absorption into the Deity,
+quietly steps into the Ganges, in order to arrive at the other shore
+of existence--in such a country, however much we may condemn these
+practices, we must be on our guard and not judge the strange religions
+of such strange creatures according to our own more sober code of
+morality. Let a man once be impressed with a belief that this life is
+but a prison, and that he has but to break through its walls in order
+to breathe the fresh and pure air of a higher life--let him once
+consider it cowardice to shrink from this act, and a proof of courage
+and of a firm faith in God to rush back to that eternal source from
+whence he came--and let these views be countenanced by a whole nation,
+sanctioned by priests, and hallowed by poets, and however we may blame
+and loathe the custom of human sacrifices and religious suicides, we
+shall be bound to confess that to such a man, and to a whole nation of
+such men, the most cruel rites will have a very different meaning from
+what they would have to us. They are not mere cruelty and brutality.
+They contain a religious element, and presuppose a belief in
+immortality, and an indifference with regard to worldly pleasures,
+which, if directed in a different channel, might produce martyrs and
+heroes. Here, at least, there is no danger of modern heresy aping
+ancient paganism; and we feel at liberty to express our sympathy and
+compassion, even with the most degraded of our brethren. The Fijians,
+for instance, commit almost every species of atrocity; but we can
+still discover, as Wilkes remarked in his 'Exploring Expedition,' that
+the source of many of their abhorrent practices is a belief in a
+future state, guided by no just notions of religious or moral
+obligations. They immolate themselves; they think it right to destroy
+their best friends, to free them from the miseries of this life; they
+actually consider it a duty, and perhaps a painful duty, that the son
+should strangle his parents, if requested to do so. Some of the
+Fijians, when interrupted by Europeans in the act of strangling their
+mother, simply replied that she was their mother, and they were her
+children, and they ought to put her to death. On reaching the grave
+the mother sat down, when they all, including children, grandchildren,
+relations, and friends, took an affectionate leave of her. A rope,
+made of twisted tapa, was then passed twice around her neck by her
+sons, who took hold of it and strangled her--after which she was put
+into her grave, with the usual ceremonies. They returned to feast and
+mourn, after which she was entirely forgotten, as though she had not
+existed. No doubt these are revolting rites; but the phase of human
+thought which they disclose is far from being simply revolting. There
+is in these immolations, even in their most degraded form, a grain of
+that superhuman faith which we admire in the temptation of Abraham;
+and we feel that the time will come, nay, that it is coming, when the
+voice of the Angel of the Lord will reach those distant islands, and
+give a higher and better purpose to the wild ravings of their
+religion.
+
+It is among these tribes that the missionary, if he can speak a
+language which they understand, gains the most rapid influence. But he
+must first learn himself to understand the nature of these savages,
+and to translate the wild yells of their devotion into articulate
+language. There is, perhaps, no race of men so low and degraded as the
+Papuas. It has frequently been asserted they had no religion at all.
+And yet these same Papuas, if they want to know whether what they are
+going to undertake is right or wrong, squat before their karwar, clasp
+the hands over the forehead, and bow repeatedly, at the same time
+stating their intentions. If they are seized with any nervous feeling
+during this process, it is considered as a bad sign, and the project
+is abandoned for a time--if otherwise, the idol is supposed to
+approve. Here we have but to translate what they in their helpless
+language call 'nervous feeling' by our word 'conscience,' and we shall
+not only understand what they really mean, but confess, perhaps, that
+it would be well for us if in our own hearts the karwar occupied the
+same prominent place which it occupies in the cottage of every Papua.
+
+_March, 1858._
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THE VEDA AND ZEND-AVESTA.
+
+
+THE VEDA.
+
+
+The main stream of the Aryan nations has always flowed towards the
+north-west. No historian can tell us by what impulse these adventurous
+Nomads were driven on through Asia towards the isles and shores of
+Europe. The first start of this world-wide migration belongs to a
+period far beyond the reach of documentary history; to times when the
+soil of Europe had not been trodden by either Celts, Germans,
+Slavonians, Romans, or Greeks. But whatever it was, the impulse was as
+irresistible as the spell which, in our own times, sends the Celtic
+tribes towards the prairies or the regions of gold across the
+Atlantic. It requires a strong will, or a great amount of inertness,
+to be able to withstand the impetus of such national, or rather
+ethnical, movements. Few will stay behind when all are going. But to
+let one's friends depart, and then to set out ourselves--to take a
+road which, lead where it may, can never lead us to join those again
+who speak our language and worship our gods--is a course which only
+men of strong individuality and great self-dependence are capable of
+pursuing. It was the course adopted by the southern branch of the
+Aryan family, the Brahmanic Aryas of India and the Zoroastrians of
+Iran.
+
+At the first dawn of traditional history we see these Aryan tribes
+migrating across the snow of the Himalaya southward towards the 'Seven
+Rivers' (the Indus, the five rivers of the Penjab, and the Sarasvati),
+and ever since India has been called their home. That before this time
+they had been living in more northern regions, within the same
+precincts with the ancestors of the Greeks, the Italians, Slavonians,
+Germans, and Celts, is a fact as firmly established as that the
+Normans of William the Conqueror were the Northmen of Scandinavia. The
+evidence of language is irrefragable, and it is the only evidence
+worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods. It would
+have been next to impossible to discover any traces of relationship
+between the swarthy natives of India and their conquerors whether
+Alexander or Clive, but for the testimony borne by language. What
+other evidence could have reached back to times when Greece was not
+yet peopled by Greeks, nor India by Hindus? Yet these are the times of
+which we are speaking. What authority would have been strong enough to
+persuade the Grecian army, that their gods and their hero ancestors
+were the same as those of king Porus, or to convince the English
+soldier that the same blood might be running in his veins and in the
+veins of the dark Bengalese? And yet there is not an English jury
+now-a-days, which, after examining the hoary documents of language,
+would reject the claim of a common descent and a spiritual
+relationship between Hindu, Greek, and Teuton. Many words still live
+in India and in England that have witnessed the first separation of
+the northern and southern Aryans, and these are witnesses not to be
+shaken by any cross-examination. The terms for God, for house, for
+father, mother, son, daughter, for dog and cow, for heart and tears,
+for axe and tree, identical in all the Indo-European idioms, are like
+the watchwords of soldiers. We challenge the seeming stranger; and
+whether he answer with the lips of a Greek, a German, or an Indian, we
+recognise him as one of ourselves. Though the historian may shake his
+head, though the physiologist may doubt, and the poet scorn the idea,
+all must yield before the facts furnished by language. There was a
+time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Slavonians, the
+Greeks and Italians, the Persians and Hindus, were living together
+beneath the same roof, separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and
+Turanian races.
+
+It is more difficult to prove that the Hindu was the last to leave
+this common home, that he saw his brothers all depart towards the
+setting sun, and that then, turning towards the south and the east, he
+started alone in search of a new world. But as in his language and in
+his grammar he has preserved something of what seems peculiar to each
+of the northern dialects singly, as he agrees with the Greek and the
+German where the Greek and the German differ from all the rest, and as
+no other language has carried off so large a share of the common Aryan
+heirloom--whether roots, grammar, words, mythes, or legends--it is
+natural to suppose that, though perhaps the eldest brother, the Hindu
+was the last to leave the central home of the Aryan family.
+
+The Aryan nations who pursued a north-westerly direction, stand before
+us in history as the principal nations of north-western Asia and
+Europe. They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of
+history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of
+active life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected
+society and morals, and we learn from their literature and works of
+art the elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of
+philosophy. In continual struggle with each other and with Semitic and
+Turanian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history,
+and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world
+together by the chains of civilisation, commerce, and religion. In a
+word, they represent the Aryan man in his historical character.
+
+But while most of the members of the Aryan family followed this
+glorious path, the southern tribes were slowly migrating towards the
+mountains which gird the north of India. After crossing the narrow
+passes of the Hindukush or the Himalaya, they conquered or drove
+before them, as it seems without much effort, the aboriginal
+inhabitants of the Trans-Himalayan countries. They took for their
+guides the principal rivers of Northern India, and were led by them to
+new homes in their beautiful and fertile valleys. It seems as if the
+great mountains in the north had afterwards closed for centuries their
+Cyclopean gates against new immigrations, while, at the same time, the
+waves of the Indian Ocean kept watch over the southern borders of the
+peninsula. None of the great conquerors of antiquity,--Sesostris,
+Semiramis, Nebuchadnezzar, or Cyrus,--disturbed the peaceful seats of
+these Aryan settlers. Left to themselves in a world of their own,
+without a past, and without a future before them, they had nothing but
+themselves to ponder on. Struggles there must have been in India also.
+Old dynasties were destroyed, whole families annihilated, and new
+empires founded. Yet the inward life of the Hindu was not changed by
+these convulsions. His mind was like the lotus leaf after a shower of
+rain has passed over it; his character remained the same, passive,
+meditative, quiet, and thoughtful. A people of this peculiar stamp was
+never destined to act a prominent part in the history of the world;
+nay, the exhausting atmosphere of transcendental ideas in which they
+lived could not but exercise a detrimental influence on the active and
+moral character of the Indians. Social and political virtues were
+little cultivated, and the ideas of the useful and the beautiful
+hardly known to them. With all this, however, they had, what the Greek
+was as little capable of imagining, as they were of realising the
+elements of Grecian life. They shut their eyes to this world of
+outward seeming and activity, to open them full on the world of
+thought and rest. The ancient Hindus were a nation of philosophers,
+such as could nowhere have existed except in India, and even there in
+early times alone. It is with the Hindu mind as if a seed were placed
+in a hothouse. It will grow rapidly, its colours will be gorgeous, its
+perfume rich, its fruits precocious and abundant. But never will it be
+like the oak growing in wind and weather, and striking its roots into
+real earth, and stretching its branches into real air beneath the
+stars and the sun of heaven. Both are experiments, the hothouse flower
+and the Hindu mind; and as experiments, whether physiological or
+psychological, both deserve to be studied.
+
+We may divide the whole Aryan family into two branches, the northern
+and the southern. The northern nations, Celts, Greeks, Romans,
+Germans, and Slavonians, have each one act allotted to them on the
+stage of history. They have each a national character to support. Not
+so the southern tribes. They are absorbed in the struggles of thought,
+their past is the problem of creation, their future the problem of
+existence; and the present, which ought to be the solution of both,
+seems never to have attracted their attention, or called forth their
+energies. There never was a nation believing so firmly in another
+world, and so little concerned about this. Their condition on earth is
+to them a problem; their real and eternal life a simple fact. Though
+this is said chiefly with reference to them before they were brought
+in contact with foreign conquerors, traces of this character are still
+visible in the Hindus, as described by the companions of Alexander,
+nay, even in the Hindus of the present day. The only sphere in which
+the Indian mind finds itself at liberty to act, to create, and to
+worship, is the sphere of religion and philosophy; and nowhere have
+religious and metaphysical ideas struck root so deep in the mind of a
+nation as in India. The shape which these ideas took amongst the
+different classes of society, and at different periods of
+civilisation, naturally varies from coarse superstition to sublime
+spiritualism. But, taken as a whole, history supplies no second
+instance where the inward life of the soul has so completely absorbed
+all the other faculties of a people.
+
+It was natural, therefore, that the literary works of such a nation,
+when first discovered in Sanskrit MSS. by Wilkins, Sir W. Jones, and
+others, should have attracted the attention of all interested in the
+history of the human race. A new page in man's biography was laid
+open, and a literature as large as that of Greece or Rome was to be
+studied. The Laws of Manu, the two epic poems, the Ramaya_n_a and
+Mahabharata, the six complete systems of philosophy, works on
+astronomy and medicine, plays, stories, fables, elegies, and lyrical
+effusions, were read with intense interest, on account of their age
+not less than their novelty.
+
+Still this interest was confined to a small number of students, and in
+a few cases only could Indian literature attract the eyes of men who,
+from the summit of universal history, survey the highest peaks of
+human excellence. Herder, Schlegel, Humboldt, and Goethe, discovered
+what was really important in Sanskrit literature. They saw what was
+genuine and original, in spite of much that seemed artificial. For the
+artificial, no doubt, has a wide place in Sanskrit literature.
+Everywhere we find systems, rules and models, castes and schools, but
+nowhere individuality, no natural growth, and but few signs of strong
+originality and genius.
+
+There is, however, one period of Sanskrit literature which forms an
+exception, and which will maintain its place in the history of
+mankind, when the name of Kalidasa and _S_akuntala will have been long
+forgotten. It is the most ancient period, the period of the Veda.
+There is, perhaps, a higher degree of interest attaching to works of
+higher antiquity; but in the Veda we have more than mere antiquity. We
+have ancient thought expressed in ancient language. Without insisting
+on the fact that even chronologically the Veda is the first book of
+the Aryan nations, we have in it, at all events, a period in the
+intellectual life of man to which there is no parallel in any other
+part of the world. In the hymns of the Veda we see man left to himself
+to solve the riddle of this world. We see him crawling on like a
+creature of the earth with all the desires and weaknesses of his
+animal nature. Food, wealth, and power, a large family and a long
+life, are the theme of his daily prayers. But he begins to lift up his
+eyes. He stares at the tent of heaven, and asks who supports it? He
+opens his ears to the winds, and asks them whence and whither? He is
+awakened from darkness and slumber by the light of the sun, and him
+whom his eyes cannot behold, and who seems to grant him the daily
+pittance of his existence, he calls 'his life, his breath, his
+brilliant Lord and Protector.' He gives names to all the powers of
+nature, and after he has called the fire Agni, the sun-light Indra,
+the storms Maruts, and the dawn Ushas, they all seem to grow naturally
+into beings like himself, nay, greater than himself. He invokes them,
+he praises them, he worships them. But still with all these gods
+around him, beneath him, and above him, the early poet seems ill at
+rest within himself. There too, in his own breast, he has discovered a
+power that wants a name, a power nearer to him than all the gods of
+nature, a power that is never mute when he prays, never absent when he
+fears and trembles. It seems to inspire his prayers, and yet to
+listen to them; it seems to live in him, and yet to support him and
+all around him. The only name he can find for this mysterious power is
+Brahman; for brahman meant originally force, will, wish, and the
+propulsive power of creation. But this impersonal brahman, too, as
+soon as it is named, grows into something strange and divine. It ends
+by being one of many gods, one of the great triad, worshipped to the
+present day. And still the thought within him has no real name; that
+power which is nothing but itself, which supports the gods, the
+heavens, and every living being, floats before his mind, conceived but
+not expressed. At last he calls it Atman; for atman, originally breath
+or spirit, comes to mean Self and Self alone--Self whether divine or
+human, Self whether creating or suffering, Self whether one or all,
+but always Self, independent and free. 'Who has seen the first-born,'
+says the poet, 'when he who has no bones (i. e. form) bore him that
+had bones? Where was the life, the blood, the Self of the world? Who
+went to ask this from any that knew it?' (Rv.I. 164, 4). This idea of
+a divine Self once expressed, everything else must acknowledge its
+supremacy, 'Self is the Lord of all things, Self is the King of all
+things. As all the spokes of a wheel are contained in the nave and the
+circumference, all things are contained in this Self; all selves are
+contained in this Self.[32] Brahman itself is but Self.'[33]
+
+[Footnote 32: B_r_ihad-ara_n_yaka, IV. 5, 15 ed. Roer, p. 487.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Ibid. p. 478. _K_handogya-upanishad, VIII. 3, 3-4.]
+
+This Atman also grew; but it grew, as it were, without attributes. The
+sun is called the Self of all that moves and rests (Rv. I. 115, 1),
+and still more frequently self becomes a mere pronoun. But Atman
+remained always free from mythe and worship, differing in this from
+the Brahman (neuter), who has his temples in India even now, and is
+worshipped as Brahman (masculine), together with Vish_n_u and _S_iva,
+and other popular gods. The idea of the Atman or Self, like a pure
+crystal, was too transparent for poetry, and therefore was handed over
+to philosophy, which afterwards polished, and turned, and watched it
+as the medium through which all is seen, and in which all is reflected
+and known. But philosophy is later than the Veda, and it is of the
+Vaidik period only I have here to speak.[34]
+
+[Footnote 34: In writing the above, I was thinking rather of the
+mental process that was necessary for the production of such words as
+brahman, atman, and others, than of their idiomatic use in the ancient
+literature of India. It might be objected, for instance, that brahman,
+neut. in the sense of creative power or the principal cause of all
+things, does not occur in the Rig-veda. This is true. But it occurs in
+that sense in the Atharva-veda, and in several of the Brahma_n_as.
+There we read of 'the oldest or greatest Brahman which rules
+everything that has been or will be.' Heaven is said to belong to
+Brahman alone (Atharva-veda X. 8, 1). In the Brahma_n_as, this Brahman
+is called the first-born, the self-existing, the best of the gods, and
+heaven and earth are said to have been established by it. Even the
+vital spirits are identified with it (_S_atapatha-brahma_n_a VIII. 4,
+9, 3).
+
+In other passages, again, this same Brahman is represented as existing
+in man (Atharva-veda X. 7, 17), and in this very passage we can watch
+the transition from the neutral Brahman into Brahman, conceived of as
+a masculine:
+
+    Ye purushe brahma vidus te vidu_h_ paramesh_t_hina_m_,
+    Yo veda paramesh_t_hina_m_, ya_s_ _k_a veda pra_g_apatim,
+    _G_yesh_t_ha_m_ ye brahma_n_a_m_ vidus, te skambham anu sa_m_vidu_h_.
+
+    'They who know Brahman in man, they know the Highest,
+    He who knows the Highest, and he who knows Pra_g_apati (the lord of
+        creatures),
+    And they who know the oldest Brahma_n_a, they know the Ground.'
+
+The word Brahma_n_a which is here used, is a derivative form of
+Brahman; but what is most important in these lines is the mixing of
+neuter and masculine words, of impersonal and personal deities. This
+process is brought to perfection by changing Brahman, the neuter, even
+grammatically into Brahman, a masculine,--a change which has taken
+place in the Ara_n_yakas, where we find Brahman used as the name of a
+male deity. It is this Brahman, with the accent on the first, not, as
+has been supposed, brahman, the priest, that appears again in the
+later literature as one of the divine triad, Brahman, Vish_n_u,
+_S_iva.
+
+The word brahman, as a neuter, is used in the Rig-veda in the sense of
+prayer also, originally what bursts forth from the soul, and, in one
+sense, what is revealed. Hence in later times brahman is used
+collectively for the Veda, the sacred word.
+
+Another word, with the accent on the last syllable, is brahman, the
+man who prays, who utters prayers, the priest, and gradually the
+Brahman by profession. In this sense it is frequently used in the
+Rig-veda (I. 108, 7), but not yet in the sense of Brahman by birth or
+caste.]
+
+In the Veda, then, we can study a theogony of which that of Hesiod is
+but the last chapter. We can study man's natural growth, and the
+results to which it may lead under the most favourable conditions. All
+was given him that nature can bestow. We see him blest with the
+choicest gifts of the earth, under a glowing and transparent sky,
+surrounded by all the grandeur and all the riches of nature, with a
+language 'capable of giving soul to the objects of sense, and body to
+the abstractions of metaphysics.' We have a right to expect much from
+him, only we must not expect in his youthful poems the philosophy of
+the nineteenth century, or the beauties of Pindar, or, with some
+again, the truths of Christianity. Few understand children, still
+fewer understand antiquity. If we look in the Veda for high poetical
+diction, for striking comparisons, for bold combinations, we shall be
+disappointed. These early poets thought more for themselves than for
+others. They sought rather, in their language, to be true to their own
+thought than to please the imagination of their hearers. With them it
+was a great work achieved for the first time to bind thoughts and
+words together, to find expressions or to form new names. As to
+similes, we must look to the words themselves, which, if we compare
+their radical and their nominal meaning, will be found full of bold
+metaphors. No translation in any modern language can do them justice.
+As to beauty, we must discover it in the absence of all effort, and in
+the simplicity of their hearts. Prose was, at that time, unknown, as
+well as the distinction between prose and poetry. It was the attempted
+imitation of those ancient natural strains of thought which in later
+times gave rise to poetry in our sense of the word, that is to say, to
+poetry as an art, with its counted syllables, its numerous epithets,
+its rhyme and rhythm, and all the conventional attributes of 'measured
+thought.'
+
+In the Veda itself, however--even if by Veda we mean the Rig-veda only
+(the other three, the Saman, Ya_g_ush, and Atharva_n_a, having solely
+a liturgical interest, and belonging to an entirely different
+sphere)--in the Rig-veda also, we find much that is artificial,
+imitated, and therefore modern, if compared with other hymns. It is
+true that all the 1017 hymns of the Rig-veda were comprised in a
+collection which existed as such before one of those elaborate
+theological commentaries, known under the name of Brahma_n_a, was
+written, that is to say, about 800 B.C. But before the date of their
+collection these must have existed for centuries. In different songs
+the names of different kings occur, and we see several generations of
+royal families pass away before us with different generations of
+poets. Old songs are mentioned, and new songs. Poets whose
+compositions we possess are spoken of as the seers of olden times;
+their names in other hymns are surrounded by a legendary halo. In some
+cases, whole books or chapters may be pointed out as more modern and
+secondary, in thought and language. But on the whole the Rig-veda is a
+genuine document, even in its most modern portions not later than the
+time of Lycurgus; and it exhibits one of the earliest and rudest
+phases in the history of mankind; disclosing in its full reality a
+period of which in Greece we have but traditions and names, such as
+Orpheus and Linus, and bringing us as near the beginnings in language,
+thought, and mythology as literary documents can ever bring us in the
+Aryan world.
+
+Though much time and labour have been spent on the Veda, in England
+and in Germany, the time is not yet come for translating it as a
+whole. It is possible and interesting to translate it literally, or in
+accordance with scholastic commentaries, such as we find in India from
+Yaska in the fifth century B.C. down to Saya_n_a in the fourteenth
+century of the Christian era. This is what Professor Wilson has done
+in his translation of the first book of the Rig-veda; and by strictly
+adhering to this principle and excluding conjectural renderings even
+where they offered themselves most naturally, he has imparted to his
+work a definite character and a lasting value. The grammar of the
+Veda, though irregular, and still in a rather floating state, has
+almost been mastered; the etymology and the meaning of many words,
+unknown in the later Sanskrit, have been discovered. Many hymns, which
+are mere prayers for food, for cattle, or for a long life, have been
+translated, and can leave no doubt as to their real intention. But
+with the exception of these simple petitions, the whole world of Vedic
+ideas is so entirely beyond our own intellectual horizon, that instead
+of translating we can as yet only guess and combine. Here it is no
+longer a mere question of skilful deciphering. We may collect all the
+passages where an obscure word occurs, we may compare them and look
+for a meaning which would be appropriate to all; but the difficulty
+lies in finding a sense which we can appropriate, and transfer by
+analogy into our own language and thought. We must be able to
+translate our feelings and ideas into their language at the same time
+that we translate their poems and prayers into our language. We must
+not despair even where their words seem meaningless and their ideas
+barren or wild. What seems at first childish may at a happier moment
+disclose a sublime simplicity, and even in helpless expressions we may
+recognise aspirations after some high and noble idea. When the scholar
+has done his work, the poet and philosopher must take it up and finish
+it. Let the scholar collect, collate, sift, and reject--let him say
+what is possible or not according to the laws of the Vaidik
+language--let him study the commentaries, the Sutras, the Brahma_n_as,
+and even later works, in order to exhaust all the sources from which
+information can be derived. He must not despise the tradition of the
+Brahmans, even where their misconceptions and the causes of their
+misconceptions are palpable. To know what a passage cannot mean is
+frequently the key to its real meaning; and whatever reasons may be
+pleaded for declining a careful perusal of the traditional
+interpretations of Yaska or Saya_n_a, they can all be traced back to
+an ill-concealed argumentum paupertatis. Not a corner in the
+Brahma_n_as, the Sutras, Yaska, and Saya_n_a should be left unexplored
+before we venture to propose a rendering of our own. Saya_n_a, though
+the most modern, is on the whole the most sober interpreter. Most of
+his etymological absurdities must be placed to Yaska's account, and
+the optional renderings which he allows for metaphysical, theological,
+or ceremonial purposes, are mostly due to his regard for the
+Brahma_n_as. The Brahma_n_as, though nearest in time to the hymns of
+the Rig-veda, indulge in the most frivolous and ill-judged
+interpretations. When the ancient Rishi exclaims with a troubled
+heart, 'Who is the greatest of the gods? Who shall first be praised by
+our songs?'--the author of the Brahma_n_a sees in the interrogative
+pronoun 'Who' some divine name, a place is allotted in the sacrificial
+invocations to a god 'Who,' and hymns addressed to him are called
+'Whoish' hymns. To make such misunderstandings possible, we must
+assume a considerable interval between the composition of the hymns
+and the Brahma_n_as. As the authors of the Brahma_n_as were blinded by
+theology, the authors of the still later Niruktas were deceived by
+etymological fictions, and both conspired to mislead by their
+authority later and more sensible commentators, such as Saya_n_a.
+Where Saya_n_a has no authority to mislead him, his commentary is at
+all events rational; but still his scholastic notions would never
+allow him to accept the free interpretation which a comparative study
+of these venerable documents forces upon the unprejudiced scholar. We
+must therefore discover ourselves the real vestiges of these ancient
+poets; and if we follow them cautiously, we shall find that with some
+effort we are still able to walk in their footsteps. We shall feel
+that we are brought face to face and mind to mind with men yet
+intelligible to us, after we have freed ourselves from our modern
+conceits. We shall not succeed always: words, verses, nay, whole hymns
+in the Rig-veda, will and must remain to us a dead letter. But where
+we can inspire those early relics of thought and devotion with new
+life, we shall have before us more real antiquity than in all the
+inscriptions of Egypt or Nineveh; not only old names and dates, and
+kingdoms and battles, but old thoughts, old hopes, old faith, and old
+errors, the old Man altogether--old now, but then young and fresh, and
+simple and real in his prayers and in his praises.
+
+The thoughtful bent of the Hindu mind is visible in the Veda also, but
+his mystic tendencies are not yet so fully developed. Of philosophy we
+find but little, and what we find is still in its germ. The active
+side of life is more prominent, and we meet occasionally with wars of
+kings, with rivalries of ministers, with triumphs and defeats, with
+war-songs and imprecations. Moral sentiments and worldly wisdom are
+not yet absorbed by phantastic intuitions. Still the child betrays the
+passions of the man, and there are hymns, though few in number, in the
+Veda, so full of thought and speculation that at this early period no
+poet in any other nation could have conceived them. I give but one
+specimen, the 129th hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-veda. It is a
+hymn which long ago attracted the attention of that eminent scholar H.
+T. Colebrooke, and of which, by the kind assistance of a friend, I am
+enabled to offer a metrical translation. In judging it we should bear
+in mind that it was not written by a gnostic or by a pantheistic
+philosopher, but by a poet who felt all these doubts and problems as
+his own, without any wish to convince or to startle, only uttering
+what had been weighing on his mind, just as later poets would sing the
+doubts and sorrows of their heart.
+
+    Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky
+    Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above.
+    What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed?
+    Was it the water's fathomless abyss?
+    There was not death--yet was there nought immortal,
+    There was no confine betwixt day and night;
+    The only One breathed breathless by itself,
+    Other than It there nothing since has been.
+    Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
+    In gloom profound--an ocean without light--
+    The germ that still lay covered in the husk
+    Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
+    Then first came love upon it, the new spring
+    Of mind--yea, poets in their hearts discerned,
+    Pondering, this bond between created things
+    And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth
+    Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven?
+    Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose--
+    Nature below, and power and will above--
+    Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here,
+    Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?
+    The Gods themselves came later into being--
+    Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
+    He from whom all this great creation came,
+    Whether his will created or was mute,
+    The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,
+    He knows it--or perchance even He knows not.
+
+The grammar of the Veda (to turn from the contents to the structure of
+the work) is important in many respects. The difference between it and
+the grammar of the epic poems would be sufficient of itself to fix the
+distance between these two periods of language and literature. Many
+words have preserved in these early hymns a more primitive form, and
+therefore agree more closely with cognate words in Greek or Latin.
+Night, for instance, in the later Sanskrit is ni_s_a, which is a form
+peculiarly Sanskritic, and agrees in its derivation neither with nox
+nor with [Greek: nyx]. The Vaidik na_s_ or nak, night, is as near to
+Latin as can be. Thus mouse in the common Sanskrit is mushas or
+mushika, both derivative forms if compared with the Latin mus, muris.
+The Vaidik Sanskrit has preserved the same primitive noun in the
+plural mush-as = Lat. mures. There are other words in the Veda which
+were lost altogether in the later Sanskrit, while they were preserved
+in Greek and Latin. Dyaus, sky, does not occur as a masculine in the
+ordinary Sanskrit; it occurs in the Veda, and thus bears witness to
+the early Aryan worship of Dyaus, the Greek Zeus. Ushas, dawn, again
+in the later Sanskrit is neuter. In the Veda it is feminine; and even
+the secondary Vaidik form Ushasa is proved to be of high antiquity by
+the nearly corresponding Latin form Aurora. Declension and conjugation
+are richer in forms and more unsettled in their usage. It was a
+curious fact, for instance, that no subjunctive mood existed in the
+common Sanskrit. The Greeks and Romans had it, and even the language
+of the Avesta showed clear traces of it. There could be no doubt that
+the Sanskrit also once possessed this mood, and at last it was
+discovered in the hymns of the Rig-veda. Discoveries of this kind may
+seem trifling, but they are as delightful to the grammarian as the
+appearance of a star, long expected and calculated, is to the
+astronomer. They prove that there is natural order in language, and
+that by a careful induction laws can be established which enable us to
+guess with great probability either at the form or meaning of words
+where but scanty fragments of the tongue itself have come down to us.
+
+_October, 1853._
+
+
+THE ZEND-AVESTA.
+
+
+By means of laws like that of the Correspondence of Letters,
+discovered by Rask and Grimm, it has been possible to determine the
+exact form of words in Gothic, in cases where no trace of them
+occurred in the literary documents of the Gothic nation. Single words
+which were not to be found in Ulfilas have been recovered by applying
+certain laws to their corresponding forms in Latin or Old High-German,
+and thus retranslating them into Gothic. But a much greater conquest
+was achieved in Persia. Here comparative philology has actually had to
+create and reanimate all the materials of language on which it was
+afterwards to work. Little was known of the language of Persia and
+Media previous to the Shahnameh of Firdusi, composed about 1000 A.D.,
+and it is due entirely to the inductive method of comparative
+philology that we have now before us contemporaneous documents of
+three periods of Persian language, deciphered, translated, and
+explained. We have the language of the Zoroastrians, the language of
+the Achaemenians, and the language of the Sassanians, which represent
+the history of the Persian tongue in three successive periods--all now
+rendered intelligible by the aid of comparative philology, while but
+fifty years ago their very name and existence were questioned.
+
+The labours of Anquetil Duperron, who first translated the
+Zend-Avesta, were those of a bold adventurer--not of a scholar. Rask
+was the first who, with the materials collected by Duperron and
+himself, analysed the language of the Avesta scientifically. He
+proved--
+
+     1. That Zend was not a corrupted Sanskrit, as supposed by W.
+     Erskine, but that it differed from it as Greek, Latin, or
+     Lithuanian differed from one another and from Sanskrit.
+
+     2. That the modern Persian was really derived from Zend as
+     Italian was from Latin; and
+
+     3. That the Avesta, or the works of Zoroaster, must have
+     been reduced to writing at least previously to Alexander's
+     conquest. The opinion that Zend was an artificial language
+     (an opinion held by men of great eminence in Oriental
+     philology, beginning with Sir W. Jones) is passed over by
+     Rask as not deserving of refutation.
+
+The first edition of the Zend texts, the critical restitution of the
+MSS., the outlines of a Zend grammar, with the translation and
+philological anatomy of considerable portions of the Zoroastrian
+writings, were the work of the late Eugene Burnouf. He was the real
+founder of Zend philology. It is clear from his works, and from Bopp's
+valuable remarks in his 'Comparative Grammar,' that Zend in its
+grammar and dictionary is nearer to Sanskrit than any other
+Indo-European language. Many Zend words can be retranslated into
+Sanskrit simply by changing the Zend letters into their corresponding
+forms in Sanskrit. With regard to the Correspondence of Letters in
+Grimm's sense of the word, Zend ranges with Sanskrit and the classical
+languages. It differs from Sanskrit principally in its sibilants,
+nasals, and aspirates. The Sanskrit s, for instance, is represented by
+the Zend h, a change analogous to that of an original s into the
+Greek aspirate, only that in Greek this change is not general. Thus
+the geographical name hapta hendu, which occurs in the Avesta, becomes
+intelligible if we retranslate the Zend h into the Sanskrit s. For
+sapta sindhu, or the Seven Rivers, is the old Vaidik name of India
+itself, derived from the five rivers of the Penjab, together with the
+Indus, and the Sarasvati.
+
+Where Sanskrit differs in words or grammatical peculiarities from the
+northern members of the Aryan family, it frequently coincides with
+Zend. The numerals are the same in all these languages up to 100. The
+name for thousand, however, sahasra, is peculiar to Sanskrit, and does
+not occur in any of the Indo-European dialects except in Zend, where
+it becomes haza_n_ra. In the same manner the German and Slavonic
+languages have a word for thousand peculiar to themselves; as also in
+Greek and Latin we find many common words which we look for in vain in
+any of the other Indo-European dialects. These facts are full of
+historical meaning; and with regard to Zend and Sanskrit, they prove
+that these two languages continued together long after they were
+separated from the common Indo-European stock.
+
+Still more striking is the similarity between Persia and India in
+religion and mythology. Gods unknown to any Indo-European nation are
+worshipped under the same names in Sanskrit and Zend; and the change
+of some of the most sacred expressions in Sanskrit into names of evil
+spirits in Zend, only serves to strengthen the conviction that we have
+here the usual traces of a schism which separated a community that had
+once been united.
+
+Burnouf, who compared the language and religion of the Avesta
+principally with the later classical Sanskrit, inclined at first to
+the opinion that this schism took place in Persia, and that the
+dissenting Brahmans immigrated afterwards into India. This is still
+the prevailing opinion, but it requires to be modified in accordance
+with new facts elicited from the Veda. Zend, if compared with
+classical Sanskrit, exhibits in many points of grammar, features of a
+more primitive character than Sanskrit. But it can now be shown, and
+Burnouf himself admitted it, that when this is the case, the Vaidik
+differs on the very same points from the later Sanskrit, and has
+preserved the same primitive and irregular form as the Zend. I still
+hold, that the name of Zend was originally a corruption of the
+Sanskrit word _k_handas (i. e. metrical language, cf. scandere),[35]
+which is the name given to the language of the Veda by Pa_n_ini and
+others. When we read in Pa_n_ini's grammar that certain forms occur in
+_k_handas, but not in the classical language, we may almost always
+translate the word _k_handas by Zend, for nearly all these rules apply
+equally to the language of the Avesta.
+
+[Footnote 35: The derivation of _k_handas, metre, from the same root
+which yielded the Latin scandere, seems to me still the most
+plausible. An account of the various explanations of this word,
+proposed by Eastern and Western scholars, is to be found in Spiegel's
+'Grammar of the Parsi Language' (preface, and p. 205), and in his
+translation of the Vendidad (pp. 44 and 293). That initial _k_h in
+Sanskrit may represent an original sk, has never, as far as I am
+aware, been denied. (Curtius, 'Grundzuege,' p. 60.) The fact that the
+root _k_hand, in the sense of stepping or striding, has not been fixed
+in Sanskrit as a verbal, but only as a nominal base, is no real
+objection either. The same thing has happened over and over again, and
+has been remarked as the necessary result of the dialectic growth of
+language by so ancient a scholar as Yaska. ('Zeitschrift der Deutschen
+Morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft, vol. viii. p. 373 seq.) That scandere
+in Latin, in the sense of scanning is a late word, does not affect the
+question at all. What is of real importance is simply this, that the
+principal Aryan nations agree in representing metre as a kind of
+stepping or striding. Whether this arose from the fact that ancient
+poetry was accompanied by dancing or rhythmic choral movements, is a
+question which does not concern us here. (Carmen descindentes
+tripodaverunt in verba haec: Enos Lases, etc. Orelli, 'Inscript.' No.
+2271.) The fact remains that the people of India, Greece, and Italy
+agree in calling the component elements of their verses feet or steps
+([Greek: pous], pes, Sanskrit pad or pada; padapankti, a row of
+feet, and _g_agati, i. e. andante, are names of Sanskrit metres). It
+is not too much, therefore, to say that they may have considered metre
+as a kind of stepping or striding, and that they may accordingly have
+called it 'stride.' If then we find the name for metre in Sanskrit
+_k_handas, i. e. skandas, and if we find that scando in Latin (from
+which sca(d)la), as we may gather from ascendo and descendo, meant
+originally striding, and that skand in Sanskrit means the same as
+scando in Latin, surely there can be little doubt as to the original
+intention of the Sanskrit name for metre, viz. _k_handas. Hindu
+grammarians derive _k_handas either from _k_had, to cover, or from
+_k_had, to please. Both derivations are possible, as far as the
+letters are concerned. But are we to accept the dogmatic
+interpretation of the theologians of the _K_handogas, who tell us that
+the metres were called _k_handas because the gods, when afraid of
+death, covered themselves with the metres? Or of the Va_g_asaneyins,
+who tell us that the _k_handas were so called because they pleased
+Pra_g_apati? Such artificial interpretations only show that the
+Brahmans had no traditional feeling as to the etymological meaning of
+that word, and that we are at liberty to discover by the ordinary
+means its original intention. I shall only mention from among much
+that has been written on the etymology of _k_handas, a most happy
+remark of Professor Kuhn, who traces the Northern skald, poet, back to
+the same root as the Sanskrit _k_handas, metre. (Kuhn's 'Zeitschrift,'
+vol. iii. p. 428.)]
+
+In mythology also, the 'nomina and numina' of the Avesta appear at
+first sight more primitive than in Manu or the Mahabharata. But if
+regarded from a Vaidik point of view, this relation shifts at once,
+and many of the gods of the Zoroastrians come out once more as mere
+reflections and deflections of the primitive and authentic gods of the
+Veda. It can now be proved, even by geographical evidence, that the
+Zoroastrians had been settled in India before they immigrated into
+Persia. I say the Zoroastrians, for we have no evidence to bear us out
+in making the same assertion of the nations of Persia and Media in
+general. That the Zoroastrians and their ancestors started from India
+during the Vaidik period can be proved as distinctly as that the
+inhabitants of Massilia started from Greece. The geographical
+traditions in the first Fargard of the Vendidad do not interfere with
+this opinion. If ancient and genuine, they would embody a remembrance
+preserved by the Zoroastrians, but forgotten by the Vaidik poets--a
+remembrance of times previous to their first common descent into the
+country of the Seven Rivers. If of later origin, and this is more
+likely, they may represent a geographical conception of the
+Zoroastrians after they had become acquainted with a larger sphere of
+countries and nations, subsequent to their emigration from the land of
+the Seven Rivers.[36]
+
+[Footnote 36: The purely mythological character of this geographical
+chapter has been proved by M. Michel Breal, 'Journal Asiatique,'
+1862.]
+
+These and similar questions of the highest importance for the early
+history of the Aryan language and mythology, however, must await their
+final decision, until the whole of the Veda and the Avesta shall have
+been published. Of this Burnouf was fully aware, and this was the
+reason why he postponed the publication of his researches into the
+antiquities of the Iranian nation. The same conviction is shared by
+Westergaard and Spiegel, who are each engaged in an edition of the
+Avesta, and who, though they differ on many points, agree in
+considering the Veda as the safest key to an understanding of the
+Avesta. Professor Roth, of Tuebingen, has well expressed the mutual
+relation of the Veda and Zend-Avesta under the following simile: 'The
+Veda,' he writes, 'and the Zend-Avesta are two rivers flowing from one
+fountain-head: the stream of the Veda is the fuller and purer, and has
+remained truer to its original character; that of the Zend-Avesta has
+been in various ways polluted, has altered its course, and cannot,
+with certainty, be traced back to its source.'
+
+As to the language of the Achaemenians, presented to us in the Persian
+text of the cuneiform inscriptions, there was no room for doubt, as
+soon as it became legible at all, that it was the same tongue as that
+of the Avesta, only in a second stage of its continuous growth. The
+process of deciphering these bundles of arrows by means of Zend and
+Sanskrit has been very much like deciphering an Italian inscription
+without a knowledge of Italian, simply by means of classical and
+mediaeval Latin. It would have been impossible, even with the quick
+perception and patient combination of a Grotefend, to read more than
+the proper names and a few titles on the walls of the Persian palaces,
+without the aid of Zend and Sanskrit; and it seems almost
+providential, as Lassen remarked, that these inscriptions, which at
+any previous period would have been, in the eyes of either classical
+or oriental scholars, nothing but a quaint conglomerate of nails,
+wedges, or arrows, should have been rescued from the dust of centuries
+at the very moment when the discovery and study of Sanskrit and Zend
+had enabled the scholars of Europe to grapple successfully with their
+difficulties.
+
+Upon a closer inspection of the language and grammar of these mountain
+records of the Achaemenian dynasty, a curious fact came to light which
+seemed to disturb the historical relation between the language of
+Zoroaster and the language of Darius. At first, historians were
+satisfied with knowing that the edicts of Darius could be explained by
+the language of the Avesta, and that the difference between the two,
+which could be proved to imply a considerable interval of time, was
+such as to exclude for ever the supposed historical identity of Darius
+Hystaspes and Gushtasp, the mythical pupil of Zoroaster. The language
+of the Avesta, though certainly not the language of Zarathustra,[37]
+displayed a grammar so much more luxuriant, and forms so much more
+primitive than the inscriptions, that centuries must have elapsed
+between the two periods represented by these two strata of language.
+When, however, the forms of these languages were subjected to a more
+searching analysis, it became evident that the phonetic system of the
+cuneiform inscriptions was more primitive and regular than even that
+of the earlier portions of the Avesta. This difficulty, however,
+admits of a solution; and, like many difficulties of the kind, it
+tends to confirm, if rightly explained, the very facts and views which
+at first it seemed to overthrow. The confusion in the phonetic system
+of the Zend grammar is no doubt owing to the influence of oral
+tradition. Oral tradition, particularly if confided to the safeguard
+of a learned priesthood, is able to preserve, during centuries of
+growth and change, the sacred accents of a dead language; but it is
+liable at least to the slow and imperceptible influences of a corrupt
+pronunciation. Nowhere can we see this more clearly than in the Veda,
+where grammatical forms that had ceased to be intelligible, were
+carefully preserved, while the original pronunciation of vowels was
+lost, and the simple structure of the ancient metres destroyed by the
+adoption of a more modern pronunciation. The loss of the Digamma in
+Homer is another case in point. There are no facts to prove that the
+text of the Avesta, in the shape in which the Parsis of Bombay and
+Yezd now possess it, was committed to writing previous to the
+Sassanian dynasty (226 A.D.). After that time it can indeed be traced,
+and to a great extent be controlled and checked by the Huzvaresh
+translations made under that dynasty. Additions to it were made, as it
+seems, even after these Huzvaresh translations; but their number is
+small, and we have no reason to doubt that the text of the Avesta, in
+the days of Arda Viraf, was on the whole exactly the same as at
+present. At the time when these translations were made, it is clear
+from their own evidence that the language of Zarathustra had already
+suffered, and that the ideas of the Avesta were no longer fully
+understood even by the learned. Before that time we may infer, indeed,
+that the doctrine of Zoroaster had been committed to writing, for
+Alexander is said to have destroyed the books of the Zoroastrians,
+Hermippus of Alexandria is said to have read them.[38] But whether on
+the revival of the Persian religion and literature, that is to say 500
+years after Alexander, the works of Zoroaster were collected and
+restored from extant MSS., or from oral tradition, must remain
+uncertain, and the disturbed state of the phonetic system would rather
+lead us to suppose a long-continued influence of oral tradition. What
+the Zend language might become, if entrusted to the guardianship of
+memory alone, unassisted by grammatical study and archaeological
+research, may be seen at the present day, when some of the Parsis, who
+are unable either to read or write, still mutter hymns and prayers in
+their temples, which, though to them mere sound, disclose to the
+experienced ear of an European scholar the time-hallowed accents of
+Zarathustra's speech.
+
+[Footnote 37: Spiegel states the results of his last researches into
+the language of the different parts of the Avesta in the following
+words:
+
+'We are now prepared to attempt an arrangement of the different
+portions of the Zend-Avesta in the order of their antiquity. First, we
+place the second part of the Ya_s_na, as separated in respect to the
+language of the Zend-Avesta, yet not composed by Zoroaster himself,
+since he is named in the third person; and indeed everything intimates
+that neither he nor his disciple Gushtasp was alive. The second place
+must unquestionably be assigned to the Vendidad. I do not believe that
+the book was originally composed as it now stands: it has suffered
+both earlier and later interpolations; still, its present form may be
+traced to a considerable antiquity. The antiquity of the work is
+proved by its contents, which distinctly show that the sacred
+literature was not yet completed.
+
+'The case is different with the writings of the last period, among
+which I reckon the first part of the Ya_s_na, and the whole of the
+Yeshts. Among these a theological character is unmistakeable, the
+separate divinities having their attributes and titles dogmatically
+fixed.
+
+'Altogether, it is interesting to trace the progress of religion in
+Parsi writings. It is a significant fact, that in the oldest, that is
+to say, the second part of the Ya_s_na, nothing is fixed in the
+doctrine regarding God. In the writings of the second period, that is
+in the Vendidad, we trace the advance to a theological, and, in its
+way, mild and scientific system. Out of this, in the last place, there
+springs the stern and intolerant religion of the Sassanian
+epoch.'--From the Rev. J. Murray Mitchell's Translation.]
+
+[Footnote 38: 'Lectures on the Science of Language,' First Series, p.
+95.]
+
+Thus far the history of the Persian language had been reconstructed by
+the genius and perseverance of Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and last,
+not least, by the comprehensive labours of Rawlinson, from the
+ante-historical epoch of Zoroaster down to the age of Darius and
+Artaxerxes II. It might have been expected that, after that time, the
+contemporaneous historians of Greece would have supplied the sequel.
+Unfortunately the Greeks cared nothing for any language except their
+own; and little for any other history except as bearing on themselves.
+The history of the Persian language after the Macedonian conquest and
+during the Parthian occupation is indeed but a blank page. The next
+glimpse of an authentic contemporaneous document is the inscription of
+Ardeshir, the founder of the new national dynasty of the Sassanians.
+It is written, though, it may be, with dialectic difference, in what
+was once called 'Pehlevi,' and is now more commonly known as
+'Huzvaresh,' this being the proper title of the language of the
+translations of the Avesta. The legends of Sassanian coins, the
+bilingual inscriptions of Sassanian emperors, and the translation of
+the Avesta by Sassanian reformers, represent the Persian language in
+its third phase. To judge from the specimens given by Anquetil
+Duperron, it was not to be wondered at that this dialect, then called
+Pehlevi, should have been pronounced an artificial jargon. Even when
+more genuine specimens of it became known, the language seemed so
+overgrown with Semitic and barbarous words, that it was expelled from
+the Iranian family. Sir W. Jones pronounced it to be a dialect of
+Chaldaic. Spiegel, however, who is now publishing the text of these
+translations, has established the fact that the language is truly
+Aryan, neither Semitic nor barbarous, but Persian in roots and
+grammar. He accounts for the large infusion of foreign terms by
+pointing to the mixed elements in the intellectual and religious life
+of Persia during and before that period. There was the Semitic
+influence of Babylonia, clearly discernible even in the characters of
+the Achaemenian inscriptions; there was the slow infiltration of Jewish
+ideas, customs, and expressions, working sometimes in the palaces of
+Persian kings, and always in the bazars of Persian cities, on high
+roads and in villages; there was the irresistible power of the Greek
+genius, which even under its rude Macedonian garb emboldened oriental
+thinkers to a flight into regions undreamed of in their philosophy;
+there were the academies, the libraries, the works of art of the
+Seleucidae; there was Edessa on the Euphrates, a city where Plato and
+Aristotle were studied, where Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist tenets
+were discussed, where Ephraem Syrus taught, and Syriac translations
+were circulated which have preserved to us the lost originals of Greek
+and Christian writers. The title of the Avesta under its Semitic form
+Apestako, was known in Syria as well as in Persia, and the true name
+of its author, Zarathustra, is not yet changed in Syriac into the
+modern Zerdusht. While this intellectual stream, principally flowing
+through Semitic channels, was irrigating and inundating the west of
+Asia, the Persian language had been left without literary cultivation.
+Need we wonder, then, that the men, who at the rising of a new
+national dynasty (226) became the reformers, teachers, and prophets of
+Persia, should have formed their language and the whole train of
+their ideas on a Semitic model. Motley as their language may appear to
+a Persian scholar fresh from the Avesta or from Firdusi, there is
+hardly a language of modern Europe which, if closely sifted, would not
+produce the same impression on a scholar accustomed only to the pure
+idiom of Homer, Cicero, Ulfilas, or Caedmon. Moreover; the soul of the
+Sassanian language--I mean its grammar--is Persian and nothing but
+Persian; and though meagre when compared with the grammar of the
+Avesta, it is richer in forms than the later Parsi, the Deri, or the
+language of Firdusi. The supposition (once maintained) that Pehlevi
+was the dialect of the western provinces of Persia is no longer
+necessary. As well might we imagine, (it is Spiegel's apposite
+remark,) that a Turkish work, because it is full of Arabic words,
+could only have been written on the frontiers of Arabia. We may safely
+consider the Huzvaresh of the translations of the Avesta as the
+language of the Sassanian court and hierarchy. Works also like the
+Bundehesh and Minokhired belong by language and thought to the same
+period of mystic incubation, when India and Egypt, Babylonia and
+Greece, were sitting together and gossiping like crazy old women,
+chattering with toothless gums and silly brains about the dreams and
+joys of their youth, yet unable to recall one single thought or
+feeling with that vigour which once gave it life and truth. It was a
+period of religious and metaphysical delirium, when everything became
+everything, when Maya and Sophia, Mitra and Christ, Viraf and Isaiah,
+Belus, Zarvan, and Kronos were mixed up in one jumbled system of inane
+speculation, from which at last the East was delivered by the
+positive doctrines of Mohammed, the West by the pure Christianity of
+the Teutonic nations.
+
+In order to judge fairly of the merits of the Huzvaresh as a language,
+it must be remembered that we know it only from these speculative
+works, and from translations made by men whose very language had
+become technical and artificial in the schools. The idiom spoken by
+the nation was probably much less infected by this Semitic fashion.
+Even the translators sometimes give the Semitic terms only as a
+paraphrase or more distinct expression side by side with the Persian.
+And, if Spiegel's opinion be right that Parsi, and not Huzvaresh, was
+the language of the later Sassanian empire, it furnishes a clear proof
+that Persian had recovered itself, had thrown off the Semitic
+ingredients, and again become a pure and national speech. This dialect
+(the Parsi) also, exists in translations only; and we owe our
+knowledge of it to Spiegel, the author of the first Parsi grammar.
+
+This third period in the history of the Persian language,
+comprehending the Huzvaresh and Parsi, ends with the downfall of the
+Sassanians. The Arab conquest quenched the last sparks of Persian
+nationality; and the fire-altars of the Zoroastrians were never to be
+lighted again, except in the oasis of Yezd and on the soil of that
+country which the Zoroastrians had quitted as the disinherited sons of
+Manu. Still the change did not take place at once. Mohl, in his
+magnificent edition of the Shahnameh, has treated this period
+admirably, and it is from him that I derive the following facts. For a
+time, Persian religion, customs, traditions, and songs survived in the
+hands of the Persian nobility and landed gentry (the Dihkans) who
+lived among the people, particularly in, the eastern provinces, remote
+from the capital and the seats of foreign dominion, Baghdad, Kufah,
+and Mosul. Where should Firdusi have collected the national strains of
+ancient epic poetry which he revived in the Shahnameh (1000 A.D.), if
+the Persian peasant and the Persian knight had not preserved the
+memory of their old heathen heroes, even under the vigilant oppression
+of Mohammedan zealots? True, the first collection of epic traditions
+was made under the Sassanians. But this work, commenced under
+Nushirvan, and finished under Yezdegird, the last of the Sassanians,
+was destroyed by Omar's command. Firdusi himself tells us how this
+first collection was made by the Dihkan Danishver. 'There was a
+Pehlevan,' he says, 'of the family of the Dihkans, brave and powerful,
+wise and illustrious, who loved to study the ancient times, and to
+collect the stories of past ages. He summoned from all the provinces
+old men who possessed portions of (i. e. who knew) an ancient work in
+which many stories were written. He asked them about the origin of
+kings and illustrious heroes, and how they governed the world which
+they left to us in this wretched state. These old men recited before
+him, one after the other, the traditions of the kings and the changes
+in the empire. The Dihkan listened, and composed a book worthy of his
+fame. This is the monument he left to mankind, and great and small
+have celebrated his name.'
+
+The collector of this first epic poem, under Yezdegird, is called a
+Dihkan by Firdusi. Dihkan, according to the Persian dictionaries,
+means (1) farmer, (2) historian; and the reason commonly assigned for
+this double meaning is, that the Persian farmers happened to be well
+read in history. Quatremere, however, has proved that the Dihkans were
+the landed nobility of Persia; that they kept up a certain
+independence, even under the sway of the Mohammedan Khalifs, and
+exercised in the country a sort of jurisdiction in spite of the
+commissioners sent from Baghdad, the seat of the government. Thus
+Danishver even is called a Dihkan, although he lived previous to the
+Arab conquest. With him, the title was only intended to show that it
+was in the country and among the peasants that he picked up the
+traditions and songs about Jemshid, Feridun, and Rustem. Of his work,
+however, we know nothing. It was destroyed by Omar; and, though it
+survived in an Arabic translation, even this was lost in later times.
+The work, therefore, had to be recommenced when in the eastern
+provinces of Persia a national, though no longer a Zoroastrian,
+feeling began to revive. The governors of these provinces became
+independent as soon as the power of the Khalifs, after its rapid rise,
+began to show signs of weakness. Though the Mohammedan religion had
+taken root, even among the national party, yet Arabic was no longer
+countenanced by the governors of the eastern provinces. Persian was
+spoken again at their courts, Persian poets were encouraged, and
+ancient national traditions, stripped of their religious garb, began
+to be collected anew. It is said that Jacob, the son of Leis (870),
+the first prince of Persian blood who declared himself independent of
+the Khalifs, procured fragments of Danishver's epic, and had it
+rearranged and continued. Then followed the dynasty of the Samanians,
+who claimed descent from the Sassanian kings. They, as well as the
+later dynasty of the Gaznevides, pursued the same popular policy. They
+were strong because they rested on the support of a national Persian
+spirit. The national epic poet of the Samanians was Dakiki, by birth a
+Zoroastrian. Firdusi possessed fragments of his work, and has given a
+specimen of it in the story of Gushtasp. The final accomplishment,
+however, of an idea, first cherished by Nushirvan, was reserved for
+Mahmud the Great, the second king of the Gaznevide dynasty. By his
+command collections of old books were made all over the empire. Men
+who knew ancient poems were summoned to the court. One of them was
+Ader Berzin, who had spent his whole life in collecting popular
+accounts of the ancient kings of Persia. Another was Serv Azad, from
+Merv, who claimed descent from Neriman, and knew all the tales
+concerning Sam, Zal, and Rustem, which had been preserved in his
+family. It was from these materials that Firdusi composed his great
+epic, the Shahnameh. He himself declares, in many passages of his
+poem, that he always followed tradition. 'Traditions,' he says, 'have
+been given by me; nothing of what is worth knowing has been forgotten.
+All that I shall say, others have said before me: they plucked before
+me the fruits in the garden of knowledge.' He speaks in detail of his
+predecessors: he even indicates the sources from which he derives
+different episodes, and it is his constant endeavour to convince his
+readers that what he relates are not poetical inventions of his own.
+Thus only can we account for the fact, first pointed out by Burnouf,
+that many of the heroes in the Shahnameh still exhibit the traits,
+sadly distorted, it is true, but still unmistakeable, of Vaidik
+deities, which had passed through the Zoroastrian schism, the
+Achaemenian reign, the Macedonian occupation, the Parthian wars, the
+Sassanian revival, and the Mohammedan conquest, and of which the
+Dihkans could still sing and tell, when Firdusi's poem impressed the
+last stamp on the language of Zarathustra. Bopp had discovered
+already, in his edition of Nalas (1832), that the Zend Viva_n_hvat was
+the same as the Sanskrit Vivasvat; and Burnouf, in his 'Observations
+sur la Grammaire Comparee de M. Bopp,' had identified a second
+personage, the Zend Kere_s_a_s_pa with the Sanskrit K_r_i_s_a_s_va.
+But the similarity between the Zend Kere_s_a_s_pa and the Garshasp of
+the Shahnameh opened a new and wide prospect to Burnouf, and
+afterwards led him on to the most striking and valuable results. Some
+of these were published in his last work on Zend, 'Etudes sur la
+Langue et les Textes Zends.' This is a collection of articles
+published originally in the 'Journal Asiatique' between 1840 and 1846;
+and it is particularly the fourth essay, 'Le Dieu Homa,' which has
+opened an entirely new mine for researches into the ancient state of
+religion and tradition common to the Aryans before their schism.
