Chips from a German Workshop
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“Count not your chickens before they be hatched,” is a well-known proverb in English, and most people, if asked what was its origin, would probably appeal to La Fontaine’s delightful fable, _La Laitière et le Pot au Lait_. We all know Perrette, lightly stepping along from her village to the town, carrying the milk-pail on her head, and in her day-dreams selling her milk for a good sum, then buying a hundred eggs, then selling the chickens, then buying a pig, fattening it, selling it again, and buying a cow with a calf. The calf frolics about, and kicks up his legs--so does Perrette, and, alas! the pail falls down, the milk is spilt, her riches gone, and she only hopes when she comes home that she may escape a flogging from her husband. Did La Fontaine invent this fable? or did he merely follow the example of Sokrates, who, as we know from the Phædon, occupied himself in prison, during the last days of his life, with turning into verse some of the fables, or, as he calls them, the myths of Æsop." -- "On the Migration of Fables" (1870) by Max Müller |
{{Template}} Chips from a German Workshop (1867–75, 5vols.) is a collection of essays by Max Müller.
Contents |
Full text of volume 1
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._
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Full text of volume 4[1]
[Transcriber’s Note:
This e-text uses characters that require UTF-8 (Unicode) file encoding, including accented Greek and a number of letters used in Sanskrit transliteration:
œ [oe ligature] θεός, Ζεύς, ἐπίῤῥημα [Greek]
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ā ē ī ō ū [vowel with macron or “long” mark] ă ĕ ĭ ŭ Ĭ [vowel with breve or “short” mark] [The book generally used circumflex accents to represent long vowels. Anomalies are individually noted.]
ů [u with small o, used in one Middle High German passage] ȩ [e with cedilla, used in this e-text to represent an unavailable Old Norse letter] † [dagger, used only in a few Index entries]
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In the combined forms ấ ế û́ ṛ́ the acute accent may display after (to the right of) the main letter; this by itself is not a problem. The text also contains the single Hebrew word גְּרֵיים [gerim], and one brief passage uses Devanagari letters:
क (k) च (c, the voiceless palatal) ज (j, the voiced palatal) श (ś)
These may be ignored if everything else displays as intended.
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Italic text is shown with _lines_. Bold (only in the Colebrooke Appendix) and “gesperrt” (spaced-out) are shown with +marks+.
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[Latin-1: revert to {t} {n} {d} {l} {ri} {s}]
CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP.
VOL. IV.
CHIPS from A GERMAN WORKSHOP.
by F. MAX MÜLLER, M.A., Foreign Member of the French Institute, etc.
VOLUME IV. ESSAYS CHIEFLY ON THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE With Index to Vols III. and IV.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, 1881. [_Published by arrangement with the Author._]
Riverside, Cambridge: +Stereotyped and Printed by+ H. O. Houghton and Company.
To
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D., Dean of Westminster, as a Token of Gratitude and Friendship
from
One Who Has for Many Years Admired His Loyalty to Truth, His Singleness of Purpose, His Chivalrous Courage, and His Unchanging Devotion to His Friends.
CONTENTS OF FOURTH VOLUME.
PAGE
I. Inaugural Lecture, On the Value of Comparative Philology
as a branch of Academic Study, delivered before the
University of Oxford, 1868 1
Note A. On the Final Dental of the Pronominal Stem _tad_ 43
Note B. Did Feminine Bases in _â_ take _s_ in the
Nominative Singular? 45
Note C. Grammatical Forms in Sanskrit corresponding to
so-called Infinitives in Greek and Latin 47
II. Rede Lecture, Part I. On the Stratification of Language,
delivered before the University of Cambridge, 1868 63
Rede Lecture, Part II. On Curtius’ Chronology of the
Indo-Germanic Languages, 1875 111
III. Lecture on the Migration of Fables, delivered at the
Royal Institution, June 3, 1870 (Contemporary Review,
July, 1870) 139
Appendix. On Professor Benfey’s Discovery of a Syriac
Translation of the Indian Fables 181
Notes 188
IV. Lecture on the Results of the Science of Language,
Delivered before the University of Strassburg, May 23,
1872 (Contemporary Review, June, 1872) 199
Note A. θεός and Deus 227
Note B. The Vocative of Dyaús and Ζεύς 230
Note C. Aryan Words occurring in Zend but not in
Sanskrit 235
V. Lecture on Missions, delivered in Westminster Abbey,
December 3, 1873 238
Note A. Passages shewing the Missionary Spirit of
Buddhism 267
Note B. The Schism in the Brahma-Samâj 269
Note C. Extracts from Keshub Chunder Sen’s Lectures 272
Dr. Stanley’s Introductory Sermon on Christian Missions 276
On the Vitality of Brahmanism, Postscript to the Lecture
on Missions (Fortnightly Review, July, 1874) 296
VI. Address on the Importance of Oriental Studies, delivered
at the International Congress of Orientalists in
London, 1874 317
Notes 355
VII. Life of Colebrooke, with Extracts from his Manuscript
Notes on Comparative Philology (Edinburgh Review,
October, 1872) 359
VIII. Reply to Mr. Darwin (Contemporary Review, January, 1875) 417
IX. In Self-defense 456
Index to Vols. III. and IV. 533
I.
