FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Lassen interprets ophir as Abh[=i]ras, at the mouth of the Indus. The biblical koph is Sanskrit kapi, ape. Other doubtful equivalents are discussed by Weber, Indische Skizzen, p. 74.]
[Footnote 2: The legend of the Flood and the fancy of the
Four Ages has been attributed to Babylon by some writers.
Ecstein claims Chaldean influence in Indic atomic
philosophy, Indische Studien, ii. 369, which is doubtful;
but the Indic alphabet probably derived thence, possibly
from Greece. The conquests of Semiramis (Serimamis in
the original) may have
included a part of India, but only Brunnhofer finds trace of
this in Vedic literature, and the character of his work we
have already described.]
[Footnote 3: Senart attributes to the Achaemenides certain
Indic formulae of administration. IA. xx. 256.]
[Footnote 4: Certain Hindu names, like those to which we called attention in the epic, containing Mihira, i.e., Mithra; the Magas; i.e., Magi; and recommendations of sun-worship in the Pur[=a]nas are the facts on which Weber bases a theory of great influence of Persia at this later period. Weber claims, in fact, that the native sun-worship was quite replaced by this importation (Indische Skizzen, p. 104). This we do not believe. Even the great number of Persians who, driven out by Arabians, settled in Gujar[=a]t (the name of Bombay is the same with Pumbadita, a Jewish settlement in Mesopotamia) had no other effect on the Brahmanic world that absorbed them (ib. p. 109) than to intensify the fervor of a native cult.]
[Footnote 5: Weber ascribes to Greek influence the Hindus first acquaintance with the planets. On a possible dramatic loan see above, p. 2, note. The Greeks were first to get into the heart of India (as far as Patna), and between the court of Antiochus the Great and the king S[=a]ubhagasena there was formal exchange of ambassadors in the third century B.C. The name of Demetrius appears as Datt[.a]mitra in the Hindu epic. He had "extended his rule over the Indus as far as the Hydaspes and perhaps over M[=a]lava and Gujarat" (about 200 B.C.; Weber, Skizzen). In the second century Menandros (the Buddhists' 'Milinda') got as far as the Jumna; but his successors retreated to the Punj[=a]b and eventually to Kabul (ib.) Compare also Weber, Sitz. d. könig. Preuss. Akad., 1890, p. 901 ff., Die Griechien in Indien. The period of Greek influence coincides with that of Buddhist supremacy in its first vigor, and it is for this reason that Brahmanic literature and religion were so untouched by it. There is to our mind no great probability that the Hindu epic owes anything to that of Greece, although Weber has put in a strong plea for this view in his essay Ueber das R[=a]m[=a]ya[n.]a.]
[Footnote 6: The romance of a Russian traveller's late 'discovery,' which Sanskrit scholars estimate at its true value, but which may seem to others worthy of regard, is perhaps, in view of the interest taken in it, one that should be told correctly. Nicholas Notovitch asserts that he discovered seven years ago in the Tibetan monastery of Himis, a work which purports to give a life of Christ from birth to death, including sixteen years spent in India. This life of 'Issa' (Jesus) is declared to have been written in the first century of the Christian era. Unfortunately for the reputation of the finder, he made a mistake in exploiting his discovery, and stated that his manuscript had been translated for him by the monks of Himis 'out of the original P[=a]li,' a dialect that these monks could not understand if they had specimens of it before them. This settled Notovitch's case, and since of course he did not transcribe a word of the MS. thus freely put at his disposal, but published the forgery in a French 'translation,' he may be added to the list of other imposters of his ilk. The humbug has been exposed for some time, and we know of no one who, having a right to express an opinion, believes Notovitch's tale, though some ignorant people have been hoaxed by it. If the blank sixteen years in Christ's life ever be explained, it may be found that they were passed in a Zoroastrian environment; but until real evidence be brought to show that Christ was in India, the wise will continue to doubt it. As little proof exists, it may be added, of Buddhistic influence in the making of the Gospels. But this point is nowadays scarcely worth discussing, for competent scholars no longer refer vague likenesses to borrowing. Certain features are common to the story of Christ and to the legends of Buddha; but they are common to other divine narratives also. The striking similarities are not found in the earliest texts of the Southern Buddhists. [=I]ça for Jesus is modern, Weber, loc. cit., p. 931.]
[Footnote 7: Elphinstone, I. pp, 140, 508; II. chap. I. The 'slave dynasty' of Kutab, 1206-1288. It was the bigoted barbarity of these Mohammedans that drove Brahmanic religion into the South.]
[Footnote 8: Though immediately before it the Harihara cult, survival of Sankhyan dualism, is practically monotheistic. Basava belongs to the twelfth century.]