+Burnouf showed that three of the most famous names in the Shahnameh,
+Jemshid, Feridun, and Garshasp, can be traced back to three heroes
+mentioned in the Zend-Avesta as the representatives of the three
+earliest generations of mankind, Yima Kshaeta, Thraetaona, and
+Kere_s_a_s_pa; and that the prototypes of these Zoroastrian heroes
+could be found again in the Yama, Trita, and K_r_i_s_a_s_va of the
+Veda. He went even beyond this. He showed that, as in Sanskrit, the
+father of Yama is Vivasvat, the father of Yima in the Avesta is
+Viva_n_hvat. He showed that as Thraetaona in Persia is the son of
+Athwya, the patronymic of Trita in the Veda is Aptya. He explained the
+transition of Thraetaona into Feridun by pointing to the Pehlevi form
+of the name, as given by Neriosengh, Fredun. This change of an
+aspirated dental into an aspirated labial, which by many is considered
+a flaw in this argument, is of frequent occurrence. We have only to
+think of [Greek: pher] and [Greek: ther], of dhuma and fumus, of
+modern Greek [Greek: phelo] and [Greek: thelo]--nay, Menenius's 'first
+complaint' would suffice to explain it. Burnouf again identified
+Zohak, the king of Persia, slain by Feridun, whom even Firdusi still
+knows by the name of Ash dahak, with the Azhi dahaka, the biting
+serpent, as he translates it, destroyed by Thraetaona in the Avesta;
+and with regard to the changes which these names, and the ideas
+originally expressed by them, had to undergo on the intellectual stage
+of the Aryan nation, he says: 'Il est sans contredit fort curieux de
+voir une des Divinites indiennes les plus venerees, donner son nom au
+premier souverain de la dynastie ariopersanne; c'est un des faits qui
+attestent le plus evidemment l'intime union des deux branches de la
+grande famille qui s'est etendue, bien de siecles avant notre ere,
+depuis le Gange jusqu'a l'Euphrate.'
+
+The great achievements of Burnouf in this field of research have been
+so often ignored, and what by right belongs to him has been so
+confidently ascribed to others, that a faithful representation of the
+real state of the case, as here given, will not appear superfluous.
+There is no intention, while giving his due to Burnouf, to detract
+from the merits of other scholars. Some more minute coincidences,
+particularly in the story of Feridun, have subsequently been added by
+Roth, Benfey, and Weber. The first, particularly, has devoted two most
+interesting articles to the identification of Yama-Yima-Jemshid and
+Trita-Thraetaona-Feridun. Trita, who has generally been fixed upon as
+the Vaidik original of Feridun, because Traitana, whose name
+corresponds more accurately, occurs but once in the Rig-veda, is
+represented in India as one of the many divine powers ruling the
+firmament, destroying darkness, and sending rain, or, as the poets of
+the Veda are fond of expressing it, rescuing the cows and slaying the
+demons that had carried them off. These cows always move along the
+sky, some dark, some bright-coloured. They low over their pasture;
+they are gathered by the winds; and milked by the bright rays of the
+sun, they drop from their heavy udders a fertilising milk upon the
+parched and thirsty earth. But sometimes, the poet says, they are
+carried off by robbers and kept in dark caves near the uttermost ends
+of the sky. Then the earth is without rain; the pious worshipper
+offers up his prayer to Indra, and Indra rises to conquer the cows for
+him. He sends his dog to find the scent of the cattle, and after she
+has heard their lowing, she returns, and the battle commences. Indra
+hurls his thunderbolt; the Maruts ride at his side; the Rudras roar;
+till at last the rock is cleft asunder, the demon destroyed, and the
+cows brought back to their pasture. This is one of the oldest mythes
+or sayings current among the Aryan nations. It appears again in the
+mythology of Italy, in Greece, in Germany. In the Avesta, the battle
+is fought between Thraetaona and Azhi dahaka, the destroying serpent.
+Traitana takes the place of Indra in this battle in one song of the
+Veda; more frequently it is Trita, but other gods also share in the
+same honour. The demon, again, who fights against the gods is
+likewise called Ahi, or the serpent, in the Veda. But the
+characteristic change that has taken place between the Veda and Avesta
+is that the battle is no longer a conflict of gods and demons for
+cows, nor of light and darkness for rain. It is the battle of a pious
+man against the power of evil. 'Le Zoroastrisme,' as Burnouf says, 'en
+se detachant plus franchement de Dieu et de la nature, a certainement
+tenu plus de compte de l'homme que n'a fait le Brahmanisme, et on peut
+dire qu'il a regagne en profondeur ce qu'il perdait en etendue. Il ne
+m'appartient pas d'indiquer ici ce qu'un systeme qui tend a developper
+les instincts les plus nobles de notre nature, et qui impose a
+l'homme, comme le plus important de ses devoirs, celui de lutter
+constamment contre le principe du mal, a pu exercer d'influence sur
+les destinees des peuples de l'Asie, chez lesquels il a ete adopte a
+diverses epoques. On peut cependant deja dire que le caractere
+religieux et martial tout a la fois, qui parait avec des traits si
+heroiques dans la plupart des Jeshts, n'a pas du etre sans action sur
+la male discipline sous laquelle ont grandi les commencements de la
+monarchie de Cyrus.'
+
+A thousand years after Cyrus (for Zohak is mentioned by Moses of
+Khorene in the fifth century) we find all this forgotten once more,
+and the vague rumours about Thraetaona and Azhi Dahaka are gathered at
+last, and arranged and interpreted into something intelligible to
+later ages. Zohak is a three-headed tyrant on the throne of
+Persia--three-headed, because the Vaidik Ahi was three-headed, only
+that one of Zohak's heads has now become human. Zohak has killed
+Jemshid of the Peshdadian dynasty: Feridun now conquers Zohak on the
+banks of the Tigris. He then strikes him down with his cow-headed
+mace, and is on the point of killing him, when, as Firdusi says, a
+supernatural voice whispered in his ear--[39]
+
+    Slay him not now, his time is not yet come,
+    His punishment must be prolonged awhile;
+    And as he cannot now survive the wound,
+    Bind him with heavy chains--convey him straight
+    Upon the mountain, there within a cave,
+    Deep, dark, and horrible--with none to soothe
+    His sufferings, let the murderer lingering die.
+    The work of heaven performing, Feridun
+    First purified the world from sin and crime.
+    Yet Feridun was not an angel, nor
+    Composed of musk and ambergris. By justice
+    And generosity he gained his fame.
+    Do thou but exercise these princely virtues,
+    And thou wilt be renowned as Feridun.
+
+[Footnote 39: Cf. Atkinson's Shahnameh, p. 48.]
+
+As a last stage in the mythe of the Vaidik Traitana we may mention
+versions like those given by Sir John Malcolm and others, who see in
+Zohak the representative of an Assyrian invasion lasting during the
+thousand years of Zohak's reign, and who change Feridun into Arbaces
+the Mede, the conqueror of Sardanapalus. We may then look at the whole
+with the new light which Burnouf's genius has shed over it, and watch
+the retrograde changes of Arbaces into Feridun, of Feridun into
+Phredun, of Phredun into Thraetaona, of Thraetaona into
+Traitana,--each a separate phase in the dissolving view of mythology.
+
+As to the language of Persia, its biography is at an end with the
+Shahnameh. What follows exhibits hardly any signs of either growth or
+decay. The language becomes more and more encumbered with foreign
+words; but the grammar seems to have arrived at its lowest ebb, and
+withstands further change. From this state of grammatical numbness,
+languages recover by a secondary formation, which grows up slowly and
+imperceptibly at first in the speech of the people; till at last the
+reviving spirit rises upwards, and sweeps away, like the waters in
+spring, the frozen surface of an effete government, priesthood,
+literature, and grammar.
+
+_October, 1853._
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE AITAREYA-BRAHMANA.[40]
+
+
+The Sanskrit text, with an English translation of the
+Aitareya-brahma_n_a, just published at Bombay by Dr. Martin Haug, the
+Superintendent of Sanskrit Studies in the Poona College, constitutes
+one of the most important additions lately made to our knowledge of
+the ancient literature of India. The work is published by the Director
+of Public Instruction, in behalf of Government, and furnishes a new
+instance of the liberal and judicious spirit in which Mr. Howard
+bestows his patronage on works of real and permanent utility. The
+Aitareya-brahma_n_a, containing the earliest speculations of the
+Brahmans on the meaning of their sacrificial prayers, and the purport
+of their ancient religious rites, is a work which could be properly
+edited nowhere but in India. It is only a small work of about two
+hundred pages, but it presupposes so thorough a familiarity with all
+the externals of the religion of the Brahmans, the various offices of
+their priests, the times and seasons of their sacred rites, the form
+of their innumerable sacrificial utensils, and the preparation of
+their offerings, that no amount of Sanskrit scholarship, such as can
+be gained in England, would have been sufficient to unravel the
+intricate speculations concerning the matters which form the bulk of
+the Aitareya-brahma_n_a. The difficulty was not to translate the text
+word for word, but to gain a clear, accurate, and living conception of
+the subjects there treated. The work was composed by persons, and for
+persons, who, in a general way, knew the performance of the Vedic
+sacrifices as well as we know the performance of our own sacred rites.
+If we placed the English Prayer-book in the hands of a stranger who
+had never assisted at an English service, we should find that, in
+spite of the simplicity and plainness of its language, it failed to
+convey to the uninitiated a clear idea of what he ought and what he
+ought not to do in church. The ancient Indian ceremonial, however, is
+one of the most artificial and complicated forms of worship that can
+well be imagined; and though its details are, no doubt, most minutely
+described in the Brahma_n_as and the Sutras, yet, without having seen
+the actual site on which the sacrifices are offered, the altars
+constructed for the occasion, the instruments employed by different
+priests--the _tout-ensemble_, in fact, of the sacred rites--the reader
+seems to deal with words, but with words only, and is unable to
+reproduce in his imagination the acts and facts which were intended to
+be conveyed by them. Various attempts were made to induce some of the
+more learned Brahmans to edit and translate some of their own rituals,
+and thus enable European scholars to gain an idea of the actual
+performance of their ancient sacrifices, and to enter more easily into
+the spirit of the speculations on the mysterious meaning of these
+rituals, which are embodied in the so-called Brahma_n_as, or 'the
+sayings of the Brahmans.' But although, thanks to the enlightened
+exertions of Dr. Ballantyne and his associates in the Sanskrit College
+of Benares, Brahmans might have been found knowing English quite
+sufficiently for the purpose of a rough and ready translation from
+Sanskrit into English, such was their prejudice against divulging the
+secrets of their craft that none could be persuaded to undertake the
+ungrateful task. Dr. Haug tells us of another difficulty, which we had
+hardly suspected,--the great scarcity of Brahmans familiar with the
+ancient Vedic ritual:
+
+     'Seeing the great difficulties, nay, impossibility of
+     attaining to anything like a real understanding of the
+     sacrificial art from all the numerous books I had collected,
+     I made the greatest efforts to obtain oral information from
+     some of those few Brahmans who are known by the name of
+     _S_rotriyas or _S_rautis, and who alone are the possessors
+     of the sacrificial mysteries as they descended from the
+     remotest times. The task was no easy one, and no European
+     scholar in this country before me ever succeeded in it. This
+     is not to be wondered at; for the proper knowledge of the
+     ritual is everywhere in India now rapidly dying out, and in
+     many parts, chiefly in those under British rule, it has
+     already died out.'
+
+[Footnote 40: 'The Aitareya-brahma_n_am of the Rig-veda,' edited and
+translated by Martin Haug, Ph.D., Superintendent of Sanskrit Studies
+in the Poona College. Bombay, 1863. London: Truebner & Co.]
+
+Dr. Haug succeeded, however, at last in procuring the assistance of a
+real Doctor of Divinity, who had not only performed the minor Vedic
+sacrifices, such as the full and new-moon offerings, but had
+officiated at some of the great Soma sacrifices, now very rarely to be
+seen in any part of India. He was induced, we are sorry to say by very
+mercenary considerations, to perform the principal ceremonies in a
+secluded part of Dr. Haug's premises. This lasted five days, and the
+same assistance was afterwards rendered by the same worthy and some of
+his brethren whenever Dr. Haug was in any doubt as to the proper
+meaning of the ceremonial treatises which give the outlines of the
+Vedic sacrifices. Dr. Haug was actually allowed to taste that sacred
+beverage, the Soma, which gives health, wealth, wisdom, inspiration,
+nay immortality, to those who receive it from the hands of a
+twice-born priest. Yet, after describing its preparation, all that Dr.
+Haug has to say of it is:
+
+     'The sap of the plant now used at Poona appears whitish, has
+     a very stringent taste, is bitter, but not sour; it is a
+     very nasty drink, and has some intoxicating effect. I tasted
+     it several times, but it was impossible for me to drink more
+     than some teaspoonfuls.'
+
+After having gone through all these ordeals, Dr. Haug may well say
+that his explanations of sacrificial terms, as given in the notes, can
+be relied upon as certain; that they proceed from what he himself
+witnessed, and what he was able to learn from men who had inherited
+the knowledge from the most ancient times. He speaks with some
+severity of those scholars in Europe who have attempted to explain the
+technical terms of the Vedic sacrifices without the assistance of
+native priests, and without even availing themselves carefully of the
+information they might have gained from native commentaries.
+
+In the preface to his edition of the Aitareya-brahma_n_a, Dr. Haug has
+thrown out some new ideas on the chronology of Vedic literature which
+deserve careful consideration. Beginning with the hymns of the
+Rig-veda, he admits, indeed, that there are in that collection ancient
+and modern hymns, but he doubts whether it will be possible to draw a
+sharp line between what has been called the _K_handas period,
+representing the free growth of sacred poetry, and the Mantra period,
+during which the ancient hymns were supposed to have been collected
+and new ones added, chiefly intended for sacrificial purposes. Dr.
+Haug maintains that some hymns of a decidedly sacrificial character
+should be ascribed to the earliest period of Vedic poetry. He takes,
+for instance, the hymn describing the horse sacrifice, and he
+concludes from the fact that seven priests only are mentioned in it by
+name, and that none of them belongs to the class of the Udgatars
+(singers) and Brahmans (superintendents), that this hymn was written
+before the establishment of these two classes of priests. As these
+priests are mentioned in other Vedic hymns, he concludes that the hymn
+describing the horse sacrifice is of a very early date. Dr. Haug
+strengthens his case by a reference to the Zoroastrian ceremonial, in
+which, as he says, the chanters and superintendents are entirely
+unknown, whereas the other two classes, the Hotars (reciters) and
+Adhvaryus (assistants) are mentioned by the same names as Zaotar and
+Rathwiskare. The establishment of the two new classes of priests
+would, therefore, seem to have taken place in India after the
+Zoroastrians had separated from the Brahmans; and Dr. Haug would
+ascribe the Vedic hymns in which no more than two classes of priests
+are mentioned to a period preceding, others in which the other two
+classes of priests are mentioned to a period succeeding, that ancient
+schism. We must confess, though doing full justice to Dr. Haug's
+argument, that he seems to us to stretch what is merely negative
+evidence beyond its proper limits. Surely a poet, though acquainted
+with all the details of a sacrifice and the titles of all the priests
+employed in it, might speak of it in a more general manner than the
+author of a manual, and it would be most dangerous to conclude that
+whatever was passed over by him in silence did not exist at the time
+when he wrote. Secondly, if there were more ancient titles of priests,
+the poet would most likely use them in preference to others that had
+been but lately introduced. Thirdly, even the ancient priestly titles
+had originally a more general meaning before they were restricted to
+their technical significance, just as in Europe bishop meant
+originally an overseer, priest an elder, deacon a minister. In several
+hymns, some of these titles--for instance, that of hotar, invoker--are
+clearly used as appellatives, and not as titles. Lastly, one of the
+priests mentioned in the hymn on the horse sacrifice, the Agnimindha,
+is admitted by Dr. Haug himself to be the same as the Agnidhra; and if
+we take this name, like all the others, in its technical sense, we
+have to recognise in him one of the four Brahman priests.[41] We
+should thus lose the ground on which Dr. Haug's argument is chiefly
+based, and should have to admit the existence of Brahman priests as
+early at least as the time in which the hymn on the horse sacrifice
+was composed. But, even admitting that allusions to a more or less
+complete ceremonial[42] could be pointed out in certain hymns, this
+might help us no doubt in subdividing and arranging the poetry of the
+second or Mantra period, but it would leave the question, whether
+allusions to ceremonial technicalities are to be considered as
+characteristics of later hymns, entirely unaffected. Dr. Haug, who
+holds that, in the development of the human race, sacrifice comes
+earlier than religious poetry, formulas earlier than prayers,
+Leviticus earlier than the Psalms, applies this view to the
+chronological arrangement of Vedic literature; and he is, therefore,
+naturally inclined to look upon hymns composed for sacrificial
+purposes, more particularly upon the invocations and formulas of the
+Ya_g_ur-veda, and upon the Nivids preserved in the Brahma_n_as and
+Sutras, as relics of greater antiquity than the free poetical
+effusions of the Rishis, which defy ceremonial rules, ignore the
+settled rank of priests and deities, and occasionally allude to
+subjects more appropriate for profane than for sacred poetry:
+
+     'The first sacrifices [he writes] were no doubt simple
+     offerings performed without much ceremonial. A few
+     appropriate solemn words, indicating the giver, the nature
+     of the offering, the deity to which, as well as the purpose
+     for which it was offered, were sufficient. All this would be
+     embodied in the sacrificial formulas known in later times
+     principally by the name of Ya_g_ush, whilst the older one
+     appears to have been Ya_g_ya. The invocation of the deity by
+     different names, and its invitation to enjoy the meal
+     prepared, may be equally old. It was justly regarded as a
+     kind of Ya_g_ush, and called Nigada or Nivid.'
+
+[Footnote 41: By an accident two lines containing the names of the
+sixteen priests in my 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature' (p.
+469) have been misplaced. Agnidhra and Pot_r_i ought to range with the
+Brahmans, Pratihart_r_i and Subrahma_n_ya with the Udgat_r_is. See
+A_s_val. Sutras IV. 1 (p. 286, 'Bibliotheca Indica'); and M. M.,
+Todtenbestattung, p. xlvi. It might be said, however, that the
+Agnimindha was meant as one of the Hotra_s_a_m_sins, or one of the
+Seven Priests, the Sapta Hotars. See Haug, Aitareya-brahma_n_a, vol.
+i. p. 58.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Many such allusions were collected in my 'History of
+Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. 486 seq.; some of them have lately
+been independently discovered by others.]
+
+In comparing these sacrificial formulas with the bulk of the Rig-veda
+hymns, Dr. Haug comes to the conclusion that the former are more
+ancient. He shows that certain of these formulas and Nivids were known
+to the poets of the hymns, as they undoubtedly were; but this would
+only prove that these poets were acquainted with these as well as with
+other portions of the ceremonial. It would only confirm the view
+advocated by others, that certain hymns were clearly written for
+ceremonial purposes, though the ceremonial presupposed by these hymns
+may in many cases prove more simple and primitive than the ceremonial
+laid down in the Brahma_n_as and Sutras. But if Dr. Haug tells us that
+the Rishis tried their poetical talent first in the composition of
+Ya_g_yas, or verses to be recited while an offering was thrown into
+the fire, and that the Ya_g_yas were afterwards extended into little
+songs, we must ask, is this fact or theory? And if we are told that
+'there can be hardly any doubt that the hymns which we possess are
+purely sacrificial, and made only for sacrificial purposes, and that
+those which express more general ideas, or philosophical thoughts, or
+confessions of sins, are comparatively late,' we can only repeat our
+former question. Dr. Haug, when proceeding to give his proofs, that
+the purely sacrificial poetry is more ancient than either profane
+songs or hymns of a more general religious character, only produces
+such collateral evidence as may be found in the literary history of
+the Jews and the Chinese--evidence which is curious, but not
+convincing. Among the Aryan nations, it has hitherto been considered
+as a general rule that poetry precedes prose. Now the Ya_g_yas and
+Nivids are prose, and though Dr. Haug calls it rhythmical prose, yet,
+as compared with the hymns, they are prose; and though such an
+argument by itself could by no means be considered as sufficient to
+upset any solid evidence to the contrary, yet it is stronger than the
+argument derived from the literature of nations who are neither of
+them Aryan in language or thought.
+
+But though we have tried to show the insufficiency of the arguments
+advanced by Dr. Haug in support of his theory, we are by no means
+prepared to deny the great antiquity of some of the sacrificial
+formulas and invocations, and more particularly of the Nivids to which
+he for the first time has called attention. There probably existed
+very ancient Nivids or invocations, but are the Nivids which we
+possess the identical Nivids alluded to in the hymns? If so, why have
+they no accents, why do they not form part of the Sanhitas, why were
+they not preserved, discussed, and analysed with the same religious
+care as the metrical hymns? The Nivids which we now possess may, as
+Dr. Haug supposes, have inspired the Rishis with the burden of their
+hymns; but they may equally well have been put together by later
+compilers from the very hymns of the Rishis. There is many a hymn in
+the Sanhita of the Rig-veda which may be called a Nivid, i. e. an
+invitation addressed to the gods to come to the sacrifices, and an
+enumeration of the principal names of each deity. Those who believe,
+on more general grounds, that all religion began with sacrifice and
+sacrificial formulas will naturally look on such hymns and on the
+Nivids as relics of a more primitive age; while others who look upon
+prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, and the unfettered expression of
+devotion and wonderment as the first germs of a religious worship,
+will treat the same Nivids as productions of a later age. We doubt
+whether this problem can be argued on general grounds. Admitting that
+the Jews began with sacrifice and ended with psalms, it would by no
+means follow that the Aryan nations did the same, nor would the
+chronological arrangement of the ancient literature of China help us
+much in forming an opinion of the growth of the Indian mind. We must
+take each nation by itself, and try to find out what they themselves
+hold as to the relative antiquity of their literary documents. On
+general grounds, the problem whether sacrifice or prayer comes first,
+may be argued ad infinitum, just like the problem whether the hen
+comes first or the egg. In the special case of the sacred literature
+of the Brahmans, we must be guided by their own tradition, which
+invariably places the poetical hymns of the Rig-veda before the
+ceremonial hymns and formulas of the Ya_g_ur-veda and Sama-veda. The
+strongest argument that has as yet been brought forward against this
+view is, that the formulas of the Ya_g_ur-veda and the sacrificial
+texts of the Sama-veda contain occasionally more archaic forms of
+language than the hymns of the Rig-veda. It was supposed, therefore,
+that, although the hymns of the Rig-veda might have been composed at
+an earlier time, the sacrificial hymns and formulas were the first to
+be collected and to be preserved in the schools by means of a strict
+mnemonic discipline. The hymns of the Rig-veda, some of which have no
+reference whatever to the Vedic ceremonial, being collected at a later
+time, might have been stripped, while being handed down by oral
+tradition, of those grammatical forms which in the course of time had
+become obsolete, but which, if once recognised and sanctioned in
+theological seminaries, would have been preserved there with the most
+religious care.
+
+According to Dr. Haug, the period during which the Vedic hymns were
+composed extends from 1400 to 2000 B.C. The oldest hymns, however, and
+the sacrificial formulas he would place between 2000 and 2400 B.C.
+This period, corresponding to what has been called the _K_handas and
+Mantra periods, would be succeeded by the Brahma_n_a period, and Dr.
+Haug would place the bulk of the Brahma_n_as, all written in prose,
+between 1400 and 1200 B.C. He does not attribute much weight to the
+distinction made by the Brahmans themselves between revealed and
+profane literature, and would place the Sutras almost contemporaneous
+with the Brahma_n_as. The only fixed point from which he starts in his
+chronological arrangement is the date implied by the position of the
+solstitial points mentioned in a little treatise, the _G_yotisha, a
+date which has been accurately fixed by the Rev. E. Main at 1186
+B.C.[43] Dr. Haug fully admits that such an observation was an
+absolute necessity for the Brahmans in regulating their calendar:
+
+     'The proper time [he writes] of commencing and ending their
+     sacrifices, principally the so-called Sattras or sacrificial
+     sessions, could not be known without an accurate knowledge
+     of the time of the sun's northern and southern progress. The
+     knowledge of the calendar forms such an essential part of
+     the ritual, that many important conditions of the latter
+     cannot be carried out without the former. The sacrifices are
+     allowed to commence only at certain lucky constellations,
+     and in certain months. So, for instance, as a rule, no great
+     sacrifice can commence during the sun's southern progress;
+     for this is regarded up to the present day as an unlucky
+     period by the Brahmans, in which even to die is believed to
+     be a misfortune. The great sacrifices generally take place
+     in spring in the months of _K_aitra and Vai_s_akha (April
+     and May). The Sattras, which lasted for one year, were, as
+     one may learn from a careful perusal of the fourth book of
+     the Aitareya-brahma_n_a, nothing but an imitation of the
+     sun's yearly course. They were divided into two distinct
+     parts, each consisting of six months of thirty days each; in
+     the midst of both was the Vishuvat, i. e. equator or central
+     day, cutting the whole Sattra into two halves. The
+     ceremonies were in both halves exactly the same, but they
+     were in the latter half performed in an inverted order.'
+
+[Footnote 43: See preface to the fourth volume of my edition of the
+Rig-veda.]
+
+This argument of Dr. Haug's seems correct as far as the date of the
+establishment of the ceremonial is concerned, and it is curious that
+several scholars who have lately written on the origin of the Vedic
+calendar, and the possibility of its foreign origin, should not have
+perceived the intimate relation between that calendar and the whole
+ceremonial system of the Brahmans. Dr. Haug is, no doubt, perfectly
+right when he claims the invention of the Nakshatras, or the Lunar
+Zodiac of the Brahmans, if we may so call it, for India; he may be
+right also when he assigns the twelfth century as the earliest date
+for the origin of that simple astronomical system on which the
+calendar of the Vedic festivals is founded. He calls the theories of
+others, who have lately tried to claim the first discovery of the
+Nakshatras for China, Babylon, or some other Asiatic country, absurd,
+and takes no notice of the sanguine expectations of certain scholars,
+who imagine they will soon have discovered the very names of the
+Indian Nakshatras in Babylonian inscriptions. But does it follow that,
+because the ceremonial presupposes an observation of the solstitial
+points in about the twelfth century, therefore the theological works
+in which that ceremonial is explained, commented upon, and furnished
+with all kinds of mysterious meanings, were composed at that early
+date? We see no stringency whatever in this argument of Dr. Haug's,
+and we think it will be necessary to look for other anchors by which
+to fix the drifting wrecks of Vedic literature.
+
+Dr. Haug's two volumes, containing the text of the
+Aitareya-brahma_n_a, translation, and notes, would probably never have
+been published, if they had not received the patronage of the Bombay
+Government. However interesting the Brahma_n_as may be to students of
+Indian literature, they are of small interest to the general reader.
+The greater portion of them is simply twaddle, and what is worse,
+theological twaddle. No person who is not acquainted beforehand with
+the place which the Brahma_n_as fill in the history of the Indian
+mind, could read more than ten pages without being disgusted. To the
+historian, however, and to the philosopher they are of infinite
+importance--to the former as a real link between the ancient and
+modern literature of India; to the latter as a most important phase
+in the growth of the human mind, in its passage from health to
+disease. Such books, which no circulating library would touch, are
+just the books which Governments, if possible, or Universities and
+learned societies, should patronise; and if we congratulate Dr. Haug
+on having secured the enlightened patronage of the Bombay Government,
+we may congratulate Mr. Howard and the Bombay Government on having, in
+this instance, secured the services of a bona fide scholar like Dr.
+Haug.[44]
+
+_March, 1864._
+
+[Footnote 44: A few paragraphs in this review, in which allusion was
+made to certain charges of what might be called 'literary rattening,'
+brought by Dr. Haug against some Sanskrit scholars, and more
+particularly against the editor of the 'Indische Studien' at Berlin,
+have here been omitted, as no longer of any interest. They may be
+seen, however, in the ninth volume of that periodical, where my review
+has been reprinted, though, as usual, very incorrectly. It was not I
+who first brought these accusations, nor should I have felt justified
+in alluding to them, if the evidence placed before me had not
+convinced me that there was some foundation for them. I am willing to
+admit that the language of Dr. Haug and others may have been too
+severe, but few will think that a very loud and boisterous denial is
+the best way to show that the strictures were quite undeserved. If, by
+alluding to these matters and frankly expressing my disapproval of
+them, I have given unnecessary pain, I sincerely regret it. So much
+for the past. As to the future, care, I trust, will be taken,--for the
+sake of the good fame of German scholarship, which, though living in
+England, I have quite as much at heart as if living in Germany,--not
+to give even the faintest countenance to similar suspicions. If my
+remarks should help in producing that result, I shall be glad to bow
+my head in silence under the vials of wrath that have been poured upon
+it.]
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+ON THE STUDY
+
+OF THE
+
+ZEND-AVESTA IN INDIA.[45]
+
+
+Sanskrit scholars resident in India enjoy considerable advantages over
+those who devote themselves to the study of the ancient literature of
+the Brahmans in this country, or in France and Germany. Although
+Sanskrit is no longer spoken by the great mass of the people, there
+are few large towns in which we do not meet with some more or less
+learned natives--the pandits, or, as they used to be called,
+pundits--men who have passed through a regular apprenticeship in
+Sanskrit grammar, and who generally devote themselves to the study of
+some special branch of Sanskrit literature, whether law, or logic, or
+rhetoric, or astronomy, or anything else. These men, who formerly
+lived on the liberality of the Rajahs and on the superstition of the
+people, find it more and more difficult to make a living among their
+own countrymen, and are glad to be employed by any civilian or
+officer who takes an interest in their ancient lore. Though not
+scholars in our sense of the word, and therefore of little use as
+teachers of the language, they are extremely useful to more advanced
+students, who are able to set them to do that kind of work for which
+they are fit, and to check their labours by judicious supervision. All
+our great Sanskrit scholars, from Sir William Jones to H.H. Wilson,
+have fully acknowledged their obligations to their native assistants.
+They used to work in Calcutta, Benares, and Bombay with a pandit at
+each elbow, instead of the grammar and the dictionary which European
+scholars have to consult at every difficult passage. Whenever an
+English Sahib undertook to edit or translate a Sanskrit text, these
+pandits had to copy and to collate MSS., to make a verbal index, to
+produce parallel passages from other writers, and, in many cases, to
+supply a translation into Hindustani, Bengali, or into their own
+peculiar English. In fact, if it had not been for the assistance thus
+fully and freely rendered by native scholars, Sanskrit scholarship
+would never have made the rapid progress which, during less than a
+century, it has made, not only in India, but in almost every country
+of Europe.
+
+[Footnote 45: 'Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion
+of the Parsees.' By Martin Haug, Dr. Phil. Bombay, 1862.]
+
+With this example to follow, it is curious that hardly any attempt
+should have been made by English residents, particularly in the Bombay
+Presidency, to avail themselves of the assistance of the Parsis for
+the purpose of mastering the ancient language and literature of the
+worshippers of Ormuzd. If it is remembered that, next to Sanskrit,
+there is no more ancient language than Zend--and that, next to the
+Veda, there is, among the Aryan nations, no more primitive religious
+code than the Zend-Avesta, it is surprising that so little should have
+been done by the members of the Indian Civil Service in this important
+branch of study. It is well known that such was the enthusiasm kindled
+in the heart of Anquetil Duperron by the sight of a facsimile of a
+page of the Zend-Avesta, that in order to secure a passage to India,
+he enlisted as a private soldier, and spent six years (1754-1761) in
+different parts of Western India, trying to collect MSS. of the sacred
+writings of Zoroaster, and to acquire from the Dustoors a knowledge of
+their contents. His example was followed, though in a less adventurous
+spirit, by Rask, a learned Dane, who after collecting at Bombay many
+valuable MSS. for the Danish Government, wrote in 1826 his essay 'On
+the Age and Genuineness of the Zend Language.' Another Dane, at
+present one of the most learned Zend scholars in Europe, Westergaard,
+likewise proceeded to India (1841-1843), before he undertook to
+publish his edition of the religious books of the Zoroastrians.
+(Copenhagen, 1852.) During all this time, while French and German
+scholars, such as Burnouf, Bopp, and Spiegel, were hard at work in
+deciphering the curious remains of the Magian religion, hardly
+anything was contributed by English students living in the very heart
+of Parsiism at Bombay and Poona.
+
+We are all the more pleased, therefore, that a young German scholar,
+Dr. Haug--who through the judicious recommendation of Mr. Howard,
+Director of Public Instruction in the Bombay Presidency, was appointed
+to a Professorship of Sanskrit in the Poona College--should have
+grasped the opportunity, and devoted himself to a thorough study of
+the sacred literature of the Parsis. He went to India well prepared
+for his task, and he has not disappointed the hopes which those who
+knew him entertained of him on his departure from Germany. Unless he
+had been master of his subject before he went to Poona, the assistance
+of the Dustoors would have been of little avail to him. But knowing
+all that could be known in Europe of the Zend language and literature,
+he knew what questions to ask, he could check every answer, and he
+could learn with his eyes what it is almost impossible to learn from
+books--namely, the religious ceremonial and the ritual observances
+which form so considerable an element in the Vendidad and Vispered.
+The result of his studies is now before us in a volume of 'Essays on
+the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsees,' published
+at Bombay, 1862. It is a volume of only three hundred and sixty-eight
+pages, and sells in England for one guinea. Nevertheless, to the
+student of Zend it is one of the cheapest books ever published. It
+contains four Essays: 1. History of the Researches into the Sacred
+Writings and Religion of the Parsees from the earliest times down to
+the present; 2. Outline of a Grammar of the Zend Language; 3. The
+Zend-Avesta, or the Scripture of the Parsees; 4. Origin and
+Development of the Zoroastrian Religion. The most important portion is
+the Outline of the Zend Grammar; for, though a mere outline, it is the
+first systematic grammatical analysis of that curious language. In
+other languages, we generally begin by learning the grammar, and then
+make our way gradually through the literature. In Zend, the
+grammatical terminations had first to be discovered by a careful
+anatomy of the literature. The Parsis themselves possessed no such
+work. Even their most learned priests are satisfied with learning the
+Zend-Avesta by heart, and with acquiring some idea of its import by
+means of a Pehlevi translation, which dates from the Sassanian period,
+or of a Sanskrit translation of still later date. Hence the
+translation of the Zend-Avesta published by Anquetil Duperron, with
+the assistance of Dustoor Darab, was by no means trustworthy. It was,
+in fact, a French translation of a Persian rendering of a Pehlevi
+version of the Zend original. It was Burnouf who, aided by his
+knowledge of Sanskrit, and his familiarity with the principles of
+comparative grammar, approached, for the first time, the very words of
+the Zend original. He had to conquer every inch of ground for himself,
+and his 'Commentaire sur le Yasna' is, in fact, like the deciphering
+of one long inscription, only surpassed in difficulty by his later
+decipherments of the cuneiform inscriptions of the Achaemenian monarchs
+of Persia. Aided by the labours of Burnouf and others, Dr. Haug has at
+last succeeded in putting together the disjecta membra poetae, and we
+have now in his Outline, not indeed a grammar like that of Pa_n_ini
+for Sanskrit, yet a sufficient skeleton of what was once a living
+language, not inferior, in richness and delicacy, even to the idiom of
+the Vedas.
+
+There are, at present, five editions, more or less complete, of the
+Zend-Avesta. The first was lithographed under Burnouf's direction, and
+published at Paris 1829-1843. The second edition of the text,
+transcribed into Roman characters, appeared at Leipzig 1850, published
+by Professor Brockhaus. The third edition, in Zend characters, was
+given to the world by Professor Spiegel, 1851; and about the same
+time a fourth edition was undertaken by Professor Westergaard, at
+Copenhagen, 1852 to 1854. There are one or two editions of the
+Zend-Avesta, published in India, with Guzerati translations, which we
+have not seen, but which are frequently quoted by native scholars. A
+German translation of the Zend-Avesta was undertaken by Professor
+Spiegel, far superior in accuracy to that of Anquetil Duperron, yet in
+the main based on the Pehlevi version. Portions of the ancient text
+had been minutely analysed and translated by Dr. Haug, even before his
+departure for the East.
+
+The Zend-Avesta is not a voluminous work. We still call it the
+Zend-Avesta, though we are told that its proper title is Avesta Zend,
+nor does it seem at all likely that the now familiar name will ever be
+surrendered for the more correct one. Who speaks of Cassius Dio,
+though we are told that Dio Cassius is wrong? Nor do we feel at all
+convinced that the name of Avesta Zend is the original and only
+correct name. According to the Parsis, Avesta means sacred text, Zend
+its Pehlevi translation. But in the Pehlevi translations themselves,
+the original work of Zoroaster is spoken of as Avesta Zend. Why it is
+so called by the Pehlevi translators, we are nowhere told by
+themselves, and many conjectures have, in consequence, been started by
+almost every Zend scholar. Dr. Haug supposes that the earliest
+portions of the Zend-Avesta ought to be called Avesta, the later
+portions Zend--Zend meaning, according to him, commentary,
+explanation, gloss. Neither the word Avesta nor Zend, however, occurs
+in the original Zend texts, and though Avesta seems to be the Sanskrit
+avastha, the Pehlevi apestak, in the sense of 'authorised text,' the
+etymology of Zend, as derived from a supposed zanti, Sanskrit _gn_ati,
+knowledge, is not free from serious objections. Avesta Zend was most
+likely a traditional name, hardly understood even at the time of the
+Pehlevi translators, who retained it in their writings. It was
+possibly misinterpreted by them, as many other Zend words have been at
+their hands, and may have been originally the Sanskrit word
+_k_handas,[46] which is applied by the Brahmans to the sacred hymns of
+the Veda. Certainty on such a point is impossible; but as it is but
+fair to give a preference to the conjectures of those who are most
+familiar with the subject, we quote the following explanation of Dr.
+Haug:
+
+     'The meaning of the term "Zend" varied at different periods.
+     Originally it meant the interpretation of the sacred texts
+     descended from Zarathustra and his disciples by the
+     successors of the prophet. In the course of time, these
+     interpretations being regarded as equally sacred with the
+     original texts, both were then called Avesta. Both having
+     become unintelligible to the majority of the Zoroastrians,
+     in consequence of their language having died out, they
+     required a Zend or explanation again. This new Zend was
+     furnished by the most learned priests of the Sassanian
+     period in the shape of a translation into the vernacular
+     language of Persia (Pehlevi) in those days, which
+     translation being the only source to the priests of the
+     present time whence to derive any knowledge of the old
+     texts, is therefore the only Zend or explanation they know
+     of.... The name Pazend, to be met with frequently in
+     connection with Avesta and Zend, denotes the further
+     explanation of the Zend doctrine..... The Pazend language is
+     the same as the so-called Parsi, i. e. the ancient Persian,
+     as written till about the time of Firdusi, 1000 A.D.'
+
+[Footnote 46: See page 84.]
+
+Whatever we may think of the nomenclature thus advocated by Dr. Haug,
+we must acknowledge in the fullest manner his great merit in
+separating for the first time the more ancient from the more modern
+parts of the Zend-Avesta. Though the existence of different dialects
+in the ancient texts was pointed out by Spiegel, and although the
+metrical portions of the Ya_s_na had been clearly marked by
+Westergaard, it is nevertheless Haug's great achievement to have
+extracted these early relics, to have collected them, and to have
+attempted a complete translation of them, as far as such an attempt
+could be carried out at the present moment. His edition of the
+Gathas--for this is the name of the ancient metrical portions--marks
+an epoch in the history of Zend scholarship, and the importance of the
+recovery of these genuine relics of Zoroaster's religion has been well
+brought out by Bunsen in the least known of his books, 'Gott in der
+Geschichte.' We by no means think that the translations here offered
+by Dr. Haug are final. We hope, on the contrary, that he will go on
+with the work he has so well begun, and that he will not rest till he
+has removed every dark speck that still covers the image of
+Zoroaster's primitive faith. Many of the passages as translated by him
+are as clear as daylight, and carry conviction by their very
+clearness. Others, however, are obscure, hazy, meaningless. We feel
+that they must have been intended for something else, something more
+definite and forcible, though we cannot tell what to do with the
+words as they stand. Sense, after all, is the great test of
+translation. We must feel convinced that there was good sense in these
+ancient poems, otherwise mankind would not have taken the trouble to
+preserve them; and if we cannot discover good sense in them, it must
+be either our fault, or the words as we now read them were not the
+words uttered by the ancient prophets of the world. The following are
+a few specimens of Dr. Haug's translations, in which the reader will
+easily discover the different hues of certainty and uncertainty, of
+sense and mere verbiage:
+
+     1. That I will ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God!
+     whether your friend (Sraosha) be willing to recite his own
+     hymn as prayer to my friend (Frashaostra or Vistaspa), thou
+     Wise! and whether he should come to us with the good mind,
+     to perform for us true actions of friendship.
+
+     2. That I will ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God!
+     How arose the best present life (this world)? By what means
+     are the present things (the world) to be supported? That
+     spirit, the holy (Vohu mano), O true wise spirit! is the
+     guardian of the beings to ward off from them every evil; He
+     is the promoter of all life.
+
+     3. That I will ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God!
+     Who was in the beginning the Father and Creator of truth?
+     Who made the sun and stars? Who causes the moon to increase
+     and wane if not Thou? This I wish to know, except what I
+     already know.
+
+     4. That I will ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God!
+     Who is holding the earth and the skies above it? Who made
+     the waters and the trees of the field? Who is in the winds
+     and storms that they so quickly run? Who is the Creator of
+     the good-minded beings, thou Wise?
+
+This is a short specimen of the earliest portion of the Zend-Avesta.
+The following is an account of one of the latest, the so-called Ormuzd
+Yasht:
+
+     'Zarathustra asked Ahuramazda after the most effectual spell
+     to guard against the influence of evil spirits. He was
+     answered by the Supreme Spirit, that the utterance of the
+     different names of Ahuramazda protects best from evil.
+     Thereupon Zarathustra begged Ahuramazda to communicate to
+     him these names. He then enumerates twenty. The first is
+     Ahmi, i. e. "I am;" the fourth, Asha-vahista, i. e. "the
+     best purity;" the sixth, "I am wisdom;" the eighth, "I am
+     knowledge;" the twelfth, Ahura, i. e. "living;" the
+     twentieth, "I am who I am, Mazdao."'
+
+Ahuramazda says then further:
+
+     '"If you call me at day or at night by these names, I shall
+     come to assist and help you; the angel Serosh will then
+     come, the genii of the waters and the trees." For the utter
+     defeat of the evil spirits, bad men, witches, Peris, a
+     series of other names are suggested to Zarathustra, such as
+     protector, guardian, spirit, the holiest, the best
+     fire-priest, etc.'
+
+Whether the striking coincidence between one of the suggested names of
+Ahuramazda, namely, 'I am who I am,' and the explanation of the name
+Jehova, Exodus iii. 14, 'I am that I am,' is accidental or not, must
+depend on the age that can be assigned to the Ormuzd Yasht. The
+chronological arrangement, however, of the various portions of the
+Zend-Avesta is as yet merely tentative, and these questions must
+remain for future consideration. Dr. Haug points out other
+similarities between the doctrines of Zoroaster and the Old and New
+Testaments. 'The Zoroastrian religion,' he writes, 'exhibits a very
+close affinity to, or rather identity with, several important
+doctrines of the Mosaic religion and Christianity, such as the
+personality and attributes of the devil, and the resurrection of the
+dead.' Neither of these doctrines, however, would seem to be
+characteristic of the Old or New Testament, and the resurrection of
+the dead is certainly to be found by implication only, and is nowhere
+distinctly asserted, in the religious books of Moses.
+
+There are other points on which we should join issue with Dr.
+Haug--as, for instance, when, on page 17, he calls the Zend the elder
+sister of Sanskrit. This seems to us in the very teeth of the evidence
+so carefully brought together by himself in his Zend grammar. If he
+means the modern Sanskrit, as distinguished from the Vedic, his
+statement would be right to some extent; but even thus, it would be
+easy to show many grammatical forms in the later Sanskrit more
+primitive than their corresponding forms in Zend. These, however, are
+minor points compared with the great results of his labours which Dr.
+Haug has brought together in these four Essays; and we feel certain
+that all who are interested in the study of ancient language and
+ancient religion will look forward with the greatest expectations to
+Dr. Haug's continued investigations of the language, the literature,
+the ceremonial, and the religion of the descendants of Zoroaster.
+
+_December, 1862._
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+PROGRESS OF ZEND SCHOLARSHIP.[47]
+
+
+There are certain branches of philological research which seem to be
+constantly changing, shifting, and, we hope, progressing. After the
+key to the interpretation of ancient inscriptions has been found, it
+by no means follows that every word can at once be definitely
+explained, or every sentence correctly construed. Thus it happens that
+the same hieroglyphic or cuneiform text is rendered differently by
+different scholars; nay, that the same scholar proposes a new
+rendering not many years after his first attempt at a translation has
+been published. And what applies to the decipherment of inscriptions
+applies with equal force to the translation of ancient texts. A
+translation of the hymns of the Veda, or of the Zend-Avesta, and, we
+may add, of the Old Testament too, requires exactly the same process
+as the deciphering of an inscription. The only safe way of finding the
+real meaning of words in the sacred texts of the Brahmans, the
+Zoroastrians, or the Jews, is to compare every passage in which the
+same word occurs, and to look for a meaning that is equally applicable
+to all, and can at the same time be defended on grammatical and
+etymological grounds. This is no doubt a tedious process, nor can it
+be free from uncertainty; but it is an uncertainty inherent in the
+subject itself, for which it would be unfair to blame those by whose
+genius and perseverance so much light has been shed on the darkest
+pages of ancient history. To those who are not acquainted with the
+efforts by which Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and Rawlinson unravelled
+the inscriptions of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, it may seem
+inexplicable, for instance, how an inscription which at one time was
+supposed to confirm the statement, known from Herodotus, that Darius
+obtained the sovereignty of Persia by the neighing of his horse,
+should now yield so very different a meaning. Herodotus relates that
+after the assassination of Smerdis the six conspirators agreed to
+confer the royal dignity on him whose horse should neigh first at
+sunrise. The horse of Darius neighed first, and he was accordingly
+elected king of Persia. After his election, Herodotus states that
+Darius erected a stone monument containing the figure of a horseman,
+with the following inscription: 'Darius, the son of Hystaspes,
+obtained the kingdom of the Persians by the virtue of his horse
+(giving its name), and of Oibareus, his groom.' Lassen translated one
+of the cuneiform inscriptions, copied originally by Niebuhr from a
+huge slab built in the southern wall of the great platform at
+Persepolis, in the following manner: 'Auramazdis magnus est. Is
+maximus est deorum. Ipse Darium regem constituit, benevolens imperium
+obtulit. Ex voluntate Auramazdis Darius rex sum. Generosus sum Darius
+rex hujus regionis Persicae; hanc mihi Auramazdis obtulit "hoc
+pomoerio ope equi (Choaspis) clarae virtutis."' This translation was
+published in 1844, and the arguments by which Lassen supported it, in
+the sixth volume of the 'Zeitschrift fuer die Kunde des Morgenlandes,'
+may be read with interest and advantage even now when we know that
+this eminent scholar was mistaken in his analysis. The first step
+towards a more correct translation was made by Professor Holtzmann,
+who in 1845 pointed out that Smerdis was murdered at Susa, not at
+Persepolis; and that only six days later Darius was elected king of
+Persia, which happened again at Susa, and not at Persepolis. The
+monument, therefore, which Darius erected in the [Greek: proasteion],
+or suburb, in the place where the fortunate event which led to his
+elevation occurred, and the inscription recording the event in loco,
+could not well be looked for at Persepolis. But far more important was
+the evidence derived from a more careful analysis of the words of the
+inscription itself. Niba, which Lassen translated as pomoerium,
+occurs in three other places, where it certainly cannot mean suburb.
+It seems to be an adjective meaning splendid, beautiful. Besides, niba
+is a nominative singular in the feminine, and so is the pronoun hya
+which precedes, and the two words which follow it--uva_s_pa and
+umartiya. Professor Holtzmann translated therefore the same sentence
+which Professor Lassen had rendered by 'hoc pomoerio ope equi
+(Choaspis) clarae virtutis,' by 'quae nitida, herbosa, celebris est,' a
+translation which is in the main correct, and has been adopted
+afterwards both by Sir H. Rawlinson and M. Oppert. Sir H. Rawlinson
+translates the whole passage as follows: 'This province of Persia
+which Ormazd has granted to me, which is illustrious, abounding in
+good horses, producing good men.' Thus vanished the horse of Darius,
+and the curious confirmation which the cuneiform inscription was at
+one time supposed to lend to the Persian legend recorded by Herodotus.
+
+[Footnote 47: 'A Lecture on the Original Language of Zoroaster.' By
+Martin Haug. Bombay, 1865.]
+
+It would be easy to point out many passages of this kind, and to use
+them in order to throw discredit on the whole method by which these
+and other inscriptions have lately been deciphered. It would not
+require any great display of forensic or parliamentary eloquence, to
+convince the public at large, by means of such evidence, that all the
+labours of Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and Rawlinson had been in vain,
+and to lay down once for all the general principle that the original
+meaning of inscriptions written in a dead language, of which the
+tradition is once lost, can never be recovered. Fortunately, questions
+of this kind are not settled by eloquent pleading or by the votes of
+majorities, but, on the contrary, by the independent judgment of the
+few who are competent to judge. The fact that different scholars
+should differ in their interpretations, or that the same scholars
+should reject his former translation, and adopt a new one that
+possibly may have to be surrendered again as soon as new light can be
+thrown on points hitherto doubtful and obscure--all this, which in the
+hands of those who argue for victory and not for truth, constitutes so
+formidable a weapon, and appeals so strongly to the prejudices of the
+many, produces very little effect on the minds of those who understand
+the reason of these changes, and to whom each new change represents
+but a new step in advance in the discovery of truth.
+
+Nor should the fact be overlooked that, if there seems to be less
+change in the translation of the books of the Old Testament for
+instance, or of Homer, it is due in a great measure to the absence of
+that critical exactness at which the decipherers of ancient
+inscriptions and the translators of the Veda and Zend-Avesta aim in
+rendering each word that comes before them. If we compared the
+translation of the Septuagint with the authorised version of the Old
+Testament, we should occasionally find discrepancies nearly as
+startling as any that can be found in the different translations of
+the cuneiform inscriptions, or of the Veda and Zend-Avesta. In the
+Book of Job, the Vulgate translates the exhortation of Job's wife by
+'Bless God and die;' the English version by 'Curse God and die;' the
+Septuagint by 'Say some word to the Lord and die.' Though, at the time
+when the Seventy translated the Old Testament, Hebrew could hardly be
+called a dead language, yet there were then many of its words the
+original meaning of which even the most learned rabbi would have had
+great difficulty in defining with real accuracy. The meaning of words
+changes imperceptibly and irresistibly. Even where there is a
+literature, and a printed literature like that of modern Europe, four
+or five centuries work such a change that few even of the most learned
+divines in England would find it easy to read and to understand
+accurately a theological treatise written in English four hundred
+years ago. The same happened, and happened to a far greater extent, in
+ancient languages. Nor was the sacred character attributed to certain
+writings any safeguard. On the contrary, greater violence is done by
+successive interpreters to sacred writings than to any other relics
+of ancient literature. Ideas grow and change, yet each generation
+tries to find its own ideas reflected in the sacred pages of their
+early prophets, and, in addition to the ordinary influences which blur
+and obscure the sharp features of old words, artificial influences are
+here at work distorting the natural expression of words which have
+been invested with a sacred authority. Passages in the Veda or
+Zend-Avesta which do not bear on religious or philosophical doctrines
+are generally explained simply and naturally, even by the latest of
+native commentators. But as soon as any word or sentence can be so
+turned as to support a doctrine, however modern, or a precept, however
+irrational, the simplest phrases are tortured and mangled till at last
+they are made to yield their assent to ideas the most foreign to the
+minds of the authors of the Veda and Zend-Avesta.
+
+To those who take an interest in these matters we may recommend a
+small Essay lately published by the Rev. R. G. S. Browne--the 'Mosaic
+Cosmogony'--in which the author endeavours to establish a literal
+translation of the first chapter of Genesis. Touching the first verb
+that occurs in the Bible, he writes: 'What is the meaning or scope of
+the Hebrew verb, in our authorised version, rendered by "created?" To
+English ears and understandings the sound comes naturally, and by long
+use irresistibly, as the representation of an ex nihilo creation. But,
+in the teeth of all the Rabbinical and Cabbalistic fancies of Jewish
+commentators, and with reverential deference to modern criticism on
+the Hebrew Bible, it is not so. R. D. Kimchi, in his endeavour to
+ascertain the shades of difference existing between the terms used in
+the Mosaic cosmogony, has assumed that our Hebrew verb bara has the
+full signification of ex nihilo creavit. Our own Castell, a profound
+and self-denying scholar has entertained the same groundless notion.
+And even our illustrious Bryan Walton was not inaccessible to this
+oblique ray of Rabbinical or ignis fatuus.'
+
+Mr. Browne then proceeds to quote Gesenius, who gives as the primary
+meaning of bara, he cut, cut out, carved, planed down, polished; and
+he refers to Lee, who characterizes it as a silly theory that bara
+meant to create ex nihilo. In Joshua xvii. 15 and 18, the same verb is
+used in the sense of cutting down trees; in Psalm civ. 30 it is
+translated by 'Thou renewest the face of the earth.' In Arabic, too,
+according to Lane, bara means properly, though not always, to create
+out of pre-existing matter. All this shows that in the verb bara, as
+in the Sanskrit tvaksh or taksh, there is no trace of the meaning
+assigned to it by later scholars, of a creation out of nothing. That
+idea in its definiteness was a modern idea, most likely called forth
+by the contact between Jews and Greeks at Alexandria. It was probably
+in contradistinction to the Greek notion of matter as co-eternal with
+the Creator, that the Jews, to whom Jehovah was all in all, asserted,
+for the first time deliberately, that God had made all things out of
+nothing. This became afterwards the received and orthodox view of
+Jewish and Christian divines, though the verb bara, so far from
+lending any support to this theory, would rather show that, in the
+minds of those whom Moses addressed and whose language he spoke, it
+could only have called forth the simple conception of fashioning or
+arranging--if, indeed, it called forth any more definite conception
+than the general and vague one conveyed by the [Greek: poiein] of the
+Septuagint. To find out how the words of the Old Testament were
+understood by those to whom they were originally addressed is a task
+attempted by very few interpreters of the Bible. The great majority of
+readers transfer without hesitation the ideas which they connect with
+words as used in the nineteenth century to the mind of Moses or his
+contemporaries, forgetting altogether the distance which divides their
+language and their thoughts from the thoughts and language of the
+wandering tribes of Israel.
+
+How many words, again, there are in Homer which have indeed a
+traditional interpretation, as given by our dictionaries and
+commentaries, but the exact purport of which is completely lost, is
+best known to Greek scholars. It is easy enough to translate [Greek:
+polemoio gephyrai] by the bridges of war, but what Homer really meant
+by these [Greek: gephyrai] has never been explained. It is extremely
+doubtful whether bridges, in our sense of the word, were known at all
+at the time of Homer; and even if it could be proved that Homer used
+[Greek: gephyrai] in the sense of a dam, the etymology, i. e., the
+earliest history of the word, would still remain obscure and doubtful.
+It is easy, again, to see that [Greek: hieros] in Greek means
+something like the English sacred. But how, if it did so, the same
+adjective could likewise be applied to a fish or to a chariot, is a
+question which, if it is to be answered at all, can only be answered
+by an etymological analysis of the word.[48] To say that sacred may
+mean marvellous, and therefore big, is saying nothing, particularly as
+Homer does not speak of catching big fish, but of catching fish in
+general.
+
+[Footnote 48: On [Greek: hieros], the Sanskrit ishira, lively, see
+Kuhn's 'Zeitschrift,' vol. ii. p. 275, vol. iii. p. 134.]
+
+These considerations--which might be carried much further, but which,
+we are afraid, have carried us away too far from our original
+subject--were suggested to us while reading a lecture lately published
+by Dr. Haug, and originally delivered by him at Bombay, in 1864,
+before an almost exclusively Parsi audience. In that lecture Dr. Haug
+gives a new translation of ten short paragraphs of the Zend-Avesta,
+which he had explained and translated in his 'Essays on the Sacred
+Language of the Parsees,' published in 1862. To an ordinary reader the
+difference between the two translations, published within the space of
+two years, might certainly be perplexing, and calculated to shake his
+faith in the soundness of a method that can lead to such varying
+results. Nor can it be denied that, if scholars who are engaged in
+these researches are bent on representing their last translation as
+final and as admitting of no further improvement, the public has a
+right to remind them that 'finality' is as dangerous a thing in
+scholarship as in politics. Considering the difficulty of translating
+the pages of the Zend-Avesta, we can never hope to have every sentence
+of it rendered into clear and intelligible English. Those who for the
+first time reduced the sacred traditions of the Zoroastrians to
+writing were separated by more than a thousand years from the time of
+their original composition. After that came all the vicissitudes to
+which manuscripts are exposed during the process of being copied by
+more or less ignorant scribes. The most ancient MSS. of the
+Zend-Avesta date from the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is
+true there is an early translation of the Zend-Avesta, the Pehlevi
+translation, and a later one in Sanskrit by Neriosengh. But the
+Pehlevi translation, which was made under the auspices of the
+Sassanian kings of Persia, served only to show how completely the
+literal and grammatical meaning of the Zend-Avesta was lost even at
+that time, in the third century after Christ; while the Sanskrit
+translation was clearly made, not from the original, but from the
+Pehlevi. It is true, also, that even in more modern times the Parsis
+of Bombay were able to give to Anquetil Duperron and other Europeans
+what they considered as a translation of the Zend-Avesta in modern
+Persian. But a scholar like Burnouf, who endeavoured for the first
+time to give an account of every word in the Zend text, to explain
+each grammatical termination, to parse every sentence, and to
+establish the true meaning of each term by an etymological analysis
+and by a comparison of cognate words in Sanskrit, was able to derive
+but scant assistance from these traditional translations. Professor
+Spiegel, to whom we owe a complete edition and translation of the
+Zend-Avesta, and who has devoted the whole of his life to the
+elucidation of the Zoroastrian religion, attributes a higher value to
+the tradition of the Parsis than Dr. Haug. But he also is obliged to
+admit that he could ascribe no greater authority to these traditional
+translations and glosses than a Biblical scholar might allow to
+Rabbinical commentaries. All scholars are agreed in fact on this, that
+whether the tradition be right or wrong, it requires in either case to
+be confirmed by an independent grammatical and etymological analysis
+of the original text. Such an analysis is no doubt as liable to error
+as the traditional translation itself, but it possesses this
+advantage, that it gives reasons for every word that has to be
+translated, and for every sentence that has to be construed. It is an
+excellent discipline to the mind even where the results at which we
+arrive are doubtful or erroneous, and it has imparted to these studies
+a scientific value and general interest which they could not otherwise
+have acquired.