INAUGURAL LECTURE,
ON THE VALUE OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY AS A BRANCH OF ACADEMIC STUDY.
Delivered Before the University of Oxford the 27th of October, 1868.
The foundation of a professorial chair in the University of Oxford marks
an important epoch in the history of every new science.[1] There are
other universities far more ready to confer this academical recognition
on new branches of scientific research, and it would be easy to mention
several subjects, and no doubt important subjects, which have long had
their accredited representatives in the universities of France and
Germany, but which at Oxford have not yet received this well-merited
recognition.
If we take into account the study of ancient languages only, we see that as soon as Champollion’s discoveries had given to the study of hieroglyphics and Egyptian antiquities a truly scientific character, the French government thought it its duty to found a chair for this promising branch of Oriental scholarship. Italy soon followed this generous example: nor was the Prussian government long behind hand in doing honor to the newborn science, as soon as in Professor Lepsius it had found a scholar worthy to occupy a chair of Egyptology at Berlin.
If France had possessed the brilliant genius to whom so much is due in the deciphering of the cuneiform inscriptions, I have little doubt that long ago a chair would have been founded at the _Collège de France_ expressly for Sir Henry Rawlinson.
England possesses some of the best, if not the best, of Persian scholars (alas! he who was here in my mind, Lord Strangford, is no longer among us), yet there is no chair for Persian at Oxford or Cambridge, in spite of the charms of its modern literature, and the vast importance of the ancient language of Persia and Bactria, the Zend, a language full of interest, not only to the comparative philologist, but also to the student of Comparative Theology.
There are few of the great universities of Europe without a chair for that language which, from the very beginning of history, as far as it is known to us, seems always to have been spoken by the largest number of human beings,--I mean Chinese. In Paris we find not one, but two chairs for Chinese, one for the ancient, another for the modern language of that wonderful empire; and if we consider the light which a study of that curious form of human speech is intended to throw on the nature and growth of language, if we measure the importance of its enormous literature by the materials which it supplies to the student of ancient religions, and likewise to the historian who wishes to observe the earliest rise of the principal sciences and arts in countries beyond the influence of Aryan and Semitic civilization,--if, lastly, we take into account the important evidence which the Chinese language, reflecting, like a never-fading photograph, the earliest workings of the human mind, is able to supply to the student of psychology, and to the careful analyzer of the elements and laws of thought, we should feel less inclined to ignore or ridicule the claims of such a language to a chair in our ancient university.[2]
I could go on and mention several other subjects, well worthy of the same distinction. If the study of Celtic languages and Celtic antiquities deserves to be encouraged anywhere, it is surely in England,--not, as has been suggested, in order to keep English literature from falling into the abyss of German platitudes, nor to put Aneurin and Taliesin in the place of Shakespeare and Burns, and to counteract by their “suavity and brilliancy” the Philistine tendencies of the Saxon and the Northman, but in order to supply sound materials and guiding principles to the critical student of the ancient history and the ancient language of Britain, to excite an interest in what still remains of Celtic antiquities, whether in manuscripts or in genuine stone monuments, and thus to preserve such national heir-looms from neglect or utter destruction. If we consider that Oxford possesses a Welsh college, and that England possesses the best of Celtic scholars, it is surely a pity that he should have to publish the results of his studies in the short intervals of official work at Calcutta, and not in the more congenial atmosphere of Rytichin.
For those who know the history of the ancient universities of England, it is not difficult to find out why they should have been less inclined than their continental sisters to make timely provision for the encouragement of these and other important branches of linguistic research. Oxford and Cambridge, as independent corporations, withdrawn alike from the support and from the control of the state, have always looked upon the instruction of the youth of England as their proper work; and nowhere has the tradition of classical learning been handed down more faithfully from one generation to another than in England; nowhere has its generous spirit more thoroughly pervaded the minds of statesmen, poet, artists, and moulded the character of that large and important class of independent and cultivated men, without which this country would cease to be what it has been for the last two centuries, a _res publica_, a commonwealth, in the best sense of the word. Oxford and Cambridge have supplied what England expected or demanded, and as English parents did not send their sons to learn Chinese or to study Cornish, there was naturally no supply where there was no demand. The professorial element in the university, the true representative of higher learning and independent research, withered away; the tutorial assumed the vastest proportions during this and the last centuries.