[Footnote 9: The literary exchange in the realm of fable between Arabia and later Sanskrit writers (of the twelfth century) is very evident. Thus in Indic dress appear at this time the story of Troy, of the passage over the Red Sea, of Jonas, etc. On the other hand, the Arabians translated native Hindu fables. See Weber, IS. iii. 327, Ueber den Zusammenhang griechischer Fabeln mit indischen, and Indische Skizzen, p. 111, and Die Griechen in Indien. Arabia further drew on India for philosophical material, and Alber[=u]ni himself translated Kapila's work (Weber,loc. cit.).]
[Footnote 10: Whereby cows, snakes, cats (sacred to one of the Çivaite 'mothers'), crocodiles, monkeys, etc, are worshipped.]
[Footnote 11: Pantheists in name alone, most of the lower caste-men are practically polytheists, and this means that they are at bottom dualists. They are wont to worship assiduously but one of the gods they recognize.]
[Footnote 12: Where Brahmanism may be said to cease and Hinduism to begin can be defined but vaguely. Krishnaism is rank Hinduism. But Çivaism is half Brahmanic. For the rest, in its essential aspects, Hinduism is as old as the Hindus. Only the form changes (as it intrudes upon Brahmanism).]
[Footnote 13: It is highly probable that the mention of the Northwestern Ç[=u]dras in Mbh[=a]. VI. 9. 67 refers to the Afghan S[=u]droi, and that the slave-caste as a whole, which bears the name Ç[=u]dra, received this appellation first as conquered tribes of Afghanistan.]
[Footnote 14: Brahmanism has always been an island in a sea. Even in the Brahmanic age there is evidence to show that it was the isolated belief of a comparatively small group of minds. It did not even control all the Aryan population.]
[Footnote 15: We refer partly to literature, that of the drama and novel, for instance; and partly to the fine arts. But in connection with the latter it may be remarked that painting, and the fine arts generally, are expressly reckoned as the pursuit of slaves alone. For instance, even as late a jurist as he that wrote the law-code of 'Vishnu' thus (chap. ii.) parcels out the duties and occupations of the four castes: The duty of a priest is to teach the Veda, his means of livelihood is to sacrifice for others and to receive aims; the duty of the warrior is to fight, his means of livelihood is to receive taxes for protecting the other castes; the duty of the V[=a]içya is to tend cattle, his means of livelihood 1s gain from flocks, farm, trade, or money-lending. The duty of a slave, Çudra, is to serve the three upper castes; his means of livelihood is the fine arts.]
[Footnote 16: It is this that has exaggerated, though not produced, that most marked of native beliefs, a faith which Intertwines with every system, Brahmanic, Buddhistic, or Hinduistic, a belief in an ecstatic power in man which gives him control over supernatural forces. Today this Yogism and Mah[=a]tmaism, which is visible even in the Rig Veda, is nothing but unbridled fancy playing with mesmerism and lies.]
[Footnote 17: The Hindu sectarian cults are often strangely like those of Greece in details, which, as we have already suggested, must revert to a like, though not necessarily mutual, source of primitive superstition. Even the sacred free bulls, which roam at large, look like old familiar friends, [Greek: aphetôn dniôn taurôn en tps tou IIoseidônos Ierps] (Plato, Kritias, 119); and we have dared to question whether Lang's 'Bull-roarer' might not be sought in the command that the priest should make the bull roar at the sacrifice; and in the verse of the Rig Veda which says that the priests "beget (produce) the Dawn by means of the roar of a bull" (vii. 79. 4); or must the bull be soma? For Müller's defence of the Hindu's veraciousness, see his /India, What Can It Teach Us, p. 34.]
[Footnote 18: Some exception may be taken to this on the ground that moral laws really are referred to the Creator in one form or another, This we acknowledge as a theory of authority, but it so seldom comes into play, and there is so little rapport between gods and moral goodness, that the difference in this regard is greater by far than the resemblance. A Christian sins against God, a Hindu sins against himself. The Christian may be punished by God; the Hindu punishes himself (the karma). The latter may say that moral laws are of God, but he means that they are natural laws, the violation of which has the same effect as touching fire.]
[Footnote 19: The lex talionis is in full force in Hindu law, even in the codes of Hinduism; for example, 'Vishnu,' V. 19.]
[Footnote 20: Deceit of a foe is no sin in any system. "All is fair in war.">[
[Footnote 21: This idea may be carried out in other instances. The bravery of civilization is not the bravado that savages call bravery, and modesty is now a virtue where boasting used to be reckoned as the necessary complement of bravery. As for hospitality in the old sense, it is not now a 'virtue' not to kill a guest.]