+
+We shall give a few specimens of the translations proposed by
+different scholars of one or two verses of the Zend-Avesta. We cannot
+here enter into the grammatical arguments by which each of these
+translations is supported. We only wish to show what is the present
+state of Zend scholarship, and though we would by no means disguise
+the fact of its somewhat chaotic character, yet we do not hesitate to
+affirm that, in spite of the conflict of the opinions of different
+scholars, and in spite of the fluctuation of systems apparently
+opposed to each other, progress may be reported, and a firm hope
+expressed that the essential doctrines of one of the earliest forms of
+religion may in time be recovered and placed before us in their
+original purity and simplicity. We begin with the Pehlevi translation
+of a passage in Ya_s_na, 45:
+
+     'Thus the religion is to be proclaimed; now give an
+     attentive hearing, and now listen, that is, keep your ear in
+     readiness, make your works and speeches gentle. Those who
+     have wished from nigh and far to study the religion, may now
+     do so. For now all is manifest, that Anhuma (Ormazd)
+     created, that Anhuma created all these beings; that at the
+     second time, at the (time of the) future body, Aharman does
+     not destroy (the life of) the worlds. Aharman made evil
+     desire and wickedness to spread through his tongue.'
+
+Professor Spiegel, in 1859, translated the same passage, of which the
+Pehlevi is a running commentary rather than a literal rendering, as
+follows:
+
+     'Now I will tell you, lend me your ear, now hear what you
+     desired, you that came from near and from afar! It is clear,
+     the wise (spirits) have created all things; evil doctrine
+     shall not for a second time destroy the world. The Evil One
+     has made a bad choice with his tongue.'
+
+Next follows the translation of the passage as published by Dr. Haug
+in 1862:
+
+     'All ye, who have come from nigh and far, listen now and
+     hearken to my speech. Now I will tell you all about that
+     pair of spirits how it is known to the wise. Neither the
+     ill-speaker (the devil) shall destroy the second (spiritual)
+     life, nor that man who, being a liar with his tongue,
+     professes the false (idolatrous) belief.'
+
+The same scholar, in 1865, translates the same passage somewhat
+differently:
+
+     'All you that have come from near and far should now listen
+     and hearken to what I shall proclaim. Now the wise have
+     manifested this universe as a duality. Let not the
+     mischief-maker destroy the second life, since he, the
+     wicked, chose with his tongue the pernicious doctrine.'
+
+The principal difficulty in this paragraph consists in the word which
+Dr. Haug translated by duality, viz. dum, and which he identifies with
+Sanskrit dvam, i. e. dvandvam, pair. Such a word, as far as we are
+aware, does not occur again in the Zend-Avesta, and hence it is not
+likely that the uncertainty attaching to its meaning will ever be
+removed. Other interpreters take it as a verb in the second person
+plural, and hence the decided difference of interpretation.
+
+The sixth paragraph of the same passage is explained by the Pehlevi
+translator as follows:
+
+     'Thus I proclaimed that among all things the greatest is to
+     worship God. The praise of purity is (due) to him who has a
+     good knowledge, (to those) who depend on Ormazd. I hear
+     Spento-mainyu (who is) Ormazd; listen to me, to what I shall
+     speak (unto you). Whose worship is intercourse with the Good
+     Mind; one can know (experience) the divine command to do
+     good through inquiry after what is good. That which is in
+     the intellect they teach me as the best, viz. the inborn
+     (heavenly) wisdom, (that is, that the divine wisdom is
+     superior to the human).'
+
+Professor Spiegel translates:
+
+     'Now I will tell you of all things the greatest. It is
+     praise with purity of Him who is wise from those who exist.
+     The holiest heavenly being, Ahuramazda, may hear it, He for
+     whose praise inquiry is made from the holy spirit, may He
+     teach me the best by his intelligence.'
+
+Dr. Haug in 1862:
+
+     'Thus I will tell you of the greatest of all (Sraosha), who
+     is praising the truth, and doing good, and of all who are
+     gathered round him (to assist him), by order of the holy
+     spirit (Ahuramazda). The living Wise may hear me; by means
+     of His goodness the good mind increases (in the world). He
+     may lead me with the best of his wisdom.'
+
+Dr. Haug in 1865:
+
+     'I will proclaim as the greatest of all things that one
+     should be good, praising only truth. Ahuramazda will hear
+     those who are bent on furthering (all that is good). May he
+     whose goodness is communicated by the Good Mind instruct me
+     in his best wisdom.'
+
+To those who are interested in the study of Zend, and wish to judge
+for themselves of the trustworthiness of these various translations,
+we can recommend a most useful work lately published in Germany by Dr.
+F. Justi, 'Handbuch der Zendsprache,' containing a complete
+dictionary, a grammar, and selections from the Zend-Avesta.
+
+_September, 1865._
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+GENESIS AND THE ZEND-AVESTA.[49]
+
+
+O that scholars could have the benefit of a little legal training, and
+learn at least the difference between what is probable and what is
+proven! What an advantage also, if they had occasionally to address a
+jury of respectable tradespeople, and were forced to acquire the art,
+or rather not to shrink from the effort, of putting the most intricate
+and delicate points in the simplest and clearest form of which they
+admit! What a lesson again it would be to men of independent research,
+if, after having amassed ever so many bags full of evidence, they had
+always before their eyes the fear of an impatient judge who wants to
+hear nothing but what is important and essential, and hates to listen
+to anything that is not to the point, however carefully it may have
+been worked out, and however eloquently it may be laid before him!
+There is hardly one book published now-a-days which, if everything in
+it that is not to the purpose were left out, could not be reduced to
+half its size. If authors could make up their minds to omit everything
+that is only meant to display their learning, to exhibit the
+difficulties they had to overcome, or to call attention to the
+ignorance of their predecessors, many a volume of thirty sheets would
+collapse into a pamphlet of fifty pages, though in that form it would
+probably produce a much greater effect than in its more inflated
+appearance.
+
+[Footnote 49: 'Eran, das Land zwischen dem Indus und Tigris, Beitraege
+zur Kenntniss des Landes und seiner Geschichte.' Von Dr. Friedrich
+Spiegel. Berlin, 1863.]
+
+Did the writers of the Old Testament borrow anything from the
+Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, or the Indians, is a simple
+enough question. It is a question that may be treated quite apart from
+any theological theories; for the Old Testament, whatever view the
+Jews may take of its origin, may surely be regarded by the historian
+as a really historical book, written at a certain time in the history
+of the world, in a language then spoken and understood, and
+proclaiming certain facts and doctrines meant to be acceptable and
+intelligible to the Jews, such as they were at that time, an
+historical nation, holding a definite place by the side of their more
+or less distant neighbours, whether Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, or
+Indians. It is well known that we have in the language of the New
+Testament the clear vestiges of Greek and Roman influences, and if we
+knew nothing of the historical intercourse between those two nations
+and the writers of the New Testament, the very expressions used by
+them--not only their language, but their thoughts, their allusions,
+illustrations, and similes--would enable us to say that some
+historical contact had taken place between the philosophers of Greece,
+the lawgivers of Rome, and the people of Judea. Why then should not
+the same question be asked with regard to more ancient times? Why
+should there be any hesitation in pointing out in the Old Testament an
+Egyptian custom, or a Greek word, or a Persian conception? If Moses
+was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, nothing surely would
+stamp his writings as more truly historical than traces of Egyptian
+influences that might be discovered in his laws. If Daniel prospered
+in the reign of Cyrus the Persian, every Persian word that could be
+discovered in Daniel would be most valuable in the eyes of a critical
+historian. The only thing which we may fairly require in
+investigations of this kind is that the facts should be clearly
+established. The subject is surely an important one--important
+historically, quite apart from any theological consequences that may
+be supposed to follow. It is as important to find out whether the
+authors of the Old Testament had come in contact with the language and
+ideas of Babylon, Persia, or Egypt, as it is to know that the Jews, at
+the time of our Lord's appearance, had been reached by the rays of
+Greek and Roman civilisation--that in fact our Lord, his disciples,
+and many of his followers, spoke Greek as well as Hebrew (i. e.
+Chaldee), and were no strangers to that sphere of thought in which the
+world of the Gentiles, the Greeks, and Romans had been moving for
+centuries.
+
+Hints have been thrown out from time to time by various writers that
+certain ideas in the Old Testament might be ascribed to Persian
+influences, and be traced back to the Zend-Avesta, the sacred writings
+of Zoroaster. Much progress has been made in the deciphering of these
+ancient documents, since Anquetil Duperron brought the first
+instalment of MSS. from Bombay, and since the late Eugene Burnouf, in
+his 'Commentaire sur le Yasna,' succeeded in establishing the grammar
+and dictionary of the Zend language upon a safe basis. Several
+editions of the works of Zoroaster have been published in France,
+Denmark, and Germany; and after the labours of Spiegel, Westergaard,
+Haug, and others, it might be supposed that such a question as the
+influence of Persian ideas on the writers of the Old Testament might
+at last be answered either in the affirmative or in the negative. We
+were much pleased, therefore, on finding that Professor Spiegel, the
+learned editor and translator of the Avesta, had devoted a chapter of
+his last work, 'Eran, das Land zwischen dem Indus und Tigris,' to the
+problem in question. We read his chapter, 'Avesta und die Genesis,
+oder die Beziehungen der Eranier zu den Semiten,' with the warmest
+interest, and when we had finished it, we put down the book with the
+very exclamation with which we began our article.
+
+We do not mean to say anything disrespectful to Professor Spiegel, a
+scholar brimfull of learning, and one of the two or three men who know
+the Avesta by heart. He is likewise a good Semitic scholar, and knows
+enough of Hebrew to form an independent opinion on the language,
+style, and general character of the different books of the Old
+Testament. He brings together in his Essay a great deal of interesting
+information, and altogether would seem to be one of the most valuable
+witnesses to give evidence on the point in question. Yet suppose him
+for a moment in a court of justice where, as in a patent case, some
+great issue depends on the question whether certain ideas had first
+been enunciated by the author of Genesis or the author of the Avesta;
+suppose him subjected to a cross-examination by a brow-beating lawyer,
+whose business it is to disbelieve and make others disbelieve every
+assertion that the witness makes, and we are afraid the learned
+Professor would break down completely. Now it may be said that this is
+not the spirit in which learned inquiries should be conducted, that
+authors have a right to a certain respect, and may reckon on a certain
+amount of willingness on the part of their readers. Such a plea may,
+perhaps, be urged when all preliminary questions in a contest have
+been disposed of, when all the evidence has been proved to lie in one
+direction, and when even the most obstinate among the gentlemen of the
+jury feel that the verdict is as good as settled. But in a question
+like this, where everything is doubtful, or, we should rather say,
+where all the prepossessions are against the view which Dr. Spiegel
+upholds, it is absolutely necessary for a new witness to be armed from
+top to toe, to lay himself open to no attack, to measure his words,
+and advance step by step in a straight line to the point that has to
+be reached. A writer like Dr. Spiegel should know that he can expect
+no mercy; nay, he should himself wish for no mercy, but invite the
+heaviest artillery against the floating battery which he has launched
+into the troubled waters of Biblical criticism. If he feels that his
+case is not strong enough, the wisest plan surely is to wait, to
+accumulate new strength if possible, or, if no new evidence is
+forthcoming, to acknowledge openly that there is no case.
+
+M. Breal--who, in his interesting Essay 'Hercule et Cacus,' has lately
+treated the same problem, the influence of Persian ideas on the
+writers of the Old Testament--gives an excellent example of how a case
+of this kind should be argued. He begins with the apocryphal books,
+and he shows that the name of an evil spirit like Asmodeus, which
+occurs in Tobit, could be borrowed from Persia only. It is a name
+inexplicable in Hebrew, and it represents very closely the Parsi
+Eshem-dev, the Zend Aeshma daeva, the spirit of concupiscence,
+mentioned several times in the Avesta (Vendidad, c. 10), as one of the
+devs, or evil spirits. Now this is the kind of evidence we want for
+the Old Testament. We can easily discover a French word in English,
+nor is it difficult to tell a Persian word in Hebrew. Are there any
+Persian words in Genesis, words of the same kind as Asmodeus in Tobit?
+No such evidence has been brought forward, and the only words we can
+think of which, if not Persian, may be considered of Aryan origin, are
+the names of such rivers as Tigris and Euphrates; and of countries
+such as Ophir and Havilah among the descendants of Shem, Javan,
+Meshech, and others among the descendants of Japhet. These names are
+probably foreign names, and as such naturally mentioned by the author
+of Genesis in their foreign form. If there are other words of Aryan or
+Iranian origin in Genesis, they ought to have occupied the most
+prominent place in Dr. Spiegel's pleading.
+
+We now proceed, and we are again quite willing to admit that, even
+without the presence of Persian words, the presence of Persian ideas
+might be detected by careful analysis. No doubt this is a much more
+delicate process, yet, as we can discover Jewish and Christian ideas
+in the Koran, there ought to be no insurmountable difficulty in
+pointing out any Persian ingredients in Genesis, however disguised and
+assimilated. Only, before we look for such ideas, it is necessary to
+show the channel through which they could possibly have flowed either
+from the Avesta into Genesis, or from Genesis into the Avesta. History
+shows us clearly how Persian words and ideas could have found their
+way into such late works as Tobit, or even into the book of Daniel,
+whether he prospered in the reign of Darius, or in the reign of Cyrus
+the Persian. But how did Persians and Jews come in contact, previously
+to the age of Cyrus? Dr. Spiegel says that Zoroaster was born in
+Arran. This name is given by mediaeval Mohammedan writers to the plain
+washed by the Araxes, and was identified by Anquetil Duperron with the
+name Airyana vae_g_a, which the Zend-Avesta gives to the first created
+land of Ormuzd. The Parsis place this sacred country in the vicinity
+of Atropatene, and it is clearly meant as the northernmost country
+known to the author or authors of the Zend-Avesta. We think that Dr.
+Spiegel is right in defending the geographical position assigned by
+tradition to Airyana vae_g_a, against modern theories that would place
+it more eastward in the plain of Pamer, nor do we hesitate to admit
+that the name (Airyana vae_g_a, i. e. the seed of the Aryan) might
+have been changed into Arran. We likewise acknowledge the force of the
+arguments by which he shows that the books now called Zend-Avesta were
+composed in the Eastern, and not in the Western, provinces of the
+Persian monarchy, though we are hardly prepared to subscribe at once
+to his conclusion (p. 270) that, because Zoroaster is placed by the
+Avesta and by later traditions in Arran, or the Western provinces, he
+could not possibly be the author of the Avesta, a literary production
+which would appear to belong exclusively to the Eastern provinces.
+The very tradition to which Dr. Spiegel appeals represents Zoroaster
+as migrating from Arran to Balkh, to the court of Gustasp, the son of
+Lohrasp; and, as one tradition has as much value as another, we might
+well admit that the work of Zoroaster, as a religious teacher, began
+in Balkh, and from thence extended still further East. But admitting
+that Arran, the country washed by the Araxes, was the birthplace of
+Zoroaster, can we possibly follow Dr. Spiegel when he says, Arran
+seems to be identical with Haran, the birthplace of Abraham? Does he
+mean the names to be identical? Then how are the aspirate and the
+double r to be explained? how is it to be accounted for that the
+mediaeval corruption of Airyana vae_g_a, namely Arran, should appear in
+Genesis? And if the dissimilarity of the two names is waived, is it
+possible in two lines to settle the much contested situation of Haran,
+and thus to determine the ancient watershed between the Semitic and
+Aryan nations? The Abbe Banier, more than a hundred years ago, pointed
+out that Haran, whither Abraham repaired, was the metropolis of
+Sabism, and that Magism was practised in Ur of the Chaldees
+('Mythology, explained by History,' vol. i. book iii. cap. 3). Dr.
+Spiegel having, as he believes, established the most ancient
+meeting-point between Abraham and Zoroaster, proceeds to argue that
+whatever ideas are shared in common by Genesis and the Avesta must be
+referred to that very ancient period when personal intercourse was
+still possible between Abraham and Zoroaster, the prophets of the Jews
+and the Iranians. Now, here the counsel for the defence would remind
+Dr. Spiegel that Genesis was not the work of Abraham, nor, according
+to Dr. Spiegel's view, was Zoroaster the author of the Zend-Avesta;
+and that therefore the neighbourly intercourse between Zoroaster and
+Abraham in the country of Arran had nothing to do with the ideas
+shared in common by Genesis and the Avesta. But even if we admitted,
+for argument's sake, that as Dr. Spiegel puts it, the Avesta contains
+Zoroastrian and Genesis Abrahamitic ideas, surely there was ample
+opportunity for Jewish ideas to find admission into what we call the
+Avesta, or for Iranian ideas to find admission into Genesis, after the
+date of Abraham and Zoroaster, and before the time when we find the
+first MSS. of Genesis and the Avesta. The Zend MSS. of the Avesta are
+very modern, so are the Hebrew MSS. of Genesis, which do not carry us
+beyond the tenth century after Christ. The text of the Avesta,
+however, can be checked by the Pehlevi translation, which was made
+under the Sassanian dynasty (226-651 A.D.), just as the text of
+Genesis can be checked by the Septuagint translation, which was made
+in the third century before Christ. Now, it is known that about the
+same time and in the same place--namely at Alexandria--where the Old
+Testament was rendered into Greek, the Avesta also was translated into
+the same language, so that we have at Alexandria in the third century
+B.C. a well established historical contact between the believers in
+Genesis and the believers in the Avesta, and an easy opening for that
+exchange of ideas which, according to Dr. Spiegel, could have taken
+place nowhere but in Arran, and at the time of Abraham and Zoroaster.
+It might be objected that this was wrangling for victory, and not
+arguing for truth, and that no real scholar would admit that the
+Avesta, in its original form, did not go back to a much earlier date
+than the third century before Christ. Yet, when such a general
+principle is to be laid down, that all that Genesis and Avesta share
+in common must belong to a time before Abraham had started for Canaan,
+and Zoroaster for Balkh, other possible means of later intercourse
+should surely not be entirely lost sight of.
+
+For what happens? The very first tradition that is brought forward as
+one common to both these ancient works--namely, that of the Four Ages
+of the World--is confessedly found in the later writings only of the
+Parsis, and cannot be traced back in its definite shape beyond the
+time of the Sassanians (Eran, p. 275). Indications of it are said to
+be found in the earlier writings, but these indications are extremely
+vague. But we must advance a step further, and, after reading very
+carefully the three pages devoted to this subject by Dr. Spiegel, we
+must confess we see no similarity whatever on that point between
+Genesis and the Avesta. In Genesis, the Four Ages have never assumed
+the form of a theory, as in India, Persia, or perhaps in Greece. If we
+say that the period from Adam to Noah is the first, that from Noah to
+Abraham the second, that from Abraham to the death of Jacob the third,
+that beginning with the exile in Egypt the fourth, we are transferring
+our ideas to Genesis, but we cannot say that the writer of Genesis
+himself laid a peculiar stress on this fourfold division. The Parsis,
+on the contrary, have a definite system. According to them the world
+is to last 12,000 years. During the first period of 3,000 years the
+world was created. During the second period Gayo-maratan, the first
+man lived by himself, without suffering from the attacks of evil.
+During the third period of 3,000 years the war between good and evil,
+between Ormuzd and Ahriman, began with the utmost fierceness; and it
+will gradually abate during the fourth period of 3,000 years, which is
+still to elapse before the final victory of good. Where here is the
+similarity between Genesis and the Avesta? We are referred by Dr.
+Spiegel to Dr. Windischmann's 'Zoroastrian Studies,' and to his
+discovery that there are ten generations between Adam and Noah, as
+there are ten generations between Yima and Thraetaona; that there are
+twelve generations between Shem and Isaac, as there are twelve between
+Thraetaona and Manus_k_itra; and that there are thirteen generations
+between Isaac and David, as there are thirteen between Manus_k_itra
+and Zarathustra. What has the learned counsel for the defence to say
+to this? First, that the name of Shem is put by mistake for that of
+Noah. Secondly, that Yima, who is here identified with Adam, is never
+represented in the Avesta as the first man, but is preceded there by
+numerous ancestors, and surrounded by numerous subjects, who are not
+his offspring. Thirdly, that in order to establish in Genesis three
+periods of ten, twelve, and thirteen generations, it is necessary to
+count Isaac, who clearly belongs to the third, as a member of the
+second, so that in reality the number of generations is the same in
+one only out of the three periods, which surely proves nothing. As to
+any similarity between the Four Yugas of the Brahmans and the Four
+Ages of the Parsis, we can only say that, if it exists, no one has as
+yet brought it out. The Greeks, again, who are likewise said to share
+the primitive doctrine of the Four Ages, believe really in five, and
+not in four, and separate them in a manner which does not in the
+least remind us of Hindu Yugas, Hebrew patriarchs, or the battle
+between Ormuzd and Ahriman.
+
+We proceed to a second point--the Creation as related in Genesis and
+the Avesta. Here we certainly find some curious coincidences. The
+world is created in six days in Genesis, and in six periods in the
+Avesta, which six periods together form one year. In Genesis the
+creation ends with the creation of man, so it does in the Avesta. On
+all other points Dr. Spiegel admits the two accounts differ, but they
+are said to agree again in the temptation and the fall. As Dr. Spiegel
+has not given the details of the temptation and the fall from the
+Avesta, we cannot judge of the points which he considers to be
+borrowed by the Jews from the Persians; but if we consult M. Breal,
+who has treated the same subject more fully in his 'Hercule et Cacus,'
+we find there no more than this, that the Dualism of the Avesta, the
+struggle between Ormuzd and Ahriman, or the principles of light and
+darkness, is to be considered as the distant reflex of the grand
+struggle between Indra, the god of the sky, and V_r_itra, the demon of
+night and darkness, which forms the constant burden of the hymns of
+the Rig-veda. In this view there is some truth, but we doubt whether
+it fully exhibits the vital principle of the Zoroastrian religion,
+which is founded on a solemn protest against the whole worship of the
+powers of nature invoked in the Vedas, and on the recognition of one
+supreme power, the God of Light, in every sense of the word--the
+spirit Ahura, who created the world and rules it, and defends it
+against the power of evil. That power of evil which in the most
+ancient portions of the Avesta has not yet received the name of
+Ahriman (i. e. angro mainyus), may afterwards have assumed some of the
+epithets which in an earlier period were bestowed on V_r_itra and
+other enemies of the bright gods, and among them, it may have assumed
+the name of serpent. But does it follow, because the principle of evil
+in the Avesta is called serpent, or azhi dahaka, that therefore the
+serpent mentioned in the third chapter of Genesis must be borrowed
+from Persia? Neither in the Veda nor in the Avesta does the serpent
+ever assume that subtil and insinuating form as in Genesis; and the
+curse pronounced on it, 'to be cursed above all cattle, and above
+every beast of the field,' is not in keeping with the relation of
+V_r_itra to Indra, or Ahriman to Ormuzd, who face each other almost as
+equals. In later books, such as 1 Chronicles xxi. 1, where Satan is
+mentioned as provoking David to number Israel (the very same
+provocation which in 2 Samuel xxiv. 1 is ascribed to the anger of the
+Lord moving David to number Israel and Judah), and in all the passages
+of the New Testament where the power of evil is spoken of as a person,
+we may admit the influence of Persian ideas and Persian expressions,
+though even here strict proof is by no means easy. As to the serpent
+in Paradise, it is a conception that might have sprung up among the
+Jews as well as among the Brahmans; and the serpent that beguiled Eve
+seems hardly to invite comparison with the much grander conceptions of
+the terrible power of V_r_itra and Ahriman in the Veda and Avesta.
+
+Dr. Spiegel next discusses the similarity between the Garden of Eden
+and the Paradise of the Zoroastrians, and though he admits that here
+again he relies chiefly on the Bundehesh, a work of the Sassanian
+period, he maintains that that work may well be compared to Genesis,
+because it contains none but really ancient traditions. We do not for
+a moment deny that this may be so, but in a case like the present,
+where everything depends on exact dates, we decline to listen to such
+a plea. We value Dr. Spiegel's translations from the Bundehesh most
+highly, and we believe with him (p. 283) that there is little doubt as
+to the Pishon being the Indus, and the Gihon the Jaxartes. The
+identification, too, of the Persian river-name Ranha (the Vedic Rasa)
+with the Araxes, the name given by Herodotus (i. 202) to the Jaxartes,
+seems very ingenious and well established. But we should still like to
+know why and in what language the Indus was first called Pishon, and
+the Jaxartes, or, it may be, the Oxus, Gihon.
+
+We next come to the two trees in the garden of Eden, the tree of
+knowledge and the tree of life. Dr. Windischmann has shown that the
+Iranians, too, were acquainted with two trees, one called Gaokerena,
+bearing the white Haoma, the other called the Painless tree. We are
+told first that these two trees are the same as the one fig tree out
+of which the Indians believe the world to have been created. Now,
+first of all, the Indians believed no such thing, and secondly, there
+is the same difference between one and two trees as there is between
+North and South. But we confess that until we know a good deal more
+about these two trees of the Iranians, we feel no inclination whatever
+to compare the Painless tree and the tree of knowledge of good and
+evil, though perhaps the white Haoma tree might remind us of the tree
+of life, considering that Haoma, as well as the Indian Soma, was
+supposed to give immortality to those who drank its juice. We
+likewise consider the comparison of the Cherubim who keep the way of
+the tree of life and the guardians of the Soma in the Veda and Avesta,
+as deserving attention, and we should like to see the etymological
+derivation of Cherubim from [Greek: gryphes], Greifen, and of Seraphim
+from the Sanskrit sarpa, serpents, either confirmed or refuted.
+
+The Deluge is not mentioned in the sacred writings of the
+Zoroastrians, nor in the hymns of the Rig-veda. It is mentioned,
+however, in one of the latest Brahma_n_as, and the carefully balanced
+arguments of Burnouf, who considered the tradition of the Deluge as
+borrowed by the Indians from Semitic neighbours, seem to us to be
+strengthened, rather than weakened, by the isolated appearance of the
+story of the Deluge in this one passage out of the whole of the Vedic
+literature. Nothing, however, has yet been pointed out to force us to
+admit a Semitic origin for the story of the Flood, as told in the
+_S_atapatha-brahma_n_a, and afterwards repeated in the Mahabharata and
+the Pura_n_as: the number of days being really the only point on which
+the two accounts startle us by their agreement.
+
+That Noah's ark rested upon the mountain of Ararat, and that Ararat
+may admit of a Persian etymology, is nothing to the point. The
+etymology itself is ingenious, but no more. The same remark applies to
+all the rest of Dr. Spiegel's arguments. Thraetaona, who has before
+been compared to Noah, divided his land among his three sons, and gave
+Iran to the youngest, an injustice which exasperated his brothers, who
+murdered him. Now it is true that Noah, too, had three sons, but here
+the similarity ends; for that Terach had three sons, and that one of
+them only, Abram, took possession of the land of promise, and that of
+the two sons of Isaac, the youngest became the heir, is again of no
+consequence for our immediate purpose, though it may remind Dr.
+Spiegel and others of the history of Thraetaona. We agree with Dr.
+Spiegel, that Zoroaster's character resembles most closely the true
+Semitic notion of a prophet. He is considered worthy of personal
+intercourse with Ormuzd; he receives from Ormuzd every word, though
+not, as Dr. Spiegel says, every letter of the law. But if Zoroaster
+was a real character, so was Abraham, and their being like each other
+proves in no way that they lived in the same place, or at the same
+time, or that they borrowed aught one from the other. What Dr. Spiegel
+says of the Persian name of the Deity, Ahura, is very doubtful. Ahura,
+he says, as well as ahu, means lord, and must be traced back to the
+root ah, the Sanskrit as, which means to be, so that Ahura would
+signify the same as Jahve, he who is. The root 'as' no doubt means to
+be, but it has that meaning because it originally meant to breathe.
+From it, in its original sense of breathing, the Hindus formed asu,
+breath, and asura, the name of God, whether it meant the breathing
+one, or the giver of breath. This asura became in Zend ahura, and if
+it assumed the general meaning of Lord, this is as much a secondary
+meaning as the meaning of demon or evil spirit, which asura assumed in
+the later Sanskrit of the Brahma_n_as.
+
+After this, Dr. Spiegel proceeds to sum up his evidence. He has no
+more to say, but he believes that he has proved the following points:
+a very early intercourse between Semitic and Aryan nations; a common
+belief shared by both in a paradise situated near the sources of the
+Oxus and Jaxartes; the dwelling together of Abraham and Zoroaster in
+Haran, Arran, or Airyana vae_g_a. Semitic and Aryan nations, he tells
+us, still live together in those parts of the world, and so it was
+from the beginning. As the form of the Jewish traditions comes nearer
+to the Persian than to the Indian traditions, we are asked to believe
+that these two races lived in the closest contact before, from this
+ancient hearth of civilisation, they started towards the West and the
+East--that is to say, before Abraham migrated to Canaan, and before
+India was peopled by the Brahmans.
+
+We have given a fair account of Dr. Spiegel's arguments, and we need
+not say that we should have hailed with equal pleasure any solid facts
+by which to establish either the dependence of Genesis on the
+Zend-Avesta, or the dependence of the Zend-Avesta on Genesis. It would
+be absurd to resist facts where facts exist; nor can we imagine any
+reason why, if Abraham came into personal contact with Zoroaster, the
+Jewish patriarch should have learnt nothing from the Iranian prophet,
+or vice versa. If such an intercourse could be established, it would
+but serve to strengthen the historical character of the books of the
+Old Testament, and would be worth more than all the elaborate theories
+that have been started on the purely miraculous origin of these books.
+But though we by no means deny that some more tangible points of
+resemblance may yet be discovered between the Old Testament and the
+Zend-Avesta, we must protest against having so interesting and so
+important a matter handled in such an unbusinesslike manner.
+
+_April, 1864._
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+THE MODERN PARSIS.[50]
+
+I.
+
+
+It is not fair to speak of any religious sect by a name to which its
+members object. Yet the fashion of speaking of the followers of
+Zoroaster as Fire-worshippers is so firmly established that it will
+probably continue long after the last believers in Ormuzd have
+disappeared from the face of the earth. At the present moment, the
+number of the Zoroastrians has dwindled down so much that they hardly
+find a place in the religious statistics of the world. Berghaus in his
+'Physical Atlas' gives the following division of the human race
+according to religion:
+
+Buddhists          31.2 per cent.
+Christians         30.7    "
+Mohammedans        15.7    "
+Brahmanists        13.4    "
+Heathens            8.7    "
+Jews                0.3    "
+
+[Footnote 50: 'The Manners and Customs of the Parsees.' By Dadabhai
+Naoroji, Esq. Liverpool, 1861.
+
+'The Parsee Religion,' By Dadabhai Naoroji, Esq. Liverpool, 1861.]
+
+He nowhere states the number of the Fire-worshippers, nor does he tell
+us under what head they are comprised in his general computation. The
+difficulties of a religious census are very great, particularly when
+we have to deal with Eastern nations. About two hundred years ago,
+travellers estimated the Gabars (as they are called in Persia) at
+eighty thousand families, or about 400,000 souls. At present the
+Parsis in Western India amount to about 100,000, to which, if we add
+5,500 in Yazd and Kirman, we get a total of 105,500. The number of the
+Jews is commonly estimated at 3,600,000; and if they represent 0.3 per
+cent of mankind, the Fire-worshippers could not claim at present more
+than about 0.01 per cent of the whole population of the earth. Yet
+there were periods in the history of the world when the worship of
+Ormuzd threatened to rise triumphant on the ruins of the temples of
+all other gods. If the battles of Marathon and Salamis had been lost,
+and Greece had succumbed to Persia, the state religion of the empire
+of Cyrus, which was the worship of Ormuzd, might have become the
+religion of the whole civilised world. Persia had absorbed the
+Assyrian and Babylonian empires; the Jews were either in Persian
+captivity or under Persian sway at home; the sacred monuments of Egypt
+had been mutilated by the hands of Persian soldiers. The edicts of the
+great king, the king of kings, were sent to India, to Greece, to
+Scythia, and to Egypt; and if 'by the grace of Auramazda' Darius had
+crushed the liberty of Greece, the purer faith of Zoroaster might
+easily have superseded the Olympian fables. Again, under the Sassanian
+dynasty (226-651 A.D.) the revived national faith of the Zoroastrians
+assumed such vigour that Shapur II, like another Diocletian, could
+aim at the extirpation of the Christian faith. The sufferings of the
+persecuted Christians in the East were as terrible as they had ever
+been in the West; nor was it by the weapons of Roman emperors or by
+the arguments of Christian divines that the fatal blow was dealt to
+the throne of Cyrus and the altars of Ormuzd. The power of Persia was
+broken at last by the Arabs; and it is due to them that the religion
+of Ormuzd, once the terror of the world, is now, and has been for the
+last thousand years, a mere curiosity in the eyes of the historian.
+
+The sacred writings of the Zoroastrians, commonly called the
+Zend-Avesta, have for about a century occupied the attention of
+European scholars, and, thanks to the adventurous devotion of Anquetil
+Duperron, and the careful researches of Rask, Burnouf, Westergaard,
+Spiegel, and Haug, we have gradually been enabled to read and
+interpret what remains of the ancient language of the Persian
+religion. The problem was not an easy one, and had it not been for the
+new light which the science of language has shed on the laws of human
+speech, it would have been as impossible to Burnouf as it was to Hyde,
+the celebrated Professor of Hebrew and Arabic at Oxford, to interpret
+with grammatical accuracy the ancient remnants of Zoroaster's
+doctrine. How that problem was solved is well known to all who take an
+interest in the advancement of modern scholarship. It was as great an
+achievement as the deciphering of the cuneiform edicts of Darius; and
+no greater compliment could have been paid to Burnouf and his
+fellow-labourers than that scholars, without inclination to test their
+method, and without leisure to follow these indefatigable pioneers
+through all the intricate paths of their researches, should have
+pronounced the deciphering of the ancient Zend as well as of the
+ancient Persian of the Achaemenian period to be impossible, incredible,
+and next to miraculous.
+
+While the scholars of Europe are thus engaged in disinterring the
+ancient records of the religion of Zoroaster, it is of interest to
+learn what has become of that religion in those few settlements where
+it is still professed by small communities. Though every religion is
+of real and vital interest in its earliest state only, yet its later
+development too, with all its misunderstandings, faults, and
+corruptions, offers many an instructive lesson to the thoughtful
+student of history. Here is a religion, one of the most ancient of the
+world, once the state religion of the most powerful empire, driven
+away from its native soil, deprived of political influence, without
+even the prestige of a powerful or enlightened priesthood, and yet
+professed by a handful of exiles--men of wealth, intelligence, and
+moral worth in Western India--with an unhesitating fervour such as is
+seldom to be found in larger religious communities. It is well worth
+the serious consideration of the philosopher and the divine to
+discover, if possible, the spell by which this apparently effete
+religion continues to command the attachment of the enlightened Parsis
+of India, and makes them turn a deaf ear to the allurements of the
+Brahmanic worship and the earnest appeals of Christian missionaries.
+We believe that to many of our readers the two pamphlets, lately
+published by a distinguished member of the Parsi community, Mr.
+Dadabhai Naoroji, Professor of Guzerati at University College,
+London, will open many problems of a more than passing interest. One
+is a Paper read before the Liverpool Philomathic Society, 'On the
+Manners and Customs of the Parsees;' the other is a Lecture delivered
+before the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, 'On the
+Parsee Religion.'
+
+In the first of these pamphlets, we are told that the small community
+of Parsis in Western India is at the present moment divided into two
+parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals. Both are equally attached
+to the faith of their ancestors, but they differ from each other in
+their modes of life--the Conservatives clinging to all that is
+established and customary, however absurd and mischievous, the
+Liberals desiring to throw off the abuses of former ages, and to avail
+themselves, as much as is consistent with their religion and their
+Oriental character, of the advantages of European civilisation. 'If I
+say,' writes our informant, 'that the Parsees use tables, knives and
+forks, &c., for taking their dinners, it would be true with regard to
+one portion, and entirely untrue with regard to another. In one house
+you see in the dining-room the dinner table furnished with all the
+English apparatus for its agreeable purposes; next door, perhaps, you
+see the gentleman perfectly satisfied with his primitive good old mode
+of squatting on a piece of mat, with a large brass or copper plate
+(round, and of the size of an ordinary tray) before him, containing
+all the dishes of his dinner, spread on it in small heaps, and placed
+upon a stool about two or three inches high, with a small tinned
+copper cup at his side for his drinks, and his fingers for his knives
+and forks. He does this, not because he cannot afford to have a
+table, &c., but because he would not have them in preference to his
+ancestral mode of life, or, perhaps, the thought has not occurred to
+him that he need have anything of the kind.'
+
+Instead, therefore, of giving a general description of Parsi life at
+present, Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji gives us two distinct accounts--first of
+the old, secondly of the new school. He describes the incidents in the
+daily life of a Parsi of the old school, from the moment he gets out
+of bed to the time of his going to rest, and the principal ceremonies
+from the hour of his birth to the hour of his burial. Although we can
+gather from the tenour of his writings that the author himself belongs
+to the Liberals, we must give him credit for the fairness with which
+he describes the party to which he is opposed. There is no sneer, no
+expression of contempt anywhere, even when, as in the case of the
+Nirang, the temptation must have been considerable. What this Nirang
+is we may best state in the words of the writer:
+
+     'The Nirang is the urine of cow, ox, or she-goat, and the
+     rubbing of it over the face and hands is the second thing a
+     Parsee does after getting out of bed. Either before applying
+     the Nirang to the face and hands, or while it remains on the
+     hands after being applied, he should not touch anything
+     directly with his hands; but, in order to wash out the
+     Nirang, he either asks somebody else to pour water on his
+     hands, or resorts to the device of taking hold of the pot
+     through the intervention of a piece of cloth, such as a
+     handkerchief or his Sudra, i. e. his blouse. He first pours
+     water on one hand, then takes the pot in that hand and
+     washes his other hand, face and feet.'
+
+Strange as this process of purification may appear, it becomes
+perfectly disgusting when we are told that women, after childbirth,
+have not only to undergo this sacred ablution, but have actually to
+drink a little of the Nirang, and that the same rite is imposed on
+children at the time of their investiture with the Sudra and Kusti,
+the badges of the Zoroastrian faith. The Liberal party have completely
+surrendered this objectionable custom, but the old school still keep
+it up, though their faith, as Dadabhai Naoroji says, in the efficacy
+of Nirang to drive away Satan may be shaken. 'The Reformers,' our
+author writes, 'maintain that there is no authority whatever in the
+original books of Zurthosht for the observance of this dirty practice,
+but that it is altogether a later introduction. The old adduce the
+authority of the works of some of the priests of former days, and say
+the practice ought to be observed. They quote one passage from the
+Zend-Avesta corroborative of their opinion, which their opponents deny
+as at all bearing upon the point.' Here, whatever our own feelings may
+be about the Nirang, truth obliges us to side with the old school, and
+if our author had consulted the ninth Fasgard of the Vendidad (page
+120, line 21, in Brockhaus's edition), he would have seen that both
+the drinking and the rubbing in of the so-called Gaomaezo--i. e.
+Nirang--are clearly enjoined by Zoroaster in certain purificatory
+rights. The custom rests, therefore, not only on the authority of a
+few priests of former days, but on the ipsissima verba of the
+Zend-Avesta, the revealed word of Ormuzd; and if, as Dadabhai Naoroji
+writes, the Reformers of the day will not go beyond abolishing and
+disavowing the ceremonies and notions that have no authority in the
+original Zend-Avesta, we are afraid that the washing with Nirang, and
+even the drinking of it, will have to be maintained. A pious Parsi has
+to say his prayers sixteen times at least every day--first on getting
+out of bed, then during the Nirang operation, again when he takes his
+bath, again when he cleanses his teeth, and when he has finished his
+morning ablutions. The same prayers are repeated whenever, during the
+day, a Parsi has to wash his hands. Every meal--and there are
+three--begins and ends with prayer, besides the grace, and before
+going to bed the work of the day is closed by a prayer. The most
+extraordinary thing is that none of the Parsis--not even their
+priests--understand the ancient language in which these prayers are
+composed. We must quote the words of our author, who is himself of the
+priestly caste, and who says:
+
+     'All prayers, on every occasion, are said, or rather
+     recited, in the old original Zend language, neither the
+     reciter nor the people around intended to be edified,
+     understanding a word of it. There is no pulpit among the
+     Parsees. On several occasions, as on the occasion of the
+     Ghumbars, the bimestral holidays, the third day's ceremonies
+     for the dead, and other religious or special holidays, there
+     are assemblages in the temple; prayers are repeated, in
+     which more or less join, but there is no discourse in the
+     vernacular of the people. Ordinarily, every one goes to the
+     fire-temple whenever he likes, or, if it is convenient to
+     him, recites his prayers himself, and as long as he likes,
+     and gives, if so inclined, something to the priests to pray
+     for him.'
+
+In another passage our author says:
+
+     'Far from being the teachers of the true doctrines and
+     duties of their religion, the priests are generally the most
+     bigoted and superstitious, and exercise much injurious
+     influence over the women especially, who, until lately,
+     received no education at all. The priests have, however, now
+     begun to feel their degraded position. Many of them, if they
+     can do so, bring up their sons in any other profession but
+     their own. There are, perhaps, a dozen among the whole body
+     of professional priests who lay claim to a knowledge of the
+     Zend-Avesta: but the only respect in which they are superior
+     to their brethren is, that they have learnt the meanings of
+     the words of the books as they are taught, without knowing
+     the language, either philosophically or grammatically.'
+
+Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji proceeds to give a clear and graphic description
+of the ceremonies to be observed at the birth and the investiture of
+children, at the betrothal of children, at marriages and at funerals,
+and he finally dismisses some of the distinguishing features of the
+national character of the Parsis. The Parsis are monogamists. They do
+not eat anything cooked by a person of another religion; they object
+to beef, pork, or ham. Their priesthood is hereditary. None but the
+son of a priest can be a priest, but it is not obligatory for the son
+of a priest to take orders. The high-priest is called Dustoor, the
+others are called Mobed.
+
+The principal points for which the Liberals among the Parsis are, at
+the present moment, contending, are the abolition of the filthy
+purifications by means of Nirang; the reduction of the large number of
+obligatory prayers; the prohibition of early betrothal and marriage;
+the suppression of extravagance at weddings and funerals; the
+education of women, and their admission into general society. A
+society has been formed, called 'the Rahanumaee Mazdiashna,' i. e. the
+Guide of the Worshippers of God. Meetings are held, speeches made,
+tracts distributed. A counter society, too, has been started, called
+'the True Guides;' and we readily believe what Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji
+tells us--that, as in Europe, so in India, the Reformers have found
+themselves strengthened by the intolerant bigotry and the weakness of
+the arguments of their opponents. The Liberals have made considerable
+progress, but their work is as yet but half done, and they will never
+be able to carry out their religious and social reforms successfully,
+without first entering on a critical study of the Zend-Avesta, to
+which, as yet, they profess to appeal as the highest authority in
+matters of faith, law, and morality.
+
+We propose, in another article, to consider the state of religion
+among the Parsis of the present day.
+
+_August, 1862._
+
+
+II.
+
+The so-called Fire-worshippers certainly do not worship the fire, and
+they naturally object to a name which seems to place them on a level
+with mere idolaters. All they admit is, that in their youth they are
+taught to face some luminous object while worshipping God (p. 7), and
+that they regard the fire, like other great natural phenomena, as an
+emblem of the Divine power (p. 26). But they assure us that they
+never ask assistance or blessings from an unintelligent material
+object, nor is it even considered necessary to turn the face to any
+emblem whatever in praying to Ormuzd. The most honest, however, among
+the Parsis, and those who would most emphatically protest against the
+idea of their ever paying divine honours to the sun or the fire, admit
+the existence of some kind of national instinct--an indescribable awe
+felt by every Parsi with regard to light and fire. The fact that the
+Parsis are the only Eastern people who entirely abstain from smoking
+is very significant; and we know that most of them would rather not
+blow out a candle, if they could help it. It is difficult to analyse
+such a feeling, but it seems, in some respects, similar to that which
+many Christians have about the cross. They do not worship the cross,
+but they have peculiar feelings of reverence for it, and it is
+intimately connected with some of their most sacred rites.
+
+But although most Parsis would be very ready to tell us what they do
+not worship, there are but few who could give a straightforward answer
+if asked what they do worship and believe. Their priests, no doubt,
+would say that they worship Ormuzd and believe in Zoroaster, his
+prophet; and they would appeal to the Zend-Avesta, as containing the
+Word of God, revealed by Ormuzd to Zoroaster. If more closely pressed,
+however, they would have to admit that they cannot understand one word
+of the sacred writings in which they profess to believe, nor could
+they give any reason why they believe Zoroaster to have been a true
+prophet, and not an impostor. 'As a body,' says Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji,
+'the priests are not only ignorant of the duties and objects of their
+own profession, but are entirely uneducated, except that they are able
+to read and write, and that, also, often very imperfectly. They do not
+understand a single word of their prayers and recitations, which are
+all in the old Zend language.'
+
+What, then, do the laity know about religion? What makes the old
+teaching of Zoroaster so dear to them that, in spite of all
+differences of opinion among themselves, young and old seem equally
+determined never to join any other religious community? Incredible as
+it may sound, we are told by the best authority, by an enlightened yet
+strictly orthodox Parsi, that there is hardly a man or a woman who
+could give an account of the faith that is in them. 'The whole
+religious education of a Parsi child consists in preparing by rote a
+certain number of prayers in Zend, without understanding a word of
+them; the knowledge of the doctrines of their religion being left to
+be picked up from casual conversation.' A Parsi, in fact, hardly knows
+what his faith is. The Zend-Avesta is to him a sealed book; and though
+there is a Guzerati translation of it, that translation is not made
+from the original, but from a Pehlevi paraphrase, nor is it recognised
+by the priests as an authorised version. Till about five and twenty
+years ago, there was no book from which a Parsi of an inquiring mind
+could gather the principles of his religion. At that time, and, as it
+would seem, chiefly in order to counteract the influence of Christian
+missionaries, a small Dialogue was written in Guzerati--a kind of
+Catechism, giving, in the form of questions and answers, the most
+important tenets of Parsiism. We shall quote some passages from this
+Dialogue, as translated by Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji. The subject of it is
+thus described:
+
+     _A few Questions and Answers to acquaint the Children of the
+     holy Zarthosti Community with the Subject of the Mazdiashna
+     Religion, _i. e._ the Worship of God._
+
+     _Question._ Whom do we, of the Zarthosti community, believe
+     in?
+
+     _Answer._ We believe in only one God, and do not believe in
+     any besides Him.
+
+     _Q._ Who is that one God?
+
+     _A._ The God who created the heavens, the earth, the angels,
+     the stars, the sun, the moon, the fire, the water, or all
+     the four elements, and all things of the two worlds; that
+     God we believe in. Him we worship, him we invoke, him we
+     adore.
+
+     _Q._ Do we not believe in any other God?
+
+     _A._ Whoever believes in any other God but this, is an
+     infidel, and shall suffer the punishment of hell.
+
+     _Q._ What is the form of our God?
+
+     _A._ Our God has neither face nor form, colour nor shape,
+     nor fixed place. There is no other like him. He is himself
+     singly such a glory that we cannot, praise or describe him;
+     nor our mind comprehend him.
+
+So far, no one could object to this Catechism, and it must be clear
+that the Dualism, which is generally mentioned as the distinguishing
+feature of the Persian religion--the belief in two Gods, Ormuzd, the
+principle of good, and Ahriman, the principle of evil--is not
+countenanced by the modern Parsis. Whether it exists in the
+Zend-Avesta is another question, which, however, cannot be discussed
+at present.[51]
+
+     The Catechism continues:
+
+     _Q._ What is our religion?
+
+     _A._ Our religion is 'Worship of God.'
+
+     _Q._ Whence did we receive our religion?
+
+     _A._ God's true prophet--the true Zurthost (Zoroaster)
+     Asphantaman Anoshirwan--brought the religion to us from God.
+
+Here it is curious to observe that not a single question is asked as
+to the claim of Zoroaster to be considered a true prophet. He is not
+treated as a divine being, nor even as the son of Ormuzd. Plato,
+indeed, speaks of Zoroaster as the son of Oromazes (Alc. i. p. 122 a),
+but this is a mistake, not countenanced, as far as we are aware, by
+any of the Parsi writings, whether ancient or modern. With the Parsis,
+Zoroaster is simply a wise man, a prophet favoured by God, and
+admitted into God's immediate presence; but all this, on his own
+showing only, and without any supernatural credentials, except some
+few miracles recorded of him in books of doubtful authority. This
+shows, at all events, how little the Parsis have been exposed to
+controversial discussions; for, as this is so weak a point in their
+system that it would have invited the attacks of every opponent, we
+may be sure that the Dustoors would have framed some argument in
+defence, if such defence had ever been needed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next extract from the Catechism treats of the canonical books:
+
+[Footnote 51: See page 140.]
+
+     _Q._ What religion has our prophet brought us from God?
+
+     _A._ The disciples of our prophet have recorded in several
+     books that religion. Many of these books were destroyed
+     during Alexander's conquest; the remainder of the books were
+     preserved with great care and respect by the Sassanian
+     kings. Of these again, the greater portion were destroyed at
+     the Mohammedan conquest by Khalif Omar, so that we have now
+     very few books remaining; viz. the Vandidad, the Yazashne,
+     the Visparad, the Khordeh Avesta, the Vistasp Nusk, and a
+     few Pehlevi books. Resting our faith upon these few books,
+     we now remain devoted to our good Mazdiashna religion. We
+     consider these books as heavenly books, because God sent the
+     tidings of these books to us through the holy Zurthost.
+
+Here, again, we see theological science in its infancy. 'We consider
+these books as heavenly books because God sent the tidings of these
+books to us through the holy Zurthost,' is not very powerful logic. It
+would have been more simple to say, 'We consider them heavenly books
+because we consider them heavenly books.' However, whether heavenly or
+not, these few books exist. They form the only basis of the
+Zoroastrian religion, and the principal source from which it is
+possible to derive any authentic information as to its origin, its
+history, and its real character.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That the Parsis are of a tolerant character with regard to such of
+their doctrines as are not of vital importance, may be seen from the
+following extract:
+
+     _Q._ Whose descendants are we?
+
+     _A._ Of Gayomars. By his progeny was Persia populated.
+
+     _Q._ Was Gayomars the first man?
+
+     _A._ According to our religion he was so, but the wise men
+     of our community, of the Chinese, the Hindus, and several
+     other nations, dispute the assertion, and say that there was
+     human population on the earth before Gayomars.
+
+The moral precepts which are embodied in this Catechism do the highest
+credit to the Parsis:
+
+     _Q._ What commands has God sent us through his prophet, the
+     exalted Zurthost?
+
+     _A._ To know God as one; to know the prophet, the exalted
+     Zurthost, as the true prophet; to believe the religion and
+     the Avesta brought by him as true beyond all manner of
+     doubt; to believe in the goodness of God; not to disobey any
+     of the commands of the Mazdiashna religion; to avoid evil
+     deeds; to exert for good deeds; to pray five times in the
+     day; to believe on the reckoning and justice on the fourth
+     morning after death; to hope for heaven and to fear hell; to
+     consider doubtless the day of general destruction and
+     resurrection; to remember always that God has done what he
+     willed, and shall do what he wills; to face some luminous
+     object while worshipping God.
+
+Then follow several paragraphs which are clearly directed against
+Christian missionaries, and more particularly against the doctrine of
+vicarious sacrifice and prayer:
+
+     'Some deceivers, [the Catechism says,] with the view of
+     acquiring exaltation in this world, have set themselves up
+     as prophets, and, going among the labouring and ignorant
+     people, have persuaded them that, "if you commit sin, I
+     shall intercede for you, I shall plead for you, I shall save
+     you," and thus deceive them; but the wise among the people
+     know the deceit.'
+
+This clearly refers to Christian missionaries, but whether Roman
+Catholic or Protestant is difficult to say. The answer given by the
+Parsis is curious and significant:
+
+     'If any one commit sin,' they reply, 'under the belief that
+     he shall be saved by somebody, both the deceiver as well as
+     the deceived shall be damned to the day of Rasta Khez....
+     There is no saviour. In the other world you shall receive
+     the return according to your actions.... Your saviour is
+     your deeds, and God himself. He is the pardoner and the
+     giver. If you repent your sins and reform, and if the Great
+     Judge consider you worthy of pardon, or would be merciful to
+     you, He alone can and will save you.'
+
+It would be a mistake to suppose that the whole doctrine of the Parsis
+is contained in the short Guzerati Catechism, translated by Mr.
+Dadabhai Naoroji, still less in the fragmentary extracts here given.
+Their sacred writings, the Ya_s_na, Vispered, and Vendidad, the
+productions of much earlier ages, contain many ideas, both religious
+and mythological, which belong to the past, to the childhood of our
+race, and which no educated Parsi could honestly profess to believe in
+now. This difficulty of reconciling the more enlightened faith of the
+present generation with the mythological phraseology of their old
+sacred writings is solved by the Parsis in a very simple manner. They
+do not, like Roman Catholics, prohibit the reading of the Zend-Avesta;
+nor do they, like Protestants, encourage a critical study of their
+sacred texts. They simply ignore the originals of their sacred
+writings. They repeat them in their prayers without attempting to
+understand them, and they acknowledge the insufficiency of every
+translation of the Zend-Avesta that has yet been made, either in
+Pehlevi, Sanskrit, Guzerati, French, or German. Each Parsi has to pick
+up his religion as best he may. Till lately, even the Catechism did
+not form a necessary part of a child's religious education. Thus the
+religious belief of the present Parsi communities is reduced to two or
+three fundamental doctrines; and these, though professedly resting on
+the teaching of Zoroaster, receive their real sanction from a much
+higher authority. A Parsi believes in one God, to whom he addresses
+his prayers. His morality is comprised in these words--pure thoughts,
+pure words, pure deeds. Believing in the punishment of vice and the
+reward of virtue, he trusts for pardon to the mercy of God. There is a
+charm, no doubt, in so short a creed; and if the whole of Zoroaster's
+teaching were confined to this, there would be some truth in what his
+followers say of their religion--namely, that 'it is for all, and not
+for any particular nation.'
+
+If now we ask again, how it is that neither Christians, nor Hindus,
+nor Mohammedans have had any considerable success in converting the
+Parsis, and why even the more enlightened members of that small
+community, though fully aware of the many weak points of their own
+theology, and deeply impressed with the excellence of the Christian
+religion, morals, and general civilisation, scorn the idea of ever
+migrating from the sacred ruins of their ancient faith, we are able to
+discover some reasons; though they are hardly sufficient to account
+for so extraordinary a fact?
+
+First, the very compactness of the modern Parsi creed accounts for the
+tenacity with which the exiles of Western India cling to it. A Parsi
+is not troubled with many theological problems or difficulties. Though
+he professes a general belief in the sacred writings of Zoroaster, he
+is not asked to profess any belief in the stories incidentally
+mentioned in the Zend-Avesta. If it is said in the Yasna that
+Zoroaster was once visited by Homa, who appeared before him in a
+brilliant supernatural body, no doctrine is laid down as to the exact
+nature of Homa. It is said that Homa was worshipped by certain ancient
+sages, Viva_n_hvat, Athwya, and Thrita, and that, as a reward for
+their worship, great heroes were born as their sons. The fourth who
+worshipped Homa was Pourusha_s_pa, and he was rewarded by the birth of
+his son Zoroaster. Now the truth is, that Homa is the same as the
+Sanskrit Soma, well known from the Veda as an intoxicating beverage
+used at the great sacrifices, and afterwards raised to the rank of a
+deity. The Parsis are fully aware of this, but they do not seem in the
+least disturbed by the occurrence of such 'fables and endless
+genealogies.' They would not be shocked if they were told, what is a
+fact, that most of these old wives' fables have their origin in the
+religion which they most detest, the religion of the Veda, and that
+the heroes of the Zend-Avesta are the same who, with slightly changed
+names, appear again as Jemshid, Feridun, Gershasp, &c., in the epic
+poetry of Firdusi.
+
+Another fact which accounts for the attachment of the Parsis to their
+religion is its remote antiquity and its former glory. Though age has
+little to do with truth, the length of time for which any system has
+lasted seems to offer a vague argument in favour of its strength. It
+is a feeling which the Parsi shares in common with the Jew and the
+Brahman, and which even the Christian missionary appeals to when
+confronting the systems of later prophets.