But looking back to the earlier history of the English universities, I believe it is a mistake to suppose that Oxford, one of the most celebrated universities during the Middle Ages and in the modern history of Europe, could ever have ignored the duty, so fully recognized by other European universities, of not only handing down intact, and laid up, as it were, in a napkin, the traditional stock of human knowledge, but of constantly adding to it, and increasing it fivefold and tenfold. Nay, unless I am much mistaken, there was really no university in which more ample provision had been made by founders and benefactors than at Oxford, for the support and encouragement of a class of students who should follow up new lines of study, devote their energies to work which, from its very nature, could not be lucrative or even self-supporting, and maintain the fame of English learning, English industry, and English genius in that great and time-honoured republic of learning which claims the allegiance of the whole of Europe, nay, of the whole civilized world. That work at Oxford and Cambridge was meant to be done by the Fellows of Colleges. In times, no doubt, when every kind of learning was in the hands of the clergy, these fellowships might seem to have been intended exclusively for the support of theological students. But when other studies, once mere germs and shoots on the tree of knowledge, separated from the old stem and assumed an independent growth, whether under the name of natural science, or history, or scholarship, or jurisprudence, a fair division ought to have been made at once of the funds which, in accordance with the letter, it may be, but certainly not with the spirit of the ancient statutes, have remained for so many years appropriated to the exclusive support of theological learning, if learning it could be called. Fortunately, that mistake has now been remedied, and the funds originally intended, without distinction, for the support of “true religion and useful learning,” are now again more equally apportioned among those who, in the age in which we live, have divided and subdivided the vast intellectual inheritance of the Middle Ages, in order to cultivate the more thoroughly every nook and every corner in the boundless field of human knowledge.
Something, however, remains still to be done in order to restore these fellowships more fully and more efficiently to their original purpose, and thus to secure to the university not only a staff of zealous teachers, which it certainly possesses, but likewise a class of independent workers, of men who, by original research, by critical editions of the classics, by an acquisition of a scholarlike knowledge of other languages besides Greek and Latin, by an honest devotion to one or the other among the numerous branches of physical science, by fearless researches into the ancient history of mankind, by a careful collection or revision of the materials for the history of politics, jurisprudence, medicine, literature, and arts, by a life-long occupation with the problems of philosophy, and last, not least, by a real study of theology, or the science of religion, should perform again those duties which in the stillness of the Middle Ages were performed by learned friars within the walls of our colleges. Those duties have remained in abeyance for several generations, and they must now be performed with increased vigor, in order to retain for Oxford that high position which it once held, not simply as a place of education, but as a seat of learning, amid the most celebrated universities of Europe.
“_Noblesse oblige_” is an old saying that is sometimes addressed to those who have inherited an illustrious name, and who are proud of their ancestors. But what are the ancestors of the oldest and proudest of families compared with the ancestors of this university! “_Noblesse oblige_” applies to Oxford at the present moment more than ever, when knowledge for its own sake, and a chivalrous devotion to studies which command no price in the fair of the world, and lead to no places of emolument in church or state, are looked down upon and ridiculed by almost everybody.