[Footnote 22: India's relations with Rome were late and wholly of mercantile character.]
[Footnote 23: It is interesting, as showing incidentally the close connection between Buddhism and Çivaism in other than philosophical aspects, that the first Indic grotto-temple mentioned by foreigners (in the third century A.D.) was one which contained a statue of an androgynous (Çivaite) deity (Weber, Indische Skizzen, p. 86, note).]
[Footnote 24: Rosaries are first mentioned in the AV.
Pariçista, XLIII. 4. 11 (Leumann, Rosaries).]
[Footnote 25: In Lamaism there is also the tiara-crowned pope, and the transubstantiation theory; the reverence to Virgin and Child, confessions, fasts, purgatory, abbots, cardinals, etc. Compare David's Hibbert Lectures, p. 193.]
[Footnote 26: The literature on this subject is very extensive (see the Bibliography). On Buddhism and Christianity see Bohlen's Altes Indien, I. 334 (Weber, Indische Skizzen, p. 92). At a recent meeting of the British Association E.B. Tylor presented a paper in which is made an attempt to show Buddhistic influence on pre-Columbian culture in America. On comparing the Aztec picture-writing account of the journey of the soul after death with Buddhistic eschatology, he is forced to the conclusion that there was direct transmission from Buddhism. We require more proof than Aztec pictures of hell to believe any such theory; and reckon this attempt to those already discussed in the eighth chapter.]
[Footnote 27: It is a mooted question in how far the influence in this line has been reciprocal. See Indische Studien, iii. 128.]
[Footnote 28: The S[=a]nkhya has no systematic connection with the 'numbers' of Pythagoras.]
[Footnote 29: Compare on the Çulvas[=u]tras, Thibaut, J.A. Beng. xliv. p. 227; Von Schroeder, Pythagoras und die Inder; Literatur und Cultur, p. 718 ff, who also cites Cantor, Geschichte der Mathematik, p. 540, and refutes the possibility, suggested by the latter, of the loan being from Greece to India on the ground that the Çulvas[=u]tra are too old to belong to the Alexandrine period, and too essentlal a part of the religious literature to have been borrowed; and also on the ground that they are not an addition to the Çr[=a]utas[=u]tra, but they make an independent portion (p. 721, note).]
[Footnote 30: Compare Garbe (loc. cit. below), and his S[=a][.m]khya Philosophic, p. 94.]
[Footnote 31: This view is not one universally accepted by Sanskrit scholars. See, for instance, Weber, Die Griechen in Indien. But to us the minute resemblance appears too striking to be accidental.]
[Footnote 32: Lassen, and Weber, Indische Skizzen, p. 91.]
[Footnote 33: Garbe, in a recent number of the Monist, where is given a résumé of the relations between Greek and Hindu philosophical thought.]
[Footnote 34: Weber, loc. cit.]
[Footnote 35: The existence of a soul (spirit) in man is always assumed in the Upanishads. In the pantheistic system (the completed Ved[=a]nta) the verity of traditional belief is also assumed. The latter assumption is made, too, though not in so pronounced a manner, in the Upanishads.]
[Footnote 36: The Upanishad philosopher sought only to save his life, but the Buddhist, to lose it.]
[Footnote 37: This is not a negative 'non-injury' kindness. It is a love 'far-reaching, all*pervading' (above, p. 333). The Buddhist is no Stoic save in the stoicism with which he looks forward to his own end. Rhys Davids has suggested that the popularity of Tibet Buddhism in distinction from Southern Buddhism may have been due to the greater weight laid by the former on altruism. For, while the earlier Buddhist strives chiefly for his own perfection, the spiritualist of the North affects greater love for his kind, and becomes wise to save others. The former is content to be an Arhat; the latter desires to be a Bodhisat, 'teacher of the law' (Hibbert Lectures, p. 254). We think, however, that the latter's success with the vulgar was the result rather of his own greater mental vulgarity and animism.]
[Footnote 38: Hurst's Indika, chap. XLIX, referring to India Christiana of 1721, and the correspondence between Mather and Ziegenbalg, who was then a missionary in India. The wealthy 'young men' who contributed were, in Hurst's opinion, Harvard students.]
