March, 1858.
FOOTNOTES:
[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.
III.
THE VEDA AND ZEND-AVESTA.
THE VEDA.
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—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.