There is no career in England at the present moment for scholars and students. No father could honestly advise his son, whatever talent he might display, to devote himself exclusively to classical, historical, or physical studies. The few men who still keep up the fair name of England by independent research and new discoveries in the fields of political and natural history, do not always come from our universities; and unless they possess independent means, they cannot devote more than the leisure hours, left by their official duties in church or state, to the prosecution of their favorite studies. This ought not to be, nor need it be so. If only twenty men in Oxford and Cambridge had the will, everything is ready for a reform, that is, for a restoration of the ancient glory of Oxford. The funds which are now frittered away in so-called prize-fellowships, would enable the universities to-morrow to invite the best talent of England back to its legitimate home. And what should we lose if we had no longer that long retinue of non-resident fellows? It is true, no doubt, that a fellowship has been a help in the early career of many a poor and hard-working man, and how could it be otherwise? But in many cases I know that it has proved a drag rather than a spur for further efforts. Students at English universities belong, as a rule, to the wealthier classes, and England is the wealthiest country in Europe. Yet in no country in the world would a young man, after his education is finished, expect assistance from public sources. Other countries tax themselves to the utmost in order to enable the largest possible number of young men to enjoy the best possible education in schools and universities. But when that is done the community feels that it has fulfilled its duty, and it says to the young generation, Now swim or drown. A manly struggle against poverty, it may be even against actual hunger, will form a stronger and sounder metal than a lotus-eating club-life in London or Paris. Whatever fellowships were intended to be, they were never intended to be mere sinecures, as most of them are at present. It is a national blessing that the two ancient universities of England should have saved such large funds from the shipwreck that swallowed up the corporate funds of the continental universities. But, in order to secure their safety for the future, it is absolutely necessary that these funds should be utilized again for the advancement of learning. Why should not a fellowship be made into a career for life, beginning with little, but rising like the incomes of other professions? Why should the grotesque condition of celibacy be imposed on a fellowship, instead of the really salutary condition of--No work, no pay? Why should not some special literary or scientific work be assigned to each fellow, whether resident in Oxford or sent abroad on scientific missions? Why, instead of having fifty young men scattered about in England, should we not have ten of the best workers in every branch of human knowledge resident at Oxford, whether as teachers, or as guides, or as examples? The very presence of such men would have a stimulating and elevating effect: it would show to the young men higher objects of human ambition than the baton of a field-marshal, the mitre of a bishop, the ermine of a judge, or the money bags of a merchant; it would create for the future a supply of new workers as soon as there was for them, if not an avenue to wealth and power, at least a fair opening for hard work and proper pay. All this might be done to-morrow, without any injury to anybody, and with every chance of producing results of the greatest value to the universities, to the country, and to the world at large. Let the university continue to do the excellent work which it does at present as a teacher, but let it not forget the equally important duty of a university, that of a worker. Our century has inherited the intellectual wealth of former centuries, and with it the duty, not only to preserve it or to dole it out in schools and universities, but to increase it far beyond the limits which it has reached at present. Where there is no advance, there is retrogression: rest is impossible for the human mind.
Much of the work, therefore, which in other universities falls to the lot of the professors, ought, in Oxford, to be performed by a staff of student-fellows, whose labors should be properly organized as they are in the Institute of France or in the Academy of Berlin. With or without teaching, they could perform the work which no university can safely neglect, the work of constantly testing the soundness of our intellectual food, and of steadily expanding the realms of knowledge. We want pioneers, explorers, conquerors, and we could have them in abundance if we cared to have them. What other universities do by founding new chairs for new sciences, the colleges of Oxford could do to-morrow by applying the funds which are not required for teaching purposes, and which are now spent on sinecure fellowships, for making either temporary or permanent provision for the endowment of original research.
It is true that new chairs have, from time to time, been founded in Oxford also; but if we inquire into the circumstances under which provision was made for the teaching of new subjects, we shall find that it generally took place, not so much for the encouragement of any new branch of scientific research, however interesting to the philosopher and the historian, as in order to satisfy some practical wants that could no longer be ignored, whether in church or state, or in the university itself.
Confining ourselves to the chairs of languages, or, as they used to be called, “the readerships of tongues,” we find that as early as 1311, while the Crusades were still fresh in the memory of the people of Europe, an appeal was made by Pope Clement V. at the Council of Vienne, calling upon the principal universities in Christendom to appoint lecturers for the study of Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldaic. It was considered at the time a great honor for Oxford to be mentioned by name, together with Paris, Bologna, and Salamanca, as one of the four great seats of learning in which the Pope and the Council of Vienne desired that provision should be made for the teaching of these languages. It is quite clear, however, from the wording of the resolution of the Council,[3] that the chief object in the foundation of these readerships was to supply men capable of defending the interests of the church, of taking an active part in the controversies with Jews and Mohammedans, who were then considered dangerous, and of propagating the faith among unbelievers.
Nor does it seem that this papal exhortation produced much effect, for we find that Henry VIII. in 1540 had to make new provision in order to secure efficient teachers of Hebrew and Greek in the University of Oxford. At that time these two languages, but more particularly Greek, had assumed not only a theological, but a political importance, and it was but natural that the king should do all in his power to foster and spread a knowledge of a language which had been one of the most powerful weapons in the hands of the reformers. At Oxford itself this new chair was by no means popular: on the contrary those who studied Greek were for a long time looked upon with great suspicion and dislike.[4]
Henry VIII. did nothing for the support of Arabic; but a century later (1636) we find Archbishop Laud, whose attention had been attracted by Eastern questions, full of anxiety to resuscitate the study of Arabic at Oxford, partly by collecting Arabic MSS. in the East and depositing them in the Bodleian Library, partly by founding a new chair of Arabic, inaugurated by Pococke, and rendered illustrious by such names as Greaves, Thomas Hyde, John Wallis, and Thomas Hunt.