[Footnote 39: The Portuguese landed in Calcutta in 1498. They were driven out by the Dutch, to whom they ceded their mercantile monopoly, in 1640-1644. The Dutch had arrived in 1596, and held their ground till their supremacy was wrested from them by Clive in 1758, The British had followed the Dutch closely (arriving in 1600), and were themselves followed soon after by the Germans and Danes (whose activity soon subsided), and by the French. The German company, under whose protection stood Ziegenbalg, was one of the last to enter India, and first to leave it (1717-1726). The most grotesquely hideous era in India's history is that which was inaugurated by the supremacy of the Christian British. Major Munroe's barbaric punishment of the Sepoys took place, however, in Clive's absence (1760-1765). Marshman, I, p. 305, says of this Munroe only that he was "an officer of undaunted resolution"! Clive himself was acquitted by his own countrymen of theft, robbery, and extortion; but the Hindus have not acquitted him or Hastings; nor will Christianity ever do so.]
[Footnote 40: For specimens of the sacred Kural of Tiruvalluvar N[=a]r[=a]yana*N[=a]yan[=]r, see the examples given by Pope, Indian Antiquary, seventh and following volumes. The Sittars, to whom we have referred above, are a more modern sect. Their precept that love is the essential of religion is not, as in the case of the Hindu idolators, of erotic nature. They seem to be the modern representatives of that Buddhistic division (see above) called S[=a]ugatas, whose religion consists in 'kindness to all.' In these sects there is found quietism, a kind of quakerism, pure morality, high teaching, sternest (almost bigoted) monotheism, and the doctrine of positive altruism, strange to the Hindu idolator as to the Brahman. The Prem S[=a]gar, or 'Ocean of Love,' is a modern Hindu work, which illustrates the religious love opposed to that of the Sittars, namely, the mystic love of the Krishnaite for his savior, whose grace is given only to him that has faith. It is the mystic rapt adoration that in expression becomes erotic and sensual.]
[Footnote 41: Hinduism itself is unconsciously doing a reforming work among the wild tribes that are not touched by the Christian missionary. These tribes, becoming Hinduized, become civilized, and, in so far as they are thus made approachable, they are put in the way of improvement; though civilization often has a bad effect upon their morals for a season.]
[Footnote 42: The substitution of the doctrine of redemption for that of karma is intellectually impossible for an educated Hindu. He may renounce the latter, but he cannot accept the former. The nearest approach to such a conception is that of the Buddhistic 'Redeemer' heresy referred to above. In all other regards Samaj and pantheism are too catholic to be affected; In this regard they are both unyielding.]
[Footnote 43: We question, for instance, the advisability of such means to "fill up the church" as is described in a missionary report delivered at the last meeting of the Missionary Union of the Classis of New York for the current year: "A man is sent to ride on a bicycle as fast as he can through the different streets. This invariably attracts attention. Boys and men follow him to the church, where it is easy to persuade them to enter." But this is an admission of our position in regard to the classes affected. The rabble may be Christianized by this means, but the intelligent will not be attracted.]
[Footnote 44: After the greater part of our work had passed the final revision, and several months after the whole was gone to press, appeared Oldenberg's Die Religion des Veda, which, as the last new book on the subject, deserves a special note. The author here takes a liberal view, and does not hesitate to illustrate Vedic religion with the light cast by other forms of superstition. But this method has its dangers, and there is perhaps a little too much straining after original types, giant-gods as prototypes and totemism in proper names, where Vedic data should be separated from what may have preceded Vedic belief. Oldenberg, as a ritualist, finds in Varuna, Dawn, and the Burial Service the inevitable stumbling-blocks of such scholars as confuse Brahmanism with early Vedism. To remove these obstacles he suggests that Varuna, as the moon, was borrowed from the Semites or Akkadians (though be frankly admits that not even the shadow of this moon lingers in Vedic belief); explains Dawn's non-participation in soma by stating that she never participates in it (which explains nothing); and jumps over the Burial Hymn with the inquiry whether, after all, it could not be interpreted as a cremation-hymn (the obvious answer being that the service does imply burial, and does not even hint at cremation). On the other hand, when theoretical barbarism and ritualism are foregone, Oldenberg has a true eye for the estimation of facts, and hence takes an unimpeachable position in several important particulars, notably in rejecting Jacobi's date of the Rig Veda; in rejecting also Hillebrandt's moon-soma; in denying an originally supreme Dy[=a]us; in his explanation of henotheism (substantially one with the explanation we gave a year ago); and in his account of the relation of the Rig Veda to the (later) Atharvan. Despite an occasional brilliant suggestion, which makes the work more exciting than reliable, this book will prove of great value to them that are particularly interested in the ritual; though the reader must be on his guard against the substitution of deduction for induction, as manifested in the confusion of epochs, and in the tendency to interpret by analogy rather than in accordance with historical data. The worth of the latter part of the book is impaired by an unsubstantiated theory of sacrifice, but as a whole it presents a clear and valuable view of the cult.]
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