+
+Thirdly, it is felt by the Parsis that in changing their religion,
+they would not only relinquish the heirloom of their remote
+forefathers, but of their own fathers; and it is felt as a dereliction
+of filial piety to give up what was most precious to those whose
+memory is most precious and almost sacred to themselves.
+
+If in spite of all this, many people, most competent to judge, look
+forward with confidence to the conversion of the Parsis, it is
+because, in the most essential points, they have already, though
+unconsciously, approached as near as possible to the pure doctrines of
+Christianity. Let them but read the Zend-Avesta, in which they profess
+to believe, and they will find that their faith is no longer the faith
+of the Ya_s_na, the Vendidad, and the Vispered. As historical relics,
+these works, if critically interpreted, will always retain a prominent
+place in the great library of the ancient world. As oracles of
+religious faith, they are defunct, and a mere anachronism in the age
+in which we live.
+
+On the other hand, let missionaries read their Bible, and let them
+preach that Christianity which once conquered the world--the genuine
+and unshackled Gospel of Christ and the Apostles. Let them respect
+native prejudices, and be tolerant with regard to all that can be
+tolerated in a Christian community. Let them consider that
+Christianity is not a gift to be pressed on unwilling minds, but the
+highest of all privileges which natives can receive at the hands of
+their present rulers. Natives of independent and honest character
+cannot afford at present to join the ranks of converts without losing
+that true caste which no man ought to lose--namely, self-respect. They
+are driven to prop up their tottering religions, rather than profess a
+faith which seems dictated to them by their conquerors. Such feelings
+ought to be respected. Finally, let missionaries study the sacred
+writings on which the faith of the Parsis is professedly founded. Let
+them examine the bulwarks which they mean to overthrow. They will find
+them less formidable from within than from without. But they will also
+discover that they rest on a foundation which ought never to be
+touched--a faith in one God, the Creator, the Ruler, and the Judge of
+the world.
+
+_August, 1862._
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+BUDDHISM.[52]
+
+
+If the command of St. Paul, 'Prove all things, hold fast that which is
+good,' may be supposed to refer to spiritual things, and, more
+especially, to religious doctrines, it must be confessed that few
+only, whether theologians or laymen, have ever taken to heart the
+apostle's command. How many candidates for holy orders are there who
+could give a straightforward answer if asked to enumerate the
+principal religions of the world, or to state the names of their
+founders, and the titles of the works which are still considered by
+millions of human beings as the sacred authorities for their religious
+belief? To study such books as the Koran of the Mohammedans, the
+Zend-Avesta of the Parsis, the King's of the Confucians, the
+Tao-te-King of the Taoists, the Vedas of the Brahmans, the Tripi_t_aka
+of the Buddhists, the Sutras of the Jains, or the Granth of the Sikhs,
+would be considered by many mere waste of time. Yet St. Paul's command
+is very clear and simple; and to maintain that it referred to the
+heresies of his own time only, or to the philosophical systems of the
+Greeks and Romans, would be to narrow the horizon of the apostle's
+mind, and to destroy the general applicability of his teaching to all
+times and to all countries. Many will ask what possible good could be
+derived from the works of men who must have been either deceived or
+deceivers, nor would it be difficult to quote some passages in order
+to show the utter absurdity and worthlessness of the religious books
+of the Hindus and Chinese. But this was not the spirit in which the
+apostle of the Gentiles addressed himself to the Epicureans and
+Stoics, nor is this the feeling with which a thoughtful Christian and
+a sincere believer in the divine government of the world is likely to
+rise from a perusal of any of the books which he knows to be or to
+have been the only source of spiritual light and comfort to thousands
+and thousands among the dwellers on earth.
+
+[Footnote 52: 'Le Bouddha et sa Religion.' Par J. Barthelemy
+Saint-Hilaire, Membre de l'Institut. Paris, 1860.]
+
+Many are the advantages to be derived from a careful study of other
+religions, but the greatest of all is that it teaches us to appreciate
+more truly what we possess in our own. When do we feel the blessings
+of our own country more warmly and truly than when we return from
+abroad? It is the same with regard to religion. Let us see what other
+nations have had and still have in the place of religion; let us
+examine the prayers, the worship, the theology even of the most highly
+civilised races,--the Greeks, the Romans, the Hindus, the
+Persians,--and we shall then understand more thoroughly what blessings
+are vouchsafed to us in being allowed to breathe from the first breath
+of life the pure air of a land of Christian light and knowledge. We
+are too apt to take the greatest blessings as matters of course, and
+even religion forms no exception. We have done so little to gain our
+religion, we have suffered so little in the cause of truth, that
+however highly we prize our own Christianity, we never prize it highly
+enough until we have compared it with the religions of the rest of the
+world.
+
+This, however, is not the only advantage; and we think that M.
+Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire has formed too low an estimate of the
+benefits to be derived from a thoughtful study of the religions of
+mankind when he writes of Buddhism: 'Le seul, mais immense service que
+le Bouddhisme puisse nous rendre, c'est par son triste contraste de
+nous faire apprecier mieux encore la valeur inestimable de nos
+croyances, en nous montrant tout ce qu'il en coute a l'humanite qui ne
+les partage point.' This is not all. If a knowledge of other countries
+and a study of the manners and customs of foreign nations teach us to
+appreciate what we have at home, they likewise form the best cure of
+that national conceit and want of sympathy with which we are too apt
+to look on all that is strange and foreign. The feeling which led the
+Hellenic races to divide the whole world into Greeks and Barbarians is
+so deeply engrained in human nature that not even Christianity has
+been able altogether to remove it. Thus when we cast our first glance
+into the labyrinth of the religions of the world, all seems to us
+darkness, self-deceit, and vanity. It sounds like a degradation of the
+very name of religion to apply it to the wild ravings of Hindu Yogins
+or the blank blasphemies of Chinese Buddhists. But as we slowly and
+patiently wend our way through the dreary prisons, our own eyes seem
+to expand, and we perceive a glimmer of light where all was darkness
+at first. We learn to understand the saying of one who more than
+anybody had a right to speak with authority on this subject, that
+'there is no religion which does not contain a spark of truth.' Those
+who would limit the riches of God's goodness and forbearance and long
+suffering, and would hand over the largest portion of the human race
+to inevitable perdition, have never adduced a tittle of evidence from
+the Gospel or from any other trustworthy source in support of so
+unhallowed a belief. They have generally appealed to the devilries and
+orgies of heathen worship; they have quoted the blasphemies of
+Oriental Sufis and the immoralities sanctioned by the successors of
+Mohammed; but they have seldom, if ever, endeavoured to discover the
+true and original character of the strange forms of faith and worship
+which they call the work of the devil. If the Indians had formed their
+notions of Christianity from the soldiers of Cortez and Pizarro, or if
+the Hindus had studied the principles of Christian morality in the
+lives of Clive and Warren Hastings; or, to take a less extreme case,
+if a Mohammedan, settled in England, were to test the practical
+working of Christian charity by the spirit displayed in the journals
+of our religious parties, their notions of Christianity would be about
+as correct as the ideas which thousands of educated Christians
+entertain of the diabolical character of heathen religion. Even
+Christianity has been depraved into Jesuitism and Mormonism, and if
+we, as Protestants, claim the right to appeal to the Gospel as the
+only test by which our faith is to be judged, we must grant a similar
+privilege to Mohammedans and Buddhists, and to all who possess a
+written, and, as they believe, revealed authority for the articles of
+their faith.
+
+But though no one is likely to deny the necessity of studying each
+religion in its most ancient form and from its original documents,
+before we venture to pronounce our verdict, the difficulties of this
+task are such that in them more than in anything else, must be sought
+the cause why so few of our best thinkers and writers have devoted
+themselves to a critical and historical study of the religions of the
+world. All important religions have sprung up in the East. Their
+sacred books are written in Eastern tongues, and some of them are of
+such ancient date that those even who profess to believe in them,
+admit that they are unable to understand them without the help of
+translations and commentaries. Until very lately the sacred books of
+three of the most important religions, those of the Brahmans, the
+Buddhists, and the Parsis, were totally unknown in Europe. It was one
+of the most important results of the study of Sanskrit, or the ancient
+language of India, that through it the key, not only to the sacred
+books of the Brahmans, the Vedas, but likewise to those of the
+Buddhists and Zoroastrians, was recovered. And nothing shows more
+strikingly the rapid progress of Sanskrit scholarship than that even
+Sir William Jones, whose name has still, with many, a more familiar
+sound than the names of Colebrooke, Burnouf, and Lassen, should have
+known nothing of the Vedas; that he should never have read a line of
+the canonical books of the Buddhists, and that he actually expressed
+his belief that Buddha was the same as the Teutonic deity Wodan or
+Odin, and _S_akya, another name of Buddha, the same as Shishac, king
+of Egypt. The same distinguished scholar never perceived the intimate
+relationship between the language of the Zend-Avesta and Sanskrit, and
+he declared the whole of the Zoroastrian writings to be modern
+forgeries.
+
+Even at present we are not yet in possession of a complete edition,
+much less of any trustworthy translation, of the Vedas; we only
+possess the originals of a few books of the Buddhist canon; and though
+the text of the Zend-Avesta has been edited in its entirety, its
+interpretation is beset with greater difficulties than that of the
+Vedas or the Tripi_t_aka. A study of the ancient religions of China,
+those of Confucius and Lao-tse, presupposes an acquaintance with
+Chinese, a language which it takes a life to learn thoroughly; and
+even the religion of Mohammed, though more accessible than any other
+Eastern religion, cannot be fully examined except by a master of
+Arabic. It is less surprising, therefore, than it might at first
+appear, that a comprehensive and scholarlike treatment of the
+religions of the world should still be a desideratum. Scholars who
+have gained a knowledge of the language, and thereby free access to
+original documents, find so much work at hand which none but
+themselves can do, that they grudge the time for collecting and
+arranging, for the benefit of the public at large, the results which
+they have obtained. Nor need we wonder that critical historians should
+rather abstain from the study of the religions of antiquity than trust
+to mere translations and second-hand authorities.
+
+Under these circumstances we feel all the more thankful if we meet
+with a writer like M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, who has acquired a
+knowledge of Eastern languages sufficient to enable him to consult
+original texts and to control the researches of other scholars, and
+who at the same time commands that wide view of the history of human
+thought which enables him to assign to each system its proper place,
+to perceive its most salient features, and to distinguish between what
+is really important and what is not, in the lengthy lucubrations of
+ancient poets and prophets. M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire is one of the
+most accomplished scholars of France; and his reputation as the
+translator of Aristotle has made us almost forget that the Professor
+of Greek Philosophy at the College de France[53] is the same as the
+active writer in the 'Globe' of 1827, and the 'National' of 1830; the
+same who signed the protest against the July ordinances, and who in
+1848 was Chief Secretary of the Provisional Government. If such a man
+takes the trouble to acquire a knowledge of Sanskrit, and to attend in
+the same College where he was professor, the lectures of his own
+colleague, the late Eugene Burnouf, his publications on Hindu
+philosophy and religion will naturally attract a large amount of
+public interest. The Sanskrit scholar by profession works and
+publishes chiefly for the benefit of other Sanskrit scholars. He is
+satisfied with bringing to light the ore which he has extracted by
+patient labour from among the dusty MSS. of the East-India House. He
+seldom takes the trouble to separate the metal from the ore, to purify
+or to strike it into current coin. He is but too often apt to forget
+that no lasting addition is ever made to the treasury of human
+knowledge unless the results of special research are translated into
+the universal language of science, and rendered available to every
+person of intellect and education. A division of labour seems most
+conducive to this end. We want a class of interpreters, men such as M.
+Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, who are fully competent to follow and to
+control the researches of professional students, and who at the same
+time have not forgotten the language of the world.
+
+[Footnote 53: M. de St. Hilaire resigned the chair of Greek literature
+at the College de France after the _coup d'etat_ of 1851, declining to
+take the oath of allegiance to the existing government.]
+
+In his work on Buddhism, of which a second edition has just appeared,
+M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire has undertaken to give to the world at
+large the really trustworthy and important results which have been
+obtained by the laborious researches of Oriental scholars, from the
+original documents of that interesting and still mysterious religion.
+It was a task of no ordinary difficulty, for although these researches
+are of very recent date, and belong to a period of Sanskrit
+scholarship posterior to Sir W. Jones and Colebrooke, yet such is the
+amount of evidence brought together by the combined industry of
+Hodgson, Turnour, Csoma de Koeroes, Stanislas Julien, Foucaux, Fausboell,
+Spence Hardy, but above all, of the late Eugene Burnouf, that it
+required no common patience and discrimination in order to compose
+from such materials so accurate, and at the same time so lucid and
+readable a book on Buddhism as that which we owe to M. Barthelemy
+Saint-Hilaire. The greater part of it appeared originally in the
+'Journal des Savants,' the time-honoured organ of the French Academy,
+which counts on its staff the names of Cousin, Flourens, Villemain,
+Biot, Mignet, Littre, &c, and admits as contributors sixteen only of
+the most illustrious members of that illustrious body, _la creme de la
+creme_.
+
+Though much had been said and written about Buddhism,--enough to
+frighten priests by seeing themselves anticipated in auricular
+confession, beads, and tonsure by the Lamas of Tibet,[54] and to
+disconcert philosophers by finding themselves outbid in positivism and
+nihilism by the inmates of Chinese monasteries,--the real beginning of
+an historical and critical study of the doctrines of Buddha dates from
+the year 1824. In that year Mr. Hodgson announced the fact that the
+original documents of the Buddhist canon had been preserved in
+Sanskrit in the monasteries of Nepal. Before that time our information
+on Buddhism had been derived at random from China, Japan, Burmah,
+Tibet, Mongolia, and Tartary; and though it was known that the
+Buddhist literature in all these countries professed itself to be
+derived, directly or indirectly, from India, and that the technical
+terms of that religion, not excepting the very name of Buddha, had
+their etymology in Sanskrit only, no hope was entertained that the
+originals of these various translations could ever be recovered. Mr.
+Hodgson, who settled in Nepal in 1821, as political resident of the
+East-India Company, and whose eyes were always open, not only to the
+natural history of that little-explored country, but likewise to its
+antiquities, its languages, and traditions, was not long before he
+discovered that his friends, the priests of Nepal, possessed a
+complete literature of their own. That literature was not written in
+the spoken dialects of the country, but in Sanskrit. Mr. Hodgson
+procured a catalogue of all the works, still in existence, which
+formed the Buddhist canon. He afterwards succeeded in procuring copies
+of these works, and he was able in 1824 to send about sixty volumes to
+the Asiatic Society of Bengal. As no member of that society seemed
+inclined to devote himself to the study of these MSS., Mr. Hodgson
+sent two complete collections of the same MSS. to the Asiatic Society
+of London and the Societe Asiatique of Paris. Before alluding to the
+brilliant results which the last-named collection produced in the
+hands of Eugene Burnouf, we must mention the labours of other
+students, which preceded the publication of Burnouf's researches.
+
+[Footnote 54: The late Abbe Huc pointed out the similarities between
+the Buddhist and Roman Catholic ceremonials with such _naivete_, that,
+to his surprise, he found his delightful 'Travels in Tibet' placed on
+the 'Index.' 'On ne peut s'empecher d'etre frappe,' he writes, 'de
+leur rapport avec le Catholicisme. La crosse, la mitre, la dalmatique,
+la chape ou pluvial, que les grands Lamas portent en voyage, ou
+lorsqu'ils font quelque ceremonie hors du temple; l'office a deux
+choeurs, la psalmodie, les exorcismes, l'encensoir soutenu par cinq
+chaines, et pouvant s'ouvrir et se fermer a volonte; les benedictions
+donnees par les Lamas en etendant la main droite sur la tete des
+fideles; le chapelet, le celibat ecclesiastique, les retraites
+spirituelles, le culte des saints, les jeunes, les processions, les
+litanies, l'eau benite; voila autant de rapports que les Bouddhistes
+ont avec nous.' He might have added tonsure, relics, and the
+confessional.]
+
+Mr. Hodgson himself gave to the world a number of valuable essays written
+on the spot, and afterwards collected under the title of 'Illustrations of
+the Literature and Religion of the Buddhists,' Serampore, 1841. He
+established the important fact, in accordance with the traditions of the
+priests of Nepal, that some of the Sanskrit documents which he recovered
+had existed in the monasteries of Nepal ever since the second century of
+our era, and that the whole of that collection had, five or six hundred
+years later, when Buddhism became definitely established in Tibet, been
+translated into the language of that country. As the art of printing had
+been introduced from China into Tibet, there was less difficulty in
+procuring complete copies of the Tibetan translation of the Buddhist canon.
+The real difficulty was to find a person acquainted with the language. By a
+fortunate concurrence of circumstances, however, it so happened that about
+the same time when Mr. Hodgson's discoveries began to attract the attention
+of Oriental scholars at Calcutta, a Hungarian, of the name of Alexander
+Csoma de Koeroes, arrived there. He had made his way from Hungary to Tibet on
+foot, without any means of his own, and with the sole object of discovering
+somewhere in Central Asia the native home of the Hungarians. Arrived in
+Tibet, his enthusiasm found a new vent in acquiring a language which no
+European before his time had mastered, and in exploring the vast collection
+of the canonical books of the Buddhists, preserved in that language. Though
+he arrived at Calcutta almost without a penny, he met with a hearty welcome
+from the members of the Asiatic Society, and was enabled with their
+assistance to publish the results of his extraordinary researches. People
+have complained of the length of the sacred books of other nations, but
+there are none that approach in bulk to the sacred canon of the Tibetans.
+It consists of two collections, commonly called the Kanjur and Tanjur. The
+proper spelling of their names is Bkah-hgyur, pronounced Kah-gyur, and
+Bstan-hgyur, pronounced Tan-gyur. The Kanjur consists, in its different
+editions, of 100, 102, or 108 volumes folio. It comprises 1083 distinct
+works. The Tanjur consists of 225 volumes folio, each weighing from four to
+five pounds in the edition of Peking. Editions of this colossal code were
+printed at Peking, Lhassa, and other places. The edition of the Kanjur
+published at Peking, by command of the Emperor Khian-Lung, sold for L600. A
+copy of the Kanjur was bartered for 7000 oxen by the Buriates, and the same
+tribe paid 1200 silver roubles for a complete copy of the Kanjur and Tanjur
+together.[55] Such a jungle of religious literature--the most excellent
+hiding-place, we should think, for Lamas and Dalai-Lamas--was too much even
+for a man who could travel on foot from Hungary to Tibet. The Hungarian
+enthusiast, however, though he did not translate the whole, gave a most
+valuable analysis of this immense bible, in the twentieth volume of the
+'Asiatic Researches,' sufficient to establish the fact that the principal
+portion of it was a translation from the same Sanskrit originals which had
+been discovered in Nepal by Mr. Hodgson. Csoma de Koeroes died soon after he
+had given to the world the first fruits of his labours,--a victim to his
+heroic devotion to the study of ancient languages and religions.
+
+[Footnote 55: 'Die Religion des Buddha,' von Koeppen, vol. ii. p.
+282.]
+
+It was another fortunate coincidence that, contemporaneously with the
+discoveries of Hodgson and Csoma de Koeroes, another scholar, Schmidt of
+St. Petersburg, had so far advanced in the study of the Mongolian
+language, as to be able to translate portions of the Mongolian version
+of the Buddhist canon, and thus forward the elucidation of some of the
+problems connected with the religion of Buddha.
+
+It never rains but it pours. Whereas for years, nay, for centuries,
+not a single original document of the Buddhist religion had been
+accessible to the scholars of Europe, we witness, in the small space
+of ten years, the recovery of four complete Buddhist literatures. In
+addition to the discoveries of Hodgson in Nepal, of Csoma de Koeroes in
+Tibet, and of Schmidt in Mongolia, the Honourable George Turnour
+suddenly presented to the world the Buddhist literature of Ceylon,
+composed in the sacred language of that island, the ancient Pali. The
+existence of that literature had been known before. Since 1826 Sir
+Alexander Johnston had been engaged in collecting authentic copies of
+the Mahavansa, the Ra_g_avali, and the Ra_g_aratnakari. These copies
+were translated at his suggestion from Pali into modern Singhalese and
+thence into English. The publication was entrusted to Mr. Edward
+Upham, and the work appeared in 1833, under the title of 'Sacred and
+Historical Works of Ceylon,' dedicated to William IV. Unfortunately,
+whether through fraud or through misunderstanding, the priests who
+were to have procured an authentic copy of the Pali originals and
+translated them into the vernacular language, appear to have formed a
+compilation of their own from various sources. The official
+translators by whom this mutilated Singhalese abridgment was to have
+been rendered into English, took still greater liberties; and the
+'Sacred and Historical Books of Ceylon' had hardly been published
+before Burnouf, then a mere beginner in the study of Pali, was able to
+prove the utter uselessness of that translation. Mr. Turnour, however,
+soon made up for this disappointment. He set to work in a more
+scholarlike spirit, and after acquiring himself a knowledge of the
+Pali language, he published several important essays on the Buddhist
+canon, as preserved in Ceylon. These were followed by an edition and
+translation of the Mahavansa, or the history of Ceylon, written in the
+fifth century after Christ, and giving an account of the island from
+the earliest times to the beginning of the fourth century A.D. Several
+continuations of that history are in existence, but Mr. Turnour was
+prevented by an early death from continuing his edition beyond the
+original portion of that chronicle. The exploration of the Ceylonese
+literature has since been taken up again by the Rev. D. J. Gogerly
+(Clough), whose essays are unfortunately scattered about in Singhalese
+periodicals and little known in Europe; and by the Rev. Spence Hardy,
+for twenty years Wesleyan Missionary in Ceylon. His two works,
+'Eastern Monachism' and 'Manual of Buddhism,' are full of interesting
+matter, but as they are chiefly derived from Singhalese, and even more
+modern sources, they require to be used with caution.[56]
+
+[Footnote 56: The same author has lately published another valuable
+work, 'The Legends and Theories of the Buddhists.' London, 1866.]
+
+In the same manner as the Sanskrit originals of Nepal were translated
+by Buddhist missionaries into Tibetan, Mongolian, and, as we shall
+soon see, into Chinese and Mandshu,[57] the Pali originals of Ceylon
+were carried to Burmah and Siam, and translated there into the
+languages of those countries. Hardly anything has as yet been done for
+exploring the literature of these two countries, which open a
+promising field for any one ambitious to follow in the footsteps of
+Hodgson, Csoma, and Turnour.
+
+[Footnote 57: 'Melanges Asiatiques,' vol. ii. p. 373.]
+
+A very important collection of Buddhist MSS. has lately been brought
+from Ceylon to Europe by M. Grimblot, and is now deposited in the
+Imperial Library at Paris. This collection, to judge from a report
+published in 1866 in the 'Journal des Savants' by M. Barthelemy
+Saint-Hilaire, consists of no less than eighty-seven works; and, as
+some of them are represented by more than one copy, the total number
+of MSS. amounts to one hundred and twenty-one. They fill altogether
+14,000 palm leaves, and are written partly in Singhalese, partly in
+Burmese characters. Next to Ceylon, Burmah and Siam would seem to be
+the two countries most likely to yield large collections of Pali MSS.,
+and the MSS. which now exist in Ceylon may, to a considerable extent,
+be traced back to these two countries. At the beginning of the
+sixteenth century, the Tamil conquerors of Ceylon are reported to have
+burnt every Buddhist book they could discover, in the hope of thus
+destroying the vitality of that detested religion. Buddhism, however,
+though persecuted--or, more probably, because persecuted--remained
+the national religion of the island, and in the eighteenth century it
+had recovered its former ascendency. Missions were then sent to Siam
+to procure authentic copies of the sacred documents; priests properly
+ordained were imported from Burmah; and several libraries, which
+contain both the canonical and the profane literature of Buddhism,
+were founded at Dadala, Ambagapitya, and other places.
+
+The sacred canon of the Buddhists is called the Tripi_t_aka, i. e. the
+three baskets. The first basket contains all that has reference to
+morality, or Vinaya; the second contains the Sutras, i. e. the
+discourses of Buddha; the third includes all works treating of
+dogmatic philosophy or metaphysics. The second and third baskets are
+sometimes comprehended under the general name of Dharma, or law, and
+it has become usual to apply to the third basket the name of
+Abhidharma, or by-law. The first and second pi_t_akas contain each
+five separate works; the third contains seven. M. Grimblot has secured
+MSS. of nearly every one of these works, and he has likewise brought
+home copies of the famous commentaries of Buddhaghosha. These
+commentaries are of great importance; for although Buddhaghosha lived
+as late as 430 A.D., he is supposed to have been the translator of
+more ancient commentaries, brought in 316 B.C. to Ceylon from Magadha
+by Mahinda, the son of A_s_oka, translated by him from Pali into
+Singhalese, and retranslated by Buddhaghosha into Pali, the original
+language both of the canonical books and of their commentaries.
+Whether historical criticism will allow to the commentaries of
+Buddhaghosha the authority due to documents of the fourth century
+before Christ, is a question that has yet to be settled. But even as a
+collector of earlier traditions and as a writer of the fifth century
+after Christ, his authority would be considerable with regard to the
+solution of some of the most important problems of Indian history and
+chronology. Some scholars who have written on the history of Buddhism
+have clearly shown too strong an inclination to treat the statements
+contained in the commentaries of Buddhaghosha as purely historical,
+forgetting the great interval of time by which he is separated from
+the events which he relates. No doubt if it could be proved that
+Buddhaghosha's works were literal translations of the so-called
+Attakathas or commentaries brought by Mahinda to Ceylon, this would
+considerably enhance their historical value. But the whole account of
+these translations rests on tradition, and if we consider the
+extraordinary precautions taken, according to tradition, by the LXX
+translators of the Old Testament, and then observe the discrepancies
+between the chronology of the Septuagint and that of the Hebrew text,
+we shall be better able to appreciate the risk of trusting to Oriental
+translations, even to those that pretend to be literal. The idea of a
+faithful literal translation seems altogether foreign to Oriental
+minds. Granted that Mahinda translated the original Pali commentaries
+into Singhalese, there was nothing to restrain him from inserting
+anything that he thought likely to be useful to his new converts.
+Granted that Buddhaghosha translated these translations back into
+Pali, why should he not have incorporated any facts that were then
+believed in and had been handed down by tradition from generation to
+generation? Was he not at liberty--nay, would he not have felt it his
+duty, to explain apparent difficulties, to remove contradictions, and
+to correct palpable mistakes? In our time, when even the
+contemporaneous evidence of Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, or Jornandes
+is sifted by the most uncompromising scepticism, we must not expect a
+more merciful treatment for the annals of Buddhism. Scholars engaged
+in special researches are too willing to acquiesce in evidence,
+particularly if that evidence has been discovered by their own efforts
+and comes before them with all the charms of novelty. But, in the
+broad daylight of historical criticism, the prestige of such a witness
+as Buddhaghosha soon dwindles away, and his statements as to kings and
+councils eight hundred years before his time are in truth worth no
+more than the stories told of Arthur by Geoffrey of Monmouth, or the
+accounts we read in Livy of the early history of Rome.
+
+One of the most important works of M. Grimblot's collection, and one
+that we hope will soon be published, is a history of Buddhism in
+Ceylon, called the Dipavansa. The only work of the same character
+which has hitherto been known is the Mahavansa, published by the
+Honourable George Turnour. But this is professedly based on the
+Dipavansa, and is probably of a much later date. Mahanama, the
+compiler of the Mahavansa, lived about 500 A. D. His work was
+continued by later chroniclers to the middle of the eighteenth
+century. Though Mahanama wrote towards the end of the fifth century
+after Christ, his own share of the chronicle seems to have ended with
+the year 302 A.D., and a commentary which he wrote on his own
+chronicle likewise breaks off at that period. The exact date of the
+Dipavansa is not yet known; but as it also breaks off with the death
+of Mahasena in 302 A.D., we cannot ascribe to it, for the present, any
+higher authority than could be commanded by a writer of the fourth
+century after Christ.
+
+We now return to Mr. Hodgson. His collections of Sanskrit MSS. had
+been sent, as we saw, to the Asiatic Society of Calcutta from 1824 to
+1839, to the Royal Asiatic Society in London in 1835, and to the
+Societe Asiatique of Paris in 1837. They remained dormant at Calcutta
+and in London. At Paris, however, these Buddhist MSS. fell into the
+hands of Burnouf. Unappalled by their size and tediousness, he set to
+work, and was not long before he discovered their extreme importance.
+After seven years of careful study, Burnouf published, in 1844, his
+'Introduction a l'Histoire du Buddhisme.' It is this work which laid
+the foundation for a systematic study of the religion of Buddha.
+Though acknowledging the great value of the researches made in the
+Buddhist literatures of Tibet, Mongolia, China, and Ceylon, Burnouf
+showed that Buddhism, being of Indian origin, ought to be studied
+first of all in the original Sanskrit documents, preserved in Nepal.
+Though he modestly called his work an Introduction to the History of
+Buddhism, there are few points of importance on which his industry has
+not brought together the most valuable evidence, and his genius shed a
+novel and brilliant light. The death of Burnouf in 1851, put an end to
+a work which, if finished according to the plan sketched out by the
+author in the preface, would have been the most perfect monument of
+Oriental scholarship. A volume published after his death, in 1852,
+contains a translation of one of the canonical books of Nepal, with
+notes and appendices, the latter full of the most valuable information
+on some of the more intricate questions of Buddhism. Though much
+remained to be done, and though a very small breach only had been made
+in the vast pile of Sanskrit MSS. presented by Mr. Hodgson to the
+Asiatic Societies of Paris and London, no one has been bold enough to
+continue what Burnouf left unfinished. The only important additions to
+our knowledge of Buddhism since his death are an edition of the
+Lalita-Vistara or the life of Buddha, prepared by a native, the
+learned Babu Rajendralal Mittra; an edition of the Pali original of
+the Dhammapadam, by Dr. Fausboell, a Dane; and last, not least, the
+excellent translation by M. Stanislas Julien, of the life and travels
+of Hiouen-Thsang. This Chinese pilgrim had visited India from 629 to
+645 A.D., for the purpose of learning Sanskrit, and translating from
+Sanskrit into Chinese some important works on the religion and
+philosophy of the Buddhists; and his account of the geography, the
+social, religious, and political state of India at the beginning of
+the seventh century, is invaluable for studying the practical working
+of that religion at a time when its influence began to decline, and
+when it was soon to be supplanted by modern Brahmanism and
+Mohammedanism.
+
+It was no easy task for M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire to make himself
+acquainted with all these works. The study of Buddhism would almost
+seem to be beyond the power of any single individual, if it required a
+practical acquaintance with all the languages in which the doctrines
+of Buddha have been written down. Burnouf was probably the only man
+who, in addition to his knowledge of Sanskrit, did not shrink from
+acquiring a practical knowledge of Tibetan, Pali, Singhalese, and
+Burmese, in order to prepare himself for such a task. The same scholar
+had shown, however, that though it was impossible for a Tibetan,
+Mongolian, or Chinese scholar to arrive, without a knowledge of
+Sanskrit, at a correct understanding of the doctrines of Buddha, a
+knowledge of Sanskrit was sufficient for entering into their spirit,
+for comprehending their origin and growth in India, and their
+modification in the different countries where they took root in later
+times. Assisted by his familiarity with Sanskrit, and bringing into
+the field, as a new and valuable auxiliary, his intimate acquaintance
+with nearly all the systems of philosophy and religion of both the
+ancient and modern worlds, M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire has succeeded
+in drawing a picture, both lively and correct, of the origin, the
+character, the strong as well as weak points, of the religion of
+Buddha. He has become the first historian of Buddhism. He has not been
+carried away by a temptation which must have been great for one who is
+able to read in the past the lessons for the present or the future. He
+has not used Buddhism either as a bugbear or as a _beau ideal_. He is
+satisfied with stating in his preface that many lessons might be
+learned by modern philosophers from a study of Buddhism, but in the
+body of the work he never perverts the chair of the historian into the
+pulpit of the preacher.
+
+'This book may offer one other advantage,' he writes, 'and I regret to
+say that at present it may seem to come opportunely. It is the
+misfortune of our times that the same doctrines which form the
+foundation of Buddhism meet at the hands of some of our philosophers
+with a favour which they ill deserve. For some years we have seen
+systems arising in which metempsychosis and transmigration are highly
+spoken of, and attempts are made to explain the world and man without
+either a God or a Providence, exactly as Buddha did. A future life is
+refused to the yearnings of mankind, and the immortality of the soul
+is replaced by the immortality of works. God is dethroned, and in His
+place they substitute man, the only being, we are told, in which the
+Infinite becomes conscious of itself. These theories are recommended
+to us sometimes in the name of science, or of history, or philology,
+or even of metaphysics; and though they are neither new nor very
+original, yet they can do much injury to feeble hearts. This is not
+the place to examine these theories, and their authors are both too
+learned and too sincere to deserve to be condemned summarily and
+without discussion. But it is well that they should know by the
+example, too little known, of Buddhism, what becomes of man if he
+depends on himself alone, and if his meditations, misled by a pride of
+which he is hardly conscious, bring him to the precipice where Buddha
+was lost. Besides, I am well aware of all the differences, and I am
+not going to insult our contemporary philosophers by confounding them
+indiscriminately with Buddha, although addressing to both the same
+reproof. I acknowledge willingly all their additional merits, which
+are considerable. But systems of philosophy must always be judged by
+the conclusions to which they lead, whatever road they may follow in
+reaching them; and their conclusions, though obtained by different
+means, are not therefore less objectionable. Buddha arrived at his
+conclusions 2400 years ago. He proclaimed and practised them with an
+energy which is not likely to be surpassed, even if it be equalled. He
+displayed a child-like intrepidity which no one can exceed, nor can it
+be supposed that any system in our days could again acquire so
+powerful an ascendency over the souls of men. It would be useful,
+however, if the authors of these modern systems would just cast a
+glance at the theories and destinies of Buddhism. It is not philosophy
+in the sense in which we understand this great name, nor is it
+religion in the sense of ancient paganism, of Christianity, or of
+Mohammedanism; but it contains elements of all worked up into a
+perfectly independent doctrine which acknowledges nothing in the
+universe but man, and obstinately refuses to recognise anything else,
+though confounding man with nature in the midst of which he lives.
+Hence all those aberrations of Buddhism which ought to be a warning to
+others. Unfortunately, if people rarely profit by their own faults,
+they profit yet more rarely by the faults of others. (Introduction, p.
+vii.)
+
+But though M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire does not write history merely
+for the sake of those masked batteries which French writers have used
+with so much skill at all times, but more particularly during the late
+years of Imperial sway, it is clear, from the remarks just quoted,
+that our author is not satisfied with simply chronicling the dry facts
+of Buddhism, or turning into French the tedious discourses of its
+founder. His work is an animated sketch, giving too little rather than
+too much. It is just the book which was wanted to dispel the erroneous
+notions about Buddhism, which are still current among educated men,
+and to excite an interest which may lead those who are naturally
+frightened by the appalling proportions of Buddhist literature, and
+the uncouth sounds of Buddhist terminology, to a study of the quartos
+of Burnouf, Turnour, and others. To those who may wish for more
+detailed information on Buddhism, than could be given by M. Barthelemy
+Saint-Hilaire, consistently with the plan of his work, we can strongly
+recommend the work of a German writer, 'Die Religion des Buddha,' von
+Koeppen, Berlin, 1857. It is founded on the same materials as the
+French work, but being written by a scholar and for scholars, it
+enters on a more minute examination of all that has been said or
+written on Buddha and Buddhism. In a second volume the same learned
+and industrious student has lately published a history of Buddhism in
+Tibet.
+
+M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire's work is divided into three portions. The
+first contains an account of the origin of Buddhism, a life of Buddha,
+and an examination of Buddhist ethics and metaphysics. In the second,
+he describes the state of Buddhism in India in the seventh century of
+our era, from the materials supplied by the travels of Hiouen-Thsang.
+The third gives a description of Buddhism as actually existing in
+Ceylon, and as lately described by an eye-witness, the Rev. Spence
+Hardy. We shall confine ourselves chiefly to the first part, which
+treats of the life and teaching of Buddha.
+
+M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, following the example of Burnouf, Lassen,
+and Wilson, accepts the date of the Ceylonese era 543 B.C. as the date
+of Buddha's death. Though we cannot enter here into long chronological
+discussions, we must remark, that this date was clearly obtained by
+the Buddhists of Ceylon by calculation, not by historical tradition,
+and that it is easy to point out in that calculation a mistake of
+about seventy years. The more plausible date of Buddha's death is 477
+B.C. For the purposes, however, which M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire had
+in view, this difference is of small importance. We know so little of
+the history of India during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., that
+the stage on which he represents Buddha as preaching and teaching
+would have had very much the same background, the same costume and
+accessories, for the sixth as for the fifth century B.C.
+
+In the life of Buddha, which extends from p. 1 to 79, M. Barthelemy
+Saint-Hilaire follows almost exclusively the Lalita-Vistara. This is
+one of the most popular works of the Buddhists. It forms part of the
+Buddhist canon; and as we know of a translation into Chinese, which M.
+Stanislas Julien ascribes to the year 76 A.D., we may safely refer its
+original composition to an ante-Christian date. It has been published
+in Sanskrit by Babu Rajendralal Mittra, and we owe to M. Foucaux an
+edition of the same work in its Tibetan translation, the first Tibetan
+text printed in Europe. From specimens that we have seen, we should
+think it would be highly desirable to have an accurate translation of
+the Chinese text, such as M. Stanislas Julien alone is able to give
+us.[58] Few people, however, except scholars, would have the patience
+to read this work either in its English or French translation, as may
+be seen from the following specimen, containing the beginning of Babu
+Rajendralal Mittra's version:
+
+     'Om! Salutation to all Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Aryas,
+     _S_ravakas, and Pratyeka Buddhas of all times, past,
+     present, and future; who are adored throughout the farthest
+     limits of the ten quarters of the globe. Thus hath it been
+     heard by me, that once on a time Bhagavat sojourned in the
+     garden of Anathapi_nd_ada, at _G_etavana, in _S_ravasti,
+     accompanied by a venerable body of 12,000 Bhikshukas. There
+     likewise accompanied him 32,000 Bodhisattvas, all linked
+     together by unity of caste, and perfect in the virtues of
+     paramita; who had made their command over Bodhisattva
+     knowledge a pastime, were illumined with the light of
+     Bodhisattva dhara_n_is, and were masters of the dhara_n_is
+     themselves; who were profound in their meditations, all
+     submissive to the lord of Bodhisattvas, and possessed
+     absolute control over samadhi; great in self-command,
+     refulgent in Bodhisattva forbearance, and replete with the
+     Bodhisattva element of perfection. Now then, Bhagavat
+     arriving in the great city of _S_ravasti, sojourned therein,
+     respected, venerated, revered, and adored, by the fourfold
+     congregation; by kings, princes, their counsellors, prime
+     ministers, and followers; by retinues of kshatriyas,
+     brahma_n_as, householders, and ministers; by citizens,
+     foreigners, _s_rama_n_as, brahma_n_as, recluses, and
+     ascetics; and although regaled with all sorts of edibles and
+     sauces, the best that could be prepared by purveyors, and
+     supplied with cleanly mendicant apparel, begging pots,
+     couches, and pain-assuaging medicaments, the benevolent
+     lord, on whom had been showered the prime of gifts and
+     applauses, remained unattached to them all, like water on a
+     lotus leaf; and the report of his greatness as the
+     venerable, the absolute Buddha, the learned and
+     well-behaved, the god of happy exit, the great knower of
+     worlds, the valiant, the all-controlling charioteer, the
+     teacher of gods and men, the quinocular lord Buddha fully
+     manifest, spread far and wide in the world. And Bhagavat,
+     having by his own power acquired all knowledge regarding
+     this world and the next, comprising devas, maras, brahmyas
+     (followers of Brahma), _s_rama_n_as, and brahma_n_as, as
+     subjects, that is both gods and men, sojourned here,
+     imparting instructions in the true religion, and expounding
+     the principles of a brahma_k_arya, full and complete in its
+     nature, holy in its import, pure and immaculate in its
+     character, auspicious is its beginning, auspicious its
+     middle, auspicious its end.'
+
+[Footnote 58: The advantages to be derived from these Chinese
+translations have been pointed out by M. Stanislas Julien. The
+analytical structure of that language imparts to Chinese translations
+the character almost of a gloss; and though we need not follow
+implicitly the interpretations of the Sanskrit originals, adopted by
+the Chinese translators, still their antiquity would naturally impart
+to them a considerable value and interest. The following specimens
+were kindly communicated to me by M. Stanislas Julien:
+
+     'Je ne sais si je vous ai communique autrefois les curieux
+     passages qui suivent: On lit dans le Lotus francais, p. 271,
+     l. 14, C'est que c'est une chose difficile a rencontrer que
+     la naissance d'un bouddha, aussi difficile a rencontrer que
+     la fleur de l'Udumbara, que l'introduction du col d'une
+     tortue dans l'ouverture d'un joug forme par le grand ocean.
+
+     'Il y a en chinois: un bouddha est difficile a rencontrer,
+     comme les fleurs Udumbara et Palaca; et en outre comme si
+     une tortue borgne voulait rencontrer un trou dans un bois
+     flottant (litt. le trou d'un bois flottant).
+
+     'Lotus francais, p. 39, l. 110 (les creatures), enchainees
+     par la concupiscence comme par la queue du Yak,
+     perpetuellement aveuglees en ce monde par les desirs, elles
+     ne cherchent pas le Buddha.
+
+     'Il y a en chinois: Profondement attachees aux cinq
+     desirs--Elles les aiment comme le Yak aime sa queue. Par la
+     concupiscence et l'amour, elles s'aveuglent elles-memes,
+     etc.'
+]
+
+The whole work is written in a similar style, and where fact and
+legend, prose and poetry, sense and nonsense, are so mixed together,
+the plan adopted by M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, of making two lives
+out of one, the one containing all that seems possible, the other what
+seems impossible, would naturally recommend itself. It is not a safe
+process, however, to distil history out of legend by simply straining
+the legendary through the sieve of physical possibility. Many things
+are possible, and may yet be the mere inventions of later writers, and
+many things which sound impossible have been reclaimed as historical,
+after removing from them the thin film of mythological phraseology. We
+believe that the only use which the historian can safely make of the
+Lalita-Vistara, is to employ it, not as evidence of facts which
+actually happened, but in illustration of the popular belief prevalent
+at the time when it was committed to writing. Without therefore
+adopting the division of fact and fiction in the life of Buddha, as
+attempted by M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, we yet believe that in order
+to avoid a repetition of childish absurdities, we shall best consult
+the interest of our readers if we follow his example, and give a short
+and rational abstract of the life of Buddha as handed down by
+tradition, and committed to writing not later than the first century
+B.C.
+
+Buddha, or more correctly, the Buddha,--for Buddha is an appellative
+meaning Enlightened,--was born at Kapilavastu, the capital of a kingdom of
+the same name, situated at the foot of the mountains of Nepal, north of the
+present Oude. His father, the king of Kapilavastu, was of the family of the
+_S_akyas, and belonged to the clan of the Gautamas. His mother was
+Mayadevi, daughter of king Suprabuddha, and need we say that she was as
+beautiful as he was powerful and just? Buddha was therefore by birth of the
+Kshatriya or warrior caste, and he took the name of _S_akya from his
+family, and that of Gautama from his clan, claiming a kind of spiritual
+relationship with the honoured race of Gautama. The name of Buddha, or the
+Buddha, dates from a later period of his life, and so probably does the
+name Siddhartha (he whose objects have been accomplished), though we are
+told that it was given him in his childhood. His mother died seven days
+after his birth, and the father confided the child to the care of his
+deceased wife's sister, who, however, had been his wife even before the
+mother's death. The child grew up a most beautiful and most accomplished
+boy, who soon knew more than his masters could teach him. He refused to
+take part in the games of his playmates, and never felt so happy as when he
+could sit alone, lost in meditation in the deep shadows of the forest. It
+was there that his father found him, when he had thought him lost, and in
+order to prevent the young prince from becoming a dreamer, the king
+determined to marry him at once. When the subject was mentioned by the aged
+ministers to the future heir to the throne, he demanded seven days for
+reflection, and convinced at last that not even marriage could disturb the
+calm of his mind, he allowed the ministers to look out for a princess. The
+princess selected was the beautiful Gopa, the daughter of Da_nd_apa_n_i.
+Though her father objected at first to her marrying a young prince who was
+represented to him as deficient in manliness and intellect, he gladly gave
+his consent when he saw the royal suitor distancing all his rivals both in
+feats of arms and power of mind. Their marriage proved one of the happiest,
+but the prince remained, as he had been before, absorbed in meditation on
+the problems of life and death. 'Nothing is stable on earth,' he used to
+say, 'nothing is real. Life is like the spark produced by the friction of
+wood. It is lighted and is extinguished--we know not whence it came or
+whither it goes. It is like the sound of a lyre, and the wise man asks in
+vain from whence it came and whither it goes. There must be some supreme
+intelligence where we could find rest. If I attained it, I could bring
+light to man; if I were free myself, I could deliver the world.' The king,
+who perceived the melancholy mood of the young prince, tried every thing to
+divert him from his speculations: but all was in vain. Three of the most
+ordinary events that could happen to any man, proved of the utmost
+importance in the career of Buddha. We quote the description of these
+occurrences from M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire:
+
+     'One day when the prince with a large retinue drove through
+     the eastern gate of the city on the way to one of his parks,
+     he met on the road an old man, broken and decrepit. One
+     could see the veins and muscles over the whole of his body,
+     his teeth chattered, he was covered with wrinkles, bald, and
+     hardly able to utter hollow and unmelodious sounds. He was
+     bent on his stick, and all his limbs and joints trembled.
+     "Who is that man?" said the prince to his coachman. "He is
+     small and weak, his flesh and his blood are dried up, his
+     muscles stick to his skin, his head is white, his teeth
+     chatter, his body is wasted away; leaning on his stick he is
+     hardly able to walk, stumbling at every step. Is there
+     something peculiar in his family, or is this the common lot
+     of all created beings?"
+
+     '"Sir," replied the coachman, "that man is sinking under old
+     age, his senses have become obtuse, suffering has destroyed
+     his strength, and he is despised by his relations. He is
+     without support and useless, and people have abandoned him,
+     like a dead tree in a forest. But this is not peculiar to
+     his family. In every creature youth is defeated by old age.
+     Your father, your mother, all your relations, all your
+     friends, will come to the same state; this is the appointed
+     end of all creatures."
+
+     '"Alas!" replied the prince, "are creatures so ignorant, so
+     weak and foolish, as to be proud of the youth by which they
+     are intoxicated, not seeing the old age which awaits them!
+     As for me, I go away. Coachman, turn my chariot quickly.
+     What have I, the future prey of old age,--what have I to do
+     with pleasure?" And the young prince returned to the city
+     without going to his park.
+
+     'Another time the prince drove through the southern gate to
+     his pleasure garden, when he perceived on the road a man
+     suffering from illness, parched with fever, his body wasted,
+     covered with mud, without a friend, without a home, hardly
+     able to breathe, and frightened at the sight of himself and
+     the approach of death. Having questioned his coachman, and
+     received from him the answer which he expected, the young
+     prince said, "Alas! health is but the sport of a dream, and
+     the fear of suffering must take this frightful form. Where
+     is the wise man who, after having seen what he is, could any
+     longer think of joy and pleasure?" The prince turned his
+     chariot and returned to the city.
+
+     'A third time he drove to his pleasure garden through the
+     western gate, when he saw a dead body on the road, lying on
+     a bier, and covered with a cloth. The friends stood about
+     crying, sobbing, tearing their hair, covering their heads
+     with dust, striking their breasts, and uttering wild cries.
+     The prince, again calling his coachman to witness this
+     painful scene, exclaimed, "Oh! woe to youth, which must be
+     destroyed by old age! Woe to health, which must be destroyed
+     by so many diseases! Woe to this life, where a man remains
+     so short a time! If there were no old age, no disease, no
+     death; if these could be made captive for ever!" Then
+     betraying for the first time his intentions, the young
+     prince said, "Let us turn back, I must think how to
+     accomplish deliverance."
+
+     'A last meeting put an end to his hesitation. He drove
+     through the northern gate on the way to his pleasure
+     gardens, when he saw a mendicant who appeared outwardly
+     calm, subdued, looking downwards, wearing with an air of
+     dignity his religious vestment, and carrying an alms-bowl.
+
+     '"Who is this man?" asked the prince.
+
+     '"Sir," replied the coachman, "this man is one of those who
+     are called bhikshus, or mendicants. He has renounced all
+     pleasures, all desires, and leads a life of austerity. He
+     tries to conquer himself. He has become a devotee. Without
+     passion, without envy, he walks about asking for alms."
+
+     '"This is good and well said," replied the prince. "The life
+     of a devotee has always been praised by the wise. It will be
+     my refuge, and the refuge of other creatures; it will lead
+     us to a real life, to happiness and immortality."
+
+     'With these words the young prince turned his chariot and
+     returned to the city.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After having declared to his father and his wife his intention of
+retiring from the world, Buddha left his palace one night when all the
+guards that were to have watched him, were asleep. After travelling
+the whole night, he gave his horse and his ornaments to his groom, and
+sent him back to Kapilavastu. 'A monument,' remarks the author of the
+Lalita-Vistara (p. 270), 'is still to be seen on the spot where the
+coachman turned back,' Hiouen-Thsang (II. 330) saw the same monument
+at the edge of a large forest, on his road to Ku_s_inagara, a city now
+in ruins, and situated about fifty miles E.S.E. from Gorakpur.[59]
+
+[Footnote 59: The geography of India at the time of Buddha, and later
+at the time of Fahian and Hiouen-Thsang, has been admirably treated by
+M. L. Vivien de Saint-Martin, in his 'Memoire Analytique sur la Carte
+de l'Asie Centrale et de l'Inde,' in the third volume of M. Stanislas
+Julien's 'Pelerins Bouddhistes.']
+
+Buddha first went to Vai_s_ali, and became the pupil of a famous
+Brahman, who had gathered round him 300 disciples. Having learnt all
+that the Brahman could teach him, Buddha went away disappointed. He
+had not found the road to salvation. He then tried another Brahman at
+Ra_g_ag_r_iha, the capital of Magadha or Behar, who had 700
+disciples, and there too he looked in vain for the means of
+deliverance. He left him, followed by five of his fellow-students, and
+for six years retired into solitude, near a village named Uruvilva,
+subjecting himself to the most severe penances, previous to his
+appearing in the world as a teacher. At the end of this period,
+however, he arrived at the conviction that asceticism, far from giving
+peace of mind and preparing the way to salvation, was a snare and a
+stumbling-block in the way of truth. He gave up his exercises, and was
+at once deserted as an apostate by his five disciples. Left to himself
+he now began to elaborate his own system. He had learnt that neither
+the doctrines nor the austerities of the Brahmans were of any avail
+for accomplishing the deliverance of man, and freeing him from the
+fear of old age, disease, and death. After long meditations, and
+ecstatic visions, he at last imagined that he had arrived at that true
+knowledge which discloses the cause, and thereby destroys the fear, of
+all the changes inherent in life. It was from the moment when he
+arrived at this knowledge, that he claimed the name of Buddha, the
+Enlightened. At that moment we may truly say that the fate of millions
+of millions of human beings trembled in the balance. Buddha hesitated
+for a time whether he should keep his knowledge to himself, or
+communicate it to the world. Compassion for the sufferings of man
+prevailed, and the young prince became the founder of a religion
+which, after more than 2000 years, is still professed by 455,000,000
+of human beings.[60]
+
+[Footnote 60: Though truth is not settled by majorities, it would be
+interesting to know which religion, counts at the present moment the
+largest numbers of believers. Berghaus, in his 'Physical Atlas,' gives
+the following division of the human race according to religion:
+
+Buddhists            31.2 per cent.
+Christians           30.7    "
+Mohammedans          15.7    "
+Brahmanists          13.4    "
+Heathens              8.7    "
+Jews                  0.3    "
+
+As Berghaus does not distinguish the Buddhists in China from the
+followers of Confucius and Lao-tse, the first place on the scale
+belongs really to Christianity. It is difficult in China to say to
+what religion a man belongs, as the same person may profess two or
+three. The emperor himself, after sacrificing according to the ritual
+of Confucius, visits a Tao-sse temple, and afterwards bows before an
+image of Fo in a Buddhist chapel. ('Melanges Asiatiques de St.
+Petersbourg,' vol. ii. p. 374.)]
+
+The further history of the new teacher is very simple. He proceeded to
+Benares, which at all times was the principal seat of learning in
+India, and the first converts he made were the five fellow-students
+who had left him when he threw off the yoke of the Brahmanical
+observances. Many others followed; but as the Lalita-Vistara breaks
+off at Buddha's arrival at Benares, we have no further consecutive
+account of the rapid progress of his doctrine. From what we can gather
+from scattered notices in the Buddhist canon, he was invited by the
+king of Magadha, Bimbisara, to his capital, Ra_g_ag_r_iha. Many of his
+lectures are represented as having been delivered at the monastery of
+Kalantaka, with which the king or some rich merchant had presented
+him; others on the Vulture Peak, one of the five hills that surrounded
+the ancient capital.
+
+Three of his most famous disciples, _S_ariputra, Katyayana, and
+Maudgalyayana, joined him during his stay in Magadha, where he
+enjoyed for many years the friendship of the king. That king was
+afterwards assassinated by his son, A_g_ata_s_atru, and then we hear
+of Buddha as settled for a time at _S_ravasti, north of the Ganges,
+where Anathapi_nd_ada, a rich merchant, had offered him and his
+disciples a magnificent building for their residence. Most of Buddha's
+lectures or sermons were delivered at _S_ravasti, the capital of
+Ko_s_ala; and the king of Ko_s_ala himself, Prasena_g_it, became a
+convert to his doctrine. After an absence of twelve years we are told
+that Buddha visited his father at Kapilavastu, on which occasion he
+performed several miracles, and converted all the _S_akyas to his
+faith. His own wife became one of his followers, and, with his aunt,
+offers the first instance of female Buddhist devotees in India. We
+have fuller particulars again of the last days of Buddha's life. He
+had attained the good age of three score and ten, and had been on a
+visit to Ra_g_ag_r_iha, where the king, A_g_ata_s_atru, the former
+enemy of Buddha, and the assassin of his own father, had joined the
+congregation, after making a public confession of his crimes. On his
+return he was followed by a large number of disciples, and when on the
+point of crossing the Ganges, he stood on a square stone, and turning
+his eyes back towards Ra_g_ag_r_iha, he said, full of emotion, 'This
+is the last time that I see that city.' He likewise visited Vai_s_ali,
+and after taking leave of it, he had nearly reached the city of
+Ku_s_inagara, when his vital strength began to fail. He halted in a
+forest, and while sitting under a sal tree, he gave up the ghost, or,
+as a Buddhist would say, entered into Nirva_n_a.
+
+This is the simple story of Buddha's life. It reads much better in
+the eloquent pages of M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, than in the turgid
+language of the Buddhists. If a critical historian, with the materials
+we possess, entered at all on the process of separating truth from
+falsehood, he would probably cut off much of what our biographer has
+left. Professor Wilson, in his Essay on Buddha and Buddhism, considers
+it doubtful whether any such person as Buddha ever actually existed.
+He dwells on the fact that there are at least twenty different dates
+assigned to his birth, varying from 2420 to 453 B.C. He points out
+that the clan of the _S_akyas is never mentioned by early Hindu
+writers, and he lays much stress on the fact that most of the proper
+names of the persons connected with Buddha suggest an allegorical
+signification. The name of his father means, he whose food is pure;
+that of his mother signifies illusion; his own secular appellation,
+Siddhartha, he by whom the end is accomplished. Buddha itself means,
+the Enlightened, or, as Professor Wilson translates it less
+accurately, he by whom all is known. The same distinguished scholar
+goes even further, and maintaining that Kapilavastu, the birthplace of
+Buddha, has no place in the geography of the Hindus, suggests that it
+may be rendered, the substance of Kapila; intimating, in fact, the
+Sankhya philosophy, the doctrine of Kapila Muni, upon which the
+fundamental elements of Buddhism, the eternity of matter, the
+principles of things, and the final extinction, are supposed to be
+planned. 'It seems not impossible,' he continues, 'that _S_akya Muni
+is an unreal being, and that all that is related of him is as much a
+fiction, as is that of his preceding migrations, and the miracles that
+attended his birth, his life, and his departure.' This is going far
+beyond Niebuhr, far even beyond Strauss. If an allegorical name had
+been invented for the father of Buddha, one more appropriate than
+'Clean-food' might surely have been found. His wife is not the only
+queen known by the name of Maya, Mayadevi, or Mayavati. Why, if these
+names were invented, should his wife have been allowed to keep the
+prosaic name of Gopa (cowherdess), and his father-in-law, that of
+Da_nd_apa_n_i, 'Stick-hand?' As to his own name, Siddhartha, the
+Tibetans maintain that it was given him by his parent, whose wish
+(artha) had been fulfilled (siddha), as we hear of Desires and
+Dieu-donnes in French. One of the ministers of Da_s_aratha had the
+same name. It is possible also that Buddha himself assumed it in after
+life, as was the case with many of the Roman surnames. As to the name
+of Buddha, no one ever maintained that it was more than a title, the
+Enlightened, changed from an appellative into a proper name, just like
+the name of Christos, the Anointed, or Mohammed, the Expected.[61]
+Kapilavastu would be a most extraordinary compound to express 'the
+substance of the Sankhya philosophy.' But all doubt on the subject is
+removed by the fact that both Fahian in the fifth, and Hiouen-Thsang
+in the seventh centuries, visited the real ruins of that city.