The foundation of a chair of Anglo-Saxon, too, was due, not so much to a patriotic interest excited by the ancient national literature of the Saxons, still less to the importance of that ancient language for philological studies, but it received its first impulse from the divines of the sixteenth century, who wished to strengthen the position of the English Church in its controversy with the Church of Rome. Under the auspices of Archbishop Parker, Anglo-Saxon MSS. were first collected, and the Anglo-Saxon translations of the Bible, as well as Anglo-Saxon homilies, and treatises on theological and ecclesiastical subjects were studied by Fox, the martyrologist, and others,[5] to be quoted as witnesses to the purity and simplicity of the primitive church founded in this realm, free in its origin from the later faults and fancies of the Church of Rome. Without this practical object, Anglo-Saxon would hardly have excited so much interest in the sixteenth century, and Oxford would probably have remained much longer without its professorial chair of the ancient national language of England, which was founded by Rawlinson, but was not inaugurated before the end of the last century (1795).
Of the two remaining chairs of languages, of Sanskrit and of Latin, the former owes its origin, not to an admiration of the classical literature of India, nor to a recognition of the importance of Sanskrit for the purposes of Comparative Philology, but to an express desire on the part of its founder to provide efficient missionaries for India; while the creation of a chair of Latin, though long delayed, was at last rendered imperative by the urgent wants of the university.
Nor does the chair of Comparative Philology, just founded by the university, form altogether an exception to this general rule. It is curious to remark that while Comparative Philology has for more than half a century excited the deepest interest, not only among continental, but likewise among English scholars, and while chairs of this new science have been founded long ago in almost every university of France, Germany, and Italy, the foundation of a new chair of Comparative Philology at Oxford should coincide very closely with a decided change that has taken place in the treatment of that science, and which has given to its results a more practical importance for the study of Greek and Latin, such as could hardly be claimed for it during the first fifty years of its growth.
We may date the origin of Comparative Philology, as distinct from the Science of Language, from the foundation of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, in 1784. From that time dates the study of Sanskrit, and it was the study of Sanskrit which formed the foundation of Comparative Philology.
It is perfectly true that Sanskrit had been studied before by Italian, German, and French missionaries; it is likewise perfectly true that several of these missionaries were fully aware of the close relationship between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. A man must be blind who, after looking at a Sanskrit grammar, does not see at once the striking coincidences between the declensions and conjugations of the classical language of India and those of Greece and Italy.[6]
Filippo Sassetti, who spent some time at Goa, between 1581 and 1588, had only acquired a very slight knowledge of Sanskrit before he wrote home to his friends “that it has many words in common with Italian, particularly in the numerals, in the names for God, serpent, and many others.” This was in the sixteenth century.
Some of the Jesuit missionaries, however, went far beyond this. A few among them had acquired a real and comprehensive knowledge of the ancient language and literature of India, and we see them anticipate in their letters several of the most brilliant discoveries of Sir W. Jones and Professor Bopp. The père Cœurdoux,[7] a French Jesuit, writes in 1767 from Pondichery to the French Academy, asking that learned society for a solution of the question, “_How is it that Sanskrit has so many words in common with Greek and Latin?_” He presents not only long lists of words, but he calls attention to the still more curious fact, that the grammatical forms in Sanskrit show the most startling similarity with Greek and Latin. After him almost everybody who had looked at Sanskrit, and who knew Greek and Latin, made the same remark and asked the same question.
But the fire only smouldered on; it would not burn up, it would not light, it would not warm. At last, owing to the exertions of the founders of the Asiatic Society at Calcutta, the necessary materials for a real study of Sanskrit became accessible to the students of Europe. The voice of Frederick Schlegel roused the attention of the world at large to the startling problem that had been thrown into the arena of the intellectual chivalry of the world, and at last the glove was taken up, and men like Bopp, and Burnouf, and Pott, and Grimm, did not rest till some answer could be returned, and some account rendered of Sanskrit, that strange intruder, and great disturber of the peace of classical scholarship.
