The Shasters And Vedas, And The Chinese, Government, Religion, Etc.
Men who wish to be known as scientific skeptics and unbelievers often boast that the above-mentioned books are more worthy of respect than the books of the Bible. For the benefit of all who may not have access to those books, the following, from Duff's India, credited to the Shasters, may be of service in the search after truth:
“Brahm produced an egg. All the primary atoms, qualities, and principles, the seeds of future worlds, that had been evolved from the substance of Brahm, were now collected together and deposited in the newly produced egg. And into it, along with them, entered the self-existent himself, under the assumed form of Brahma; and then he sat vivifying, expanding, and combining the elements, during four thousand three hundred millions of solar years. During this amazing period the wondrous egg floated like a bubble on the water, increasing constantly in size. At length the supreme, who dwelt therein, burst the shell of the stupendous egg and issued forth under a new form with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, and a thousand arms. Along with him issued another form, huge and measureless, which speedily matured into the present glorious universe.”—Shasters.
In Hindostan we may see on one hand the trident of Neptune, the eagle of Jupiter, the satyrs of Bacchus, the bow of Cupid and the chariot of the Sun; on the other, we hear the cymbals of Rhea, the songs of the Muses, and the pastoral tales of Apollo Nomius. The Hindoos enumerate four grand periods in the world's history called yugs. The first comprehends one million seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand years. The second, one million two hundred and ninety-six thousand; the third, eight hundred and sixty-four thousand years, and the fourth four hundred and twenty-three thousand years. Four thousand nine hundred and thirty-seven of the last yug expired in eighteen hundred and forty-three. The [pg 055] incredibility of their chronology will be seen at a glance, if you recollect that it is claimed that one of their sovereigns lived through the whole of the first yug. Veda is a generic name for their four oldest and most sacred books, containing simply a revelation directly from Brahma.
Many unbelievers in this, and the old world, who have set themselves against our Bible, have indorsed the Vedas as scientific, without so much as having read or known one line in them. These Vedas profess to go back through maha yugs of 4,320,000 years of men. A thousand of these maha yugs, or 4,320,000,000 of years make a kalpa, or one day of the life of Brahma, and his night is of equal length; a hundred such days and nights measure the time of his life.
These books give, as facts, seven great continents, separated by that many rivers and seven mountain-chains four hundred thousand miles high. They record a hundred sons to one king, ten thousand to another, and sixty thousand to another. These kings were in no danger from violating the command to “multiply and replenish the earth;” but there is one difficulty, at least, about the records concerning the seventy thousand and one hundred sons born to these three kings, and that is this, the records say: They were all born in a pumpkin and nourished in pans of milk, reduced to ashes by the curse of a sage, and restored to life by the waters of the Ganges. Those same sacred books say: The moon is fifty thousand leagues higher than the sun, and that it shines by its own light and animates our body; they say, the sun goes behind the Someyra Mountains and this makes the night; they say, these mountains are many thousand miles high, and are situated in the middle of our earth; they say, our earth is flat and triangular, having seven stories, each one of peculiar beauty, having its own inhabitants, and each one having a sea. The first story of earth, they say, is composed of honey, the second is composed of sugar, the third of butter, the fourth of wine; and the whole thing is carried upon the heads of elephants, and when these shake themselves earthquakes are produced. Among the astronomical calculations which confirm [pg 056] all this there are accounts of floods of waters rising to the Polar star. How is that for a flood?
Infidel, if you read this, and remember that you have been guilty of foisting the Vedas against the Hebrew Scriptures, hide your face and do it no more. The Hindoos worship cats and monkeys and holy bulls and sticks and stones. They are yet sacrificing their infants in that sacred river, Ganges. The car of Juggernaut, 'tis said, is yet rolling on its bloody wheels, and women are yet burned upon the dead bodies of their husbands. What is the trouble with those unfortunates? Well, they enjoy freedom from the Bible, freedom from the Bible God, and freedom from the Protestant and Catholic clergy—the freedom that the infidels of the United States concern themselves so much about. Give them what they plead for and it will not be long until they will have more hell than they will love or worship. Infidels boast of the worth of the writings of Confucius and the religion of the Chinese. Let us look after their condition. Here it is, as given in the Universal Vocabulary. As they are esteemed by unbelievers so ancient as to put to shame all others pretending to antiquity, we must be allowed to make the test of their religious and scientific tree by its fruits. First. “If a person be suspected of treason he is put to death in a slow and painful manner, all his relations in the first degree are beheaded, his female relations sold into slavery, and all his connections residing in his house are put to death. If a physician treat the case of a patient in any way different from established rules, and the patient dies, he is treated as guilty of homicide, though, if on his trial it be shown that it was a mere error, he is redeemed from death, but must quit his practice forever. When a debtor is unable to meet the demand of his creditor he receives thirty blows, and the same number may be repeated from time to time till the debt is paid. In case the creditor violently seize the debtor's goods he is liable to eighty blows. In order to the collection of debts, it is customary for creditors to enter the houses of their debtors on the first day of the year and pronounce their claims with a loud voice, and continue there [pg 057] until they are reimbursed. It is said that this teazing proves a successful method of collecting debts; inasmuch as the debtor, fearing that something may befall the creditor while in his house, and, therefore, suspicion fall on him, he is moved to use all possible endeavors to answer the demand. Women are sold in marriage and the highest bidder takes them. Their government is patriarchial and despotic. The emperor is styled Holy Son of Heaven, Sole Governor of the Earth. Their religion is paganism.”
Zell's Encyclopedia gives the following items as true to-day: “Their husbandry is, to a great extent, nullified by the rude and ill-adapted implements employed therefor, and also by the smallness of the farms. Hence, agriculture, as scientifically considered, is but little advanced.” The form of government is strictly patriarchial. The emperor, who bears the various euphuistic titles of the “Brother of the Sun and Moon.” Teen-tsye, or the “Sun of Heaven;” Ta-hwang-li, or the “Great Emperor;” and Wansuy-yay, or the “Lord of a Myriad Years,” is regarded as the father of his people, and has unlimited power over all his subjects. The emperor is spiritual as well as temporal sovereign, and as high priest of the empire, can alone, with his immediate representatives and ministers, perform the great religious ceremonies. The bamboo, as the chief instrument of government, is applied without distinction, to the highest and lowest Chinese.
The imperial palaces are of great extent, consisting of a series of courts, with galleries and halls of audience beautifully painted. The temples differ greatly in form and size. The ordinary temples or joss-houses, consist each of one chamber containing an idol. This, gentle reader, is the store-house of pagan idolatry to which some unbelievers in Indiana and elsewhere resort for names or titles by which to designate the houses of Christian worship in our own country. How would those men like to emigrate to China, where they could have a language that suits their taste, and a literature and religion about which they have boasted so much? If Chinese government, [pg 058] religion, and literature and science be so old as is claimed by Chinamen, and by infidels in our country, and its age be the cause of its great superiority in religion and science, may we not thank the Lord that we are young?