+
+[Footnote 61: See Sprenger, 'Das Leben des Mohammed,' 1861, vol. i. p.
+155.]
+
+Making every possible allowance for the accumulation of fiction which
+is sure to gather round the life of the founder of every great
+religion, we may be satisfied that Buddhism, which changed the aspect
+not only of India, but of nearly the whole of Asia, had a real
+founder; that he was not a Brahman by birth, but belonged to the
+second or royal caste; that being of a meditative turn of mind, and
+deeply impressed with the frailty of all created things, he became a
+recluse, and sought for light and comfort in the different systems of
+Brahman philosophy and theology. Dissatisfied with the artificial
+systems of their priests and philosophers, convinced of the
+uselessness, nay of the pernicious influence, of their ceremonial
+practices and bodily penances, shocked, too, by their worldliness and
+pharisaical conceit, which made the priesthood the exclusive property
+of one caste and rendered every sincere approach of man to his Creator
+impossible without their intervention, Buddha must have produced at
+once a powerful impression on the people at large, when breaking
+through all the established rules of caste, he assumed the privileges
+of a Brahman, and throwing away the splendour of his royal position,
+travelled about as a beggar, not shrinking from the defiling contact
+of sinners and publicans. Though when we now speak of Buddhism, we
+think chiefly of its doctrines, the reform of Buddha had originally
+much more of a social than of a religious character. Buddha swept away
+the web with which the Brahmans had encircled the whole of India.
+Beginning as the destroyer of an old, he became the founder of a new
+religion. We can hardly understand how any nation could have lived
+under a system like that of the Brahmanic hierarchy, which coiled
+itself round every public and private act, and would have rendered
+life intolerable to any who had forfeited the favour of the priests.
+That system was attacked by Buddha. Buddha might have taught whatever
+philosophy he pleased, and we should hardly have heard his name. The
+people would not have minded him, and his system would only have been
+a drop in the ocean of philosophical speculation, by which India was
+deluged at all times. But when a young prince assembled round him
+people of all castes, of all ranks, when he defeated the Brahmans in
+public disputations, when he declared the sacrifices by which they
+made their living not only useless but sinful, when instead of severe
+penance or excommunications inflicted by the Brahmans sometimes for
+the most trifling offences, he only required public confession of sin
+and a promise to sin no more: when the charitable gifts hitherto
+monopolised by the Brahmans, began to flow into new channels,
+supporting hundreds and thousands of Buddhist mendicants, more had
+been achieved than probably Buddha himself had ever dreamt of; and he
+whose meditations had been how to deliver the soul of man from misery
+and the fear of death, had delivered the people of India from a
+degrading thraldom and from priestly tyranny.
+
+The most important element of the Buddhist reform has always been its
+social and moral code, not its metaphysical theories. That moral code,
+taken by itself, is one of the most perfect which the world has ever
+known. On this point all testimonies from hostile and from friendly
+quarters agree. Spence Hardy, a Wesleyan Missionary, speaking of the
+Dhamma Padam, or the 'Footsteps of the Law,' admits that a collection
+might be made from the precepts of this work, which in the purity of
+its ethics could hardly be equalled from any other heathen author. M.
+Laboulaye, one of the most distinguished members of the French
+Academy, remarks in the 'Debats' of the 4th of April, 1853: 'It is
+difficult to comprehend how men not assisted by revelation could have
+soared so high, and approached so near to the truth.' Besides the five
+great commandments not to kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery,
+not to lie, not to get drunk, every shade of vice, hypocrisy, anger,
+pride, suspicion, greediness, gossiping, cruelty to animals, is
+guarded against by special precepts. Among the virtues recommended, we
+find not only reverence of parents, care for children, submission to
+authority, gratitude, moderation in time of prosperity, submission in
+time of trial, equanimity at all times, but virtues unknown in any
+heathen system of morality, such as the duty of forgiving insults and
+not rewarding evil with evil. All virtues, we are told, spring from
+Maitri, and this Maitri can only be translated by charity and love. 'I
+do not hesitate,' says Burnouf,[62] 'to translate by charity the word
+Maitri; it does not express friendship or the feeling of particular
+affection which a man has for one or more of his fellow-creatures, but
+that universal feeling which inspires us with good-will towards all
+men and constant willingness to help them.' We add one more testimony
+from the work of M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire:
+
+     'Je n'hesite pas a ajouter,' he writes, 'que, sauf le Christ
+     tout seul, il n'est point, parmi les fondateurs de religion,
+     de figure plus pure ni plus touchante que celle du Bouddha.
+     Sa vie n'a point de tache. Son constant heroisme egale sa
+     conviction; et si la theorie qu'il preconise est fausse, les
+     exemples personnels qu'il donne sont irreprochables. Il est
+     le modele acheve de toutes les vertus qu'il preche; son
+     abnegation, sa charite son inalterable douceur, ne se
+     dementent point un seul instant; il abandonne a vingt-neuf
+     ans la cour du roi son pere pour se faire religieux et
+     mendiant; il prepare silencieusement sa doctrine par six
+     annees de retraite et de meditation; il la propage par la
+     seule puissance de la parole et de la persuasion, pendant
+     plus d'un demi-siecle; et quand il meurt entre les bras de
+     ses disciples, c'est avec la serenite d'un sage qui a
+     pratique le bien toute sa vie, et qui est assure d'avoir
+     trouve le vrai.' (Page v.)
+
+[Footnote 62: Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 300.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There still remain, no doubt, some blurred and doubtful pages in the
+history of the prince of Kapilavastu; but we have only to look at the
+works on ancient philosophy and religion published some thirty years
+ago, in order to perceive the immense progress that has been made in
+establishing the true historical character of the founder of Buddhism.
+There was a time when Buddha was identified with Christ. The
+Manichaeans were actually forced to abjure their belief that Buddha,
+Christ, and Mani were one and the same person.[63] But we are thinking
+rather of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when elaborate
+books were written, in order to prove that Buddha had been in reality
+the Thoth of the Egyptians, that he was Mercury, or Wodan, or
+Zoroaster, or Pythagoras. Even Sir W. Jones, as we saw, identified
+Buddha, first with Odin, and afterwards with Shishak, 'who either in
+person or by a colony from Egypt imported into India the mild heresy
+of the ancient Bauddhas.' At present we know that neither Egypt nor
+the Walhalla of Germany, neither Greece nor Persia, could have
+produced either the man himself or his doctrine. He is the offspring
+of India in mind and soul. His doctrine, by the very antagonism in
+which it stands to the old system of Brahmanism, shows that it could
+not have sprung up in any country except India. The ancient history of
+Brahmanism leads on to Buddhism, with the same necessity with which
+mediaeval Romanism led to Protestantism. Though the date of Buddha is
+still liable to small chronological oscillations, his place in the
+intellectual annals of India is henceforth definitely marked: Buddhism
+became the state religion of India at the time of A_s_oka; and
+A_s_oka, the Buddhist Constantine, was the grandson of _K_andragupta,
+the contemporary of Seleucus Nicator. The system of the Brahmans had
+run its course. Their ascendency, at first purely intellectual and
+religious, had gradually assumed a political character. By means of
+the system of caste this influence pervaded the whole social fabric,
+not as a vivifying leaven, but as a deadly poison. Their increasing
+power and self-confidence are clearly exhibited in the successive
+periods of their ancient literature. It begins with the simple hymns
+of the Veda. These are followed by the tracts, known by the name of
+Brahma_n_as, in which a complete system of theology is elaborated, and
+claims advanced in favour of the Brahmans, such as were seldom
+conceded to any hierarchy. The third period in the history of their
+ancient literature is marked by their Sutras or Aphorisms, curt and
+dry formularies, showing the Brahmans in secure possession of all
+their claims. Such privileges as they then enjoyed are never enjoyed
+for any length of time. It was impossible for anybody to move or to
+assert his freedom of thought and action without finding himself
+impeded on all sides by the web of the Brahmanic law; nor was there
+anything in their religion to satisfy the natural yearnings of the
+human heart after spiritual comfort. What was felt by Buddha, had been
+felt more or less intensely by thousands; and this was the secret of
+his success. That success was accelerated, however, by political
+events. _K_andragupta had conquered the throne of Magadha, and
+acquired his supremacy in India in defiance of the Brahmanic law. He
+was of low origin, a mere adventurer, and by his accession to the
+throne an important mesh had been broken in the intricate system of
+caste. Neither he nor his successors could count on the support of the
+Brahmans, and it is but natural that his grandson, A_s_oka, should
+have been driven to seek support from the sect founded by Buddha.
+Buddha, by giving up his royal station, had broken the law of caste as
+much as _K_andragupta by usurping it. His school, though it had
+probably escaped open persecution until it rose to political
+importance, could never have been on friendly terms with the Brahmans
+of the old school. The _parvenu_ on the throne saw his natural allies
+in the followers of Buddha, and the mendicants, who by their
+unostentatious behaviour had won golden opinions among the lower and
+middle classes, were suddenly raised to an importance little dreamt of
+by their founder. Those who see in Buddhism, not a social but chiefly
+a religious and philosophical reform, have been deceived by the later
+Buddhist literature, and particularly by the controversies between
+Buddhists and Brahmans, which in later times led to the total
+expulsion of the former from India, and to the political
+re-establishment of Brahmanism. These, no doubt, turn chiefly on
+philosophical problems, and are of the most abstruse and intricate
+character. But such was not the teaching of Buddha. If we may judge
+from 'the four verities,' which Buddha inculcated from the first day
+that he entered on his career as a teacher, his philosophy of life was
+very simple. He proclaims that there was nothing but sorrow in life;
+that sorrow is produced by our affections, that our affections must be
+destroyed in order to destroy the root of sorrow, and that he could
+teach mankind how to eradicate all the affections, all passions, all
+desires. Such doctrines were intelligible; and considering that Buddha
+received people of all castes, who after renouncing the world and
+assuming their yellow robes, were sure of finding a livelihood from
+the charitable gifts of the people, it is not surprising that the
+number of his followers should have grown so rapidly. If Buddha really
+taught the metaphysical doctrines which are ascribed to him by
+subsequent writers--and this is a point which it is impossible to
+settle--not one in a thousand among his followers would have been
+capable of appreciating those speculations. They must have been
+reserved for a few of his disciples, and they would never have formed
+the nucleus for a popular religion.
+
+[Footnote 63: Neander, 'History of the Church,' vol. i. p. 817:
+[Greek: Ton Zaradan kai Boudan kai ton Christon kai ton Manichaion
+hena kai ton auton einai.]]
+
+Nearly all who have written on Buddhism, and M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire
+among the rest, have endeavoured to show that these metaphysical doctrines
+of Buddha were borrowed from the earlier systems of Brahmanic philosophy,
+and more particularly from the Sankhya system. The reputed founder of that
+system is Kapila, and we saw before how Professor Wilson actually changed
+the name of Kapilavastu, the birthplace of Buddha, into a mere
+allegory:--Kapilavastu meaning, according to him, the substance of Kapila
+or of the Sankhya philosophy. This is not all. Mr. Spence Hardy (p. 132)
+quotes a legend in which it is said that Buddha was in a former existence
+the ascetic Kapila, that the _S_akya princes came to his hermitage, and
+that he pointed out to them the proper place for founding a new city, which
+city was named after him Kapilavastu. But we have looked in vain for any
+definite similarities between the system of Kapila, as known to us in the
+Sankhya-sutras, and the Abhidharma, or the metaphysics of the Buddhists.
+Such similarities would be invaluable. They would probably enable us to
+decide whether Buddha borrowed from Kapila or Kapila from Buddha, and thus
+determine the real chronology of the philosophical literature of India, as
+either prior or subsequent to the Buddhist era. There are certain notions
+which Buddha shares in common not only with Kapila, but with every Hindu
+philosopher. The idea of transmigration, the belief in the continuing
+effects of our good and bad actions, extending from our former to our
+present and from our present to our future lives, the sense that life is a
+dream or a burden, the admission of the uselessness of religious
+observances after the attainment of the highest knowledge, all these
+belong, so to say, to the national philosophy of India. We meet with these
+ideas everywhere, in the poetry, the philosophy, the religion of the
+Hindus. They cannot be claimed as the exclusive property of any system in
+particular. But if we look for more special coincidences between Buddha's
+doctrines and those of Kapila or other Indian philosophers, we look in
+vain. At first it might seem as if the very first aphorism of Kapila,
+namely, 'the complete cessation of pain, which is of three kinds, is the
+highest aim of man,' was merely a philosophical paraphrase of the events
+which, as we saw, determined Buddha to renounce the world in search of the
+true road to salvation. But though the starting-point of Kapila and Buddha
+is the same, a keen sense of human misery and a yearning after a better
+state, their roads diverge so completely and their goals are so far apart,
+that it is difficult to understand how, almost by common consent, Buddha is
+supposed either to have followed in the footsteps of Kapila, or to have
+changed Kapila's philosophy into a religion. Some scholars imagine that
+there was a more simple and primitive philosophy which was taught by
+Kapila, and that the Sutras which are now ascribed to him, are of later
+date. It is impossible either to prove or to disprove such a view. At
+present we know Kapila's philosophy from his Sutras only,[64] and these
+Sutras seem to us posterior, not anterior, to Buddha. Though the name of
+Buddha is not mentioned in the Sutras, his doctrines are clearly alluded to
+and controverted in several parts of them.
+
+[Footnote 64: Of Kapila's Sutras, together with the commentary of
+Vi_g_nana Bhikshu, a new edition was published in 1856, by Dr.
+Fitz-Edward Hall, in the 'Bibliotheca Indica.' An excellent
+translation of the Aphorisms, with illustrative extracts from the
+commentaries, was printed for the use of the Benares College, by Dr.
+Ballantyne.]
+
+It has been said that Buddha and Kapila were both atheists, and that
+Buddha borrowed his atheism from Kapila. But atheism is an indefinite
+term, and may mean very different things. In one sense every Indian
+philosopher was an atheist, for they all perceived that the gods of
+the populace could not claim the attributes that belong to a Supreme
+Being. But all the important philosophical systems of the Brahmans
+admit, in some form or other, the existence of an Absolute and Supreme
+Being, the source of all that exists, or seems to exist. Kapila, when
+accused of atheism, is not accused of denying the existence of an
+Absolute Being. He is accused of denying the existence of I_s_vara,
+which in general means the Lord, but which in the passage where it
+occurs, refers to the I_s_vara of the Yogins, or mystic philosophers.
+They maintained that in an ecstatic state man possesses the power of
+seeing God face to face, and they wished to have this ecstatic
+intuition included under the head of sensuous perceptions. To this
+Kapila demurred. You have not proved the existence of your Lord, he
+says, and therefore I see no reason why I should alter my definition
+of sensuous perception in order to accommodate your ecstatic visions.
+The commentator narrates that this strong language was used by Kapila
+in order to silence the wild talk of the Mystics, and that, though he
+taunted his adversaries with having failed to prove the existence of
+their Lord, he himself did not deny the existence of a Supreme Being.
+Kapila, however, went further. He endeavoured to show that all the
+attributes which the Mystics ascribed to their Lord are inappropriate.
+He used arguments very similar to those which have lately been used
+with such ability by a distinguished Bampton Lecturer. The supreme
+lord of the Mystics, Kapila argued, is either absolute and
+unconditioned (mukta), or he is bound and conditioned (baddha). If he
+is absolute and unconditioned, he cannot enter into the condition of a
+Creator; he would have no desires which could instigate him to create.
+If, on the contrary, he is represented as active, and entering on the
+work of creation, he would no longer be the absolute and unchangeable
+Being which we are asked to believe in. Kapila, like the preacher of
+our own days, was accused of paving the road to atheism, but his
+philosophy was nevertheless admitted as orthodox, because, in addition
+to sensuous perception and inductive reasoning, Kapila professed
+emphatically his belief in revelation, i. e. in the Veda, and allowed
+to it a place among the recognised instruments of knowledge. Buddha
+refused to allow to the Vedas any independent authority whatever, and
+this constituted the fundamental difference between the two
+philosophers.
+
+Whether Kapila's philosophy was really in accordance with the spirit
+of the Veda, is quite a different question. No philosophy, at least
+nothing like a definite system, is to be found in the sacred hymns of
+the Brahmans; and though the Vedanta philosophy does less violence to
+the passages which it quotes from the Veda, the authors of the Veda
+would have been as much surprised at the consequences deduced from
+their words by the Vedantin, as by the strange meaning attributed to
+them by Kapila. The Vedanta philosopher, like Kapila, would deny the
+existence of a Creator in the usual sense of the word. He explained
+the universe as an emanation from Brahman, which is all in all. Kapila
+admitted two principles, an absolute Spirit and Nature, and he looked
+upon the universe as produced by a reflection of Nature thrown on the
+mirror of the absolute Spirit. Both systems seem to regard creation,
+or the created world, as a misfortune, as an unfortunate accident. But
+they maintain that its effects can be neutralised, and that
+emancipation from the bonds of earthly existence is possible by means
+of philosophy. The Vedanta philosopher imagines he is free when he has
+arrived at the knowledge that nothing exists but Brahman; that all
+phenomena are merely the result of ignorance; that after the
+destruction of that ignorance, and of its effects, all is merged again
+in Brahman, the true source of being, thought, and happiness. Kapila
+taught that the spirit became free from all mundane fetters as soon as
+it perceived that all phenomena were only passing reflections produced
+by nature upon the spirit, and as soon as it was able to shut its eyes
+to those illusory visions. Both systems therefore, and the same
+applies to all the other philosophical systems of the Brahmans,
+admitted an absolute or self-existing Being as the cause of all that
+exists or seems to exist. And here lies the specific difference
+between Kapila and Buddha. Buddha, like Kapila, maintained that this
+world had no absolute reality, that it was a snare and an illusion.
+The words, 'All is perishable, all is miserable, all is void,' must
+frequently have passed his lips. But we cannot call things unreal
+unless we have a conception of something that is real. Where, then,
+did Buddha find a reality in comparison with which this world might be
+called unreal? What remedy did he propose as an emancipation from the
+sufferings of this life? Difficult as it seems to us to conceive it,
+Buddha admits of no real cause of this unreal world. He denies the
+existence not only of a Creator, but of any Absolute Being. According
+to the metaphysical tenets, if not of Buddha himself, at least of his
+sect, there is no reality anywhere, neither in the past nor in the
+future. True wisdom consists in perceiving the nothingness of all
+things, and in a desire to become nothing, to be blown out, to enter
+into Nirva_n_a. Emancipation is obtained by total extinction, not by
+absorption in Brahman, or by a recovery of the soul's true estate. If
+to be is misery, not to be must be felicity, and this felicity is the
+highest reward which Buddha promised to his disciples. In reading the
+Aphorisms of Kapila, it is difficult not to see in his remarks on
+those who maintain that all is void, covert attacks on Buddha and his
+followers. In one place (I. 43) Kapila argues that if people believed
+in the reality of thought only, and denied the reality of external
+objects, they would soon be driven to admit that nothing at all
+exists, because we perceive our thoughts in the same manner as we
+perceive external objects. This naturally leads him to an examination
+of that extreme doctrine, according to which all that we perceive is
+void, and all is supposed to perish, because it is the nature of
+things that they should perish. Kapila remarks in reference to this
+view (I. 45), that it is a mere assertion of persons who are 'not
+enlightened,' in Sanskrit a-buddha, a sarcastic expression in which it
+is very difficult not to see an allusion to Buddha, or to those who
+claimed for him the title of the Enlightened. Kapila then proceeds to
+give the best answer that could be given to those who taught that
+complete annihilation must be the highest aim of man, as the only
+means of a complete cessation of suffering. 'It is not so,' he says,
+'for if people wish to be free from suffering, it is they themselves
+who wish to be free, just as in this life it is they themselves who
+wish to enjoy happiness. There must be a permanent soul in order to
+satisfy the yearnings of the human heart, and if you deny that soul,
+you have no right to speak of the highest aim--of man.'
+
+Whether the belief in this kind of Nirva_n_a, i. e. in a total
+extinction of being, personality, and consciousness, was at any time
+shared by the large masses of the people, is difficult either to
+assert or deny. We know nothing in ancient times of the religious
+convictions of the millions. We only know what a few leading spirits
+believed, or professed to believe. That certain individuals should
+have spoken and written of total extinction as the highest aim of man,
+is intelligible. Job cursed the day on which he was born, and Solomon
+praised the 'dead which are already dead, more than the living which
+are yet alive,' 'Yea, better is he than both they,' he said, 'which
+hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under
+the sun,' Voltaire said in his own flippant way, 'On aime la vie, mais
+le neant ne laisse pas d'avoir du bon;' and a modern German
+philosopher, who has found much favour with those who profess to
+despise Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, writes, 'Considered in its
+objective value, it is more than doubtful that life is preferable to
+the Nothing. I should say even, that if experience and reflection
+could lift up their voices they would recommend to us the Nothing. We
+are what ought not to be, and we shall therefore cease to be.' Under
+peculiar circumstances, in the agonies of despair, or under the
+gathering clouds of madness, such language is intelligible; but to
+believe, as we are asked to believe, that one half of mankind had
+yearned for total annihilation, would be tantamount to a belief that
+there is a difference in kind between man and man. Buddhist
+philosophers, no doubt, held this doctrine, and it cannot be denied
+that it found a place in the Buddhist canon. But even among the
+different schools of Buddhist philosophers, very different views are
+adopted as to the true meaning of Nirva_n_a, and with the modern
+Buddhists of Burmah, Nigban, as they call it, is defined simply as
+freedom from old age, disease, and death. We do not find fault with M.
+Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire for having so emphatically pressed the charge
+of nihilism against Buddha himself. In one portion of the Buddhist
+canon the most extreme views of nihilism are put into his mouth. All
+we can say is that that canon is later than Buddha, and that in the
+same canon[65] the founder of Buddhism, after having entered into
+Nirva_n_a, is still spoken of as living, nay, as showing himself to
+those who believe in him. Buddha, who denied the existence, or at
+least the divine nature, of the gods worshipped by the Brahmans, was
+raised himself to the rank of a deity by some of his followers (the
+Ai_s_varikas), and we need not wonder therefore if his Nirva_n_a too
+was gradually changed into an Elysian field. And finally, if we may
+argue from human nature, such as we find it at all times and in all
+countries, we confess that we cannot bring ourselves to believe that
+the reformer of India, the teacher of so perfect a code of morality,
+the young prince who gave up all he had in order to help those whom
+he saw afflicted in mind, body, or estate, should have cared much
+about speculations which he knew would either be misunderstood, or not
+understood at all, by those whom he wished to benefit; that he should
+have thrown away one of the most powerful weapons in the hands of
+every religious teacher, the belief in a future life, and should not
+have seen, that if this life was sooner or later to end in nothing, it
+was hardly worth the trouble which he took himself, or the sacrifices
+which he imposed on his disciples.
+
+_April, 1862._
+
+[Footnote 65: 'L'enfant egare,' par Ph. Ed. Foucaux, p. 19.]
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+BUDDHIST PILGRIMS.[66]
+
+
+M. Stanislas Julien has commenced the publication of a work entitled,
+'Voyages des Pelerins Bouddhistes.' The first volume, published in the
+year 1853, contains the biography of Hiouen-thsang, who, in the middle
+of the seventh century A.D., travelled from China through Central Asia
+to India. The second, which has just reached us, gives us the first
+portion of Hiouen-thsang's own diary.
+
+[Footnote 66: 'Voyages des Pelerins Bouddhistes.' Vol. I. Histoire de
+la Vie de Hiouen-thsang, et de ses Voyages dans l'Inde, depuis l'an
+629 jusqu'en 645, par Hoeili et Yen-thsong; traduite du Chinois par
+Stanislas Julien.
+
+Vol. II. Memoires sur les Contrees Occidentales, traduits du Sanscrit
+en Chinois, en l'an 648, par Hiouen-thsang, et du Chinois en Francais,
+pas Stanislas Julien. Paris, 1853-1857: B. Duprat. London and
+Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate.]
+
+There are not many books of travel which can be compared to these
+volumes. Hiouen-thsang passed through countries which few had visited
+before him. He describes parts of the world which no one has explored
+since, and where even our modern maps contain hardly more than the
+ingenious conjectures of Alexander von Humboldt. His observations are
+minute; his geographical, statistical, and historical remarks most
+accurate and trustworthy. The chief object of his travels was to study
+the religion of Buddha, the great reformer of India. Some Chinese
+pilgrims visited India before, several after, his time. Hiouen-thsang,
+however, is considered by the Chinese themselves as the most
+distinguished of these pilgrims, and M. Stanislas Julien has rightly
+assigned to him the first place in his collection.
+
+In order to understand what Hiouen-thsang was, and to appreciate his
+life and his labours, we must first cast a glance at the history of a
+religion which, however unattractive and even mischievous it may
+appear to ourselves, inspired her votary with the true spirit of
+devotion and self-sacrifice. That religion has now existed for exactly
+2,400 years. To millions and millions of human beings it has been the
+only preparation for a higher life placed within their reach. And even
+at the present day it counts among the hordes of Asia a more numerous
+array of believers than any other faith, not excluding Mohammedanism
+or Christianity. The religion of Buddha took its origin in India about
+the middle of the sixth century B.C., but it did not assume its
+political importance till about the time of Alexander's invasion. We
+know little, therefore, of its first origin and spreading, because the
+canonical works on which we must chiefly rely for information belong
+to a much later period, and are strongly tinged with a legendary
+character. The very existence of such a being as Buddha, the son of
+_S_uddhodana, king of Kapilavastu, has been doubted. But what can
+never be doubted is this, that Buddhism, such as we find it in
+Russia[67] and Sweden[68] on the very threshold of European
+civilisation, in the north of Asia, in Mongolia, Tatary, China, Tibet,
+Nepal, Siam, Burmah, and Ceylon, had its origin in India. Doctrines
+similar to those of Buddha existed in that country long before his
+time. We can trace them like meandering roots below the surface long
+before we reach the point where the roots strike up into a stem, and
+the stem branches off again into fruit-bearing branches. What was
+original and new in Buddha was his changing a philosophical system
+into a practical doctrine; his taking the wisdom of the few, and
+coining as much of it as he thought genuine for the benefit of the
+many; his breaking with the traditional formalities of the past, and
+proclaiming for the first time, in spite of castes and creeds, the
+equality of the rich and the poor, the foolish and the wise, the
+'twice-born' and the outcast. Buddhism, as a religion and as a
+political fact, was a reaction against Brahmanism, though it retained
+much of that more primitive form of faith and worship. Buddhism, in
+its historical growth, presupposes Brahmanism, and, however hostile
+the mutual relation of these two religions may have been at different
+periods of Indian history, it can be shown, without much difficulty,
+that the latter was but a natural consequence of the former.
+
+The ancient religion of the Aryan inhabitants of India had started,
+like the religion of the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans, Slaves, and
+Celts, with a simple and intelligible mythological phraseology. In the
+Veda--for there is but one real Veda--the names of all the so-called
+gods or Devas betray their original physical character and meaning
+without disguise. The fire was praised and invoked by the name of
+"Agni" (_ignis_); the earth by the name of "P_r_ithvi" (the broad);
+the sky by the name of "Dyu" (Jupiter), and afterwards of "Indra;" the
+firmament and the waters by the name of "Varu_n_a," or [Greek:
+Ovravos]. The sun was invoked by many names, such as "Surya,"
+"Savit_r_i," "Vish_n_u," or "Mitra;" and the dawn rejoiced in such
+titles as "Ushas," "Urva_s_i," "Ahana," and "Surya." Nor was the moon
+forgotten. For though it is mentioned but rarely under its usual name
+of "_K_andra," it is alluded to under the more sacred appellation of
+"Soma;" and each of its four phases had received its own denomination.
+There is hardly any part of nature, if it could impress the human mind
+in any way with the ideas of a higher power, of order, eternity, or
+beneficence,--whether the winds, or the rivers, or the trees, or the
+mountains,--without a name and representative in the early Hindu
+Pantheon. No doubt there existed in the human mind, from the very
+beginning, something, whether we call it a suspicion, an innate idea,
+an intuition, or a sense of the Divine. What distinguishes man from
+the rest of the animal creation is chiefly that ineradicable feeling
+of dependence and reliance upon some higher power, a consciousness of
+bondage, from which the very name of "religion" was derived. "It is He
+that hath made us, and not we ourselves." The presence of that power
+was felt everywhere, and nowhere more clearly and strongly than in the
+rising and setting of the sun, in the change of day and night, of
+spring and winter, of birth and death. But, although the Divine
+presence was felt everywhere, it was impossible in that early period
+of thought, and with a language incapable as yet of expressing
+anything but material objects, to conceive the idea of God in its
+purity and fullness, or to assign to it an adequate and worthy
+expression. Children cannot think the thoughts of men, and the poets
+of the Veda could not speak the language of Aristotle. It was by a
+slow process that the human mind elaborated the idea of one absolute
+and supreme Godhead; and by a still slower process that the human
+language matured a word to express that idea. A period of growth was
+inevitable, and those who, from a mere guess of their own, do not
+hesitate to speak authoritatively of a primeval revelation, which
+imparted to the Pagan world the idea of the Godhead in all its purity,
+forget that, however pure and sublime and spiritual that revelation
+might have been, there was no language capable as yet of expressing
+the high and immaterial conceptions of that Heaven-sent message. The
+real history of religion, during the earliest mythological period,
+represents to us a slow process of fermentation in thought and
+language, with its various interruptions, its overflowings, its
+coolings, its deposits, and its gradual clearing from all extraneous
+and foreign admixture. This is not only the case among the
+Indo-European or Aryan races in India, in Greece, and in Germany. In
+Peru, and wherever the primitive formations of the intellectual world
+crop out, the process is exactly the same. "The religion of the sun,"
+as it has been boldly said by the author of the "Spanish Conquest in
+America," "was inevitable." It was like a deep furrow which that
+heavenly luminary drew, in its silent procession from east to west,
+over the virgin mind of the gazing multitude; and in the impression
+left there by the first rising and setting of the sun, there lay the
+dark seed of a faith in a more than human being, the first intimation
+of a life without beginning, of a world without end. Manifold seed
+fell afterwards into the soil once broken. Something divine was
+discovered in everything that moved and lived. Names were stammered
+forth in anxious haste, and no single name could fully express what
+lay hidden in the human mind and wanted expression--the idea of an
+absolute, and perfect, and supreme, and immortal Essence. Thus a
+countless host of nominal gods was called into being, and for a time
+seemed to satisfy the wants of a thoughtless multitude. But there were
+thoughtful men at all times, and their reason protested against the
+contradictions of a mythological phraseology, though it had been
+hallowed by sacred customs and traditions. That rebellious reason had
+been at work from the very first, always ready to break the yoke of
+names and formulas which no longer expressed what they were intended
+to express. The idea which had yearned for utterance was the idea of a
+supreme and absolute Power, and that yearning was not satisfied by
+such names as "Kronos," "Zeus," and "Apollon." The very sound of such
+a word as "God," used in the plural, jarred on the ear, as if we were
+to speak of two universes, or of a single twin. There are many words,
+as Greek and Latin grammarians tell us, which, if used in the plural,
+have a different meaning from what they have in the singular. The
+Latin "aeedes" means a temple; if used in the plural it means a house.
+"Deus" and [Greek: Theos] ought to be added to the same class of
+words. The idea of supreme perfection excluded limitation, and the
+idea of God excluded the possibility of many gods. This may seem
+language too abstract and metaphysical for the early times of which we
+are speaking. But the ancient poets of the Vedic hymns have expressed
+the same thought with perfect clearness and simplicity. In the
+Rig-veda (I. 164, 46) we read:--
+
+"That which is one the sages speak of in many ways--they call it
+'Agni,' 'Yama,' 'Matari_s_van.'"
+
+[Footnote 67: See W. Spottiswoode's 'Tarantasse Journey,' p. 220,
+Visit to the Buddhist Temple.]
+
+[Footnote 68: The only trace of the influence of Buddhism among the
+_K_udic races, the Fins, Laps, &c., is found in the name of their
+priests and sorcerers, the Shamans. Shaman is supposed to be a
+corruption of _S_rama_n_a, a name applied to Buddha, and to Buddhist
+priests in general. The ancient mythological religion of the _K_udic
+races has nothing in common with Buddhism. See Castren's 'Lectures on
+Finnish Mythology,' 1853. Finland was ceded by Sweden to Russia in
+1809, See the Author's 'Survey of Languages,' second edition, p. 116.
+Shamanism found its way from India to Siberia via Tibet, China, and
+Mongolia. Rules on the formation of magic figures, on the treatment of
+diseases by charms, on the worship of evil spirits, on the acquisition
+of supernatural powers, on charms, incantations, and other branches of
+Shaman witchcraft, are found in the Stan-gyour, or the second part of
+the Tibetan canon, and in some of the late Tantras of the Nepalese
+collection.]
+
+Besides the plurality of gods, which was sure to lead to their
+destruction, there was a taint of mortality which they could not throw
+off. They all derived their being from the life of nature. The god who
+represented the sun was liable, in the mythological language of
+antiquity, to all the accidents which threatened the solar luminary.
+Though he might rise in immortal youth in the morning, he was
+conquered by the shadows of the night, and the powers of winter seemed
+to overthrow his heavenly throne. There is nothing in nature free from
+change, and the gods of nature fell under the thralldom of nature's
+laws. The sun must set, and the solar gods and heroes must die. There
+must be one God, there must be one unchanging Deity; this was the
+silent conviction of the human mind. There are many gods, liable to
+all the vicissitudes of life; this was everywhere the answer of
+mythological religion.
+
+It is curious to observe in how many various ways these two opposite
+principles were kept for a time from open conflict, and how long the
+heathen temples resisted the enemy which was slowly and imperceptibly
+undermining their very foundations. In Greece this mortal element,
+inherent in all gods, was eliminated to a great extent by the
+conception of heroes. Whatever was too human in the ancient legends
+told of Zeus and Apollon was transfered to so-called half-gods or
+heroes, who were represented as the sons or favorites of the gods, and
+who bore their fate under a slightly altered name. The twofold
+character of Herakles as a god and as a hero is acknowledged even by
+Herodotus, and some of his epithets would have been sufficient to
+indicate his solar and originally divine character. But, in order to
+make some of the legends told of the solar deity possible or
+conceivable, it was necessary to represent Herakles as a more human
+being, and to make him rise to the seat of the Immortals only after he
+had endured toils and sufferings incompatible with the dignity of an
+Olympian god. We find the same idea in Peru, only that there it led to
+different results. A thinking, or, as he was called, a freethinking
+Inca[69] remarked that this perpetual travelling of the sun was a sign
+of servitude,[70] and he threw doubts upon the divine nature of such
+an unquiet thing as that great luminary appeared to him to be. And
+this misgiving led to a tradition which, even should it be unfounded
+in history, had some truth in itself, that there was in Peru an
+earlier worship, that of an invisible Deity, the Creator of the world,
+Pachacamac. In Greece, also, there are signs of a similar craving
+after the "Unknown God." A supreme God was wanted, and Zeus, the
+stripling of Creta, was raised to that rank. He became God above all
+gods--[Greek: hapanton kyrios] as Pindar calls him. Yet more was
+wanted than a mere Zeus; and thus a supreme Fate or Spell was imagined
+before which all the gods, and even Zeus, had to bow. And even this
+Fate was not allowed to remain supreme, and there was something in the
+destinies of man which was called [Greek: hypermoron], or "beyond
+Fate." The most awful solution, however, of the problem belongs to
+Teutonic mythology. Here, also, some heroes were introduced; but their
+death was only the beginning of the final catastrophe. "All gods must
+die." Such is the last word of that religion which had grown up in the
+forests of Germany, and found a last refuge among the glaciers and
+volcanoes of Iceland. The death of Sigurd, the descendant of Odin,
+could not avert the death of Balder, the son of Odin; and the death of
+Balder was soon to be followed by the death of Odin himself, and of
+all the immortal gods.
+
+All this was inevitable, and Prometheus, the man of forethought, could
+safely predict the fall of Zeus. The struggles by which reason and
+faith overthrow tradition and superstition vary in different countries
+and at different times; but the final victory is always on their side.
+In India the same antagonism manifested itself, but what there seemed
+a victory of reason threatened to become the destruction of all
+religious faith. At first there was hardly a struggle. On the
+primitive mythological stratum of thought two new formations
+arose,--the Brahmanical philosophy and the Brahmanical ceremonial; the
+one opening the widest avenues of philosophical thought, the other
+fencing all religious feeling within the narrowest barriers. Both
+derived their authority from the same source. Both professed to carry
+out the meaning and purpose of the Veda. Thus we see on the one side,
+the growth of a numerous and powerful priesthood, and the
+establishment of a ceremonial which embraced every moment of a man's
+life from his birth to his death. There was no event which might have
+moved the heart to a spontaneous outpouring of praise or thanksgiving,
+which was not regulated by priestly formulas. Every prayer was
+prescribed, every sacrifice determined. Every god had his share, and
+the claims of each deity on the adoration of the faithful were set
+down with such punctiliousness, the danger of offending their pride
+was represented in such vivid colors, that no one would venture to
+approach their presence without the assistance of a well-paid staff of
+masters of divine ceremonies. It was impossible to avoid sin without
+the help of the Brahmans. They alone knew the food that might properly
+be eaten, the air which might properly be breathed, the dress which
+might properly be worn. They alone could tell what god should be
+invoked, what sacrifice be offered; and the slightest mistake of
+pronunciation, the slightest neglect about clarified butter, or the
+length of the ladle in which it was to be offered, might bring
+destruction upon the head of the unassisted worshipper. No nation was
+ever so completely priest-ridden as the Hindus under the sway of the
+Brahmanic law. Yet, on the other side, the same people were allowed to
+indulge in the most unrestrained freedom of thought, and in the
+schools of their philosophy the very names of their gods were never
+mentioned. Their existence was neither denied nor asserted; they were
+of no greater importance in the system of the world of thought than
+trees or mountains, men or animals; and to offer sacrifices to them
+with a hope of rewards, so far from being meritorious, was considered
+as dangerous to that emancipation to which a clear perception of
+philosophical truth was to lead the patient student. There was one
+system which taught that there existed but one Being, without a
+second; that everything else which seemed to exist was but a dream and
+illusion, and that this illusion might be removed by a true knowledge
+of the one Being. There was another system which admitted two
+principles,--one a subjective and self-existent mind, the other
+matter, endowed with qualities. Here the world, with its joys and
+sorrows, was explained as the result of the subjective Self,
+reflecting itself in the mirror of matter; and final emancipation was
+obtained by turning away the eyes from the play of nature, and being
+absorbed in the knowledge of the time and absolute Self. A third
+system started with the admission of atoms, and explained every
+effect, including the elements and the mind, animals, men, and gods,
+from the concurrence of these atoms. In fact, as M. Cousin remarked
+many years ago, the history of the philosophy of India is "un abrege
+de l'histoire de la philosophie." The germs of all these systems are
+traced back to the Vedas, Brahma_n_as, and the Upanishads, and the man
+who believed in any of them was considered as orthodox as the devout
+worshipper of the gods; the one was saved by knowledge and faith, the
+other by works and faith.
+
+Such was the state of the Hindu mind when Buddhism arose; or, rather,
+such was the state of the Hindu mind which gave rise to Buddhism.
+Buddha himself went through the school of the Brahmans. He performed
+their penances, he studied their philosophy, and he at last claimed
+the name of "the Buddha," or "the Enlightened," when he threw away the
+whole ceremonial, with its sacrifices, superstitions, penances, and
+castes, as worthless, and changed the complicated systems of
+philosophy into a short doctrine of salvation. This doctrine of
+salvation has been called pure Atheism and Nihilism, and it no doubt
+was liable to both charges in its metaphysical character, and in that
+form in which we chiefly know it. It was Atheistic, not because it
+denied the existence of such gods as Indra and Brahma. Buddha did not
+even condescend to deny their existence. But it was called Atheistic,
+like the Sankhya philosophy, which admitted but one subjective Self,
+and considered creation as an illusion of that Self, imaging itself
+for a while in the mirror of nature. As there was no reality in
+creation, there could be no real Creator. All that seemed to exist was
+the result of ignorance. To remove that ignorance was to remove the
+cause of all that seemed to exist. How a religion which taught the
+annihilation of all existence, of all thought, of all individuality
+and personality, as the highest object of all endeavors, could have
+laid hold of the minds of millions of human beings, and how at the
+same time, by enforcing the duties of morality, justice, kindness, and
+self-sacrifice, it could have exercised a decided beneficial
+influence, not only on the natives of India, but on the lowest
+barbarians of Central Asia, is a riddle which no one has been able to
+solve. We must distinguish, it seems, between Buddhism as a religion,
+and Buddhism as a a religion, and Buddhism as a philosophy.
+The former addressed itself to millions, the latter to a few isolated
+thinkers. It is from these isolated thinkers, however, and from their
+literary compositions, that we are apt to form our notions of what
+Buddhism was, while, as a matter of fact, not one in a thousand would
+have been capable of following these metaphysical speculations. To the
+people at large Buddhism was a moral and religious, not a
+philosophical reform. Yet even its morality has a metaphysical tinge.
+The morality which it teaches is not a morality of expediency and
+rewards. Virtue is not enjoined because it necessarily leads to
+happiness. No; virtue is to be practised, but happiness is to be
+shunned, and the only reward for virtue is that it subdues the
+passions, and thus prepares the human mind for that knowledge which is
+to end in complete annihilation. There are ten commandments which
+Buddha imposes on his disciples.[71] They are--
+
+1. Not to kill.
+2. Not to steal.
+3. Not to commit adultery.
+4. Not to lie.
+5. Not to get intoxicated.
+6. To abstain from unseasonable meals.
+7. To abstain from public spectacles.
+
+[Footnote 69: Helps, _The Spanish Conquest_, vol. iii. p. 503: "Que
+cosa tam inquieta non le parescia ser Dios."]
+
+[Footnote 70: On the servitude of the gods, see the "Essay on
+Comparative Mythology," _Oxford Essays_, 1856, p. 69.]
+
+[Footnote 71: See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 444. Barthelemy
+Saint-Hilaire, 'Du Bouddhisme,' p. 132. Ch.F.Neumann, 'Catechism of
+the Shamans.']
+
+8. To abstain from expensive dresses.
+9. Not to have a large bed.
+10. Not to receive silver or gold.
+
+The duties of those who embraced a religious life were more severe.
+They were not allowed to wear any dress except rags collected in
+cemeteries, and these rags they had to sew together with their own
+hands. A yellow cloak was to be thrown over these rags. Their food was
+to be extremely simple, and they were not to possess anything, except
+what they could get by collecting alms from door to door in their
+wooden bowls. They had but one meal in the morning, and were not
+allowed to touch any food after midday. They were to live in forests,
+not in cities, and their only shelter was to be the shadow of a tree.
+There they were to sit, to spread their carpet, but not to lie down,
+even during sleep. They were allowed to enter the nearest city or
+village in order to beg, but they had to return to their forest before
+night, and the only change which was allowed, or rather prescribed,
+was when they had to spend some nights in the cemeteries, there to
+meditate on the vanity of all things. And what was the object of all
+this asceticism? Simply to guide each individual towards that path
+which would finally bring him to Nirva_n_a, to utter extinction or
+annihilation. The very definition of virtue was that it helped man to
+cross over to the other shore, and that other shore was not death, but
+cessation of all being. Thus charity was considered a virtue; modesty,
+patience, courage, contemplation, and science, all were virtues, but
+they were practised only as a means of arriving at deliverance. Buddha
+himself exhibited the perfection of all these virtues. His charity
+knew no bounds. When he saw a tigress starved, and unable to feed her
+cubs, he is said to have made a charitable oblation of his body to be
+devoured by them. Hiouen-thsang visited the place on the banks of the
+Indus where this miracle was supposed to have happened, and he remarks
+that the soil is still red there from the blood of Buddha, and that
+the trees and flowers have the same colour.[72] As to the modesty of
+Buddha, nothing could exceed it. One day, king Prasena_g_it, the
+protector of Buddha, called on him to perform miracles, in order to
+silence his adversaries, the Brahmans. Buddha consented. He performed
+the required miracles; but he exclaimed, 'Great king, I do not teach
+the law to my pupils, telling them, Go, ye saints, and before the eyes
+of the Brahmans and householders perform, by means of your
+supernatural powers, miracles greater than any man can perform. I tell
+them, when I teach them the law, Live, ye saints, hiding your good
+works and showing your sins.' And yet, all this self-sacrificing
+charity, all this self-sacrificing humility, by which the life of
+Buddha was distinguished throughout, and which he preached to the
+multitudes that came to listen to him, had, we are told, but one
+object, and that object was final annihilation. It is impossible
+almost to believe it, and yet when we turn away our eyes from the
+pleasing picture of that high morality which Buddha preached for the
+first time to all classes of men, and look into the dark pages of his
+code of religious metaphysics, we can hardly find another explanation.
+Fortunately, the millions who embraced the doctrines of Buddha, and
+were saved by it from the depths of barbarism, brutality, and
+selfishness, were unable to fathom the meaning of his metaphysical
+doctrines. With them the Nirva_n_a to which they aspired, became only
+a relative deliverance from the miseries of human life; nay, it took
+the bright colours of a paradise, to be regained by the pious
+worshipper of Buddha. But was this the meaning of Buddha himself? In
+his 'Four Verities' he does not, indeed, define Nirva_n_a, except by
+cessation of all pain; but when he traces the cause of pain, and
+teaches the means of destroying not only pain itself, but the cause of
+pain, we shall see that his Nirva_n_a assumes a very different
+meaning. His 'Four Verities' are very simple. The first asserts the
+existence of pain; the second asserts that the cause of pain lies in
+sin; the third asserts that pain may cease by Nirva_n_a; the fourth
+shows the way that leads to Nirva_n_a. This way to Nirva_n_a consists
+in eight things--right faith (orthodoxy), right judgment (logic),
+right language (veracity), right purpose (honesty), right practice
+(religious life), right obedience (lawful life), right memory, and
+right meditation. All these precepts might be understood as part of a
+simply moral code, closing with a kind of mystic meditation on the
+highest object of thought, and with a yearning after deliverance from
+all worldly ties. Similar systems have prevailed in many parts of the
+world, without denying the existence of an absolute Being, or of a
+something towards which the human mind tends, in which it is absorbed
+or even annihilated. Awful as such a mysticism may appear, yet it
+leaves still something that exists, it acknowledges a feeling of
+dependence in man. It knows of a first cause, though it may have
+nothing to predicate of it except that it is [Greek: to kinoun
+akineton]. A return is possible from that desert. The first cause may
+be called to life again. It may take the names of Creator, Preserver,
+Ruler; and when the simplicity and helplessness of the child have
+re-entered the heart of man, the name of father will come back to the
+lips which had uttered in vain all the names of a philosophical
+despair. But from the Nirva_n_a of the Buddhist metaphysician there is
+no return. He starts from the idea that the highest object is to
+escape pain. Life in his eyes is nothing but misery; birth the cause
+of all evil, from which even death cannot deliver him, because he
+believes in an eternal cycle of existence, or in transmigration. There
+is no deliverance from evil, except by breaking through the prison
+walls, not only of life, but of existence, and by extirpating the last
+cause of existence. What, then, is the cause of existence? The cause
+of existence, says the Buddhist metaphysician, is attachment--an
+inclination towards something; and this attachment arises from thirst
+or desire. Desire presupposes perception of the object desired;
+perception presupposes contact; contact, at least a sentient contact,
+presupposes the senses; and, as the senses can only perceive what has
+form and name, or what is distinct, distinction is the real cause of
+all the effects which end in existence, birth, and pain. Now, this
+distinction is itself the result of conceptions or ideas; but these
+ideas, so far from being, as in Greek philosophy, the true and
+everlasting forms of the Absolute, are here represented as mere
+illusions, the effects of ignorance (avidya). Ignorance, therefore, is
+really the primary cause of all that seems to exist. To know that
+ignorance, as the root of all evil, is the same as to destroy it, and
+with it all effects that flowed from it. In order to see how this
+doctrine affects the individual, let us watch the last moments of
+Buddha as described by his disciples. He enters into the first stage
+of meditation when he feels freedom from sin, acquires a knowledge of
+the nature of all things, and has no desire except that of Nirva_n_a.
+But he still feels pleasure; he even uses his reasoning and
+discriminating powers. The use of these powers ceases in the second
+stage of meditation, when nothing remains but a desire after
+Nirva_n_a, and a general feeling of satisfaction, arising from his
+intellectual perfection. That satisfaction, also, is extinguished in
+the third stage. Indifference succeeds; yet there is still
+self-consciousness, and a certain amount of physical pleasure. These
+last remnants are destroyed in the fourth stage; memory fades away,
+all pleasure and pain are gone, and the doors of Nirva_n_a now open
+before him. After having passed these four stages once, Buddha went
+through them a second time, but he died before he attained again to
+the fourth stage. We must soar still higher, and though we may feel
+giddy and disgusted, we must sit out this tragedy till the curtain
+falls. After the four stages of meditation[73] are passed, the Buddha
+(and every being is to become a Buddha) enters into the infinity of
+space; then into the infinity of intelligence; and thence he passes
+into the region of nothing. But even here there is no rest. There is
+still something left--the idea of the nothing in which he rejoices.
+That also must be destroyed, and it is destroyed in the fourth and
+last region, where there is not even the idea of a nothing left, and
+where there is complete rest, undisturbed by nothing, or what is not
+nothing.[74] There are few persons who will take the trouble of
+reasoning out such hallucinations; least of all, persons who are
+accustomed to the sober language of Greek philosophy; and it is the
+more interesting to hear the opinion which one of the best
+Aristotelean scholars of the present day, after a patient examination
+of the authentic documents of Buddhism, has formed of its system of
+metaphysics. M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, in a review on Buddhism,
+published in the 'Journal des Savants,' says:
+
+     'Buddhism has no God; it has not even the confused and vague
+     notion of a Universal Spirit in which the human soul,
+     according to the orthodox doctrine of Brahmanism, and the
+     Sankhya philosophy, may be absorbed. Nor does it admit
+     nature, in the proper sense of the word, and it ignores that
+     profound division between spirit and matter which forms the
+     system and the glory of Kapila. It confounds man with all
+     that surrounds him, all the while preaching to him the laws
+     of virtue. Buddhism, therefore, cannot unite the human soul,
+     which it does not even mention, with a God, whom it ignores;
+     nor with nature, which it does not know better. Nothing
+     remained but to annihilate the soul; and in order to be
+     quite sure that the soul may not re-appear under some new
+     form in this world, which has been cursed as the abode of
+     illusion and misery, Buddhism destroys its very elements,
+     and never gets tired of glorying in this achievement. What
+     more is wanted?
+
+[Footnote 72: Vol. i. p. 89, vol. ii. p. 167.]
+
+[Footnote 73: These 'four stages' are described in the same manner in
+the canonical books of Ceylon and Nepal, and may therefore safely be
+ascribed to that original form of Buddhism from which the Southern and
+the Northern schools branched off at a later period. See Burnouf,
+'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 800.]
+
+[Footnote 74: See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 814.]
+
+If this is not the absolute nothing, what is Nirva_n_a?'
+
+Such religion, we should say, was made for a mad-house. But Buddhism
+was an advance, if compared with Brahmanism; it has stood its ground
+for centuries, and if truth could be decided by majorities, the show
+of hands, even at the present day, would be in favour of Buddha. The
+metaphysics of Buddhism, like the metaphysics of most religions, not
+excluding our own Gnosticism and Mysticism, were beyond the reach of
+all except a few hardened philosophers or ecstatic dreamers. Human
+nature could not be changed. Out of the very nothing it made a new
+paradise; and he who had left no place in the whole universe for a
+Divine Being, was deified himself by the multitudes who wanted a
+person whom they could worship, a king whose help they might invoke, a
+friend before whom they could pour out their most secret griefs. And
+there remained the code of a pure morality, proclaimed by Buddha.
+There remained the spirit of charity, kindness, and universal pity
+with which he had inspired his disciples.[75] There remained the
+simplicity of the ceremonial he had taught, the equality of all men
+which he had declared, the religious toleration which he had preached
+from the beginning. There remained much, therefore, to account for the
+rapid strides which his doctrine made from the mountain peaks of
+Ceylon to the Tundras of the Samoyedes, and we shall see in the simple
+story of the life of Hiouen-thsang that Buddhism, with all its
+defects, has had its heroes, its martyrs, and its saints.
+
+[Footnote 75: See the 'Dhammapadam,' a Pali work on Buddhist ethics,
+lately edited by V. Fausboell, a distinguished pupil of Professor
+Westergaard, at Copenhagen. The Rev. Spence Hardy ('Eastern
+Monachism,' p. 169) writes: 'A collection might be made from the
+precepts of this work, that in the purity of its ethics could scarcely
+be equalled from any other heathen author.' Mr. Knighton, when
+speaking of the same work in his 'History of Ceylon' (p. 77), remarks:
+'In it we have exemplified a code of morality, and a list of precepts,
+which, for pureness, excellence, and wisdom, is only second to that of
+the Divine Lawgiver himself.']
+
+Hiouen-thsang, born in China more than a thousand years after the
+death of Buddha, was a believer in Buddhism. He dedicated his whole
+life to the study of that religion; travelling from his native country
+to India, visiting every place mentioned in Buddhist history or
+tradition, acquiring the ancient language in which the canonical books
+of the Buddhists were written, studying commentaries, discussing
+points of difficulty, and defending the orthodox faith at public
+councils against disbelievers and schismatics. Buddhism had grown and
+changed since the death of its founder, but it had lost nothing of its
+vitality. At a very early period a proselytizing spirit awoke among
+the disciples of the Indian reformer, an element entirely new in the
+history of ancient religions. No Jew, no Greek, no Roman, no Brahman
+ever thought of converting people to his own national form of worship.
+Religion was looked upon as private or national property. It was to be
+guarded against strangers. The most sacred names of the gods, the
+prayers by which their favour could be gained, were kept secret. No
+religion, however, was more exclusive than that of the Brahmans. A
+Brahman was born, nay, twice-born. He could not be made. Not even the
+lowest caste, that of the _S_udras, would open its ranks to a
+stranger. Here lay the secret of Buddha's success. He addressed
+himself to castes and outcasts. He promised salvation to all; and he
+commanded his disciples to preach his doctrine in all places and to
+all men. A sense of duty, extending from the narrow limits of the
+house, the village, and the country to the widest circle of mankind, a
+feeling of sympathy and brotherhood towards all men, the idea, in
+fact, of humanity, were in India first pronounced by Buddha. In the
+third Buddhist Council, the acts of which have been preserved to us in
+the 'Mahavansa,'[76] we hear of missionaries being sent to the chief
+countries beyond India. This Council, we are told, took place 308
+B.C., 235 years after the death of Buddha, in the 17th year of the
+reign of the famous king A_s_oka, whose edicts have been preserved to
+us on rock inscriptions in various parts of India. There are sentences
+in these inscriptions of A_s_oka which might be read with advantage by
+our own missionaries, though they are now more than 2000 years old.
+Thus it is written on the rocks of Girnar, Dhauli, and Kapurdigiri--
+
+     'Piyadasi, the king beloved of the gods, desires that the
+     ascetics of all creeds might reside in all places. All these
+     ascetics profess alike the command which people should
+     exercise over themselves, and the purity of the soul. But
+     people have different opinions, and different inclinations.'
+
+And again:
+
+     'A man ought to honour his own faith only; but he should
+     never abuse the faith of others. It is thus that he will do
+     no harm to anybody. There are even circumstances where the
+     religion of others ought to be honoured. And in acting
+     thus, a man fortifies his own faith, and assists the faith
+     of others. He who acts otherwise, diminishes his own faith,
+     and hurts the faith of others.'
+
+[Footnote 76: 'Mahavanso,' ed. G. Turnour, Ceylon, 1837, p. 71.]
+
+Those who have no time to read the voluminous works of the late E.
+Burnouf on Buddhism, his 'Introduction a l'Histoire du Buddhisme,' and
+his translation of 'Le Lotus de la bonne Loi,' will find a very
+interesting and lucid account of these councils, and edicts, and
+missions, and the history of Buddhism in general, in a work lately
+published by Mrs. Speir, 'Life in Ancient India.' Buddhism spread in
+the south to Ceylon, in the north to Kashmir, the Himalayan countries,
+Tibet, and China. One Buddhist missionary is mentioned in the Chinese
+annals as early as 217 B.C.;[77] and about the year 120 B.C. a Chinese
+General, after defeating the barbarous tribes north of the Desert of
+Gobi, brought back as a trophy a golden statue, the statue of
+Buddha.[78] It was not, however, till the year 65 A.D. that Buddhism
+was officially recognised by the Emperor Ming-ti[79] as a third state
+religion in China. Ever since, it has shared equal honours with the
+doctrines of Confucius and Lao-tse, in the Celestial Empire, and it is
+but lately that these three established religions have had to fear the
+encroachments of a new rival in the creed of the Chief of the rebels.
+
+[Footnote 77: See 'Foe Koue Ki,' p. 41, and xxxviii. preface.]
+
+[Footnote 78: See 'Foe Koue Ki,' p. 41.]
+
+[Footnote 79: 'Lalita-Vistara,' ed. Foucaux, p. xvii. n.]