The work which then began, was incessant. It was not enough that some words in Greek and Latin should be traced in Sanskrit. A kind of silent conviction began to spread that there must be in Sanskrit a remedy for all evils; people could not rest till every word in Greek and Latin had, in some disguise or other, been discovered in Sanskrit. Nor were Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit enough to satisfy the thirst of the new discoverers. The Teutonic languages were soon annexed, the Celtic languages yielded to some gentle pressure, the Slavonic languages clamored for incorporation, the sacred idiom of ancient Persia, the Zend, demanded its place by the side of Sanskrit, the Armenian followed in its wake; and when even the Ossetic from the valleys of Mount Caucasus, and the Albanian from the ancient hills of Epirus, had proved their birthright, the whole family, the Aryan family of language, seemed complete, and an historical fact, the original unity of all these languages, was established on a basis which even the most skeptical could not touch or shake. Scholars rushed in as diggers rush into a new gold field, picking up whatever is within reach, and trying to carry off more than they could carry, so that they might be foremost in the race, and claim as their own all that they had been the first to look at or to touch. There was a rush, and now and then an ugly rush, and when the armfuls of nuggets that were thrown down before the world in articles, pamphlets, essays, and ponderous volumes, came to be more carefully examined, it was but natural that not everything that glittered should turn out to be gold. Even in the works of more critical scholars, such as Bopp, Burnouf, Pott, and Benfey, at least in those which were published in the first enthusiasm of discovery, many things may now be pointed out, which no assayer would venture to pass. It was the great merit of Bopp that he called the attention away from this tempting field to the more laborious work of grammatical analysis, though even in his Comparative Grammar, in that comprehensive survey of the grammatical outlines of the Aryan languages, the spirit of conquest and centralization still predominates. All languages are, if possible, to submit to the same laws; what is common to all of them is welcome, what is peculiar to each is treated as anomalous, or explained as the result of later corruption.
This period in the history of Comparative Philology has sometimes been characterized as _syncretistic_, and to a certain extent that name and the censure implied in it are justified. But to a very small extent only. It was in the nature of things that a comparative study of languages should at first be directed to what is common to all; nay, without having first become thoroughly acquainted with the general features of the whole family, it would have been impossible to discover and fully to appreciate what is peculiar to each of the members.
Nor was it long before a reaction set in. One scholar from the very first, and almost contemporaneously with Bopp’s first essays on Comparative Grammar, devoted himself to the study of one branch of languages only, availing himself, as far as he was able, of the new light which a knowledge of Sanskrit had thrown on the secret history of the whole Aryan family of speech, but concentrating his energies on the Teutonic; I mean, of course, Jacob Grimm, the author of the great historical grammar of the German language; a work which will live and last long after other works of that early period shall have been forgotten, or replaced, at least, by better books.
After a time Grimm’s example was followed by others. Zeuss, in his “Grammatica Celtica,” established the study of the Celtic languages on the broad foundations of Comparative Grammar. Miklosich and Schleicher achieved similar results by adopting the same method for the study of the Slavonic dialects. Curtius, by devoting himself to an elucidation of Greek, opened the eyes of classical scholars to the immense advantages of this new treatment of grammar and etymology; while Corssen, in his more recent works on Latin, has struck a mine which may well tempt the curiosity of every student of the ancient dialects of Italy. At the present moment the reaction is complete; and there is certainly some danger, lest what was called a _syncretistic_ spirit should now be replaced by an _isolating_ spirit in the science of language.
It cannot be denied, however, that this isolating, or rather discriminating, tendency has produced already the most valuable results, and I believe that it is chiefly due to the works of Curtius and Corssen, if Greek and Latin scholars have been roused at last from their apathy and been made aware of the absolute necessity of Comparative Philology, as a subject to be taught, not only in every university but in every school. I believe it is due to their works that a conviction has gradually been gaining ground among the best scholars at Oxford, also, that Comparative Philology could no longer be ignored as an important ingredient in the teaching of Greek and Latin; and while a comparative analysis of Sanskrit, Zend, Armenian, Greek, Latin, Gothic, High-German, Lithuanian, Slavonic, and Celtic, such as we find it in Bopp’s “Comparative Grammar,” would hardly be considered as a subject of practical utility, even in a school of philology, it was recognized at last that, not only for sound principles of etymology, not only for a rational treatment of Greek and Latin grammar, not only for a right understanding of classical mythology, but even for a critical restoration of the very texts of Homer and Plautus, a knowledge of Comparative Philology, as applied to Greek and Latin, had become indispensable.
My chief object, therefore, as Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford, will be to treat the classical languages under that new aspect which they have assumed, as viewed by the microscope of Curtius and Corssen, rather than by the telescope of Bopp, Pott, and Benfey. I shall try not only to give results, but to explain what is far more important, the method by which these results were obtained, so far as this is possible without, for the present at least, presupposing among my hearers a knowledge of Sanskrit. Sanskrit certainly forms the only sound foundation of Comparative Philology, and it will always remain the only safe guide through all its intricacies. A comparative philologist without a knowledge of Sanskrit is like an astronomer without a knowledge of mathematics. He may admire, he may observe, he may discover, but he will never feel satisfied, he will never feel certain, he will never feel quite at home.
I hope, therefore, that, besides those who attend my public lectures, there will be at least a few to form a private class for the study of the elements of Sanskrit. Sanskrit, no doubt, is a very difficult language, and it requires the study of a whole life to master its enormous literature. Its grammar, too, has been elaborated with such incredible minuteness by native grammarians, that I am not surprised if many scholars who begin the study of Sanskrit turn back from it in dismay. But it is quite possible to learn the rules of Sanskrit declension and conjugation, and to gain an insight into the grammatical organization of that language, without burdening one’s memory with all the phonetic rules which generally form the first chapter of every Sanskrit grammar, or without devoting years of study to the unraveling of the intricacies of the greatest of Indian, if not of all grammarians,--Pâṇini. There are but few among our very best comparative philologists who are able to understand Pâṇini. Professor Benfey, whose powers of work are truly astounding, stands almost alone in his minute knowledge of that greatest of all grammarians. Neither Bopp, nor Pott, nor Curtius, nor Corssen, ever attempted to master Pâṇini’s wonderful system. But a study of Sanskrit, as taught by European grammarians, cannot be recommended too strongly to all students of language. A good sailor may, for a time, steer without a compass, but even he feels safer when he knows that he may consult it, if necessary; and whenever he comes near the rocks,--and there are many in the Aryan sea,--he will hardly escape shipwreck without this magnetic needle.[8]
It will be asked, no doubt, by Greek and Latin scholars who have never as yet devoted themselves seriously to a study of Comparative Philology, what is to be gained after all the trouble of learning Sanskrit, and after mastering the works of Bopp, and Benfey, and Curtius? Would a man be a better Greek and Latin scholar for knowing Sanskrit? Would he write better Latin and Greek verse? Would he be better able to read and compare Greek and Latin MSS., and to prepare a critical edition of classical authors? To all these questions I reply both _No_ and _Yes_.
If there is one branch of classical philology where the advantages derived from Comparative Philology have been most readily admitted, it is etymology. More than fifty years ago, Otfried Müller told classical scholars that that province at least must be surrendered. And yet it is strange to see how long it takes before old erroneous derivations are exploded and finally expelled from our dictionaries; and how, in spite of all warnings, similarity of sound and similarity of meaning are still considered the chief criteria of Greek and Latin etymologies. I do not address this reproach to classical scholars only; it applies equally to many comparative philologists who, for the sake of some striking similarity of sound and meaning, will now and then break the phonetic laws which they themselves have helped to establish.
If we go back to earlier days, we find that Sanskrit scholars who had discovered that one of the names of the god of love in Bengali was _Dipuc_, _i.e._ the inflamer, derived from it by inversion the name of the god of love in Latin, _Cupid_. Sir William Jones identified _Janus_ with the Sanskrit +Gaṇeśa+, _i.e._, lord of hosts,[9] and even later scholars allowed themselves to be tempted to see the Indian prototype of _Ganymedes_ in the +Kaṇva-medhâtithi+ or +Kaṇva-mesha+ of the Veda.[10]
After the phonetic laws of each language had been more carefully elaborated, it was but too frequently forgotten that words have a history as well as a growth, and that the history of a word must be explored first, before an attempt is made to unravel its growth. Thus it was extremely tempting to derive _paradise_ from the Sanskrit +paradeśa+. The compound +para-deśa+ was supposed to mean the highest or a distant country, and all the rest seemed so evident as to require no further elucidation. +Paradeśa+, however, does not mean the highest or a distant country in Sanskrit, but is always used in the sense of a foreign country, an enemy’s country. Further, as early as the Song of Solomon (iv. 13), the word occurs in Hebrew as _pardés_, and how it could have got there straight from Sanskrit requires, at all events, some historical explanation. In Hebrew the word might have been borrowed from Persian, but the Sanskrit word +paradeśa+, if it existed at all in Persian, would have been _paradaesa_, the _s_ being a guttural, not a dental sibilant. Such a compound, however, does not exist in Persian, and therefore the Sanskrit word +paradeśa+ could not have reached Hebrew _viâ_ Persia.