+
+After Buddhism had been introduced into China, the first care of its
+teachers was to translate the sacred works from Sanskrit, in which
+they were originally written, into Chinese. We read of the Emperor
+Ming-ti,[80] of the dynasty of Han, sending Tsai-in and other high
+officials to India, in order to study there the doctrine of Buddha.
+They engaged the services of two learned Buddhists, Matanga and
+Tchou-fa-lan, and some of the most important Buddhist works were
+translated by them into Chinese. 'The Life of Buddha,' the
+'Lalita-Vistara,'[81] a Sanskrit work which, on account of its style
+and language, had been referred by Oriental scholars to a much more
+modern period of Indian literature, can now safely be ascribed to an
+ante-Christian era, if, as we are told by Chinese scholars, it was
+translated from Sanskrit into Chinese, as one of the canonical books
+of Buddhism, as early as the year 76 A.D. The same work was translated
+also into Tibetan; and an edition of it--the first Tibetan work
+printed in Europe--published in Paris by M.E. Foucaux, reflects high
+credit on that distinguished scholar, and on the Government which
+supports these studies in the most liberal and enlightened spirit. The
+intellectual intercourse between the Indian peninsula and the northern
+continent of Asia remained uninterrupted for many centuries. Missions
+were sent from China to India, to report on the political and
+geographical state of the country, but the chief object of interest
+which attracted public embassies and private pilgrims across the
+Himalayan mountains was the religion of Buddha. About three hundred
+years after the public recognition of Buddhism by the Emperor Ming-ti,
+the great stream of Buddhist pilgrims began to flow from China to
+India. The first account which we possess of these pilgrimages refers
+to the travels of Fahian, who visited India towards the end of the
+fourth century. His travels have been translated by Remusat, but M.
+Julien promises a new and more correct translation. After Fahian, we
+have the travels of Hoei-seng and Song-yun, who were sent to India, in
+518, by command of the Empress, with a view of collecting sacred books
+and relics. Of Hiouen-thsang, who follows next in time, we possess, at
+present, eight out of twelve books; and there is reason to hope that
+the last four books of his Journal will soon follow in M. Julien's
+translation.[82] After Hiouen-thsang, the chief works of Chinese
+pilgrims are the 'Itineraries' of the fifty-six monks, published in
+730, and the travels of Khi-nie, who visited India in 964, at the head
+of three hundred pilgrims. India was for a time the Holy Land of
+China. There lay the scene of the life and death of the great teacher;
+there were the monuments commemorating the chief events of his life;
+there the shrines where his relics might be worshipped; there the
+monasteries where tradition had preserved his sayings and his doings;
+there the books where his doctrine might be studied in its original
+purity; there the schools where the tenets of different sects which
+had sprung up in the course of time might best be acquired.
+
+[Footnote 80: 'Lalita-Vistara,' p. 17.]
+
+[Footnote 81: Two parts of the Sanskrit text have been published in
+the 'Bibliotheca Indica.']
+
+[Footnote 82: They have since been published.]
+
+Some of the pilgrims and envoys have left us accounts of their
+travels, and, in the absence of anything like an historical literature
+in India itself, these Chinese works are of the utmost importance for
+gaining an insight into the social, political, and religious history
+of that country from the beginning of our era to the time of the
+Mohammedan conquest. The importance of Mohammedan writers, so far as
+they treat on the history of India during the Middle Ages, was soon
+recognised, and in a memoir lately published by the most eminent
+Arabic scholar of France, M. Reinaud, new and valuable historical
+materials have been collected--materials doubly valuable in India,
+where no native historian has ever noted down the passing events of
+the day. But, although the existence of similar documents in Chinese
+was known, and although men of the highest literary eminence--such as
+Humboldt, Biot, and others--had repeatedly urged the necessity of
+having a translation of the early travels of the Chinese Pilgrims, it
+seemed almost as if our curiosity was never to be satisfied. France
+has been the only country where Chinese scholarship has ever
+flourished, and it was a French scholar, Abel Remusat, who undertook
+at last the translation of one of the Chinese Pilgrims. Remusat died
+before his work was published, and his translation of the travels of
+Fahian, edited by M. Landresse, remained for a long time without being
+followed up by any other. Nor did the work of that eminent scholar
+answer all expectations. Most of the proper names, the names of
+countries, towns, mountains, and rivers, the titles of books, and the
+whole Buddhistic phraseology, were so disguised in their Chinese dress
+that it was frequently impossible to discover their original form.
+
+The Chinese alphabet was never intended to represent the sound of
+words. It was in its origin a hieroglyphic system, each word having
+its own graphic representative. Nor would it have been possible to
+write Chinese in any other way. Chinese is a monosyllabic language. No
+word is allowed more than one consonant and one vowel,--the vowels
+including diphthongs and nasal vowels. Hence the possible number of
+words is extremely small, and the number of significative sounds in
+the Chinese language is said to be no more than 450. No language,
+however, could be satisfied with so small a vocabulary, and in
+Chinese, as in other monosyllabic dialects, each word, as it was
+pronounced with various accents and intonations, was made to convey a
+large number of meanings; so that the total number of words, or rather
+of ideas, expressed in Chinese, is said to amount to 43,496. Hence a
+graphic representation of the mere sound of words would have been
+perfectly useless, and it was absolutely necessary to resort to
+hieroglyphical writing, enlarged by the introduction of determinative
+signs. Nearly the whole immense dictionary of Chinese--at least
+twenty-nine thirtieths--consists of combined signs, one part
+indicating the general sound, the other determining its special
+meaning. With such a system of writing it was possible to represent
+Chinese, but impossible to convey either the sound or the meaning of
+any other language. Besides, some of the most common sounds--such as
+r, b, d, and the short a--are unknown in Chinese.
+
+How, then, were the translators to render Sanskrit names in Chinese?
+The most rational plan would have been to select as many Chinese signs
+as there were Sanskrit letters, and to express one and the same letter
+in Sanskrit always by one and the same sign in Chinese; or, if the
+conception of a consonant without a vowel, and of a vowel without a
+consonant, was too much for a Chinese understanding, to express at
+least the same syllabic sound in Sanskrit, by one and the same
+syllabic sign in Chinese. A similar system is adopted at the present
+day, when the Chinese find themselves under the necessity of writing
+the names of Lord Palmerston or Sir John Bowring; but, instead of
+adopting any definite system of transcribing, each translator seems to
+have chosen his own signs for rendering the sounds of Sanskrit words,
+and to have chosen them at random. The result is that every Sanskrit
+word as transcribed by the Chinese Buddhists is a riddle which no
+ingenuity is able to solve. Who could have guessed that 'Fo-to,' or
+more frequently 'Fo,' was meant for Buddha? 'Ko-lo-keou-lo' for
+Rahula, the son of Buddha? 'Po-lo-nai' for Benares? 'Heng-ho' for
+Ganges? 'Niepan' for Nirv_ana_? 'Chamen' for _S_rama_n_a? 'Feito' for
+Veda? 'Tcha-li' for Kshattriya? 'Siu-to-lo' for _S_udra? 'Fan' or
+'Fan-lon-mo' for Brahma? Sometimes, it is true, the Chinese
+endeavoured to give, besides the sounds, a translation of the meaning
+of the Sanskrit words. But the translation of proper names is always
+very precarious, and it required an intimate knowledge of Sanskrit and
+Buddhist literature to recognise from these awkward translations the
+exact form of the proper names for which they were intended. If, in a
+Chinese translation of 'Thukydides,' we read of a person called
+'Leader of the people,' we might guess his name to have been
+Demagogos, or Laoegos, as well as Agesilaos. And when the name of the
+town of _S_ravasti was written Che-wei, which means in Chinese 'where
+one hears,' it required no ordinary power of combination to find that
+the name of _S_ravasti was derived from a Sanskrit noun, _s_ravas
+(Greek [Greek: kleos], Lat. cluo), which means 'hearing' or 'fame,'
+and that the etymological meaning of the name of _S_ravasti was
+intended by the Chinese 'Che-wei.' Besides these names of places and
+rivers, of kings and saints, there was the whole strange phraseology
+of Buddhism, of which no dictionary gives any satisfactory
+explanation. How was even the best Chinese scholar to know that the
+words which usually mean 'dark shadow' must be taken in the technical
+sense of Nirva_n_a, or becoming absorbed in the Absolute, that
+'return-purity' had the same sense, and that a third synonymous
+expression was to be recognised in a phrase which, in ordinary
+Chinese, would have the sense of 'transport-figure-crossing-age?' A
+monastery is called 'origin-door,' instead of 'black-door.' The voice
+of Buddha is called 'the voice of the dragon;' and his doctrine goes
+by the name of 'the door of expedients.'
+
+Tedious as these details may seem, it was almost a duty to state them,
+in order to give an idea of the difficulties which M. Stanislas Julien
+had to grapple with. Oriental scholars labour under great
+disadvantages. Few people take an interest in their works, or, if they
+do, they simply accept the results, but they are unable to appreciate
+the difficulty with which these results were obtained. Many persons
+who have read the translation of the cuneiform inscriptions are glad,
+no doubt, to have the authentic and contemporaneous records of Darius
+and Xerxes. But if they followed the process by which scholars such as
+Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and Rawlinson arrived at their results,
+they would see that the discovery of the alphabet, the language, the
+grammar, and the meaning of the inscriptions of the Achaemenian dynasty
+deserves to be classed with the discoveries of a Kepler, a Newton, or
+a Faraday. In a similar manner, the mere translation of a Chinese work
+into French seems a very ordinary performance; but M. Stanislas
+Julien, who has long been acknowledged as the first Chinese scholar in
+Europe, had to spend twenty years of incessant labour in order to
+prepare himself for the task of translating the 'Travels of
+Hiouen-thsang.' He had to learn Sanskrit, no very easy language; he
+had to study the Buddhist literature written in Sanskrit, Pali,
+Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese. He had to make vast indices of every
+proper name connected with Buddhism. Thus only could he shape his own
+tools, and accomplish what at last he did accomplish. Most persons
+will remember the interest with which the travels of M.M. Huc and
+Gabet were read a few years ago, though these two adventurous
+missionaries were obliged to renounce their original intention of
+entering India by way of China and Tibet, and were not allowed to
+proceed beyond the famous capital of Lhassa. If, then, it be
+considered that there was a traveller who had made a similar journey
+twelve hundred years earlier--who had succeeded in crossing the
+deserts and mountain passes which separate China from India--who had
+visited the principal cities of the Indian Peninsula, at a time of
+which we have no information, from native or foreign sources, as to
+the state of that country--who had learned Sanskrit, and made a large
+collection of Buddhist works--who had carried on public disputations
+with the most eminent philosophers and theologians of the day--who had
+translated the most important works on Buddhism from Sanskrit into
+Chinese, and left an account of his travels, which still existed in
+the libraries of China--nay, which had been actually printed and
+published--we may well imagine the impatience with which all scholars
+interested in the ancient history of India, and in the subject of
+Buddhism, looked forward to the publication of so important a work.
+Hiouen-thsang's name had first been mentioned in Europe by Abel
+Remusat and Klaproth. They had discovered some fragments of his
+travels in a Chinese work on foreign countries and foreign nations.
+Remusat wrote to China to procure, if possible, a complete copy of
+Hiouen-thsang's works. He was informed by Morrison that they were out
+of print. Still, the few specimens which he had given at the end of
+his translation of the 'Foe Koue Ki' had whetted the appetite of
+Oriental scholars. M. Stanislas Julien succeeded in procuring a copy
+of Hiouen-thsang in 1838; and after nearly twenty years spent in
+preparing a translation of the Chinese traveller, his version is now
+before us. If there are but few who know the difficulty of a work like
+that of M. Stanislas Julien, it becomes their duty to speak out,
+though, after all, perhaps the most intelligible eulogium would be,
+that in a branch of study where there are no monopolies and no
+patents, M. Stanislas Julien is acknowledged to be the only man in
+Europe who could produce the article which he has produced in the work
+before us.
+
+We shall devote the rest of our space to a short account of the life
+and travels of Hiouen-thsang. Hiouen-thsang was born in a provincial
+town of China, at a time when the empire was in a chronic state of
+revolution. His father had left the public service, and had given most
+of his time to the education of his four children. Two of them
+distinguished themselves at a very early age--one of them was
+Hiouen-thsang, the future traveller and theologian. The boy was sent
+to school at a Buddhist monastery, and, after receiving there the
+necessary instruction, partly from his elder brother, he was himself
+admitted as a monk at the early age of thirteen. During the next seven
+years, the young monk travelled about with his brother from place to
+place, in order to follow the lectures of some of the most
+distinguished professors. The horrors of war frequently broke in upon
+his quiet studies, and forced him to seek refuge in the more distant
+provinces of the empire. At the age of twenty he took priest's orders,
+and had then already become famous by his vast knowledge. He had
+studied the chief canonical books of the Buddhist faith, the records
+of Buddha's life and teaching, the system of ethics and metaphysics;
+and he was versed in the works of Confucius and Lao-tse. But still his
+own mind was agitated by doubts. Six years he continued his studies in
+the chief places of learning in China, and where he came to learn he
+was frequently asked to teach. At last, when he saw that none, even
+the most eminent theologians, were able to give him the information he
+wanted, he formed his resolve of travelling to India. The works of
+earlier pilgrims, such as Fahian and others, were known to him. He
+knew that in India he should find the originals of the works which in
+their Chinese translation left so many things doubtful in his mind;
+and though he knew from the same sources the dangers of his journey,
+yet 'the glory,' as he says, 'of recovering the Law, which was to be a
+guide to all men and the means of their salvation, seemed to him
+worthy of imitation.' In common with several other priests, he
+addressed a memorial to the Emperor to ask leave for their journey.
+Leave was refused, and the courage of his companions failed. Not that
+of Hiouen-thsang. His own mother had told him that, soon before she
+gave birth to him, she had seen her child travelling to the Far West
+in search of the Law. He was himself haunted by similar visions, and
+having long surrendered worldly desires, he resolved to brave all
+dangers, and to risk his life for the only object for which he thought
+it worth while to live. He proceeded to the Yellow River, the
+Hoang-ho, and to the place where the caravans bound for India used to
+meet, and, though the Governor had sent strict orders not to allow any
+one to cross the frontier, the young priest, with the assistance of
+his co-religionists, succeeded in escaping the vigilance of the
+Chinese 'douaniers.' Spies were sent after him. But so frank was his
+avowal, and so firm his resolution, which he expressed in the presence
+of the authorities, that the Governor himself tore his hue and cry to
+pieces, and allowed him to proceed. Hitherto he had been accompanied
+by two friends. They now left him, and Hiouen-thsang found himself
+alone, without a friend and without a guide. He sought for strength in
+fervent prayer. The next morning a person presented himself, offering
+his services as a guide. This guide conducted him safely for some
+distance, but left him when they approached the desert. There were
+still five watch-towers to be passed, and there was nothing to
+indicate the road through the desert, except the hoof-marks of horses,
+and skeletons. The traveller followed this melancholy track, and,
+though misled by the 'mirage' of the desert, he reached the first
+tower. Here the arrows of the watchmen would have put an end to his
+existence and his cherished expedition. But the officer in command,
+himself a zealous Buddhist, allowed the courageous pilgrim to proceed,
+and gave him letters of recommendation to the officers of the next
+towers. The last tower, however, was guarded by men inaccessible to
+bribes, and deaf to reasoning. In order to escape their notice,
+Hiouen-thsang had to make a long detour. He passed through another
+desert, and lost his way. The bag in which he carried his water burst,
+and then even the courage of Hiouen-thsang failed. He began to retrace
+his steps. But suddenly he stopped. 'I took an oath,' he said, 'never
+to make a step backward till I had reached India. Why, then, have I
+come here? It is better I should die proceeding to the West than
+return to the East and live.' Four nights and five days he travelled
+through the desert without a drop of water. He had nothing to refresh
+himself except his prayers--and what were they? Texts from a work
+which taught that there was no God, no Creator, no creation,--nothing
+but mind, minding itself. It is incredible in how exhausted an
+atmosphere the divine spark within us will glimmer on, and even warm
+the dark chambers of the human heart. Comforted by his prayers,
+Hiouen-thsang proceeded, and arrived after some time at a large lake.
+He was in the country of the Oigour Tatars. They received him well,
+nay, too well. One of the Tatar Khans, himself a Buddhist, sent for
+the Buddhist pilgrim, and insisted on his staying with him to instruct
+his people. Remonstrances proved of no avail. But Hiouen-thsang was
+not to be conquered. 'I know,' he said, 'that the king, in spite of
+his power, has no power over my mind and my will;' and he refused all
+nourishment, in order to put an end to his life. [Greek: Thanoumai kai
+eleutheresomai.] Three days he persevered, and at last the Khan,
+afraid of the consequences, was obliged to yield to the poor monk. He
+made him promise to visit him on his return to China, and then to stay
+three years with him. At last, after a delay of one month, during
+which the Khan and his Court came daily to hear the lessons of their
+pious guest, the traveller continued his journey with a numerous
+escort, and with letters of introduction from the Khan to twenty-four
+Princes whose territories the little caravan had to pass. Their way
+lay through what is now called Dsungary, across the Musur-dabaghan
+mountains, the northern portion of the Belur-tag, the Yaxartes valley,
+Bactria, and Kabulistan. We cannot follow them through all the places
+they passed, though the accounts which he gives of their adventures
+are most interesting, and the description of the people most
+important. Here is a description of the Musur-dabaghan mountains:
+
+     'The top of the mountain rises to the sky. Since the
+     beginning of the world the snow has been accumulating, and
+     is now transformed into vast masses of ice, which never
+     melt, either in spring or summer. Hard and brilliant sheets
+     of snow are spread out till they are lost in the infinite,
+     and mingle with the clouds. If one looks at them, the eyes
+     are dazzled by the splendour. Frozen peaks hang down over
+     both sides of the road, some hundred feet high, and twenty
+     feet or thirty feet thick. It is not without difficulty and
+     danger that the traveller can clear them or climb over them.
+     Besides, there are squalls of wind, and tornadoes of snow
+     which attack the pilgrims. Even with double shoes, and in
+     thick furs, one cannot help trembling and shivering.'
+
+During the seven days that Hiouen-thsang crossed these Alpine passes
+he lost fourteen of his companions.
+
+What is most important, however, in this early portion of the Chinese
+traveller is the account which he gives of the high degree of
+civilisation among the tribes of Central Asia. We had gradually
+accustomed ourselves to believe in an early civilisation of Egypt, of
+Babylon, of China, of India; but now that we find the hordes of Tatary
+possessing in the seventh century the chief arts and institutions of
+an advanced society, we shall soon have to drop the name of barbarians
+altogether. The theory of M. Oppert, who ascribes the original
+invention of the cuneiform letters and a civilisation anterior to that
+of Babylon and Nineveh to a Turanian or Scythian race, will lose much
+of its apparent improbability; for no new wave of civilisation had
+reached these countries between the cuneiform period of their
+literature and history and the time of Hiouen-thsang's visit. In the
+kingdom of Okini, on the western frontier of China, Hiouen-thsang
+found an active commerce, gold, silver, and copper coinage;
+monasteries, where the chief works of Buddhism were studied, and an
+alphabet, derived from Sanskrit. As he travelled on he met with mines,
+with agriculture, including pears, plums, peaches, almonds, grapes,
+pomegranates, rice, and wheat. The inhabitants were dressed in silk
+and woollen materials. There were musicians in the chief cities who
+played on the flute and the guitar. Buddhism was the prevailing
+religion, but there were traces of an earlier worship, the Bactrian
+fire-worship. The country was everywhere studded with halls,
+monasteries, monuments, and statues. Samarkand formed at that early
+time a kind of Athens, and its manners were copied by all the tribes
+in the neighbourhood. Balkh, the old capital of Bactria, was still an
+important place on the Oxus, well fortified, and full of sacred
+buildings. And the details which our traveller gives of the exact
+circumference of the cities, the number of their inhabitants, the
+products of the soil, the articles of trade, can leave no doubt in our
+minds that he relates what he had seen and heard himself. A new page
+in the history of the world is here opened, and new ruins pointed out,
+which would reward the pickaxe of a Layard.
+
+But we must not linger. Our traveller, as we said, had entered India
+by way of Kabul. Shortly before he arrived at Pou-lou-cha-pou-lo, i.
+e. the Sanskrit Purushapura, the modern Peshawer, Hiouen-thsang heard
+of an extraordinary cave, where Buddha had formerly converted a
+dragon, and had promised his new pupil to leave him his shadow, in
+order that, whenever the evil passions of his dragon-nature should
+revive, the aspect of his master's shadowy features might remind him
+of his former vows. This promise was fulfilled, and the dragon-cave
+became a famous place of pilgrimage. Our traveller was told that the
+roads leading to the cave were extremely dangerous, and infested by
+robbers--that for three years none of the pilgrims had ever returned
+from the cave. But he replied, 'It would be difficult during a hundred
+thousand Kalpas to meet one single time with the true shadow of
+Buddha; how could I, having come so near, pass on without going to
+adore it?' He left his companions behind, and after asking in vain
+for a guide, he met at last with a boy who showed him to a farm
+belonging to a convent. Here he found an old man who undertook to act
+as his guide. They had hardly proceeded a few miles when they were
+attacked by five robbers. The monk took off his cap and displayed his
+ecclesiastical robes. 'Master,' said one of the robbers, 'where are
+you going?' Hiouen-thsang replied, 'I desire to adore the shadow of
+Buddha.' 'Master,' said the robber, 'have you not heard that these
+roads are full of bandits?' 'Robbers are men,' Hiouen-thsang
+exclaimed, 'and at present, when I am going to adore the shadow of
+Buddha, even though the roads were full of wild beasts, I should walk
+on without fear. Surely, then, I ought not to fear you, as you are men
+whose heart is possessed of pity.' The robbers were moved by these
+words, and opened their hearts to the true faith. After this little
+incident, Hiouen-thsang proceeded with his guide. He passed a stream
+rushing down between two precipitous walls of rock. In the rock itself
+there was a door which opened. All was dark. But Hiouen-thsang
+entered, advanced towards the east, then moved fifty steps backwards,
+and began his devotions. He made one hundred salutations, but he saw
+nothing. He reproached himself bitterly with his former sins, he
+cried, and abandoned himself to utter despair, because the shadow of
+Buddha would not appear before him. At last, after many prayers and
+invocations, he saw on the eastern wall a dim light, of the size of a
+saucepan, such as the Buddhist monks carry in their hands. But it
+disappeared. He continued praying full of joy and pain, and again he
+saw a light, which vanished like lightning. Then he vowed, full of
+devotion and love, that he would never leave the place till he had
+seen the shadow of the 'Venerable of the age.' After two hundred
+prayers, the cave was suddenly bathed in light, and the shadow of
+Buddha, of a brilliant white colour, rose majestically on the wall, as
+when the clouds suddenly open and, all at once, display the marvellous
+image of the 'Mountain of Light.' A dazzling splendour lighted up the
+features of the divine countenance. Hiouen-thsang was lost in
+contemplation and wonder, and would not turn his eyes away from the
+sublime and incomparable object.... After he awoke from his trance, he
+called in six men, and commanded them to light a fire in the cave, in
+order to burn incense; but, as the approach of the light made the
+shadow of Buddha disappear, the fire was extinguished. Then five of
+the men saw the shadow, but the sixth saw nothing. The old man who had
+acted as guide was astounded when Hiouen-thsang told him the vision.
+'Master,' he said, 'without the sincerity of your faith, and the
+energy of your vows, you could not have seen such a miracle.'
+
+This is the account given by Hiouen-thsang's biographers. But we must
+say, to the credit of Hiouen-thsang himself, that in the 'Si-yu-ki,'
+which contains his own diary, the story is told in a different way.
+The cave is described with almost the same words. But afterwards, the
+writer continues: 'Formerly, the shadow of Buddha was seen in the
+cave, bright, like his natural appearance, and with all the marks of
+his divine beauty. One might have said, it was Buddha himself. For
+some centuries, however, it can no longer be seen completely. Though
+one does see something, it is only a feeble and doubtful resemblance.
+If a man prays with sincere faith, and if he has received from above
+a hidden impression, he sees the shadow clearly, but he cannot enjoy
+the sight for any length of time.'
+
+From Peshawer, the scene of this extraordinary miracle, Hiouen-thsang
+proceeded to Kashmir, visited the chief towns of Central India, and
+arrived at last in Magadha, the Holy Land of the Buddhists. Here he
+remained five years, devoting all his time to the study of Sanskrit
+and Buddhist literature, and inspecting every place hallowed by the
+recollections of the past. He then passed through Bengal, and
+proceeded to the south, with a view of visiting Ceylon, the chief seat
+of Buddhism. Baffled in that wish, he crossed the peninsula from east
+to west, ascended the Malabar coast, reached the Indus, and, after
+numerous excursions to the chief places of North-Western India,
+returned to Magadha, to spend there, with his old friends, some of the
+happiest years of his life. The route of his journeyings is laid down
+in a map drawn with exquisite skill by M. Vivien de Saint-Martin. At
+last he was obliged to return to China, and, passing through the
+Penjab, Kabulistan, and Bactria, he reached the Oxus, followed its
+course nearly to its sources on the plateau of Pamir, and, after
+staying some time in the three chief towns of Turkistan, Khasgar,
+Yarkand, and Khoten, he found himself again, after sixteen years of
+travels, dangers, and studies, in his own native country. His fame had
+spread far and wide, and the poor pilgrim, who had once been hunted by
+imperial spies and armed policemen, was now received with public
+honours by the Emperor himself. His entry into the capital was like a
+triumph. The streets were covered with carpets, flowers were
+scattered, and banners flying. Soldiers were drawn up, the
+magistrates went out to meet him, and all the monks of the
+neighbourhood marched along in solemn procession. The trophies that
+adorned this triumph, carried by a large number of horses, were of a
+peculiar kind. First, 150 grains of the dust of Buddha; secondly, a
+golden statue of the great Teacher; thirdly, a similar statue of
+sandal-wood; fourthly, a statue of sandal-wood, representing Buddha as
+descending from heaven; fifthly, a statue of silver; sixthly, a golden
+statue of Buddha conquering the dragons; seventhly, a statue of
+sandal-wood, representing Buddha as a preacher; lastly, a collection
+of 657 works in 520 volumes. The Emperor received the traveller in the
+Phoenix Palace, and, full of admiration for his talents and wisdom,
+invited him to accept a high office in the Government. This
+Hiouen-thsang declined. 'The soul of the administration,' he said, 'is
+still the doctrine of Confucius;' and he would dedicate the rest of
+his life to the Law of Buddha. The Emperor thereupon asked him to
+write an account of his travels, and assigned him a monastery where he
+might employ his leisure in translating the works he had brought back
+from India. His travels were soon written and published, but the
+translation of the Sanskrit MSS. occupied he whole rest of his life.
+It is said that the number of works translated by him, with the
+assistance of a large staff of monks, amounted to 740, in 1,335
+volumes. Frequently he might be seen meditating on a difficult
+passage, when suddenly it seemed as if a higher spirit had enlightened
+his mind. His soul was cheered, as when a man walking in darkness sees
+all at once the sun piercing the clouds and shining in its full
+brightness; and, unwilling to trust to his own understanding, he used
+to attribute his knowledge to a secret inspiration of Buddha and the
+Bodhisattvas. When he found that the hour of death approached, he had
+all his property divided among the poor. He invited his friends to
+come and see him, and to take a cheerful leave of that impure body of
+Hiouen-thsang. 'I desire,' he said, 'that whatever merits I may have
+gained by good works may fall upon other people. May I be born again
+with them in the heaven of the blessed, be admitted to the family of
+Mi-le, and serve the Buddha of the future, who is full of kindness and
+affection. When I descend again upon earth to pass through other forms
+of existence, I desire at every new birth to fulfil my duties towards
+Buddha, and arrive at the last at the highest and most perfect
+intelligence. He died in the year 664--about the same time that
+Mohammedanism was pursuing its bloody conquests in the East, and
+Christianity began to shed its pure light over the dark forests of
+Germany.
+
+It is impossible to do justice to the character of so extraordinary a
+man as Hiouen-thsang in so short a sketch as we have been able to
+give. If we knew only his own account of his life and travels--the
+volume which has just been published at Paris--we should be ignorant
+of the motives which guided him and of the sufferings which he
+underwent. Happily, two of his friends and pupils had left an account
+of their teacher, and M. Stanislas Julien has acted wisely in
+beginning his collection of the Buddhist Pilgrims with the translation
+of that biography. There we learn something of the man himself and of
+that silent enthusiasm which supported him in his arduous work. There
+we see him braving the dangers of the desert, scrambling along
+glaciers, crossing over torrents, and quietly submitting to the
+brutal violence of Indian Thugs. There we see him rejecting the
+tempting invitations of Khans, Kings, and Emperors, and quietly
+pursuing among strangers, within the bleak walls of the cell of a
+Buddhist college, the study of a foreign language, the key to the
+sacred literature of his faith. There we see him rising to eminence,
+acknowledged as an equal by his former teachers, as a superior by the
+most distinguished scholars of India; the champion of the orthodox
+faith, an arbiter at councils, the favourite of Indian kings. In his
+own work there is hardly a word about all this. We do not wish to
+disguise his weaknesses, such as they appear in the same biography. He
+was a credulous man, easily imposed upon by crafty priests, still more
+easily carried away by his own superstitions; but he deserved to have
+lived in better times, and we almost grudge so high and noble a
+character to a country not our own, and to a religion unworthy of such
+a man. Of selfishness we find no trace in him. His whole life belonged
+to the faith in which he was born, and the objects of his labour was
+not so much to perfect himself as to benefit others. He was an honest
+man. And strange, and stiff, and absurd, and outlandish as his outward
+appearance may seem, there is something in the face of that poor
+Chinese monk, with his yellow skin and his small oblique eyes, that
+appeals to our sympathy--something in his life, and the work of his
+life, that places him by right among the heroes of Greece, the martyrs
+of Rome, the knights of the crusades, the explorers of the Arctic
+regions--something that makes us feel it a duty to inscribe his name
+on the roll of the 'forgotten worthies' of the human race. There is a
+higher consanguinity than that of the blood which runs through our
+veins--that of the blood which makes our hearts beat with the same
+indignation and the same joy. And there is a higher nationality than
+that of being governed by the same imperial dynasty--that of our
+common allegiance to the Father and Ruler of all mankind.
+
+It is but right to state that we owe the publication, at least of the
+second volume of M. Julien's work, to the liberality of the Court of
+Directors of the East-India Company. We have had several opportunities
+of pointing out the creditable manner in which that body has
+patronized literary and scientific works connected with the East, and
+we congratulate the Chairman, Colonel Sykes, and the President of the
+Board of Control, Mr. Vernon Smith, on the excellent choice they have
+made in this instance. Nothing can be more satisfactory than that
+nearly the whole edition of a work which would have remained
+unpublished without their liberal assistance, has been sold in little
+more than a month.
+
+_April, 1857._
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+THE MEANING OF NIRVANA.
+
+
+_To the Editor of_ THE TIMES.
+
+
+Sir,--Mr. Francis Barham, of Bath, has protested in a letter, printed
+in 'The Times' of the 24th of April, against my interpretations of
+Nirva_n_a, or the summum bonum of the Buddhists. He maintains that the
+Nirva_n_a in which the Buddhists believe, and which they represent as
+the highest goal of their religion and philosophy, means union and
+communion with God, or absorption of the individual soul by the divine
+essence, and not, as I tried to show in my articles on the 'Buddhist
+Pilgrims,' utter annihilation.
+
+I must not take up much more of your space with so abstruse a subject
+as Buddhist metaphysics; but at the same time I cannot allow Mr.
+Barham's protest to pass unnoticed. The authorities which he brings
+forward against my account of Buddhism, and particularly against my
+interpretation of Nirva_n_a, seem formidable enough. There is Neander,
+the great church historian, Creuzer, the famous scholar, and Hue, the
+well-known traveller and missionary,--all interpreting, as Mr. Barham
+says, the Nirva_n_a of the Buddhists in the sense of an apotheosis of
+the human soul, as it was taught in the Vedanta philosophy of the
+Brahmans, the Sufiism of the Persians, and the Christian mysticism of
+Eckhart and Tauler, and not in the sense of absolute annihilation.
+
+Now, with regard to Neander and Creuzer, I must observe that their
+works were written before the canonical books of the Buddhists,
+composed in Sanskrit, had been discovered, or at least before they had
+been sent to Europe, and been analysed by European scholars. Besides,
+neither Neander nor Creuzer was an Oriental scholar, and their
+knowledge of the subject could only be second-hand. It was in 1824
+that Mr. Brian Houghton Hodgson, then resident at the Court of Nepal,
+gave the first intimation of the existence of a large religious
+literature written in Sanskrit, and preserved by the Buddhists of
+Nepal as the canonical books of their faith. It was in 1830 and 1835
+that the same eminent scholar and naturalist presented the first set
+of these books to the Royal Asiatic Society in London. In 1837 he made
+a similar gift to the Societe Asiatique of Paris, and some of the most
+important works were transmitted by him to the Bodleian Library at
+Oxford. It was in 1844 that the late Eugene Burnouf published, after a
+careful study of these documents, his classical work, 'Introduction a
+l'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien,' and it is from this book that our
+knowledge of Buddhism may be said to date. Several works have since
+been published, which have added considerably to the stock of
+authentic information on the doctrine of the great Indian reformer.
+There is Burnouf's translation of 'Le Lotus de la bonne Loi,'
+published after the death of that lamented scholar, together with
+numerous essays, in 1852. There are two interesting works by the Rev.
+Spence Hardy--'Eastern Monachism,' London, 1850, and 'A Manual of
+Buddhism,' London, 1853; and there are the publications of M.
+Stanislas Julien, E. Foucaux, the Honourable George Turnour, Professor
+H. H. Wilson, and others, alluded to in my article on the 'Buddhist
+Pilgrims.' It is from these works alone that we can derive correct and
+authentic information on Buddhism, and not from Neander's 'History of
+the Christian Church' or from Creuzer's 'Symbolik.'
+
+If any one will consult these works, he will find that the discussions
+on the true meaning of Nirva_n_a are not of modern date, and that, at
+a very early period, different philosophical schools among the
+Buddhists of India, and different teachers who spread the doctrine of
+Buddhism abroad, propounded every conceivable opinion as to the
+orthodox explanation of this term. Even in one and the same school we
+find different parties maintaining different views on the meaning of
+Nirva_n_a. There is the school of the Svabhavikas, which still exists
+in Nepal. The Svabhavikas maintain that nothing exists but nature, or
+rather substance, and that this substance exists by itself
+(svabhavat), without a Creator or a Ruler. It exists, however, under
+two forms: in the state of Prav_r_itti, as active, or in the state of
+Nirv_r_itti, as passive. Human beings, who, like everything else,
+exist svabhavat, 'by themselves,' are supposed to be capable of
+arriving at Nirv_r_itti, or passiveness, which is nearly synonymous
+with Nirva_n_a. But here the Svabhavikas branch off into two sects.
+Some believe that Nirv_r_itti is repose, others that it is
+annihilation; and the former add, 'were it even annihilation
+(sunyata), it would still be good, man being otherwise doomed to an
+eternal migration through all the forms of nature; the more desirable
+of which are little to be wished for; and the less so, at any price to
+be shunned.'[83]
+
+What was the original meaning of Nirva_n_a may perhaps best be seen
+from the etymology of this technical term. Every Sanskrit scholar
+knows that Nirva_n_a means originally the blowing out, the extinction
+of light, and not absorption. The human soul, when it arrives at its
+perfection, is blown out,[84] if we use the phraseology of the
+Buddhists, like a lamp; it is not absorbed, as the Brahmans say, like
+a drop in the ocean. Neither in the system of Buddhist philosophy, nor
+in the philosophy from which Buddha is supposed to have borrowed, was
+there any place left for a Divine Being by which the human soul could
+be absorbed. Sankhya philosophy, in its original form, claims the name
+of an-i_s_vara, 'lordless' or 'atheistic' as its distinctive title.
+Its final object is not absorption in God, whether personal or
+impersonal, but Moksha, deliverance of the soul from all pain and
+illusion, and recovery by the soul of its true nature. It is doubtful
+whether the term Nirva_n_a was coined by Buddha. It occurs in the
+literature of the Brahmans as a synonyme of Moksha, deliverance;
+Nirv_r_itti, cessation; Apavarga, release; Ni_hs_reyas, summum bonum.
+It is used in this sense in the Mahabharata, and it is explained in
+the Amara-Kosha as having the meaning of 'blowing out, applied to a
+fire and to a sage.'[85] Unless, however, we succeed in tracing this
+term in works anterior to Buddha, we may suppose that it was invented
+by him in order to express that meaning of the summum bonum which he
+was the first to preach, and which some of his disciples explained in
+the sense of absolute annihilation.
+
+[Footnote 83: See Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 441; Hodgson, 'Asiatic
+Researches,' vol. xvi.]
+
+[Footnote 84: 'Calm,' 'without wind,' as Nirva_n_a is sometimes
+explained, is expressed in Sanskrit by Nirvata. See Amara-Kosha, sub
+voce.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Different views of the Nirva_n_a, as conceived by the
+Tirthakas or the Brahmans, may be seen in an extract from the
+Lankavatara, translated by Burnouf, p. 514.]
+
+The earliest authority to which we can go back, if we want to know the
+original character of Buddhism, is the Buddhist Canon, as settled
+after the death of Buddha at the first Council. It is called
+Tripi_t_aka, or the Three Baskets, the first containing the Sutras, or
+the discourses of Buddha; the second, the Vinaya, or his code of
+morality; the third, the Abhidharma, or the system of metaphysics. The
+first was compiled by Ananda, the second by Upali, the third by
+Ka_s_yapa--all of them the pupils and friends of Buddha. It may be
+that these collections, as we now possess them, were finally arranged,
+not at the first, but at the third Council. Yet, even then, we have no
+earlier, no more authentic, documents from which we could form an
+opinion as to the original teaching of Buddha; and the Nirva_n_a, as
+taught in the metaphysics of Ka_s_yapa, and particularly in the
+Pra_gn_a-paramita, is annihilation, not absorption. Buddhism,
+therefore, if tested by its own canonical books, cannot be freed from
+the charge of Nihilism, whatever may have been its character in the
+mind of its founder, and whatever changes it may have undergone in
+later times, and among races less inured to metaphysical discussions
+than the Hindus.
+
+The ineradicable feeling of dependence on something else, which is the
+life-spring of all religion, was completely numbed in the early Buddhist
+metaphysicians, and it was only after several generations had passed away,
+and after Buddhism had become the creed of millions, that this feeling
+returned with increased warmth, changing, as I said in my article, the very
+Nothing into a paradise, and deifying the very Buddha who had denied the
+existence of a Deity. That this has been the case in China we know from the
+interesting works of the Abbe Huc, and from other sources, such as the
+'Catechism of the Shamans, or the Laws and Regulations of the Priesthood of
+Buddha in China,' translated by Ch. F. Neumann, London, 1831. In India,
+also, Buddhism, as soon as it became a popular religion, had to speak a
+more human language than that of metaphysical Pyrrhonism. But, if it did
+so, it was because it was shamed into it. This we may see from the very
+nicknames which the Brahmans apply to their opponents, the Bauddhas. They
+call them Nastikas--those who maintain that there is nothing;
+_S_unyavadins-those who maintain that there is a universal void.
+
+The only ground, therefore, on which we may stand, if we wish to
+defend the founder of Buddhism against the charges of Nihilism and
+Atheism, is this, that, as some of the Buddhists admit, the 'Basket of
+Metaphysics' was rather the work of his pupils, not of Buddha
+himself.[86] This distinction between the authentic words of Buddha
+and the canonical books in general, is mentioned more than once. The
+priesthood of Ceylon, when the manifest errors with which their
+canonical commentaries abound, were brought to their notice, retreated
+from their former position, and now assert that it is only the express
+words of Buddha that they receive as undoubted truth.[87] There is a
+passage in a Buddhist work which reminds us somewhat of the last page
+of Dean Milman's 'History of Christianity,' and where we read:
+
+     'The words of the priesthood are good; those of the Rahats
+     (saints) are better; but those of the All-knowing are the
+     best of all.'
+
+[Footnote 86: See Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 41. 'Abuddhoktam
+abhidharma-_s_astram.' Ibid. p. 454. According to the Tibetan
+Buddhists, however, Buddha propounded the Abhidharma when he was
+fifty-one years old. 'Asiatic Researches,' vol. xx. p. 339.]
+
+[Footnote 87: 'Eastern Monachism,' p. 171.]
+
+This is an argument which Mr. Francis Barham might have used with more
+success, and by which he might have justified, if not the first
+disciples, at least the original founder of Buddhism. Nay, there is a
+saying of Buddha's which tends to show that all metaphysical
+discussion was regarded by him as vain and useless. It is a saying
+mentioned in one of the MSS. belonging to the Bodleian Library. As it
+has never been published before, I may be allowed to quote it in the
+original: Sadasad vi_k_aram na sahate,--'The ideas of being and not
+being do not admit of discussion,'--a tenet which, if we consider that
+it was enunciated before the time of the Eleatic philosophers of
+Greece, and long before Hegel's Logic, might certainly have saved us
+many an intricate and indigestible argument.
+
+A few passages from the Buddhist writings of Nepal and Ceylon will
+best show that the horror nihili was not felt by the metaphysicians
+of former ages in the same degree as it is felt by ourselves. The
+famous hymn which resounds in heaven when the luminous rays of the
+smile of Buddha penetrate through the clouds, is 'All is transitory,
+all is misery, all is void, all is without substance.' Again, it is
+said in the Pra_gn_a-paramita,[88] that Buddha began to think that he
+ought to conduct all creatures to perfect Nirva_n_a. But he reflected
+that there are really no creatures which ought to be conducted, nor
+creatures that conduct; and, nevertheless, he did conduct all
+creatures to perfect Nirva_n_a. Then, continues the text, why is it
+said that there are neither creatures which arrive at complete
+Nirva_n_a, nor creatures which conduct there? Because it is illusion
+which makes creatures what they are. It is as if a clever juggler, or
+his pupil, made an immense number of people to appear on the high
+road, and after having made them to appear, made them to disappear
+again. Would there be anybody who had killed, or murdered, or
+annihilated, or caused them to vanish? No. And it is the same with
+Buddha. He conducts an immense, innumerable, infinite number of
+creatures to complete Nirva_n_a, and yet there are neither creatures
+which are conducted, nor creatures that conduct. If a Bodhisattva, on
+hearing this explanation of the Law, is not frightened, then it may be
+said that he has put on the great armour.[89]
+
+[Footnote 88: Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 462.]
+
+[Footnote 89: Ibid. p. 478.]
+
+Soon after, we read: 'The name of Buddha is nothing but a word. The
+name of Bodhisattva is nothing but a word. The name of Perfect Wisdom
+(Pra_gn_a-paramita) is nothing but a word. The name is indefinite, as
+if one says "I," for "I" is something indefinite, because it has no
+limits.'
+
+Burnouf gives the gist of the whole Pra_gn_a-paramita in the following
+words: 'The highest Wisdom, or what is to be known, has no more real
+existence than he who has to know, or the Bodhisattva; no more than he
+who does know, or the Buddha.' But Burnouf remarks that nothing of
+this kind is to be found in the Sutras, and that Gautama _S_akya-muni,
+the son of _S_uddhodana, would never have become the founder of a
+popular religion if he had started with similar absurdities. In the
+Sutras the reality of the objective world is denied; the reality of
+form is denied; the reality of the individual, or the 'I,' is equally
+denied. But the existence of a subject, of something like the Purusha,
+the thinking substance of the Sankhya philosophy, is spared. Something
+at least exists with respect to which everything else may be said not
+to exist. The germs of the ideas, developed in the Pra_gn_a-paramita,
+may indeed be discovered here and there in the Sutras.[90] But they
+had not yet ripened into that poisonous plant which soon became an
+indispensable narcotic in the schools of the later Buddhists. Buddha
+himself, however, though, perhaps, not a Nihilist, was certainly an
+Atheist. He does not deny distinctly either the existence of gods, or
+that of God; but he ignores the former, and he is ignorant of the
+latter. Therefore, if Nirva_n_a in his mind was not yet complete
+annihilation, still less could it have been absorption into a Divine
+essence. It was nothing but selfishness, in the metaphysical sense of
+the word--a relapse into that being which is nothing but itself. This
+is the most charitable view which we can take of the Nirva_n_a, even
+as conceived by Buddha himself, and it is the view which Burnouf
+derived from the canonical books of the Northern Buddhists. On the
+other hand, Mr. Spence Hardy, who in his works follows exclusively the
+authority of the Southern Buddhists, the Pali and Singhalese works of
+Ceylon, arrives at the same result. We read in his work: 'The Rahat
+(Arhat), who has reached Nirva_n_a, but is not yet a Pratyeka-buddha,
+or a Supreme Buddha, says: "I await the appointed time for the
+cessation of existence. I have no wish to live; I have no wish to die.
+Desire is extinct."'
+
+[Footnote 90: Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 520.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a very interesting dialogue between Milinda and Nagasena,
+communicated by Mr. Spence Hardy, Nirva_n_a is represented as
+something which has no antecedent cause, no qualities, no locality. It
+is something of which the utmost we may assert is, that it is:
+
+     _Nagasena._ Can a man, by his natural strength, go from the
+     city of Sagal to the forest of Himala?
+
+     _Milinda._ Yes.
+
+     _Nagasena._ But could any man, by his natural strength,
+     bring the forest of Himala to this city of Sagal?
+
+     _Milinda._ No.
+
+     _Nagasena._ In like manner, though the fruition of the paths
+     may cause the accomplishment of Nirva_n_a, no cause by which
+     Nirva_n_a is produced can be declared. The path that leads
+     to Nirva_n_a may be pointed out, but not any cause for its
+     production. Why? because that which constitutes Nirva_n_a is
+     beyond all computation,--a mystery, not to be
+     understood.... It cannot be said that it is produced, nor
+     that it is not produced; that it is past or future or
+     present. Nor can it be said that it is the seeing of the
+     eye, or the hearing of the ear, or the smelling of the nose,
+     or the tasting of the tongue, or the feeling of the body.
+
+     _Milinda._ Then you speak of a thing that is not; you merely
+     say that Nirva_n_a is Nirva_n_a;--therefore there is no
+     Nirva_n_a.
+
+     _Nagasena._ Great king, Nirva_n_a is.
+
+Another question also, whether Nirva_n_a is something different from
+the beings that enter into it, has been asked by the Buddhists
+themselves:
+
+     _Milinda._ Does the being who acquires it, attain something
+     that has previously existed?--or is it his own product, a
+     formation peculiar to himself?
+
+     _Nagasena._ Nirva_n_a does not exist previously to its
+     reception; nor is it that which was brought into existence.
+     Still to the being who attains it, there is Nirva_n_a.
+
+In opposition, therefore, to the more advanced views of the Nihilistic
+philosophers of the North, Nagasena maintains the existence of
+Nirva_n_a, and of the being that has entered Nirva_n_a. He does not
+say that Buddha is a mere word. When asked by king Milinda, whether
+the all-wise Buddha exists, he replies:
+
+     _Nagasena._ He who is the most meritorious (Bhagavat) does
+     exist.
+
+     _Milinda._ Then can you point out to me the place in which
+     he exists?
+
+     _Nagasena._ Our Bhagavat has attained Nirva_n_a, where there
+     is no repetition of birth. We cannot say that he is here,
+     or that he is there. When a fire is extinguished, can it be
+     said that it is here, or that it is there? Even so, our
+     Buddha has attained extinction (Nirva_n_a). He is like the
+     sun that has set behind the Astagiri mountain. It cannot be
+     said that he is here, or that he is there: but we can point
+     him out by the discourses he delivered. In them he lives.
+
+At the present moment, the great majority of Buddhists would probably
+be quite incapable of understanding the abstract speculation of their
+ancient masters. The view taken of Nirva_n_a in China, Mongolia, and
+Tatary may probably be as gross as that which most of the Mohammedans
+form of their paradise. But, in the history of religion, the historian
+must go back to the earliest and most original documents that are to
+be obtained. Thus only may he hope to understand the later
+developments which, whether for good or evil, every form of faith has
+had to undergo.
+
+_April, 1857._
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+CHINESE TRANSLATIONS
+
+OF
+
+SANSKRIT TEXTS.[91]
+
+
+Well might M. Stanislas Julien put [Greek: heureka] on the title-page
+of his last work, in which he explains his method of deciphering the
+Sanskrit words which occur in the Chinese translations of the Buddhist
+literature of India. We endeavoured to explain the laborious character
+and the important results of his researches on this subject on a
+former occasion, when reviewing his translation of the 'Life and
+Travels of the Buddhist Pilgrim Hiouen-thsang.' At that time, however,
+M. Julien kept the key of his discoveries to himself. He gave us the
+results of his labours without giving us more than a general idea of
+the process by which those results had been obtained. He has now
+published his 'Methode pour dechiffrer et transcrire les noms
+sanscrits qui se rencontrent dans les livres chinois,' and he has
+given to the public his Chinese-Sanskrit dictionary, the work of
+sixteen years of arduous labour, containing all the Chinese characters
+which are used for representing phonetically the technical terms and
+proper names of the Buddhist literature of India.
+
+[Footnote 91: 'Methode pour dechiffrer et transcrire les noms
+sanscrits qui se rencontrent dans les livres chinois.' Par M.
+Stanislas Julien, Membre de l'Institut. Paris, 1861.]
+
+In order fully to appreciate the labours and discoveries of M. Julien
+in this remote field of Oriental literature, we must bear in mind that
+the doctrine of Buddha arose in India about two centuries before
+Alexander's invasion. It became the state religion of India soon after
+Alexander's conquest, and it produced a vast literature, which was
+collected into a canon at a council held about 246 B.C. Very soon
+after that council, Buddhism assumed a proselytizing character. It
+spread in the south to Ceylon, in the north to Kashmir, the Himalayan
+countries, Tibet, and China. In the historical annals of China, on
+which, in the absence of anything like historical literature in
+Sanskrit, we must mainly depend for information on the spreading of
+Buddhism, one Buddhist missionary is mentioned as early as 217 B.C.;
+and about the year 120 B.C. a Chinese general, after defeating the
+barbarous tribes north of the desert of Gobi, brought back as a trophy
+a golden statue--the statue of Buddha. It was not, however, till the
+year 65 A.D. that Buddhism was officially recognised by the Chinese
+Emperor as a third state religion. Ever since, it has shared equal
+honours with the doctrines of Confucius and Lao-tse in the Celestial
+Empire; and it is but lately that these three established religions
+have had to fear the encroachments of a new rival in the creed of the
+Chief of the rebels.
+
+Once established in China, and well provided with monasteries and
+benefices, the Buddhist priesthood seems to have been most active in
+its literary labours. Immense as was the Buddhist literature of India,
+the Chinese swelled it to still more appalling proportions. The first
+thing to be done was to translate the canonical books. This seems to
+have been the joint work of Chinese who had acquired a knowledge of
+Sanskrit during their travels in India, and of Hindus who settled in
+Chinese monasteries in order to assist the native translators. The
+translation of books which profess to contain a new religious doctrine
+is under all circumstances a task of great difficulty. It was so
+particularly when the subtle abstractions of the Buddhist religion had
+to be clothed in the solid, matter-of-fact idiom of the Chinese. But
+there was another difficulty which it seemed almost impossible to
+overcome. Many words, not only proper names, but the technical terms
+also of the Buddhist creed, had to be preserved in Chinese. They were
+not to be translated, but to be transliterated. But how was this to be
+effected with a language which, like Chinese, had no phonetic
+alphabet? Every Chinese character is a word; it has both sound and
+meaning; and it is unfit, therefore, for the representation of the
+sound of foreign words. In modern times, certain characters have been
+set apart for the purpose of writing the proper names and titles of
+foreigners; but such is the peculiar nature of the Chinese system of
+writing, that even with this alphabet it is only possible to represent
+approximatively the pronunciation of foreign words. In the absence,
+however, of even such an alphabet, the translators of the Buddhist
+literature seem to have used their own discretion--or rather
+indiscretion--in appropriating, without any system, whatever Chinese
+characters seemed to them to come nearest to the sound of Sanskrit
+words. Now the whole Chinese language consists in reality of about
+four hundred words, or significative sounds, all monosyllabic. Each of
+these monosyllabic sounds embraces a large number of various meanings,
+and each of these various meanings is represented by its own sign.
+Thus it has happened that the Chinese Dictionary contains 43,496
+signs, whereas the Chinese language commands only four hundred
+distinct utterances. Instead of being restricted, therefore, to one
+character which always expresses the same sound, the Buddhist
+translators were at liberty to express one and the same sound in a
+hundred different ways. Of this freedom they availed themselves to the
+fullest extent. Each translator, each monastery, fixed on its own
+characters for representing the pronunciation of Sanskrit words. There
+are more than twelve hundred Chinese characters employed by various
+writers in order to represent the forty-two simple letters of the
+Sanskrit alphabet. The result has been that even the Chinese were
+after a time unable to read--i. e. to pronounce--these random
+transliterations. What, then, was to be expected from Chinese scholars
+in Europe? Fortunately, the Chinese, to save themselves from their own
+perplexities, had some lists drawn up, exhibiting the principles
+followed by the various translators in representing the proper names,
+the names of places, and the technical terms of philosophy and
+religion which they had borrowed from the Sanskrit. With the help of
+these lists, and after sixteen years consecrated to the study of the
+Chinese translations of Sanskrit works and of other original
+compositions of Buddhist authors, M. Julien at last caught up the
+thread that was to lead him through this labyrinth; and by means of
+his knowledge of Sanskrit, which he acquired solely for that purpose,
+he is now able to do what not even the most learned among the
+Buddhists in China could accomplish--he is able to restore the exact
+form and meaning of every word transferred from Sanskrit into the
+Buddhist literature of China.
+
+Without this laborious process, which would have tired out the
+patience and deadened the enthusiasm of most scholars, the treasures
+of the Buddhist literature preserved in Chinese were really useless.
+Abel Remusat, who during his lifetime was considered the first Chinese
+scholar in Europe, attempted indeed a translation of the travels of
+Fahian, a Buddhist pilgrim, who visited India about the end of the
+fourth century after Christ. It was in many respects a most valuable
+work, but the hopelessness of reducing the uncouth Chinese terms to
+their Sanskrit originals made it most tantalising to look through its
+pages. Who was to guess that Ho-kia-lo was meant for the Sanskrit
+Vyakara_n_a, in the sense of sermons; Po-to for the Sanskrit Avadana,
+parables; Kia-ye-i for the Sanskrit Ka_s_yapiyas, the followers of
+Ka_s_yapa? In some instances, Abel Remusat, assisted by Chezy, guessed
+rightly; and later Sanskrit scholars, such as Burnouf, Lassen, and
+Wilson, succeeded in re-establishing, with more or less certainty, the
+original form of a number of Sanskrit words, in spite of their Chinese
+disguises. Still there was no system, and therefore no certainty, in
+these guesses, and many erroneous conclusions were drawn from
+fragmentary translations of Chinese writers on Buddhism, which even
+now are not yet entirely eliminated from the works of Oriental
+scholars. With M. Julien's method, mathematical certainty seems to
+have taken the place of learned conjectures; and whatever is to be
+learnt from the Chinese on the origin, the history, and the true
+character of Buddha's doctrine may now be had in an authentic and
+unambiguous form.
+
+But even after the principal difficulties have been cleared away
+through the perseverance of M. Stanislas Julien, and after we have
+been allowed to reap the fruits of his labours in his masterly
+translation of the 'Voyages des Pelerins Bouddhistes,' there still
+remains one point that requires some elucidation. How was it that the
+Chinese, whose ears no doubt are of the same construction as our own,
+should have made such sad work of the Sanskrit names which they
+transcribed with their own alphabet? Much may be explained by the
+defects of their language. Such common sounds as v, g, r, b, d, and
+short a, are unknown in Chinese as initials; no compound consonants
+are allowed, every consonant being followed by a vowel; and the final
+letters are limited to a very small number. This, no doubt, explains,
+to a great extent, the distorted appearance of many Sanskrit words
+when written in Chinese. Thus, Buddha could only be written Fo to.
+There was no sign for an initial b, nor was it possible to represent a
+double consonant, such as ddh. Fo to was the nearest approach to
+Buddha of which Chinese, when written, was capable. But was it so in
+speaking? Was it really impossible for Fahian and Hiouen-thsang, who
+had spent so many years in India, and who were acquainted with all the
+intricacies of Sanskrit grammar, to distinguish between the sounds of
+Buddha and Fo to? We cannot believe this. We are convinced that
+Hiouen-thsang, though he wrote, and could not but write, Fo to with
+the Chinese characters, pronounced Buddha just as we pronounce it, and
+that it was only among the unlearned that Fo to became at last the
+recognised name of the founder of Buddhism, abbreviated even to the
+monosyllabic Fo, which is now the most current appellation of 'the
+Enlightened.' In the same manner the Chinese pilgrims wrote Niepan,
+but they pronounced Nirva_n_a; they wrote Fan-lon-mo, and pronounced
+Brahma.
+
+Nor is it necessary that we should throw all the blame of these
+distortions on the Chinese. On the contrary, it is almost certain that
+some of the discrepancies between the Sanskrit of their translations
+and the classical Sanskrit of Pa_n_ini were due to the corruption
+which, at the time when Buddhism arose, and still more at the time
+when Buddhism spread to China, had crept into the spoken language of
+India. Sanskrit had ceased to be the spoken language of the people
+previous to the time of A_s_oka. The edicts which are still preserved
+on the rocks of Dhauli, Girnar, and Kapurdigiri are written in a
+dialect which stands to Sanskrit in the same relation as Italian to
+Latin. Now it is true, no doubt, that the canonical books of the
+Buddhists are written in a tolerably correct Sanskrit, very different
+from the Italianized dialect of A_s_oka. But that Sanskrit was, like
+the Greek of Alexandria, like the Latin of Hungary, a learned idiom,
+written by the learned for the learned; it was no longer the living
+speech of India. Now it is curious that in many of the canonical
+Buddhist works which we still possess, the text which is written in
+Sanskrit prose is from time to time interrupted by poetical portions,
+called Gathas or ballads, in which the same things are told in verse
+which had before been related in prose. The dialect of these songs or
+ballads is full of what grammarians would call irregularities, that is
+to say, full of those changes which every language undergoes in the
+mouths of the people. In character these corruptions are the same as
+those which have been observed in the inscriptions of A_s_oka, and
+which afterwards appear in Pali and the modern Prakrit dialects of
+India. Various conjectures have been started to explain the
+amalgamation of the correct prose text and the free and easy poetical
+version of the same events, as embodied in the sacred literature of
+the Buddhists. Burnouf, the first who instituted a critical inquiry
+into the history and literature of Buddhism, supposed that there was,
+besides the canon fixed by the three convocations, another digest of
+Buddhist doctrines composed in the popular style, which may have
+developed itself, as he says, subsequently to the preaching of
+_S_akya, and which would thus be intermediate between the regular
+Sanskrit and the Pali. He afterwards, however, inclines to another
+view--namely, that these Gathas were written out of India by men to
+whom Sanskrit was no longer familiar, and who endeavoured to write in
+the learned language, which they ill understood, with the freedom
+which is imparted by the habitual use of a popular but imperfectly
+determined dialect. Other Sanskrit scholars have proposed other
+solutions of this strange mixture of correct prose and incorrect
+poetry in the Buddhist literature; but none of them was satisfactory.
+The problem seems to have been solved at last by a native scholar,
+Babu Rajendralal, a curious instance of the reaction of European
+antiquarian research on the native mind of India. Babu Rajendralal
+reads Sanskrit of course with the greatest ease. He is a pandit by
+profession, but he is at the same time a scholar and critic in our
+sense of the word. He has edited Sanskrit texts after a careful
+collation of MSS., and in his various contributions to the 'Journal of
+the Asiatic Society of Bengal,' he has proved himself completely above
+the prejudices of his class, freed from the erroneous views on the
+history and literature of India in which every Brahman is brought up,
+and thoroughly imbued with those principles of criticism which men
+like Colebrooke, Lassen, and Burnouf have followed in their researches
+into the literary treasures of his country. His English is remarkably
+clear and simple, and his arguments would do credit to any Sanskrit
+scholar in England. We quote from his remarks on Burnouf's account of
+the Gathas, as given in that scholar's 'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien:'
+
+     'Burnouf's opinion on the origin of the Gathas, we venture
+     to think, is founded on a mistaken estimate of Sanskrit
+     style. The poetry of the Gatha has much artistic elegance
+     which at once indicates that it is not the composition of
+     men who were ignorant of the first principles of grammar.
+     The authors display a great deal of learning, and discuss
+     the subtlest questions of logic and metaphysics with much
+     tact and ability, and it is difficult to conceive that men
+     who were perfectly familiar with the most intricate forms of
+     Sanskrit logic, who have expressed the most abstruse
+     metaphysical ideas in precise and often in beautiful
+     language, who composed with ease and elegance in Arya,
+     To_t_aka, and other difficult measures, were unacquainted
+     with the rudiments of the language in which they wrote, and
+     were unable to conjugate the verb to be in all its forms....
+     The more reasonable conjecture appears to be that the Gatha
+     is the production of bards who were contemporaries or
+     immediate successors of _S_akya, who recounted to the devout
+     congregations of the prophet of Magadha, the sayings and
+     doings of their great teacher in popular and easy-flowing
+     verses, which in course of time came to be regarded as the
+     most authentic source of all information connected with the
+     founder of Buddhism. The high estimation in which the
+     ballads and improvisations of bards are held in India and
+     particularly in the Buddhist writings, favours this
+     supposition; and the circumstance that the poetical portions
+     are generally introduced in corroboration of the narration
+     of the prose, with the words "Thereof this may be said,"
+     affords a strong presumptive evidence.'
+
+Now this, from the pen of a native scholar, is truly remarkable. The
+spirit of Niebuhr seems to have reached the shores of India, and this
+ballad theory comes out more successfully in the history of Buddha
+than in the history of Romulus. The absence of anything like cant in
+the mouth of a Brahman speaking of Buddhism, the _bete noire_ of all
+orthodox Brahmans, is highly satisfactory, and our Sanskrit scholars
+in Europe will have to pull hard if, with such men as Babu Rajendralal
+in the field, they are not to be distanced in the race of scholarship.
+
+We believe, then, that Babu Rajendralal is right, and we look upon the
+dialect of the Gathas as a specimen of the Sanskrit spoken by the
+followers of Buddha about the time of A_s_oka and later. And this will
+help us to understand some of the peculiar changes which the Sanskrit
+of the Chinese Buddhists must have undergone, even before it was
+disguised in the strange dress of the Chinese alphabet. The Chinese
+pilgrims did not hear the Sanskrit pronounced as it was pronounced in
+the Parishads according to the strict rules of their _S_iksha or
+phonetics. They heard it as it was spoken in Buddhist monasteries, as
+it was sung in the Gathas of Buddhist minstrels, as it was preached in
+the Vyakara_n_as or sermons of Buddhist friars. For instance. In the
+Gathas a short a is frequently lengthened. We find na instead of na,
+'no.' The same occurs in the Sanskrit of the Chinese Buddhists. (See
+Julien, 'Methode,' p. 18; p. 21.) We find there also vistara instead
+of vistara, &c. In the dialect of the Gathas nouns ending in
+consonants, and therefore irregular, are transferred to the easier
+declension in a. The same process takes place in modern Greek and in
+the transition of Latin into Italian; it is, in fact, a general
+tendency of all languages which are carried on by the stream of living
+speech. Now this transition from one declension to another had taken
+place before the Chinese had appropriated the Sanskrit of the Buddhist
+books. The Sanskrit nabhas becomes nabha in the Gathas; locative
+nabhe, instead of nabhasi. If, therefore, we find in Chinese lo-che
+for the Sanskrit ra_g_as, dust, we may ascribe the change of r into l
+to the inability of the Chinese to pronounce or to write an r. We may
+admit that the Chinese alphabet offered nothing nearer to the sound of
+_g_a than tche; but the dropping of the final s has no excuse in
+Chinese, and finds its real explanation in the nature of the Gatha
+dialect. Thus the Chinese Fan-lan-mo does not represent the correct
+Sanskrit Brahman, but the vulgar form Brahma. The Chinese so-po for
+sarva, all, thomo for dharma, law, find no explanation in the dialect
+of the Gathas, but the suppression of the r before v and m, is of
+frequent occurrence in the inscriptions of A_s_oka. The omission of
+the initial s in words like sthana, place, sthavira, an elder, is
+likewise founded on the rules of Pali and Prakrit, and need not be
+placed to the account of the Chinese translators. In the inscription
+of Girnar sthavira is even reduced to thaira. The s of the nominative
+is frequently dropped in the dialect of the Gathas, or changed into o.
+Hence we might venture to doubt whether it is necessary to give to the
+character 1780 of M. Julien's list, which generally has the value of
+ta, a second value sta. This s is only wanted to supply the final s of
+kas, the interrogative pronoun, in such a sentence as kas
+tadgu_n_a_h_? what is the use of this? Now here we are inclined to
+believe that the final s of kas had long disappeared in the popular
+language of India, before the Chinese came to listen to the strange
+sounds and doctrines of the disciples of Buddha. They probably heard
+ka tadgu_n_a, or ka taggu_n_a, and this they represented as best they
+could by the Chinese kia-to-kieou-na.
+
+With these few suggestions we leave the work of M. Stanislas Julien.
+It is in reality a work done once for all--one huge stone and
+stumbling-block effectually rolled away which for years had barred the
+approach to some most valuable documents of the history of the East.
+Now that the way is clear, let us hope that others will follow, and
+that we shall soon have complete and correct translations of the
+travels of Fahian and other Buddhist pilgrims whose works are like so
+many Murray's 'Handbooks of India,' giving us an insight into the
+social, political, and religious state of that country at a time when
+we look in vain for any other historical documents.
+
+_March, 1861._
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+THE WORKS OF CONFUCIUS.[92]
+
+
+In reviewing the works of missionaries, we have repeatedly dwelt on
+the opportunities of scientific usefulness which are open to the
+messengers of the Gospel in every part of the world. We are not afraid
+of the common objection that missionaries ought to devote their whole
+time and powers to the one purpose for which they are sent out and
+paid by our societies. Missionaries cannot always be engaged in
+teaching, preaching, converting, and baptising the heathen. A
+missionary, like every other human creature, ought to have his leisure
+hours; and if those leisure hours are devoted to scientific pursuits,
+to the study of the languages or the literature of the people among
+whom he lives, to a careful description of the scenery and antiquities
+of the country, the manners, laws, and customs of its inhabitants,
+their legends, their national poetry, or popular stories, or, again,
+to the cultivation of any branch of natural science, he may rest
+assured that he is not neglecting the sacred trust which he accepted,
+but is only bracing and invigorating his mind, and keeping it from
+that stagnation which is the inevitable result of a too monotonous
+employment. The staff of missionaries which is spread over the whole
+globe supplies the most perfect machinery that could be devised for
+the collection of all kinds of scientific knowledge. They ought to be
+the pioneers of science. They should not only take out--they should
+also bring something home; and there is nothing more likely to
+increase and strengthen the support on which our missionary societies
+depend, nothing more sure to raise the intellectual standard of the
+men selected for missionary labour, than a formal recognition of this
+additional duty. There may be exceptional cases where missionaries are
+wanted for constant toil among natives ready to be instructed, and
+anxious to be received as members of a Christian community. But, as a
+general rule, the missionary abroad has more leisure than a clergyman
+at home, and time sits heavy on the hands of many whose congregations
+consist of no more than ten or twenty souls. It is hardly necessary to
+argue this point, when we can appeal to so many facts. The most
+successful missionaries have been exactly those whose names are
+remembered with gratitude, not only by the natives among whom they
+laboured, but also by the savants of Europe; and the labours of the
+Jesuit missionaries in India and China, of the Baptist missionaries at
+Serampore, of Gogerly and Spence Hardy in Ceylon, of Caldwell in
+Tinnevelly, of Wilson in Bombay, of Moffat, Krapf, and last, but not
+least, of Livingstone, will live not only in the journals of our
+academies, but likewise in the annals of the missionary Church.
+
+[Footnote 92: 'The Chinese Classics;' with a Translation, Critical and
+Exegetical Notes. By James Legge, D.D., of the London Missionary
+Society. Hong Kong, 1861.]
+
+The first volume of an edition of the Chinese Classics, which we have
+just received from the Rev. Dr. J. Legge, of the London Missionary
+Society, is a new proof of what can be achieved by missionaries, if
+encouraged to devote part of their time and attention to scientific
+and literary pursuits. We do not care to inquire whether Dr. Legge has
+been successful as a missionary. Even if he had not converted a single
+Chinese, he would, after completing the work which he has just begun,
+have rendered most important aid to the introduction of Christianity
+into China. He arrived in the East towards the end of 1839, having
+received only a few months' instruction in Chinese from Professor Kidd
+in London. Being stationed at Malacca, it seemed to him then--and he
+adds 'that the experience of twenty-one years has given its sanction
+to the correctness of the judgment'--that he could not consider
+himself qualified for the duties of his position until he had
+thoroughly mastered the classical books of the Chinese, and
+investigated for himself the whole field of thought through which the
+sages of China had ranged, and in which were to be found the
+foundations of the moral, social, and political life of the people. He
+was not able to pursue his studies without interruption, and it was
+only after some years, when the charge of the Anglo-Chinese College
+had devolved upon him, that he could procure the books necessary to
+facilitate his progress. After sixteen years of assiduous study, Dr.
+Legge had explored the principal works of Chinese literature; and he
+then felt that he could render the course of reading through which he
+had passed more easy to those who were to follow after him, by
+publishing, on the model of our editions of the Greek and Roman
+Classics, a critical text of the Classics of China, together with a
+translation and explanatory notes. His materials were ready, but
+there was the difficulty of finding the funds necessary for so costly
+an undertaking. Scarcely, however, had Dr. Legge's wants become known
+among the British and other foreign merchants in China, than one of
+them, Mr. Joseph Jardine, sent for the Doctor, and said to him, 'I
+know the liberality of the merchants in China, and that many of them
+would readily give their help to such an undertaking; but you need not
+have the trouble of canvassing the community. If you are prepared to
+undertake the toil of the publication, I will bear the expense of it.
+We make our money in China, and we should be glad to assist in
+whatever promises to be a benefit to it.' The result of this
+combination of disinterested devotion on the part of the author, and
+enlightened liberality on the part of his patron, lies now before us
+in a splendid volume of text, translation, and commentary, which, if
+the life of the editor is spared (and the sudden death of Mr. Jardine
+from the effects of the climate is a warning how busily death is at
+work among the European settlers in those regions), will be followed
+by at least six other volumes.
+
+The edition is to comprise the books now recognised as of highest
+authority by the Chinese themselves. These are the five King's and the
+four Shoo's. King means the warp threads of a web, and its application
+to literary compositions rests on the same metaphor as the Latin word
+textus, and the Sanskrit Sutra, meaning a yarn, and a book. Shoo
+simply means writings. The five King's are, 1. the Yih, or the Book of
+Changes; 2. the Shoo, or the Book of History; 3. the She, or the Book
+of Poetry; 4. the Le Ke, or Record of Rites; and 5. the Chun Tsew, or
+Spring and Autumn; a chronicle extending from 721 to 480 B.C. The four
+Shoo's consist of, 1. the Lun Yu, or Digested Conversations between
+Confucius and his disciples; 2. Ta Heo, or Great Learning, commonly
+attributed to one of his disciples; 3. the Chung Yung, or Doctrine of
+the Mean, ascribed to the grandson of Confucius; 4. of the works of
+Mencius, who died 288 B.C.
+
+The authorship of the five King's is loosely attributed to Confucius;
+but it is only the fifth, or 'the Spring and Autumn,' which can be
+claimed as the work of the philosopher. The Yih, the Shoo, and the She
+King were not composed, but only compiled by him, and much of the Le
+Ke is clearly from later hands. Confucius, though the founder of a
+religion and a reformer, was thoroughly conservative in his
+tendencies, and devotedly attached to the past. He calls himself a
+transmitter, not a maker, believing in and loving the ancients (p.
+59). 'I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge,' he
+says, 'I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it
+there' (p. 65). The most frequent themes of his discourses were the
+ancient songs, the history, and the rules of propriety established by
+ancient sages (p. 64). When one of his contemporaries wished to do
+away with the offering of a lamb as a meaningless formality, Confucius
+reproved him with the pithy sentence, 'You love the sheep, I love the
+ceremony.' There were four things, we are told, which Confucius
+taught--letters, ethics, devotion of soul, and truthfulness (p. 66).
+When speaking of himself, he said, 'At fifteen, I had my mind bent on
+learning. At thirty, I stood firm. At forty, I had no doubt. At fifty,
+I knew the decrees of heaven. At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ
+for the reception of truth. At seventy, I could follow what my heart
+desired, without transgressing what was right' (p. 10). Though this
+may sound like boasting, it is remarkable how seldom Confucius himself
+claims any superiority above his fellow-creatures. He offers his
+advice to those who are willing to listen, but he never speaks
+dogmatically; he never attempts to tyrannize over the minds or hearts
+of his friends. If we read his biography, we can hardly understand how
+a man whose life was devoted to such tranquil pursuits, and whose
+death scarcely produced a ripple on the smooth and silent surface of
+the Eastern world, could have left the impress of his mind on millions
+and millions of human beings--an impress which even now, after 2339
+years, is clearly discernible in the national character of the largest
+empire of the world. Confucius died in 478 B.C., complaining that of
+all the princes of the empire there was not one who would adopt his
+principles and obey his lessons. After two generations, however, his
+name had risen to be a power--the rallying point of a vast movement of
+national and religious regeneration. His grandson speaks of him as the
+ideal of a sage, as the sage is the ideal of humanity at large. Though
+Tze-tze claims no divine honour for his grandsire, he exalts his
+wisdom and virtue beyond the limits of human nature. This is a
+specimen of the language which he applies to Confucius:
+
+     'He may be compared to heaven and earth in their supporting
+     and containing, their overshadowing and curtaining all
+     things; he may be compared to the four seasons in their
+     alternating progress, and to the sun and moon in their
+     successive shining.... Quick in apprehension, clear in
+     discernment, of far-reaching intellect and all-embracing
+     knowledge, he was fitted to exercise rule; magnanimous,
+     generous, benign, and mild, he was fitted to exercise
+     forbearance; impulsive, energetic, firm, and enduring, he
+     was fitted to maintain a firm hold; self-adjusted, grave,
+     never swerving from the Mean, and correct, he was fitted to
+     command reverence; accomplished, distinctive, concentrative,
+     and searching, he was fitted to exercise discrimination....
+     All-embracing and vast, he was like heaven; deep and active
+     as a fountain, he was like the abyss.... Therefore his fame
+     overspreads the Middle Kingdom and extends to all barbarous
+     tribes. Wherever ships and carriages reach, wherever the
+     strength of man penetrates, wherever the heavens overshadow
+     and the earth sustains, wherever the sun and moon shine,
+     wherever frost and dews fall, all who have blood and breath
+     unfeignedly honour and love him. Hence it is said--He is the
+     equal of Heaven' (p. 53).
+
+This is certainly very magnificent phraseology, but it will hardly
+convey any definite impression to the minds of those who are not
+acquainted with the life and teaching of the great Chinese sage. These
+may be studied now by all who can care for the history of human
+thought, in the excellent work of Dr. Legge. The first volume, just
+published, contains the Confucian Analects, the Great Learning, and
+the Doctrine of the Mean, or the First, Second, and Third Shoo's, and
+will, we hope, soon be followed by the other Chinese Classics.[93] We
+must here confine ourselves to giving a few of the sage's sayings,
+selected from thousands that are to be found in the Confucian
+Analects. Their interest is chiefly historical, as throwing light on
+the character of one of the most remarkable men in the history of the
+human race. But there is besides this a charm in the simple
+enunciation of simple truths; and such is the fear of truism in our
+modern writers that we must go to distant times and distant countries
+if we wish to listen to that simple Solomonic wisdom which is better
+than the merchandize of silver and the gain thereof than fine gold.
+
+[Footnote 93: Dr. Legge has since published: vol. ii. containing the
+works of Mencius; vol. iii. part 1. containing the first part of the
+Shoo King; vol. iii. part 2. containing the fifth part of the Shoo
+King.]
+
+Confucius shows his tolerant spirit when he says, 'The superior man is
+catholic, and no partisan. The mean man is a partisan, and not
+catholic' (p. 14).
+
+There is honest manliness in his saying, 'To see what is right, and
+not to do it, is want of courage' (p. 18).
+
+His definition of knowledge, though less profound than that of
+Socrates, is nevertheless full of good sense:
+
+     'The Master said, "Shall I teach you what knowledge is? When
+     you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do
+     not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it--this is
+     knowledge"' (p. 15).
+
+Nor was Confucius unacquainted with the secrets of the heart: 'It is
+only the truly virtuous man,' he says in one place, 'who can love or
+who can hate others' (p. 30). In another place he expresses his belief
+in the irresistible charm of virtue: 'Virtue is not left to stand
+alone,' he says; 'he who practises it will have neighbours.' He bears
+witness to the hidden connection between intellectual and moral
+excellence: 'It is not easy,' he remarks, 'to find a man who has
+learned for three years without coming to be good' (p. 76). In his
+ethics, the golden rule of the Gospel, 'Do ye unto others as ye would
+that others should do to you,' is represented as almost unattainable.
+Thus we read, 'Tsze-Kung said, "What I do not wish men to do to me, I
+also wish not to do to men." The Master said, "Tsze, you have not
+attained to that,"' The Brahmans, too, had a distant perception of the
+same truth, which is expressed, for instance, in the Hitopadesa in the
+following words: 'Good people show mercy unto all beings, considering
+how like they are to themselves.' On subjects which transcend the
+limits of human understanding, Confucius is less explicit; but his
+very reticence is remarkable, when we consider the recklessness with
+which Oriental philosophers launch into the depths of religious
+metaphysics. Thus we read (p. 107):
+
+     'Ke Loo asked about serving the spirits of the dead. The
+     Master said, "While you are not able to serve men, how can
+     you serve their spirits?"
+
+     Ke Loo added, "I venture to ask about death." He was
+     answered, "While you do not know life, how can you know
+     about death?"'
+
+And again (p. 190):
+
+     'The Master said, "I would prefer not speaking."
+
+     Tsze-Kung said, "If you, Master, do not speak, what shall
+     we, your disciples, have to record?"
+
+     The Master said, "Does Heaven speak? The four seasons pursue
+     their courses, and all things are continually being
+     produced; but does Heaven say anything?"'
+
+_November, 1861._
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+POPOL VUH.
+
+
+A book called 'Popol Vuh,'[94] and pretending to be the original text
+of the sacred writings of the Indians of Central America, will be
+received by most people with a sceptical smile. The Aztec children who
+were shown all over Europe as descendants of a race to whom, before
+the Spanish conquest, divine honours were paid by the natives of
+Mexico, and who turned out to be unfortunate creatures that had been
+tampered with by heartless speculators, are still fresh in the memory
+of most people; and the 'Livre des Sauvages,'[95] lately published by
+the Abbe Domenech, under the auspices of Count Walewsky, has somewhat
+lowered the dignity of American studies in general. Still, those who
+laugh at the 'Manuscrit Pictographique Americain' discovered by the
+French Abbe in the library of the French Arsenal, and edited by him
+with so much care as a precious relic of the old Red-skins of North
+America, ought not to forget that there would be nothing at all
+surprising in the existence of such a MS., containing genuine
+pictographic writing of the Red Indians. The German critic of Abbe
+Domenech, M. Petzholdt,[96] assumes much too triumphant an air in
+announcing his discovery that the 'Manuscrit Pictographique' was the
+work of a German boy in the backwoods of America. He ought to have
+acknowledged that the Abbe himself had pointed out the German scrawls
+on some of the pages of his MS.; that he had read the names of Anna
+and Maria; and that he never claimed any great antiquity for the book
+in question. Indeed, though M. Petzholdt tells us very confidently
+that the whole book is the work of a naughty, nasty, and profane
+little boy, the son of German settlers in the backwoods of America, we
+doubt whether anybody who takes the trouble to look through all the
+pages will consider this view as at all satisfactory, or even as more
+probable than that of the French Abbe. We know what boys are capable
+of in pictographic art from the occasional defacements of our walls
+and railings; but we still feel a little sceptical when M. Petzholdt
+assures us that there is nothing extraordinary in a boy filling a
+whole volume with these elaborate scrawls. If M. Petzholdt had taken
+the trouble to look at some of the barbarous hieroglyphics that have
+been collected in North America, he would have understood more readily
+how the Abbe Domenech, who had spent many years among the Red Indians,
+and had himself copied several of their inscriptions, should have
+taken the pages preserved in the library of the Arsenal at Paris as
+genuine specimens of American pictography. There is a certain
+similarity between these scrawls and the figures scratched on rocks,
+tombstones, and trees by the wandering tribes of North America; and
+though we should be very sorry to endorse the opinion of the
+enthusiastic Abbe, or to start any conjecture of our own as to the
+real authorship of the 'Livre des Sauvages,' we cannot but think that
+M. Petzholdt would have written less confidently, and certainly less
+scornfully, if he had been more familiar than he seems to be with the
+little that is known of the picture-writing of the Indian tribes. As a
+preliminary to the question of the authenticity of the 'Popol Vuh,' a
+few words on the pictorial literature of the Red Indians of North
+America will not be considered out of place. The 'Popol Vuh' is not
+indeed a 'Livre des Sauvages,' but a literary composition in the true
+sense of the word. It contains the mythology and history of the
+civilised races of Central America, and comes before us with
+credentials that will bear the test of critical inquiry. But we shall
+be better able to appreciate the higher achievements of the South
+after we have examined, however cursorily, the rude beginnings in
+literature among the savage races of the North.
+
+[Footnote 94: 'Popol Vuh:' le Livre Sacre et les Mythes de l'Antiquite
+Americaine, avec les Livres Heroiques et Historiques des Quiches. Par
+l'Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg. Paris: Durand, 1861.]
+
+[Footnote 95: 'Manuscrit Pictographique Americain,' precede d'une
+Notice sur l'Ideographie des Peaux-Rouges. Par l'Abbe Em. Domenech.
+Ouvrage publie sous les auspices de M. le Ministre d'Etat et de la
+Maison de l'Empereur. Paris, 1860.]
+
+[Footnote 96: 'Das Buch der Wilden im Lichte Franzoesischer
+Civilisation.' Mit Proben aus dem in Paris als 'Manuscrit
+Pictographique Americain,' veroeffentlichten Schmierbuche eines
+Deutsch-Amerikanischen Hinterwaelder Jungen. Von J. Petzholdt. Dresden,
+1861.]
+
+Colden, in his 'History of the Five Nations,' informs us that when, in
+1696, the Count de Frontenac marched a well-appointed army into the
+Iroquois country, with artillery and all other means of regular
+military offence, he found, on the banks of the Onondaga, now called
+Oswego River, a tree, on the trunk of which the Indians had depicted
+the French army, and deposited two bundles of cut rushes at its foot,
+consisting of 1434 pieces; an act of symbolical defiance on their
+part, which was intended to warn their Gallic invaders that they would
+have to encounter this number of warriors.
+
+This warlike message is a specimen of Indian picture-writing. It
+belongs to the lowest stage of graphic representation, and hardly
+differs from the primitive way in which the Persian ambassadors
+communicated with the Greeks, or the Romans with the Carthaginians.
+Instead of the lance and the staff of peace between which the
+Carthaginians were asked to choose, the Red Indians would have sent an
+arrow and a pipe, and the message would have been equally understood.
+This, though not yet _peindre la parole_, is nevertheless a first
+attempt at _parler aux yeux_. It is a first beginning which may lead
+to something more perfect in the end. We find similar attempts at
+pictorial communication among other savage tribes, and they seem to
+answer every purpose. In Freycinet and Arago's 'Voyage to the Eastern
+Ocean' we are told of a native of the Carolina Islands, a Tamor of
+Sathoual, who wished to avail himself of the presence of a ship to
+send to a trader at Botta, M. Martinez, some shells which he had
+promised to collect in exchange for a few axes and some other
+articles. This he expressed to the captain, who gave him a piece of
+paper to make the drawing, and satisfactorily executed the commission.
+The figure of a man at the top denoted the ship's captain, who by his
+outstretched hands represented his office as a messenger between the
+parties. The rays or ornaments on his head denote rank or authority.
+The vine beneath him is a type of friendship. In the left column are
+depicted the number and kinds of shells sent; in the right column the
+things wished for in exchange--namely, seven fish-hooks, three large
+and four small, two axes, and two pieces of iron.
+
+The inscriptions which are found on the Indian graveboards mark a step
+in advance. Every warrior has his crest, which is called his totem,
+and is painted on his tombstone. A celebrated war-chief, the Adjetatig
+of Wabojeeg, died on Lake Superior, about 1793. He was of the clan of
+the Addik, or American reindeer. This fact is symbolized by the figure
+of the deer. The reversed position denotes death. His own personal
+name, which was White Fisher, is not noticed. But there are seven
+transverse strokes on the left, and these have a meaning--namely, that
+he had led seven war parties. Then there are three perpendicular lines
+below his crest, and these again are readily understood by every
+Indian. They represent the wounds received in battle. The figure of a
+moose's head is said to relate to a desperate conflict with an enraged
+animal of this kind; and the symbols of the arrow and the pipe are
+drawn to indicate the chief's influence in war and peace.
+
+There is another graveboard of the ruling chief of Sandy Lake on the
+Upper Mississippi. Here the reversed bird denotes his family name or
+clan, the Crane. Four transverse lines above it denote that he had
+killed four of his enemies in battle. An analogous custom is mentioned
+by Aristotle ('Politica,' vii. 2, p. 220, ed. Goettling). Speaking of
+the Iberians, he states that they placed as many obelisks round the
+grave of a warrior as he had killed enemies in battle.
+
+But the Indians went further; and though they never arrived at the
+perfection of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, they had a number of
+symbolic emblems which were perfectly understood by all their tribes.
+Eating is represented by a man's hand lifted to his mouth. Power over
+man is symbolized by a line drawn in the figure from the mouth to the
+heart; power in general by a head with two horns. A circle drawn
+around the body at the abdomen denotes full means of subsistence. A
+boy drawn with waved lines from each ear and lines leading to the
+heart represents a pupil. A figure with a plant as head, and two
+wings, denotes a doctor skilled in medicine, and endowed with the
+power of ubiquity. A tree with human legs, a herbalist or professor of
+botany. Night is represented by a finely crossed or barred sun, or a
+circle with human legs. Rain is figured by a dot or semicircle filled
+with water and placed on the head. The heaven with three disks of the
+sun is understood to mean three days' journey, and a landing after a
+voyage is represented by a tortoise. Short sentences, too, can be
+pictured in this manner. A prescription ordering abstinence from food
+for two, and rest for four, days is written by drawing a man with two
+bars on the stomach and four across the legs. We are told even of
+war-songs and love-songs composed in this primitive alphabet; but it
+would seem as if, in these cases, the reader required even greater
+poetical imagination than the writer. There is one war-song consisting
+of four pictures--
+
+     1. The sun rising.
+
+     2. A figure pointing with one hand to the earth and the
+     other extended to the sky.
+
+     3. The moon with two human legs.
+
+     4. A figure personifying the Eastern woman, i. e. the
+     evening star.
+
+These four symbols are said to convey to the Indian the following
+meaning:
+
+    I am rising to seek the war path;
+    The earth and the sky are before me;
+    I walk by day and by night;
+    And the evening star is my guide.
+
+The following is a specimen of a love-song:
+
+     1. Figure representing a god (monedo) endowed with magic
+     power.
+
+     2. Figure beating the drum and singing; lines from his
+     mouth.
+
+     3. Figure surrounded by a secret lodge.
+
+     4. Two bodies joined with one continuous arm.
+
+     5. A woman on an island.
+
+     6. A woman asleep; lines from his ear towards her.
+
+     7. A red heart in a circle.
+
+This poem is intended to express these sentiments:
+
+     1. It is my form and person that make me great--
+
+     2. Hear the voice of my song, it is my voice.
+
+     3. I shield myself with secret coverings.
+
+     4. All your thoughts are known to me, blush!
+
+     5. I could draw you hence were you ever so far--
+
+     6. Though you were on the other hemisphere--
+
+     7. I speak to your naked heart.
+
+All we can say is, that if the Indians can read this writing, they are
+greater adepts in the mysteries of love than the judges of the old
+_Cours d'amour_. But it is much more likely that these war-songs and
+love-songs are known to the people beforehand, and that their writings
+are only meant to revive what exists in the memory of the reader. It
+is a kind of mnemonic writing, and it has been used by missionaries
+for similar purposes, and with considerable success. Thus, in a
+translation of the Bible in the Massachusetts language by Eliot, the
+verses from 25 to 32 in the thirtieth chapter of Proverbs, are
+expressed by 'an ant, a coney, a locust, a spider, a river (symbol of
+motion), a lion, a greyhound, a he-goat and king, a man foolishly
+lifting himself to take hold of the heavens.' No doubt these symbols
+would help the reader to remember the proper order of the verses, but
+they would be perfectly useless without a commentary or without a
+previous knowledge of the text.
+
+We are told that the famous Testera, brother of the chamberlain of
+Francois I, who came to America eight or nine years after the taking
+of Mexico, finding it impossible to learn the language of the natives,
+taught them the Bible history and the principal doctrines of the
+Christian religion, by means of pictures, and that these diagrams
+produced a greater effect on the minds of the people, who were
+accustomed to this style of representation, than all other means
+employed by the missionaries. But here again, unless these pictures
+were explained by interpreters, they could by themselves convey no
+meaning to the gazing crowds of the natives. The fullest information
+on this subject is to be found in a work by T. Baptiste, 'Hieroglyphes
+de la conversion, ou par des estampes et des figures on apprend aux
+naturels a desirer le ciel.'
+
+There is no evidence to show that the Indians of the North ever
+advanced beyond the rude attempts which we have thus described, and of
+which numerous specimens may be found in the voluminous work of
+Schoolcraft, published by authority of Congress, 'Historical and
+Statistical Information respecting the History, Condition, and
+Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States,' Philadelphia,
+1851-1855. There is no trace of anything like literature among the
+wandering tribes of the North, and until a real 'Livre des Sauvages'
+turns up to fill this gap, they must continue to be classed among the
+illiterate races.[97]
+
+[Footnote 97: 'Manuscrit Pictographique,' pp. 26, 29.]
+
+It is very different if we turn our eyes to the people of Central and
+South America, to the races who formed the population of Mexico,
+Guatemala, and Peru, when conquered by the Spaniards. The Mexican
+hieroglyphics published by Lord Kingsborough are not to be placed in
+the same category with the totems and the pictorial scratches of the
+Red-skins. They are, first of all, of a much more artistic character,
+more conventional in their structure, and hence more definite in their
+meaning. They are coloured, written on paper, and in many respects
+quite on a level with the hieroglyphic inscriptions and hieratic
+papyri of Egypt. Even the conception of speaking to the ear through
+the eye, of expressing sound by means of outlines, was familiar to the
+Mexicans, though they seem to have applied their phonetic signs to the
+writing of the names of places and persons only. The principal object,
+indeed, of the Mexican hieroglyphic manuscripts was not to convey new
+information, but rather to remind the reader by means of mnemonic
+artifices of what he had learnt beforehand. This is acknowledged by
+the best authorities, by men who knew the Indians shortly after their
+first intercourse with Europeans, and whom we may safely trust in what
+they tell us of the oral literature and hieroglyphic writings of the
+natives. Acosta, in his 'Historia natural y moral,' vi. 7, tells us
+that the Indians were still in the habit of reciting from memory the
+addresses and speeches of their ancient orators, and numerous songs
+composed by their national poets. As it was impossible to acquire
+these by means of hieroglyphics or written characters such as were
+used by the Mexicans, care was taken that those speeches and poems
+should be learnt by heart. There were colleges and schools for that
+purpose, where these and other things were taught to the young by the
+aged in whose memory they seemed to be engraved. The young men who
+were brought up to be orators themselves had to learn the ancient
+compositions word by word; and when the Spaniards came and taught them
+to read and write the Spanish language, the Indians soon began to
+write for themselves, a fact attested by many eye-witnesses.
+
+Las Casas, the devoted friend of the Indians, writes as follows:
+
+     'It ought to be known that in all the republics of this
+     country, in the kingdoms of New Spain and elsewhere, there
+     was amongst other professions, that of the chroniclers and
+     historians. They possessed a knowledge of the earliest
+     times, and of all things concerning religion, the gods, and
+     their worship. They knew the founders of cities, and the
+     early history of their kings and kingdoms. They knew the
+     modes of election and the right of succession; they could
+     tell the number and characters of their ancient kings, their
+     works, and memorable achievements whether good or bad, and
+     whether they had governed well or ill. They knew the men
+     renowned for virtue and heroism in former days, what wars
+     they had waged, and how they had distinguished themselves;
+     who had been the earliest settlers, what had been their
+     ancient customs, their triumphs and defeats. They knew, in
+     fact, whatever belonged to history; and were able to give an
+     account of all the events of the past.... These chroniclers
+     had likewise to calculate the days, months, and years; and
+     though they had no writing like our own, they had their
+     symbols and characters through which they understood
+     everything; they had their great books, which were composed
+     with such ingenuity and art that our alphabet was really of
+     no great assistance to them.... Our priests have seen those
+     books, and I myself have seen them likewise, though many
+     were burnt at the instigation of the monks, who were afraid
+     that they might impede the work of conversion. Sometimes
+     when the Indians who had been converted had forgotten
+     certain words, or particular points of the Christian
+     doctrine, they began--as they were unable to read our
+     books--to write very ingeniously with their own symbols and
+     characters, drawing the figures which corresponded either to
+     the ideas or to the sounds of our words. I have myself seen
+     a large portion of the Christian doctrine written in figures
+     and images, which they read as we read the characters of a
+     letter; and this is a very extraordinary proof of their
+     genius.... There never was a lack of those chroniclers. It
+     was a profession which passed from father to son, highly
+     respected in the whole republic; each historian instructed
+     two or three of his relatives. He made them practise
+     constantly, and they had recourse to him whenever a doubt
+     arose on a point of history.... But not these young
+     historians only went to consult him; kings, princes, and
+     priests came to ask his advice. Whenever there was a doubt
+     as to ceremonies, precepts of religion, religious festivals,
+     or anything of importance in the history of the ancient
+     kingdoms, every one went to the chroniclers to ask for
+     information.'
+
+In spite of the religious zeal of Dominican and Franciscan friars, a
+few of these hieroglyphic MSS. escaped the flames, and may now be seen
+in some of our public libraries, as curious relics of a nearly extinct
+and forgotten literature. The first collection of these MSS. and other
+American antiquities was due to the zeal of the Milanese antiquarian,
+Boturini, who had been sent by the Pope in 1736 to regulate some
+ecclesiastical matters, and who devoted the eight years of his stay in
+the New World to rescuing whatever could be rescued from the scattered
+ruins of ancient America. Before, however, he could bring these
+treasures safe to Europe, he was despoiled of his valuables by the
+Spanish Viceroy; and when at last he made his escape with the remnants
+of his collection, he was taken prisoner by an English cruiser, and
+lost everything. The collection, which remained at Mexico, became the
+subject of several lawsuits, and after passing through the hands of
+Veytia and Gama, who both added to it considerably, it was sold at
+last by public auction. Humboldt, who was at that time passing through
+Mexico, acquired some of the MSS., which he gave to the Royal Museum
+at Berlin. Others found their way into private hands, and after many
+vicissitudes they have mostly been secured by the public libraries or
+private collectors of Europe. The most valuable part of that
+unfortunate shipwreck is now in the hands of M. Aubin, who was sent to
+Mexico in 1830 by the French Government, and who devoted nearly
+twenty years to the same work which Boturini had commenced a hundred
+years before. He either bought the dispersed fragments of the
+collections of Boturini, Gama, and Pichardo, or procured accurate
+copies; and he has brought to Europe, what is, if not the most
+complete, at least the most valuable and most judiciously arranged
+collection of American antiquities. We likewise owe to M. Aubin the
+first accurate knowledge of the real nature of the ancient Mexican
+writing; and we look forward with confident hope to his still
+achieving in his own field as great a triumph as that of Champollion,
+the decipherer of the hieroglyphics of Egypt.
+
+One of the most important helps towards the deciphering of the
+hieroglyphic MSS. of the Americans is to be found in certain books
+which, soon after the conquest of Mexico, were written down by natives
+who had learnt the art of alphabetic writing from their conquerors,
+the Spaniards. Ixtlilxochitl, descended from the royal family of
+Tetzcuco, and employed as interpreter by the Spanish Government, wrote
+the history of his own country from the earliest time to the arrival
+of Cortez. In writing this history he followed the hieroglyphic
+paintings as they had been explained to him by the old chroniclers.
+Some of these very paintings, which formed the text-book of the
+Mexican historian, have been recovered by M. Aubin; and as they helped
+the historian in writing his history, that history now helps the
+scholar in deciphering their meaning. It is with the study of works
+like that of Ixtlilxochitl that American philology ought to begin.
+They are to the student of American antiquities what Manetho is to
+the student of Egyptian hieroglyphics, or Berosus to the decipherer of
+the cuneiform inscriptions. They are written in dialects not more than
+three hundred years old, and still spoken by large numbers of natives,
+with such modifications as three centuries are certain to produce.
+They give us whatever was known of history, mythology, and religion
+among the people whom the Spaniards found in Central and South America
+in the possession of most of the advantages of a long-established
+civilisation. Though we must not expect to find in them what we are
+accustomed to call history, they are nevertheless of great historical
+interest, as supplying the vague outlines of a distant past, filled
+with migrations, wars, dynasties, and revolutions, such as were
+cherished in the memory of the Greeks at the time of Solon, and
+believed in by the Romans at the time of Cato. They teach us that the
+New World which was opened to Europe a few centuries ago, was in its
+own eyes an old world, not so different in character and feelings from
+ourselves as we are apt to imagine when we speak of the Red-skins of
+America, or when we read the accounts of the Spanish conquerors, who
+denied that the natives of America possessed human souls, in order to
+establish their own right of treating them like wild beasts.
+
+The 'Popol Vuh,' or the sacred book of the people of Guatemala, of
+which the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg has just published the original
+text, together with a literal French translation, holds a very
+prominent rank among the works composed by natives in their own native
+dialects, and written down by them with the letters of the Roman
+alphabet. There are but two works that can be compared to it in their
+importance to the student of American antiquities and American
+languages, namely, the 'Codex Chimalpopoca' in Nahuatl, the ancient
+written language of Mexico, and the 'Codex Cakchiquel' in the dialect
+of Guatemala. These, together with the work published by the Abbe
+Brasseur de Bourbourg under the title of 'Popol Vuh,' must form the
+starting-point of all critical inquiries into the antiquities of the
+American people.
+
+The first point which has to be determined with regard to books of
+this kind is whether they are genuine or not: whether they are what
+they pretend to be--compositions about three centuries old, founded on
+the oral traditions and the pictographic documents of the ancient
+inhabitants of America, and written in the dialects as spoken at the
+time of Columbus, Cortez, and Pizarro. What the Abbe Brasseur de
+Bourbourg has to say on this point amounts to this:--The manuscript
+was first discovered by Father Francisco Ximenes towards the end of
+the seventeenth century. He was cure of Santo-Tomas Chichicastenango,
+situated about three leagues south of Santa-Cruz del Quiche, and
+twenty-two leagues north-east of Guatemala. He was well acquainted
+with the languages of the natives of Guatemala, and has left a
+dictionary of their three principal dialects, his 'Tesoro de las
+Lenguas Quiche, Cakchiquel y Tzutohil.' This work, which has never
+been printed, fills two volumes, the second of which contains the copy
+of the MS. discovered by Ximenes. Ximenes likewise wrote a history of
+the province of the preachers of San-Vincente de Chiapas y Guatemala,
+in four volumes. Of this he left two copies. But three volumes only
+were still in existence when the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg visited
+Guatemala, and they are said to contain valuable information on the
+history and traditions of the country. The first volume contains the
+Spanish translation of the manuscript which occupies us at present.
+The Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg copied that translation in 1855. About
+the same time a German traveller, Dr. Scherzer, happened to be at
+Guatemala, and had copies made of the works of Ximenes. These were
+published at Vienna, in 1856.[98] The French Abbe, however, was not
+satisfied with a mere reprint of the text and its Spanish translation
+by Ximenes, a translation which he qualifies as untrustworthy and
+frequently unintelligible. During his travels in America he acquired a
+practical knowledge of several of the native dialects, particularly of
+the Quiche, which is still spoken in various dialects by about six
+hundred thousand people. As a priest he was in daily intercourse with
+these people; and it was while residing among them and able to consult
+them like living dictionaries, that, with the help of the MSS. of
+Ximenes, he undertook his own translation of the ancient chronicles of
+the Quiches. From the time of the discovery of Ximenes, therefore, to
+the time of the publication of the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, all
+seems clear and satisfactory. But there is still a century to be
+accounted for, from the end of the sixteenth century, when the
+original is supposed to have been written, to the end of the
+seventeenth, when it was first discovered by Ximenes at
+Chichicastenango.
+
+[Footnote 98: Mr. A. Helps was the first to point out the importance
+of this work in his excellent 'History of the Spanish Conquest in
+America.']
+
+These years are not bridged over. We may appeal, however, to the
+authority of the MS. itself, which carries the royal dynasties down to
+the Spanish Conquest, and ends with the names of the two princes, Don
+Juan de Rojas and Don Juan Cortes, the sons of Tecum and Tepepul.
+These princes, though entirely subject to the Spaniards, were allowed
+to retain the insignia of royalty to the year 1558, and it is shortly
+after their time that the MS. is supposed to have been written. The
+author himself says in the beginning that he wrote 'after the word of
+God (chabal Dios) had been preached, in the midst of Christianity; and
+that he did so because people could no longer see the 'Popol Vuh,'
+wherein it was clearly shown that they came from the other side of the
+sea, the account of our living in the land of shadow, and how we saw
+light and life.' There is no attempt at claiming for his work any
+extravagant age or mysterious authority. It is acknowledged to have
+been written when the Castilians were the rulers of the land; when
+bishops were preaching the word of Dios, the new God; when the ancient
+traditions of the people were gradually dying out. Even the title of
+'Popol Vuh,' which the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg has given to this
+work, is not claimed for it by its author. He says that he wrote when
+the 'Popol Vuh' was no longer to be seen. Now 'Popol Vuh' means the
+book of the people, and referred to the traditional literature in
+which all that was known about the early history of the nation, their
+religion and ceremonies, was handed down from age to age.
+
+It is to be regretted that the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg should have
+sanctioned the application of this name to the Quiche MS. discovered
+by Father Ximenes, and that he should apparently have translated it by
+'Livre sacre' instead of 'Livre national,' or 'Libro del comun,' as
+proposed by Ximenes. Such small inaccuracies are sure to produce great
+confusion. Nothing but a desire to have a fine sounding title could
+have led the editor to commit this mistake, for he himself confesses
+that the work published by him has no right to the title 'Popol Vuh,'
+and that 'Popol Vuh' does not mean 'Livre sacre.' Nor is there any
+more reason to suppose, with the learned Abbe, that the first two
+books of the Quiche MS. contain an almost literal transcript of the
+'Popol Vuh,' or that the 'Popol Vuh; was the original of the
+'Teo-Amoxtli,' or the sacred book of the Toltecs. All we know is, that
+the author wrote his anonymous work because the 'Popol Vuh'--the
+national book, or the national tradition--was dying out, and that he
+comprehended in the first two sections the ancient traditions common
+to the whole race, while he devoted the last two to the historical
+annals of the Quiches, the ruling nation at the time of the Conquest
+in what is now the republic of Guatemala. If we look at the MS. in
+this light, there is nothing at all suspicious in its character and
+its contents. The author wished to save from destruction the stories
+which he had heard as a child of his gods and his ancestors. Though
+the general outline of these stories may have been preserved partly in
+the schools, partly in the pictographic MSS., the Spanish Conquest had
+thrown everything into confusion, and the writer had probably to
+depend chiefly on his own recollections. To extract consecutive
+history from these recollections, is simply impossible. All is vague,
+contradictory, miraculous, absurd. Consecutive history is altogether
+a modern idea, of which few only of the ancient nations had any
+conception. If we had the exact words of the 'Popol Vuh,' we should
+probably find no more history there than we find in the Quiche MS. as
+it now stands. Now and then, it is true, one imagines one sees certain
+periods and landmarks, but in the next page all is chaos again. It may
+be difficult to confess that with all the traditions of the early
+migrations of Cecrops and Danaus into Greece, with the Homeric poems
+of the Trojan war, and the genealogies of the ancient dynasties of
+Greece, we know nothing of Greek history before the Olympiads, and
+very little even then. Yet the true historian does not allow himself
+to indulge in any illusions on this subject, and he shuts his eyes
+even to the most plausible reconstructions.
+
+The same applies with a force increased a hundredfold to the ancient
+history of the aboriginal races of America, and the sooner this is
+acknowledged, the better for the credit of American scholars. Even the
+traditions of the migrations of the Chichimecs, Colhuas, and Nahuas,
+which form the staple of all American antiquarians, are no better than
+the Greek traditions about Pelasgians, AEolians, and Ionians; and it
+would be a mere waste of time to construct out of such elements a
+systematic history, only to be destroyed again sooner or later by some
+Niebuhr, Grote, or Lewis.
+
+But if we do not find history in the stories of the ancient races of
+Guatemala, we do find materials for studying their character, for
+analysing their religion and mythology, for comparing their principles
+of morality, their views of virtue, beauty, and heroism, to those of
+other races of mankind. This is the charm, the real and lasting charm,
+of such works as that presented to us for the first time in a
+trustworthy translation by the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg.
+Unfortunately there is one circumstance which may destroy even this
+charm. It is just possible that the writers of this and other American
+MSS. may have felt more or less consciously the influence of European
+and Christian ideas, and if so, we have no sufficient guarantee that
+the stories they tell represent to us the American mind in its
+pristine and genuine form. There are some coincidences between the Old
+Testament and the Quiche MS. which are certainly startling. Yet even
+if a Christian influence has to be admitted, much remains in these
+American traditions which is so different from anything else in the
+national literatures of other countries, that we may safely treat it
+as the genuine growth of the intellectual soil of America. We shall
+give, in conclusion, some extracts to bear out our remarks; but we
+ought not to part with Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg without expressing
+to him our gratitude for his excellent work, and without adding a hope
+that he may be able to realise his plan of publishing a 'Collection of
+documents written in the indigenous languages, to assist the student
+of the history and philology of ancient America,' a collection of
+which the work now published is to form the first volume.
+
+
+_Extracts from the 'Popol Vuh.'_
+
+The Quiche MS. begins with an account of the creation. If we read it
+in the literal translation of the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, with all
+the uncouth names of divine and other beings that have to act their
+parts in it, it does not leave any very clear impression on our minds.
+Yet after reading it again and again, some salient features stand out
+more distinctly, and make us feel that there was a groundwork of noble
+conceptions which has been covered and distorted by an aftergrowth of
+fantastic nonsense. We shall do best for the present to leave out all
+proper names, which only bewilder the memory and which convey no
+distinct meaning even to the scholar. It will require long-continued
+research before it can be determined whether the names so profusely
+applied to the Deity were intended as the names of so many distinct
+personalities, or as the names of the various manifestations of one
+and the same Power. At all events, they are of no importance to us
+till we can connect more distinct ideas than it is possible to gather
+from the materials now at hand, with such inharmonious sounds as
+Tzakol, Bitol, Alom, Qaholom, Hun-Ahpu-Vuch, Gucumatz, Quax-Cho, &c.
+Their supposed meanings are in some cases very appropriate, such as
+the Creator, the Fashioner, the Begetter, the Vivifier, the Ruler, the
+Lord of the green planisphere, the Lord of the azure surface, the
+Heart of heaven; in other cases we cannot fathom the original
+intention of names such as the feathered serpent, the white boar, _le
+tireur de sarbacane au sarigue_, and others; and they therefore sound
+to our ears simply absurd. Well, the Quiches believed that there was a
+time when all that exists in heaven and earth was made. All was then
+in suspense, all was calm and silent; all was immovable, all peaceful,
+and the vast space of the heavens was empty. There was no man, no
+animal, no shore, no trees; heaven alone existed. The face of the
+earth was not to be seen; there was only the still expanse of the sea
+and the heaven above. Divine Beings were on the waters like a growing
+light. Their voice was heard as they meditated and consulted, and when
+the dawn rose, man appeared. Then the waters were commanded to retire,
+the earth was established that she might bear fruit and that the light
+of day might shine on heaven and earth.
+
+'For, they said, we shall receive neither glory nor honour from all we
+have created until there is a human being--a being endowed with
+reason. "Earth," they said, and in a moment the earth was formed. Like
+a vapour it rose into being, mountains appeared from the waters like
+lobsters, and the great mountains were made. Thus was the creation of
+the earth, when it was fashioned by those who are the Heart of heaven,
+the Heart of the earth; for thus were they called who first gave
+fertility to them, heaven and earth being still inert and suspended in
+the midst of the waters.'
+
+Then follows the creation of the brute world, and the disappointment
+of the gods when they command the animals to tell their names and to
+honour those who had created them. Then the gods said to the animals:
+
+'You will be changed, because you cannot speak. We have changed your
+speech. You shall have your food and your dens in the woods and crags;
+for our glory is not perfect, and you do not invoke us. There will be
+beings still that can salute us; we shall make them capable of
+obeying. Do your task; as to your flesh, it will be broken by the
+tooth.'
+
+Then follows the creation of man. His flesh was made of earth (_terre
+glaise_). But man was without cohesion or power, inert and aqueous;
+he could not turn his head, his sight was dim, and though he had the
+gift of speech, he had no intellect. He was soon consumed again in the
+water.
+
+And the gods consulted a second time how to create beings that should
+adore them, and after some magic ceremonies, men were made of wood,
+and they multiplied. But they had no heart, no intellect, no
+recollection of their Creator; they did not lift up their heads to
+their Maker, and they withered away and were swallowed up by the
+waters.
+
+Then follows a third creation, man being made of a tree called tzite,
+woman of the marrow of a reed called sibac. They, too, did neither
+think nor speak before him who had made them, and they were likewise
+swept away by the waters and destroyed. The whole nature--animals,
+trees, and stones--turned against men to revenge the wrongs they had
+suffered at their hands, and the only remnant of that early race is to
+be found in small monkeys which still live in the forests.
+
+Then follows a story of a very different character, and which
+completely interrupts the progress of events. It has nothing to do
+with the creation, though it ends with two of its heroes being changed
+into sun and moon. It is a story very much like the fables of the
+Brahmans or the German Maehrchen. Some of the principal actors in it
+are clearly divine beings who have been brought down to the level of
+human nature, and who perform feats and tricks so strange and
+incredible that in reading them we imagine ourselves in the midst of
+the Arabian Nights. In the struggles of the two favourite heroes
+against the cruel princes of Xibalba, there may be reminiscences of
+historical events; but it would be perfectly hopeless to attempt to
+extricate these from the mass of fable by which they are surrounded.
+The chief interest of the American tale consists in the points of
+similarity which it exhibits with the tales of the Old World. We shall
+mention two only--the repeated resuscitation of the chief heroes, who,
+even when burnt and ground to powder and scattered on the water, are
+born again as fish and changed into men; and the introduction of
+animals endowed with reason and speech. As in the German tales,
+certain peculiarities in the appearance and natural habits of animals
+are frequently accounted for by events that happened 'once upon a
+time'--for instance, the stumpy tail of the bear, by his misfortune
+when he went out fishing on the ice--so we find in the American tales,
+'that it was when the two principal heroes (Hun-Ahpu and Xbalanque)
+had caught the rat and were going to strangle it over the fire, that
+_le rat commenca a porter une queue sans poil_. Thus, because a
+certain serpent swallowed a frog who was sent as a messenger,
+therefore _aujourd'hui encore les serpents engloutissent les
+crapauds_.'
+
+The story, which well deserves the attention of those who are
+interested in the origin and spreading of popular tales, is carried on
+to the end of the second book, and it is only in the third that we
+hear once more of the creation of man.
+
+Three attempts, as we saw, had been made and had failed. We now hear
+again that before the beginning of dawn, and before the sun and moon
+had risen, man had been made, and that nourishment was provided for
+him which was to supply his blood, namely, yellow and white maize.
+Four men are mentioned as the real ancestors of the human race, or
+rather of the race of the Quiches. They were neither begotten by the
+gods nor born of woman, but their creation was a wonder wrought by the
+Creator. They could reason and speak, their sight was unlimited, and
+they knew all things at once. When they had rendered thanks to their
+Creator for their existence, the gods were frightened and they
+breathed a cloud over the eyes of men that they might see a certain
+distance only, and not be like the gods themselves. Then while the
+four men were asleep, the gods gave them beautiful wives, and these
+became the mothers of all tribes, great and small. These tribes, both
+black and white, lived and spread in the East. They did not yet
+worship the gods, but only turned their faces up to heaven, hardly
+knowing what they were meant to do here below. Their features were
+sweet, so was their language, and their intellect was strong.
+
+We now come to a most interesting passage, which is intended to
+explain the confusion of tongues. No nation, except the Jews, has
+dwelt much on the problem why there should be many languages instead
+of one. Grimm, in his 'Essay on the Origin of Language,' remarks: 'It
+may seem surprising that neither the ancient Greeks nor the ancient
+Indians attempted to propose or to solve the question as to the origin
+and the multiplicity of human speech. Holy Writ strove to solve at
+least one of these riddles, that of the multiplicity of languages, by
+means of the tower of Babel. I know only one other poor Esthonian
+legend which might be placed by the side of this biblical solution.
+"The old god," they say, "when men found their first seats too narrow,
+resolved to spread them over the whole earth, and to give to each
+nation its own language. For this purpose he placed a caldron of water
+on the fire, and commanded the different races to approach it in
+order, and to select for themselves the sounds which were uttered by
+the singing of the water in its confinement and torture.'"
+
+Grimm might have added another legend which is current among the
+Thlinkithians, and was clearly framed in order to account for the
+existence of different languages. The Thlinkithians are one of the
+four principal races inhabiting Russian America. They are called
+Kaljush, Koljush, or Kolosh by the Russians, and inhabit the coast
+from about 60 deg. to 45 deg. N.L., reaching therefore across the Russian
+frontier as far as the Columbia River, and they likewise hold many of
+the neighbouring islands. Weniaminow estimates their number, both in
+the Russian and English colonies, at 20 to 25,000. They are evidently
+a decreasing race, and their legends, which seem to be numerous and
+full of original ideas, would well deserve the careful attention of
+American ethnologists. Wrangel suspected a relationship between them
+and the Aztecs of Mexico. These Thlinkithians believe in a general
+flood or deluge, and that men saved themselves in a large floating
+building. When the waters fell, the building was wrecked on a rock,
+and by its own weight burst into two pieces. Hence arose the
+difference of languages. The Thlinkithians with their language
+remained on one side; on the other side were all the other races of
+the earth.[99]
+
+[Footnote 99: Holmberg, 'Ethnographische Skizzen ueber die Voelker des
+Russischen Amerika,' Helsingfors, 1855.]
+
+Neither the Esthonian nor the Thlinkithian legend, however, offers any
+striking points of coincidence with the Mosaic accounts. The
+analogies, therefore, as well as the discrepancies, between the ninth
+chapter of Genesis and the chapter here translated from the Quiche MS.
+require special attention:
+
+     'All had but one language, and they did not invoke as yet
+     either wood or stones; they only remembered the word of the
+     Creator, the Heart of heaven and earth.
+
+     'And they spoke while meditating on what was hidden by the
+     spring of day; and full of the sacred word, full of love,
+     obedience, and fear, they made their prayers, and lifting
+     their eyes up to heaven, they asked for sons and daughters:
+
+     '"Hail! O Creator and Fashioner, thou who seest and hearest
+     us! do not forsake us, O God, who art in heaven and earth,
+     Heart of the sky, Heart of the earth! Give us offspring and
+     descendants as long as the sun and dawn shall advance. Let
+     there be seed and light. Let us always walk on open paths,
+     on roads where there is no ambush. Let us always be quiet
+     and in peace with those who are ours. May our lives run on
+     happily. Give us a life secure from reproach. Let there be
+     seed for harvest, and let there be light."
+
+     'They then proceeded to the town of Tulan, where they
+     received their gods.
+
+     'And when all the tribes were there gathered together, their
+     speech was changed, and they did not understand each other
+     after they arrived at Tulan. It was there that they
+     separated, and some went to the East, others came here. Even
+     the language of the four ancestors of the human race became
+     different. "Alas," they said, "we have left our language.
+     How has this happened? We are ruined! How could we have been
+     led into error? We had but one language when we came to
+     Tulan; our form of worship was but one. What we have done is
+     not good," replied all the tribes in the woods and under the
+     lianas.'
+
+The rest of the work, which consists altogether of four books, is
+taken up with an account of the migrations of the tribes from the
+East, and their various settlements. The four ancestors of the race
+seem to have had a long life, and when at last they came to die, they
+disappeared in a mysterious manner, and left to their sons what is
+called the Hidden Majesty, which was never to be opened by human
+hands. What it was we do not know. There are many subjects of interest
+in the chapters which follow, only we must not look there for history,
+although the author evidently accepts as truly historical what he
+tells us about the successive generations of kings. But when he brings
+us down at last, after sundry migrations, wars, and rebellions, to the
+arrival of the Castilians, we find that between the first four
+ancestors of the human or of the Quiche race and the last of their
+royal dynasties, there intervene only fourteen generations, and the
+author, whoever he was, ends with the confession:
+
+'This is all that remains of the existence of Quiche; for it is
+impossible to see the book in which formerly the kings could read
+everything, as it has disappeared. It is over with all those of
+Quiche! It is now called Santa-Cruz!'
+
+_March, 1862._
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+SEMITIC MONOTHEISM.[100]
+
+
+A work such as M. Renan's 'Histoire Generale et Systeme Compare des
+Langues Semitiques' can only be reviewed chapter by chapter. It
+contains a survey not only, as its title would lead us to suppose, of
+the Semitic languages, but of the Semitic languages and nations; and,
+considering that the whole history of the civilised world has hitherto
+been acted by two races only, the Semitic and the Aryan, with
+occasional interruptions produced by the inroads of the Turanian race,
+M. Renan's work comprehends in reality half of the history of the
+ancient world. We have received as yet the first volume only of this
+important work, and before the author had time to finish the second,
+he was called upon to publish a second edition of the first, which
+appeared in 1858, with important additions and alterations.
+
+[Footnote 100: 'Histoire Generale et Systeme Compare des Langues
+Semitiques.' Par Ernest Renan, Membre de l'Institut. Seconde edition,
+Paris, 1858.
+
+'Nouvelles Considerations sur le Caractere General des Peuples
+Semitiques, et en particulier sur leur Tendance au Monotheisme,' Par
+Ernest Renan. Paris, 1859.]
+
+In writing the history of the Semitic race it is necessary to lay down
+certain general characteristics common to all the members of that
+race, before we can speak of nations so widely separated from each
+other as the Jews, the Babylonians, Phenicians, Carthaginians, and
+Arabs, as one race or family. The most important bond which binds
+these scattered tribes together into one ideal whole is to be found in
+their language. There can be as little doubt that the dialects of all
+the Semitic nations are derived from one common type as there is about
+the derivation of French, Spanish, and Italian from Latin, or of
+Latin, Greek, German, Celtic, Slavonic, and Sanskrit from the
+primitive idiom of the ancestors of the Aryan race. The evidence of
+language would by itself be quite sufficient to establish the fact
+that the Semitic nations descended from common ancestors, and
+constitute what, in the science of language, may be called a distinct
+race. But M. Renan was not satisfied with this single criterion of the
+relationship of the Semitic tribes, and he has endeavoured to draw,
+partly from his own observations, partly from the suggestions of other
+scholars, such as Ewald and Lassen, a more complete portrait of the
+Semitic man. This was no easy task. It was like drawing the portrait
+of a whole family, omitting all that is peculiar to each individual
+member, and yet preserving the features which, constitute the general
+family likeness. The result has been what might be expected. Critics
+most familiar with one or the other branch of the Semitic family have
+each and all protested that they can see no likeness in the portrait.
+It seems to some to contain features which it ought not to contain,
+whereas others miss the very expression which appears to them most
+striking.
+
+The following is a short abstract of what M. Renan considers the
+salient points in the Semitic character:
+
+'Their character,' he says, 'is religious rather than political, and
+the mainspring of their religion is the conception of the unity of
+God. Their religious phraseology is simple, and free from mythological
+elements. Their religious feelings are strong, exclusive, intolerant,
+and sustained by a fervour which finds its peculiar expression in
+prophetic visions. Compared to the Aryan nations, they are found
+deficient in scientific and philosophical originality. Their poetry is
+chiefly subjective or lyrical, and we look in vain among their poets
+for excellence in epic and dramatic compositions. Painting and the
+plastic arts have never arrived at a higher than the decorative stage.
+Their political life has remained patriarchal and despotic, and their
+inability to organise on a large scale has deprived them of the means
+of military success. Perhaps the most general feature of their
+character is a negative one,--their inability to perceive the general
+and the abstract, whether in thought, language, religion, poetry, or
+politics; and, on the other hand, a strong attraction towards the
+individual and personal, which makes them monotheistic in religion,
+lyrical in poetry, monarchical in politics, abrupt in style, and
+impractical for speculation.'
+
+One cannot look at this bold and rapid outline of the Semitic
+character without perceiving how many points it contains which are
+open to doubt and discussion. We shall confine our remarks to one
+point, which, in our mind, and, as far as we can see, in M. Renan's
+mind likewise, is the most important of all--namely, the supposed
+monotheistic tendency of the Semitic race. M. Renan asserts that this
+tendency belongs to the race by instinct,--that it forms the rule, not
+the exception; and he seems to imply that without it the human race
+would never have arrived at the knowledge or worship of the One God.
+
+If such a remark had been made fifty years ago, it would have roused
+little or no opposition. 'Semitic' was then used in a more restricted
+sense, and hardly comprehended more than the Jews and Arabs. Of this
+small group of people it might well have been said, with such
+limitations as are tacitly implied in every general proposition on the
+character of individuals or nations, that the work set apart for them
+by a Divine Providence in the history of the world was the preaching
+of a belief in one God. Three religions have been founded by members
+of that more circumscribed Semitic family--the Jewish, the Christian,
+the Mohammedan; and all three proclaim, with the strongest accent, the
+doctrine that there is but one God.
+
+Of late, however, not only have the limits of the Semitic family been
+considerably extended, so as to embrace several nations notorious for
+their idolatrous worship, but the history of the Jewish and Arab
+tribes has been explored so much more fully, that even there traces of
+a wide-spread tendency to polytheism have come to light.
+
+The Semitic family is divided by M. Renan into two great branches,
+differing from each other in the form of their monotheistic belief,
+yet both, according to their historian, imbued from the beginning with
+the instinctive faith in one God:
+
+1. The nomad branch, consisting of Arabs, Hebrews, and the
+neighbouring tribes of Palestine, commonly called the descendants of
+Terah; and
+
+2. The political branch, including the nations of Phenicia, of Syria,
+Mesopotamia, and Yemen.
+
+Can it be said that all these nations, comprising the worshippers of
+Elohim, Jehovah, Sabaoth, Moloch, Nisroch, Rimmon, Nebo, Dagon,
+Ashtaroth, Baal or Bel, Baal-peor, Baal-zebub, Chemosh, Milcom,
+Adrammelech, Annamelech, Nibhaz and Tartak, Ashima, Nergal,
+Succoth-benoth, the Sun, Moon, planets, and all the host of heaven,
+were endowed with a monotheistic instinct? M. Renan admits that
+monotheism has always had its principal bulwark in the nomadic branch,
+but he maintains that it has by no means been so unknown among the
+members of the political branch as is commonly supposed. But where are
+the criteria by which, in the same manner as their dialects, the
+religions of the Semitic races could be distinguished from the
+religions of the Aryan and Turanian races? We can recognise any
+Semitic dialect by the triliteral character of its roots. Is it
+possible to discover similar radical elements in all the forms of
+faith, primary or secondary, primitive or derivative, of the Semitic
+tribes? M. Renan thinks that it is. He imagines that he hears the
+key-note of a pure monotheism through all the wild shoutings of the
+priests of Baal and other Semitic idols, and he denies the presence of
+that key-note in any of the religious systems of the Aryan nations,
+whether Greeks or Romans, Germans or Celts, Hindus or Persians. Such
+an assertion could not but rouse considerable opposition, and so
+strong seems to have been the remonstrances addressed to M. Renan by
+several of his colleagues in the French Institute that, without
+awaiting the publication of the second volume of his great work, he
+has thought it right to publish part of it as a separate pamphlet. In
+his 'Nouvelles Considerations sur le Caractere General des Peuples
+Semitiques, et en particulier sur leur Tendance au Monotheisme,' he
+endeavours to silence the objections raised against the leading idea
+of his history of the Semitic race. It is an essay which exhibits not
+only the comprehensive knowledge of the scholar, but the warmth and
+alacrity of the advocate. With M. Renan the monotheistic character of
+the descendants of Shem is not only a scientific tenet, but a moral
+conviction. He wishes that his whole work should stand or fall with
+this thesis, and it becomes, therefore, all the more the duty of the
+critic, to inquire whether the arguments which he brings forward in
+support of his favourite idea are valid or not.
+
+It is but fair to M. Renan that, in examining his statements, we
+should pay particular attention to any slight modifications which he
+may himself have adopted in his last memoir. In his history he asserts
+with great confidence, and somewhat broadly, that 'le monotheisme
+resume et explique tous les caracteres de la race Semitique.' In his
+later pamphlet he is more captious. As an experienced pleader he is
+ready to make many concessions in order to gain all the more readily
+our assent to his general proposition. He points out himself with
+great candour the weaker points of his argument, though, of course,
+only in order to return with unabated courage to his first
+position,--that of all the races of mankind the Semitic race alone was
+endowed with the instinct of monotheism. As it is impossible to deny
+the fact that the Semitic nations, in spite of this supposed
+monotheistic instinct, were frequently addicted to the most degraded
+forms of a polytheistic idolatry, and that even the Jews, the most
+monotheistic of all, frequently provoked the anger of the Lord by
+burning incense to other gods, M. Renan remarks that when he speaks of
+a nation in general he only speaks of the intellectual aristocracy of
+that nation. He appeals in self-defence to the manner in which
+historians lay down the character of modern nations. 'The French,' he
+says, 'are repeatedly called "_une nation spirituelle_," and yet no
+one would wish to assert either that every Frenchman is _spirituel_,
+or that no one could be _spirituel_ who is not a Frenchman.' Now, here
+we may grant to M. Renan that if we speak of '_esprit_' we naturally
+think of the intellectual minority only, and not of the whole bulk of
+a nation; but if we speak of religion, the case is different. If we
+say that the French believe in one God only, or that they are
+Christians, we speak not only of the intellectual aristocracy of
+France but of every man, woman, and child born and bred in France.
+Even if we say that the French are Roman Catholics, we do so only
+because we know that there is a decided majority in France in favour
+of the unreformed system of Christianity. But if, because some of the
+most distinguished writers of France have paraded their contempt for
+all religious dogmas, we were to say broadly that the French are a
+nation without religion, we should justly be called to order for
+abusing the legitimate privileges of generalization. The fact that
+Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and Jeremiah were firm believers in one God
+could not be considered sufficient to support the general proposition
+that the Jewish nation was monotheistic by instinct. And if we
+remember that among the other Semitic races we should look in vain for
+even four such names, the case would seem to be desperate to any one
+but M. Renan.
+
+We cannot believe that M. Renan would be satisfied with the admission
+that there had been among the Jews a few leading men who believed in
+one God, or that the existence of but one God was an article of faith
+not quite unknown among the other Semitic races; yet he has hardly
+proved more. He has collected, with great learning and ingenuity, all
+traces of monotheism in the annals of the Semitic nations; but he has
+taken no pains to discover the traces of polytheism, whether faint or
+distinct, which are disclosed in the same annals. In acting the part
+of an advocate he has for a time divested himself of the nobler
+character of the historian.
+
+If M. Renan had looked with equal zeal for the scattered vestiges both
+of a monotheistic and of a polytheistic worship, he would have drawn,
+perhaps, a less striking, but we believe a more faithful, portrait of
+the Semitic man. We may accept all the facts of M. Renan, for his
+facts are almost always to be trusted; but we cannot accept his
+conclusions, because they would be in contradiction to other facts
+which M. Renan places too much in the background, or ignores
+altogether. Besides, there is something in the very conclusions to
+which he is driven by his too partial evidence which jars on our ears,
+and betrays a want of harmony in the premises on which he builds.
+Taking his stand on the fact that the Jewish race was the first of all
+the nations of the world to arrive at the knowledge of one God, M.
+Renan proceeds to argue that, if their monotheism had been the result
+of a persevering mental effort--if it had been a discovery like the
+philosophical or scientific discoveries of the Greeks, it would be
+necessary to admit that the Jews surpassed all other nations of the
+world in intellect and vigour of speculation. This, he admits, is
+contrary to fact:
+
+     'Apart la superiorite de son culte, le peuple juif n'en a
+     aucune autre; c'est un des peuples les moins doues pour la
+     science et la philosophie parmi les peuples de l'antiquite;
+     il n'a une grande position ni politique ni militaire. Ses
+     institutions sont purement conservatrices; les prophetes,
+     qui representent excellemment son genie, sont des hommes
+     essentiellement reactionnaires, se reportant toujours vers
+     un ideal anterieur. Comment expliquer, au sein d'une societe
+     aussi etroite et aussi peu developpee, une revolution
+     d'idees qu'Athenes et Alexandrie n'ont pas reussi a
+     accomplir?'
+
+M. Renan then defines the monotheism of the Jews, and of the Semitic
+nations in general, as the result of a low, rather than of a high
+state of intellectual cultivation: 'Il s'en faut,' he writes (p. 40),
+'que le monotheisme soit le produit d'une race qui a des idees
+exaltees en fait de religion; c'est en realite le fruit d'une race qui
+a peu de besoins religieux. C'est comme _minimum_ de religion, en fait
+de dogmes et en fait de pratiques exterieures, que le monotheisme est
+surtout accommode aux besoins des populations nomades.'
+
+But even this _minimum_ of religious reflection which is required,
+according to M. Renan, for the perception of the unity of God, he
+grudges to the Semitic nations, and he is driven in the end (p. 73)
+to explain the Semitic Monotheism as the result of a religious
+instinct, analogous to the instinct which led each race to the
+formation of its own language.
+
+Here we miss the usual clearness and precision which distinguish most
+of M. Renan's works. It is always dangerous to transfer expressions
+from one branch of knowledge to another. The word 'instinct' has its
+legitimate application in natural history, where it is used of the
+unconscious acts of unconscious beings. We say that birds build their
+nests by instinct, that fishes swim by instinct, that cats catch mice
+by instinct; and, though no natural philosopher has yet explained what
+instinct is, yet we accept the term as a conventional expression for
+an unknown power working in the animal world.
+
+If we transfer this word to the unconscious acts of conscious beings,
+we must necessarily alter its definition. We may speak of an
+instinctive motion of the arm, but we only mean a motion which has
+become so habitual as to require no longer any special effort of the
+will.
+
+If, however, we transfer the word to the conscious thoughts of
+conscious beings, we strain the word beyond its natural capacities, we
+use it in order to avoid other terms which would commit us to the
+admission either of innate ideas or inspired truths. We use a word in
+order to avoid a definition. It may sound more scientific to speak of
+a monotheistic instinct rather than of the inborn image or the
+revealed truth of the One living God; but is instinct less mysterious
+than revelation? Can there be an instinct without an instigation or an
+instigator? And whose hand was it that instigated the Semitic mind to
+the worship of one God? Could the same hand have instigated the Aryan
+mind to the worship of many gods? Could the monotheistic instinct of
+the Semitic race, if an instinct, have been so frequently obscured, or
+the polytheistic instinct of the Aryan race, if an instinct, so
+completely annihilated, as to allow the Jews to worship on all the
+high places round Jerusalem, and the Greeks and Romans to become
+believers in Christ? Fishes never fly, and cats never catch frogs.
+These are the difficulties into which we are led; and they arise
+simply and solely from our using words for their sound rather than for
+their meaning. We begin by playing with words, but in the end the
+words will play with us.
+
+There are, in fact, various kinds of monotheism, and it becomes our
+duty to examine more carefully what they mean and how they arise.
+There is one kind of monotheism, though it would more properly be
+called theism, or henotheism, which forms the birthright of every
+human being. What distinguishes man from all other creatures, and not
+only raises him above the animal world, but removes him altogether
+from the confines of a merely natural existence, is the feeling of
+sonship inherent in and inseparable from human nature. That feeling
+may find expression in a thousand ways, but there breathes through all
+of them the inextinguishable conviction, 'It is He that hath made us,
+and not we ourselves.' That feeling of sonship may with some races
+manifest itself in fear and trembling, and it may drive whole
+generations into religious madness and devil worship. In other
+countries it may tempt the creature into a fatal familiarity with the
+Creator, and end in an apotheosis of man, or a headlong plunging of
+the human into the divine. It may take, as with the Jews, the form of
+a simple assertion that 'Adam was the son of God,' or it may be
+clothed in the mythological phraseology of the Hindus, that Manu, or
+man, was the descendant of Svayambhu, the Self-existing. But, in some
+form or other, the feeling of dependence on a higher Power breaks
+through in all the religions of the world, and explains to us the
+meaning of St. Paul, 'that God, though in times past He suffered all
+nations to walk in their own ways, nevertheless He left not Himself
+without witness, in that He did good and gave us rain from heaven, and
+fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.'
+
+This primitive intuition of God and the ineradicable feeling of
+dependence on God, could only have been the result of a primitive
+revelation, in the truest sense of that word. Man, who owed his
+existence to God, and whose being centred and rested in God, saw and
+felt God as the only source of his own and of all other existence. By
+the very act of the creation, God had revealed Himself. There He was,
+manifested in His works, in all His majesty and power, before the face
+of those to whom He had given eyes to see and ears to hear, and into
+whose nostrils He had breathed the breath of life, even the Spirit of
+God.
+
+This primitive intuition of God, however, was in itself neither
+monotheistic nor polytheistic, though it might become either,
+according to the expression which it took in the languages of man. It
+was this primitive intuition which supplied either the subject or the
+predicate in all the religions of the world, and without it no
+religion, whether true or false, whether revealed or natural, could
+have had even its first beginning. It is too often forgotten by those
+who believe that a polytheistic worship was the most natural
+unfolding of religious life, that polytheism must everywhere have been
+preceded by a more or less conscious theism. In no language does the
+plural exist before the singular. No human mind could have conceived
+the idea of gods without having previously conceived the idea of a
+god. It would be, however, quite as great a mistake to imagine,
+because the idea of a god must exist previously to that of gods, that
+therefore a belief in One God preceded everywhere the belief in many
+gods. A belief in God as exclusively One, involves a distinct negation
+of more than one God, and that negation is possible only after the
+conception, whether real or imaginary, of many gods.
+
+The primitive intuition of the Godhead is neither monotheistic nor
+polytheistic, and it finds its most natural expression in the simplest
+and yet the most important article of faith--that God is God. This
+must have been the faith of the ancestors of mankind previously to any
+division of race or confusion of tongues. It might seem, indeed, as if
+in such a faith the oneness of God, though not expressly asserted, was
+implied, and that it existed, though latent, in the first revelation
+of God. History, however, proves that the question of oneness was yet
+undecided in that primitive faith, and that the intuition of God was
+not yet secured against the illusions of a double vision. There are,
+in reality, two kinds of oneness which, when we enter into
+metaphysical discussions, must be carefully distinguished, and which
+for practical purposes are well kept separate by the definite and
+indefinite articles. There is one kind of oneness which does not
+exclude the idea of plurality; there is another which does. When we
+say that Cromwell was a Protector of England, we do not assert that he
+was the only protector. But if we say that he was the Protector of
+England, it is understood that he was the only man who enjoyed that
+title. If, therefore, an expression had been given to that primitive
+intuition of the Deity, which is the mainspring of all later religion,
+it would have been--'There is a God,' but not yet 'There is but "One
+God."' The latter form of faith, the belief in One God, is properly
+called monotheism, whereas the term of henotheism would best express
+the faith in a single god.
+
+We must bear in mind that we are here speaking of a period in the
+history of mankind when, together with the awakening of ideas, the
+first attempts only were being made at expressing the simplest
+conceptions by means of a language most simple, most sensuous, and
+most unwieldy. There was as yet no word sufficiently reduced by the
+wear and tear of thought to serve as an adequate expression for the
+abstract idea of an immaterial and supernatural Being. There were
+words for walking and shouting, for cutting and burning, for dog and
+cow, for house and wall, for sun and moon, for day and night. Every
+object was called by some quality which had struck the eye as most
+peculiar and characteristic. But what quality should be predicated of
+that Being of which man knew as yet nothing but its existence?
+Language possessed as yet no auxiliary verbs. The very idea of being
+without the attributes of quality or action, had never entered into
+the human mind. How then was that Being to be called which had
+revealed its existence, and continued to make itself felt by
+everything that most powerfully impressed the awakening mind, but
+which as yet was known only like a subterraneous spring by the waters
+which it poured forth with inexhaustible strength? When storm and
+lightning drove a father with his helpless family to seek refuge in
+the forests, and the fall of mighty trees crushed at his side those
+who were most dear to him, there were, no doubt, feelings of terror
+and awe, of helplessness and dependence, in the human heart which
+burst forth in a shriek for pity or help from the only Being that
+could command the storm. But there was no name by which He could be
+called. There might be names for the storm-wind and the thunderbolt,
+but these were not the names applicable to Him that rideth upon the
+heavens of heavens, which were of old. Again, when after a wild and
+tearful night the sun dawned in the morning, smiling on man--when
+after a dreary and deathlike winter spring came again with its
+sunshine and flowers, there were feelings of joy and gratitude, of
+love and adoration in the heart of every human being; but though there
+were names for the sun and the spring, for the bright sky and the
+brilliant dawn, there was no word by which to call the source of all
+this gladness, the giver of light and life.
+
+At the time when we may suppose that the first attempts at finding a
+name for God were made, the divergence of the languages of mankind had
+commenced. We cannot dwell here on the causes which led to the
+multiplicity of human speech; but whether we look on the confusion of
+tongues as a natural or supernatural event, it was an event which the
+science of language has proved to have been inevitable. The ancestors
+of the Semitic and the Aryan nations had long become unintelligible to
+each other in their conversations on the most ordinary topics, when
+they each in their own way began to look for a proper name for God.
+Now one of the most striking differences between the Aryan and the
+Semitic forms of speech was this:--In the Semitic languages the roots
+expressive of the predicates which were to serve as the proper names
+of any subjects, remained so distinct within the body of a word, that
+those who used the word were unable to forget its predicative meaning,
+and retained in most cases a distinct consciousness of its appellative
+power. In the Aryan languages, on the contrary, the significative
+element, or the root of a word, was apt to become so completely
+absorbed by the derivative elements, whether prefixes or suffixes,
+that most substantives ceased almost immediately to be appellative,
+and were changed into mere names or proper names. What we mean can
+best be illustrated by the fact that the dictionaries of Semitic
+languages are mostly arranged according to their roots. When we wish
+to find the meaning of a word in Hebrew or Arabic we first look for
+its root, whether triliteral or biliteral, and then look in the
+dictionary for that root and its derivatives. In the Aryan languages,
+on the contrary, such an arrangement would be extremely inconvenient.
+In many words it is impossible to detect the radical element. In
+others, after the root is discovered, we find that it has not given
+birth to any other derivatives which would throw their converging rays
+of light on its radical meaning. In other cases, again, such seems to
+have been the boldness of the original name-giver that we can hardly
+enter into the idiosyncrasy which assigned such a name to such an
+object.
+
+This peculiarity of the Semitic and Aryan languages must have had the
+greatest influence on the formation of their religious phraseology.
+The Semitic man would call on God in adjectives only, or in words
+which always conveyed a predicative meaning. Every one of his words
+was more or less predicative, and he was therefore restricted in his
+choice to such words as expressed some one or other of the abstract
+qualities of the Deity. The Aryan man was less fettered in his choice.
+Let us take an instance. Being startled by the sound of thunder, he
+would at first express his impression by the single phrase, It
+thunders,--[Greek: brouta]. Here the idea of God is understood rather
+than expressed, very much in the same manner as the Semitic proper
+names Zabd (present), Abd (servant), Aus (present), are habitually
+used for Zabd-allah, Abd-allah, Aus-allah,--the servant of God, the
+gift of God. It would be more in accordance with the feelings and
+thoughts of those who first used these so-called impersonal verbs to
+translate them by He thunders, He rains, He snows. Afterwards, instead
+of the simple impersonal verb He thunders, another expression
+naturally suggested itself. The thunder came from the sky, the sky was
+frequently called Dyaus (the bright one), in Greek [Greek: Zeus]; and
+though it was not the bright sky which thundered, but the dark, yet
+Dyaus had already ceased to be an expressive predicate, it had become
+a traditional name, and hence there was nothing to prevent an Aryan
+man from saying Dyaus, or the sky thunders, in Greek [Greek: Zeus
+brouta]. Let us here mark the almost irresistible influence of
+language on the mind. The word Dyaus, which at first meant bright, had
+lost its radical meaning, and now meant simply sky. It then entered
+into a new stage. The idea which had first been expressed by the
+pronoun or the termination of the third person, He thunders, was taken
+up into the word Dyaus, or sky. He thunders, and Dyaus thunders,
+became synonymous expressions, and by the mere habit of speech He
+became Dyaus, and Dyaus became He. Henceforth Dyaus remained as an
+appellative of that unseen though ever present Power, which had
+revealed its existence to man from the beginning, but which remained
+without a name long after every beast of the field and every fowl of
+the air had been named by Adam.
+
+Now, what happened in this instance with the name of Dyaus, happened
+again and again with other names. When men felt the presence of God in
+the great and strong wind, in the earthquake, or the fire, they said
+at first, He storms, He shakes, He burns. But they likewise said, the
+storm (Marut) blows, the fire (Agni) burns, the subterraneous fire
+(Vulcanus) upheaves the earth. And after a time the result was the
+same as before, and the words meaning originally wind or fire were
+used, under certain restrictions, as names of the unknown God. As long
+as all these names were remembered as mere names or attributes of one
+and the same Divine Power, there was as yet no polytheism, though, no
+doubt, every new name threatened to obscure more and more the
+primitive intuition of God. At first, the names of God, like fetishes
+or statues, were honest attempts at expressing or representing an idea
+which could never find an adequate expression or representation. But
+the eidolon, or likeness, became an idol; the nomen, or name, lapsed
+into a numen, or demon, as soon as they were drawn away from their
+original intention. If the Greeks had remembered that Zeus was but a
+name or symbol of the Deity, there would have been no more harm in
+calling God by that name than by any other. If they had remembered
+that Kronos, and Uranos, and Apollon were all but so many attempts at
+naming the various sides, or manifestations, or aspects, or persons of
+the Deity, they might have used these names in the hours of their
+various needs, just as the Jews called on Jehovah, Elohim, and
+Sabaoth, or as Roman Catholics implore the help of Nunziata, Dolores,
+and Notre-Dame-de-Grace.
+
+What, then, is the difference between the Aryan and Semitic
+nomenclature for the Deity? Why are we told that the pious invocations
+of the Aryan world turned into a blasphemous mocking of the Deity,
+whereas the Semitic nations are supposed to have found from the first
+the true name of God? Before we look anywhere else for an answer to
+the question, we must look to language itself, and here we see that
+the Semitic dialects could never, by any possibility, have produced
+such names as the Sanskrit Dyaus (Zeus), Varu_n_a (Uranos), Marut
+(Storm, Mars), or Ushas (Eos). They had no doubt names for the bright
+sky, for the tent of heaven, and for the dawn. But these names were so
+distinctly felt as appellatives, that they could never be thought of
+as proper names, whether as names of the Deity, or as names of
+deities. This peculiarity has been illustrated with great skill by M.
+Renan. We differ from him when he tries to explain the difference
+between the mythological phraseology of the Aryan and the theological
+phraseology of the Semitic races, by assigning to each a peculiar
+theological instinct. We cannot, in fact, see how the admission of
+such an instinct, i. e. of an unknown and incomprehensible power,
+helps us in any way whatsoever to comprehend this curious mental
+process. His problem, however, is exactly the same as ours, and it
+would be impossible to state that problem in a more telling manner
+than he has done.
+
+'The rain,' he says (p. 79), 'is represented, in all the primitive
+mythologies of the Aryan race, as the fruit of the embraces of Heaven
+and Earth.' 'The bright sky,' says AEschylus, in a passage which one
+might suppose was taken from the Vedas, 'loves to penetrate the earth;
+the earth on her part aspires to the heavenly marriage. Rain falling
+from the loving sky impregnates the earth, and she produces for
+mortals pastures of the flocks and the gifts of Ceres.' In the Book of
+Job,[101] on the contrary, it is God who tears open the waterskins of
+Heaven (xxxviii. 37), who opens the courses for the floods (ibid. 25),
+who engenders the drops of dew (ibid. 28):
+
+    'He draws towards Him the mists from the waters,
+    Which pour down as rain, and form their vapours.
+    Afterwards the clouds spread them out,
+    They fall as drops on the crowds of men.' (Job xxxvi. 27, 28.)
+
+[Footnote 101: We give the extracts according to M. Renan's
+translation of the Book of Job (Paris, 1859, Michel Levy).]
+
+    'He charges the night with damp vapours,
+    He drives before Him the thunder-bearing cloud.
+    It is driven to one side or the other by His command.
+    To execute all that He ordains
+    On the face of the universe,
+    Whether it be to punish His creatures
+    Or to make thereof a proof of His mercy,' (Job xxxvii. 11-13.)
+
+Or, again, Proverbs xxx. 4:
+
+     'Who hath gathered the wind in His fists? Who hath bound the
+     waters in a garment? Who hath established all the ends of
+     the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son's name, if
+     thou canst tell?'
+
+It has been shown by ample evidence from the Rig-veda how many mythes
+were suggested to the Aryan world by various names of the dawn, the
+day-spring of life. The language of the ancient Aryans of India had
+thrown out many names for that heavenly apparition, and every name, as
+it ceased to be understood, became, like a decaying seed, the germ of
+an abundant growth of mythe and legend. Why should not the same have
+happened to the Semitic names for the dawn? Simply and solely because
+the Semitic words had no tendency to phonetic corruption; simply and
+solely because they continued to be felt as appellatives, and would
+inevitably have defeated every attempt at mythological phraseology
+such as we find in India and Greece. When the dawn is mentioned in the
+Book of Job (ix. 11), it is God 'who commandeth the sun and it riseth
+not, and sealeth up the stars.' It is His power which causeth the
+day-spring to know its place, that it might take hold of the ends of
+the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it (Job xxxviii. 12,
+13; Renan, 'Livre de Job,' pref. 71). Shahar, the dawn, never becomes
+an independent agent; she is never spoken of as Eos rising from the
+bed of her husband Tithonos (the setting sun), solely and simply
+because the word retained its power as an appellative, and thus could
+not enter into any mythological metamorphosis.
+
+Even in Greece there are certain words which have remained so pellucid
+as to prove unfit for mythological refraction. Selene in Greek is so
+clearly the moon that her name would pierce through the darkest clouds
+of mythe and fable. Call her Hecate, and she will bear any disguise,
+however fanciful. It is the same with the Latin Luna. She is too
+clearly the moon to be mistaken for anything else, but call her
+Lucina, and she will readily enter into various mythological phases.
+If, then, the names of sun and moon, of thunder and lightning, of
+light and day, of night and dawn could not yield to the Semitic races
+fit appellatives for the Deity, where were they to be found? If the
+names of Heaven or Earth jarred on their ears as names unfit for the
+Creator, where could they find more appropriate terms? They would not
+have objected to real names such as Jupiter Optimus Maximus, or
+[Greek: Zeus kydistos megistos], if such words could have been framed
+in their dialects, and the names of Jupiter and Zeus could have been
+so ground down as to become synonymous with the general term for
+'God.' Not even the Jews could have given a more exalted definition of
+the Deity than that of Optimus Maximus--the Best and the Greatest;
+and their very name of God, Jehovah, is generally supposed to mean no
+more than what the Peleiades of Dodona said of Zeus, [Greek: Zeus en,
+Zeus estin, Zeus essetai o megale Zeu], 'He was, He is, He will be, Oh
+great Zeus!' Not being able to form such substantives as Dyaus, or
+Varu_n_a, or Indra, the descendants of Shem fixed on the predicates
+which in the Aryan prayers follow the name of the Deity, and called
+Him the Best and the Greatest, the Lord and King. If we examine the
+numerous names of the Deity in the Semitic dialects we find that they
+are all adjectives, expressive of moral qualities. There is El,
+strong; Bel or Baal, Lord; Beel-samin, Lord of Heaven; Adonis (in
+Phenicia), Lord; Marnas (at Gaza), our Lord; Shet, Master, afterwards
+a demon; Moloch, Milcom, Malika, King; Eliun, the Highest (the God of
+Melchisedek); Ram and Rimmon, the Exalted; and many more names, all
+originally adjectives and expressive of certain general qualities of
+the Deity, but all raised by one or the other of the Semitic tribes to
+be the names of God or of that idea which the first breath of life,
+the first sight of this world, the first consciousness of existence,
+had for ever impressed and implanted in the human mind.
+
+But do these names prove that the people who invented them had a clear
+and settled idea of the unity of the Deity? Do we not find among the
+Aryan nations that the same superlatives, the same names of Lord and
+King, of Master and Father, are used when the human mind is brought
+face to face with the Divine, and the human heart pours out in prayer
+and thanksgiving the feelings inspired by the presence of God?
+Brahman, in Sanskrit, meant originally Power, the same as El. It
+resisted for a long time the mythological contagion, but at last it
+yielded like all other names of God, and became the name of one God.
+By the first man who formed or fixed these names, Brahman, like El,
+and like every name of God, was meant, no doubt, as the best
+expression that could be found for the image reflected from the
+Creator upon the mind of the creature. But in none of these words can
+we see any decided proof that those who framed them had arrived at the
+clear perception of One God, and were thus secured against the danger
+of polytheism. Like Dyaus, like Indra, like Brahman, Baal and El and
+Moloch were names of God, but not yet of the One God.
+
+And we have only to follow the history of these Semitic names in order
+to see that, in spite of their superlative meaning, they proved no
+stronger bulwark against polytheism than the Latin Optimus Maximus.
+The very names which we saw explained before as meaning the Highest,
+the Lord, the Master, are represented in the Phenician mythology as
+standing to each other in the relation of Father and Son. (Renan, p.
+60.) There is hardly one single Semitic tribe which did not at times
+forget the original meaning of the names by which they called on God.
+If the Jews had remembered the meaning of El, the Omnipotent, they
+could not have worshipped Baal, the Lord, as different from El. But as
+the Aryan tribes bartered the names of their gods, and were glad to
+add the worship of Zeus to that of Uranos, the worship of Apollon to
+that of Zeus, the worship of Hermes to that of Apollon, the Semitic
+nations likewise were ready to try the gods of their neighbours. If
+there had been in the Semitic race a truly monotheistic instinct, the
+history of those nations would become perfectly unintelligible.
+Nothing is more difficult to overcome than an instinct: naturam furca
+expellas, tamen usque recurret. But the history even of the Jews is
+made up of an almost uninterrupted series of relapses into polytheism.
+Let us admit, on the contrary, that God had in the beginning revealed
+Himself the same to the ancestors of the whole human race. Let us then
+observe the natural divergence of the languages of man, and consider
+the peculiar difficulties that had to be overcome in framing names for
+God, and the peculiar manner in which they were overcome in the
+Semitic and Aryan languages, and everything that follows will be
+intelligible. If we consider the abundance of synonymes into which all
+ancient languages burst out at their first starting--if we remember
+that there were hundreds of names for the earth and the sky, the sun
+and the moon, we shall not be surprised at meeting with more than one
+name for God both among the Semitic and the Aryan nations. If we
+consider how easily the radical or significative elements of words
+were absorbed and obscured in the Aryan, and how they stood out in
+bold relief in the Semitic languages, we shall appreciate the
+difficulty which the Shemites experienced in framing any name that
+should not seem to take too one-sided a view of the Deity by
+predicating but one quality, whether strength, dominion, or majesty;
+and we shall equally perceive the snare which their very language laid
+for the Aryan nations, by supplying them with a number of words which,
+though they seemed harmless as meaning nothing except what by
+tradition or definition they were made to mean, yet were full of
+mischief owing to the recollections which, at any time, they might
+revive. Dyaus in itself was as good a name as any for God, and in some
+respects more appropriate than its derivative deva, the Latin deus,
+which the Romance nations still use without meaning any harm. But
+Dyaus had meant sky for too long a time to become entirely divested of
+all the old mythes or sayings which were true of Dyaus, the sky, but
+could only be retained as fables if transferred to Dyaus, God. Dyaus,
+the Bright, might be called the husband of the earth; but, when the
+same mythe was repeated of Zeus, the god, then Zeus became the husband
+of Demeter, Demeter became a goddess, a daughter sprang from their
+union, and all the sluices of mythological madness were opened. There
+were a few men, no doubt, at all times, who saw through this
+mythological phraseology, who called on God, though they called him
+Zeus, or Dyaus, or Jupiter. Xenophanes, one of the earliest Greek
+heretics, boldly maintained that there was but 'one God, and that He
+was not like unto men, either in body or mind.'[102] A poet in the
+Veda asserts distinctly, 'They call Him Indra, Mitra, Varu_n_a, Agni;
+then He is the well-winged heavenly Garutmat; that which is One the
+wise call it many ways--they call it Agni, Yama, Matari_s_van.'[103]
+
+[Footnote 102: Xenophanes, about contemporary with Cyrus, as quoted by
+Clemens Alex., Strom. v, p. 601,--[Greek: eis theos en te theoisi kai
+anthropoisi megistos, oute demas thnetoisin homoiios oude noema].]
+
+[Footnote 103: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' by M. M., p.
+567.]
+
+But, on the whole, the charm of mythology prevailed among the Aryan
+nations, and a return to the primitive intuition of God and a total
+negation of all gods, wore rendered more difficult to the Aryan than
+to the Semitic man. The Semitic man had hardly ever to resist the
+allurements of mythology. The names with which he invoked the Deity
+did not trick him by their equivocal character. Nevertheless, these
+Semitic names, too, though predicative in the beginning, became
+subjective, and from being the various names of One Being, lapsed into
+names of various beings. Hence arose a danger which threatened
+well-nigh to bar to the Semitic race the approach to the conception
+and worship of the One God.
+
+Nowhere can we see this danger more clearly than in the history of the
+Jews. The Jews had, no doubt, preserved, from the beginning the idea
+of God, and their names of God contained nothing but what might by
+right be ascribed to Him. They worshipped a single God, and, whenever
+they fell into idolatry, they felt that they had fallen away from God.
+But that God, under whatever name they invoked Him, was especially
+their God, their own national God, and His existence did not exclude
+the existence of other gods or demons. Of the ancestors of Abraham and
+Nachor, even of their father Terah, we know that in old time, when
+they dwelt on the other side of the flood, they served other gods
+(Joshua xxiv. 2). At the time of Joshua these gods were not yet
+forgotten, and instead of denying their existence altogether, Joshua
+only exhorts the people to put away the gods which their fathers
+served on the other side of the flood and in Egypt, and to serve the
+Lord: 'Choose ye this day,' he says, 'whom you will serve; whether the
+gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the
+flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell; but as
+for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.'
+
+Such a speech, exhorting the people to make their choice between
+various gods, would have been unmeaning if addressed to a nation which
+had once conceived the unity of the Godhead. Even images of the gods
+were not unknown to the family of Abraham, for, though we know nothing
+of the exact form of the teraphim, or images which Rachel stole from
+her father, certain it is that Laban calls them his gods (Genesis
+xxxi. 19, 30). But what is much more significant than these traces of
+polytheism and idolatry is the hesitating tone in which some of the
+early patriarchs speak of their God. When Jacob flees before Esau into
+Padan-Aram and awakes from his vision at Bethel, he does not profess
+his faith in the One God, but he bargains, and says, 'If God will be
+with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me
+bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my
+father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God: and this
+stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house: and of all
+that thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee'
+(Genesis xxviii. 20-22). Language of this kind evinces not only a
+temporary want of faith in God, but it shows that the conception of
+God had not yet acquired that complete universality which alone
+deserves to be called monotheism, or belief in the One God. To him who
+has seen God face to face there is no longer any escape or doubt as to
+who is to be his god; God is his god, whatever befall. But this Jacob
+learnt not until he had struggled and wrestled with God, and committed
+himself to His care at the very time when no one else could have
+saved him. In that struggle Jacob asked for the true name of God, and
+he learnt from God that His name was secret (Genesis xxxii. 29). After
+that, his God was no longer one of many gods. His faith was not like
+the faith of Jethro (Exodus xxvii. 11), the priest of Midian, the
+father-in-law of Moses, who when he heard of all that God had done for
+Moses acknowledged that God (Jehovah) was greater than all gods
+(Elohim). This is not yet faith in the One God. It is a faith hardly
+above the faith of the people who were halting between Jehovah and
+Baal, and who only when they saw what the Lord did for Elijah, fell on
+their faces and said, 'The Lord He is the God.'
+
+And yet this limited faith in Jehovah as the God of the Jews, as a God
+more powerful than the gods of the heathen, as a God above all gods,
+betrays itself again and again in the history of the Jews. The idea of
+many gods is there, and wherever that idea exists, wherever the plural
+of god is used in earnest, there is polytheism. It is not so much the
+names of Zeus, Hermes, &c., which constitute the polytheism of the
+Greeks; it is the plural [Greek: theoi], gods, which contains the
+fatal spell. We do not know what M. Renan means when he says that
+Jehovah with the Jews 'n'est pas le plus grand entre plusieurs dieux;
+c'est le Dieu unique.' It was so with Abraham, it was so after Jacob
+had been changed into Israel, it was so with Moses, Elijah, and
+Jeremiah. But what is the meaning of the very first commandment, 'Thou
+shalt have no other gods before me?' Could this command have been
+addressed to a nation to whom the plural of God was a nonentity? It
+might be answered that the plural of God was to the Jews as revolting
+as it is to us, that it was revolting to their faith, if not to their
+reason. But how was it that their language tolerated the plural of a
+word which excludes plurality as much as the word for the centre of a
+sphere? No man who had clearly perceived the unity of God, could say
+with the Psalmist (lxxxvi. 8), 'Among the gods there is none like unto
+Thee, O Lord, neither are there any works like unto Thy works.' Though
+the same poet says, 'Thou art God alone,' he could not have compared
+God with other gods, if his idea of God had really reached that
+all-embracing character which it had with Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and
+Jeremiah. Nor would God have been praised as the 'great king above all
+gods' by a poet in whose eyes the gods of the heathen had been
+recognised as what they were--mighty shadows, thrown by the mighty
+works of God, and intercepting for a time the pure light of the
+Godhead.
+
+We thus arrive at a different conviction from that which M. Renan has
+made the basis of the history of the Semitic race. We can see nothing
+that would justify the admission of a monotheistic instinct, granted
+to the Semitic, and withheld from the Aryan race. They both share in
+the primitive intuition of God, they are both exposed to dangers in
+framing names for God, and they both fall into polytheism. What is
+peculiar to the Aryan race is their mythological phraseology,
+superadded to their polytheism; what is peculiar to the Semitic race
+is their belief in a national god--in a god chosen by his people as
+his people had been chosen by him.
+
+No doubt, M. Renan might say that we ignored his problem, and that we
+have not removed the difficulties which drove him to the admission of
+a monotheistic instinct. How is the fact to be explained, he might
+ask, that the three great religions of the world in which the unity of
+the Deity forms the key-note, are of Semitic origin, and that the
+Aryan nations, wherever they have been brought to a worship of the One
+God, invoke Him with names borrowed from the Semitic languages?
+
+But let us look more closely at the facts before we venture on
+theories. Mohammedanism, no doubt, is a Semitic religion, and its very
+core is monotheism. But did Mohammed invent monotheism? Did he invent
+even a new name of God? (Renan, p. 23.) Not at all. His object was to
+destroy the idolatry of the Semitic tribes of Arabia, to dethrone the
+angels, the Jin, the sons and daughters who had been assigned to
+Allah, and to restore the faith of Abraham in one God. (Renan, p. 37.)
+
+And how is it with Christianity? Did Christ come to preach a faith in
+a new God? Did He or His disciples invent a new name of God? No,
+Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil; and the God whom He
+preached was the God of Abraham.
+
+And who is the God of Jeremiah, of Elijah, and of Moses? We answer
+again, the God of Abraham.
+
+Thus the faith in the One living God, which seemed to require the
+admission of a monotheistic instinct, grafted in every member of the
+Semitic family, is traced back to one man, to him 'in whom all
+families of the earth shall be blessed' (Genesis xii. 3, Acts iii. 25,
+Galatians iii. 8). If from our earliest childhood we have looked upon
+Abraham, the friend of God, with love and veneration; if our first
+impressions of a truly god-fearing life were taken from him, who left
+the land of his fathers to live a stranger in the land whither God
+had called him, who always listened to the voice of God, whether it
+conveyed to him the promise of a son in his old age, or the command to
+sacrifice that son, his only son Isaac, his venerable figure will
+assume still more majestic proportions when we see in him the
+life-spring of that faith which was to unite all the nations of the
+earth, and the author of that blessing which was to come on the
+Gentiles through Jesus Christ.
+
+And if we are asked how this one Abraham possessed not only the
+primitive intuition of God as He had revealed Himself to all mankind,
+but passed through the denial of all other gods to the knowledge of
+the one God, we are content to answer that it was by a special Divine
+Revelation. We do not indulge in theological phraseology, but we mean
+every word to its fullest extent. The Father of Truth chooses His own
+prophets, and He speaks to them in a voice stronger than the voice of
+thunder. It is the same inner voice through which God speaks to all of
+us. That voice may dwindle away, and become hardly audible; it may
+lose its Divine accent, and sink into the language of worldly
+prudence; but it may also, from time to time, assume its real nature,
+with the chosen of God, and sound into their ears as a voice from
+Heaven. A 'divine instinct' may sound more scientific, and less
+theological; but in truth it would neither be an appropriate name for
+what is a gift or grace accorded to but few, nor would it be a more
+scientific, i. e. a more intelligible word than 'special revelation.'
+
+The important point, however, is not whether the faith of Abraham
+should be called a divine instinct or a revelation; what we wish here
+to insist on is that that instinct, or that revelation, was special,
+granted to one man, and handed down from him to Jews, Christians, and
+Mohammedans, to all who believe in the God of Abraham. Nor was it
+granted to Abraham entirely as a free gift. Abraham was tried and
+tempted before he was trusted by God. He had to break with the faith
+of his fathers; he had to deny the gods who were worshipped by his
+friends and neighbours. Like all the friends of God, he had to hear
+himself called an infidel and atheist, and in our own days he would
+have been looked upon as a madman for attempting to slay his son. It
+was through special faith that Abraham received his special
+revelation, not through instinct, not through abstract meditation, not
+through ecstatic visions. We want to know more of that man than we do;
+but, even with the little we know of him, he stands before us as a
+figure second only to one in the whole history of the world. We see
+his zeal for God, but we never see him contentious. Though Melchisedek
+worshipped God under a different name, invoking Him as Eliun, the Most
+High, Abraham at once acknowledged in Melchisedek a worshipper and
+priest of the true God, or Elohim, and paid him tithes. In the very
+name of Elohim we seem to trace the conciliatory spirit of Abraham.
+Elohim is a plural, though it is followed by the verb in the singular.
+It is generally said that the genius of the Semitic languages
+countenances the use of plurals for abstract conceptions, and that
+when Jehovah is called Elohim, the plural should be translated by 'the
+Deity.' We do not deny the fact, but we wish for an explanation, and
+an explanation is suggested by the various phases through which, as
+we saw, the conception of God passed in the ancient history of the
+Semitic mind. Eloah was at first the name for God, and as it is found
+in all the dialects of the Semitic family except the Phenician (Renan,
+p. 61), it may probably be considered as the most ancient name of the
+Deity, sanctioned at a time when the original Semitic speech had not
+yet branched off into national dialects. When this name was first used
+in the plural, it could only have signified, like every plural, many
+Eloahs, and such a plural could only have been formed after the
+various names of God had become the names of independent deities, i.
+e. during a polytheistic stage. The transition from this into the
+monotheistic stage could be effected in two ways--either by denying
+altogether the existence of the Elohim, and changing them into devils,
+as the Zoroastrians did with the Devas of their Brahmanic ancestors;
+or by taking a higher view, and looking upon the Elohim as so many
+names, invented with the honest purpose of expressing the various
+aspects of the Deity, though in time diverted from their original
+purpose. This is the view taken by St. Paul of the religion of the
+Greeks when he came to declare unto them 'Him whom they ignorantly
+worshipped,' and the same view was taken by Abraham. Whatever the
+names of the Elohim, worshipped by the numerous clans of his race,
+Abraham saw that all the Elohim were meant for God, and thus Elohim,
+comprehending by one name everything that ever had been or could be
+called divine, became the name with which the monotheistic age was
+rightly inaugurated,--a plural, conceived and construed as a singular.
+Jehovah was all the Elohim, and therefore there could be no other God.
+From this point of view the Semitic name of the Deity, Elohim, which
+seemed at first not only ungrammatical but irrational, becomes
+perfectly clear and intelligible, and it proves better than anything
+else that the true monotheism could not have risen except on the ruins
+of a polytheistic faith. It is easy to scoff at the gods of the
+heathen, but a cold-hearted philosophical negation of the gods of the
+ancient world is more likely to lead to Deism or Atheism than to a
+belief in the One living God, the Father of all mankind, 'who hath
+made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of
+the earth; and hath determined the times before appointed, and the
+bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply
+they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from
+every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as
+certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also His
+offspring.'
+
+Taking this view of the historical growth of the idea of God, many of
+the difficulties which M. Renan has to overcome by most elaborate and
+sometimes hair-splitting arguments, disappear at once. M. Renan, for
+instance, dwells much on Semitic proper names in which the names of
+the Deity occur, and he thinks that, like the Greek names Theodorus or
+Theodotus, instead of Zenodotus, they prove the existence of a faith
+in one God. We should say they may or may not. As Devadatta, in
+Sanskrit, may mean either 'given by God,' or 'given by the gods,' so
+every proper name which M. Renan quotes, whether of Jews, or Edomites,
+Ishmaelites, Ammonites, Moabites, and Themanites, whether from the
+Bible, or from Arab historians, from Greek authors, Greek
+inscriptions, the Egyptian papyri, the Himyaritic and Sinaitic
+inscriptions and ancient coins, are all open to two interpretations.
+'The servant of Baal' may mean the servant of the Lord, but it may
+also mean the servant of Baal, as one of many lords, or even the
+servant of the Baalim or the Lords. The same applies to all other
+names. 'The gift of El' may mean 'the gift of the only strong God;'
+but it may likewise mean 'the gift of the El,' as one of many gods, or
+even 'the gift of the Els,' in the sense of the strong gods. Nor do we
+see why M. Renan should take such pains to prove that the name of
+Orotal or Orotulat, mentioned by Herodotos (III. 8), may be
+interpreted as the name of a supreme deity; and that Alilat, mentioned
+by the same traveller, should be taken, not as the name of a goddess,
+but as a feminine noun expressive of the abstract sense of the deity.
+Herodotos says distinctly that Orotal was a deity like Bacchus; and
+Alilat, as he translates her name by [Greek: Ouranie], must have
+appeared to him as a goddess, and not as the Supreme Deity. One verse
+of the Koran is sufficient to show that the Semitic inhabitants of
+Arabia worshipped not only gods, but goddesses also. 'What think ye of
+Allat, al Uzza, and Manah, that other third goddess?'
+
+If our view of the development of the idea of God be correct, we can
+perfectly understand how, in spite of this polytheistic phraseology,
+the primitive intuition of God should make itself felt from time to
+time, long before Mohammed restored the belief of Abraham in one God.
+The old Arabic prayer mentioned by Abulfarag may be perfectly genuine:
+'I dedicate myself to thy service, O God! Thou hast no companion,
+except thy companion, of whom thou art absolute master, and of
+whatever is his.' The verse pointed out to M. Renan by M. Caussin de
+Perceval from the Moallaka of Zoheyr, was certainly anterior to
+Mohammed: 'Try not to hide your secret feelings from the sight of
+Allah; Allah knows all that is hidden.' But these quotations serve no
+more to establish the universality of the monotheistic instinct in the
+Semitic race than similar quotations from the Veda would prove the
+existence of a conscious monotheism among the ancestors of the Aryan
+race. There too we read, 'Agni knows what is secret among mortals'
+(Rig-veda VIII. 39, 6): and again, 'He, the upholder of order,
+Varu_n_a, sits down among his people; he, the wise, sits there to
+govern. From thence perceiving all wondrous things, he sees what has
+been and what will be done.'[104] But in these very hymns, better than
+anywhere else, we learn that the idea of supremacy and omnipotence
+ascribed to one god did by no means exclude the admission of other
+gods, or names of God. All the other gods disappear from the vision of
+the poet while he addresses his own God, and he only who is to fulfil
+his desires stands in full light before the eyes of the worshipper as
+the supreme and only God.
+
+[Footnote 104: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' by M. M., p.
+536.]
+
+The Science of Religion is only just beginning, and we must take care
+how we impede its progress by preconceived notions or too hasty
+generalizations. During the last fifty years the authentic documents
+of the most important religions of the world have been recovered in a
+most unexpected and almost miraculous manner. We have now before us
+the canonical books of Buddhism; the Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster is no
+longer a sealed book; and the hymns of the Rig-veda have revealed a
+state of religion anterior to the first beginnings of that mythology
+which in Homer and Hesiod stands before us as a mouldering ruin. The
+soil of Mesopotamia has given back the very images once worshipped by
+the most powerful of the Semitic tribes, and the cuneiform
+inscriptions of Babylon and Nineveh have disclosed the very prayers
+addressed to Baal or Nisroch. With the discovery of these documents a
+new era begins in the study of religion. We begin to see more clearly
+every day what St. Paul meant in his sermon at Athens. But as the
+excavator at Babylon or Nineveh, before he ventures to reconstruct the
+palaces of these ancient kingdoms, sinks his shafts into the ground
+slowly and circumspectly lest he should injure the walls of the
+ancient palaces which he is disinterring; as he watches every
+corner-stone lest he mistake their dark passages and galleries, and as
+he removes with awe and trembling the dust and clay from the brittle
+monuments lest he destroy their outlines, and obliterate their
+inscriptions, so it behoves the student of the history of religion to
+set to work carefully, lest he should miss the track, and lose himself
+in an inextricable maze. The relics which he handles are more precious
+than the ruins of Babylon; the problems he has to solve are more
+important than the questions of ancient chronology; and the
+substructions which he hopes one day to lay bare are the world-wide
+foundations of the eternal kingdom of God.
+
+We look forward with the highest expectations to the completion of M.
+Renan's work, and though English readers will differ from many of the
+author's views, and feel offended now and then at his blunt and
+unguarded language, we doubt not that they will find his volumes both
+instructive and suggestive. They are written in that clear and
+brilliant style which has secured to M. Renan the rank of one of the
+best writers of French, and which throws its charm even over the dry
+and abstruse inquiries into the grammatical forms and radical elements
+of the Semitic languages.
+
+_April, 1860._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Note: List of corrections.
+
+Duplication of paragraphs.
+
+Page xix
+
+Duplication of pages.
+
+3 pages after 236
+
+Missing text
+
+Page xviii - last paragraph
+
+Page xxviii - last paragraph
+
+Page 18
+
+Page 46
+
+Page 89
+
+Page 91
+
+Page 99
+
+Page 116
+
+Pages missing
+
+3 pages after 233
+
+The page numbers have gone awry because of the corrections. Any
+reference to page numbers may be made to the Internet Archive edition.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I, by
+Friedrich Max  Mueller
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