It is true, nevertheless, that the ancient Hebrew word _pardés_ is borrowed from Persian, viz.: from the Zend _pairidaêza_, which means _circumvallatio_, a piece of ground inclosed by high walls, afterwards a park, a garden.[11] The root in Sanskrit is DIH or DHIH (for Sanskrit _h_ is Zend _z_), and means originally to knead, to squeeze together, to shape. From it we have the Sanskrit +dehî+, a wall, while in Greek the same root, according to the strictest phonetic rules, yielded τοῖχος, wall. In Latin our root is regularly changed into _fig_, and gives us _figulus_, a potter, _figura_, form or shape, and _fingere_. In Gothic it could only appear as _deig-an_, to knead, to form anything out of soft substances; hence _daig-s_, the English _dough_, German _Deich_.
But the Greek παράδεισος did not come from Hebrew, because here again there is no historical bridge between the two languages. In Greek we trace the word to Xenophon, who brought it back from his repeated journeys in Persia, and who uses it in the sense of pleasure-ground, or deer park.[12]
Lastly, we find the same word used in the LXX., as the name given to the garden of Eden, the word having been borrowed either a third time from Persia, or taken from the Greek, and indirectly from the works of Xenophon.
This is the real history of the word. It is an Aryan word, but it does not exist in Sanskrit. It was first formed in Zend, transferred from thence as a foreign word into Hebrew and again into Greek. Its modern Persian form is _firdaus_.
All this is matter of history rather than philology. Yet we read in one of the best classical dictionaries: “The root of παράδεισος appears to be Semitic, Arab. _firdaus_, Hebr. _pardês_: borrowed, also, in Sanskrit +paradêśa+.”[13] Nearly every word is wrong.
From the same root DIH springs the Sanskrit word +deha+, body; body, like figure, being conceived as that which is formed or shaped. Bopp identified this +deha+ with Gothic _leik_, body, particularly dead body, the modern German _Leiche_ and _Leichnam_, the English _lich_ in _lich-gate_. In this case the master of Comparative Philology disregarded the phonetic laws which he had himself helped to establish. The transition of _d_ into _l_ is no doubt common enough as between Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek, but it has never been established as yet on good evidence as taking place between Sanskrit and Gothic. Besides, the Sanskrit _h_ ought in Gothic to appear as _g_, as we have it in _deig-s_, dough, and not by a tenuis.
Another Sanskrit word for body is +kalevara+, and this proved again a stumbling-block to Bopp, who compares it with the Latin _cadaver_. Here one might plead that _l_ and _d_ are frequently interchanged in Sanskrit and Latin words, but, as far as our evidence goes at present, we have no doubt many cases where an original Sanskrit _d_ is represented in Latin by _l_, but no really trustworthy instance in which an original Sanskrit _l_ appears in Latin as _d_. Besides, the Sanskrit diphthong _e_ cannot, as a rule, in Latin be represented by long _â_.
If such things could happen to Bopp, we must not be too severe on similar breaches of the peace committed by classical scholars. What classical scholars seem to find most difficult to learn is that there are various degrees of certainty in etymologies even in those proposed by our best comparative scholars, and that not everything that is mentioned by Bopp, or Pott, or Benfey as possible, as plausible, as probable, and even as more than probable, ought, therefore, to be set down, for instance, in a grammar or dictionary, as simply a matter of fact. With certain qualifications, an etymology may have a scientific value; without those qualifications, it may become not only unscientific but mischievous. Again, nothing seems a more difficult lesson for an etymologist to learn than to say, I do not know. Yet to my mind, nothing shows, for instance, the truly scholarlike mind of Professor Curtius better than the very fact for which he has been so often blamed, viz.: his passing over in silence the words about which he has nothing certain to say.
Let us take an instance. If we open our best Greek dictionaries, we find that the Greek αὐγή, light, splendor, is compared with the German word for eye, _Auge_. No doubt every letter in the two words is the same, and the meaning of the Greek word could easily be supposed to have been specialized or localized in German. Sophocles (“Aj.” 70) speaks of ὀμμάτων αὐγαί, the lights of the eyes, and Euripides (“Andr.” 1180) uses αὐγαί by itself for eyes, like the Latin _lumina_. The verb αὐγαζω, too, is used in Greek in the sense of seeing or viewing. Why, then, it was asked, should αὐγή not be referred to the same source as the German _Auge_, and why should not both be traced back to the same root that yielded the Latin _oc-ulus_? As long as we trust to our ears, or to what is complacently called common sense, it would seem mere fastidiousness to reject so evident an etymology. But as soon as we know the real chemistry of vowels and consonants, we shrink instinctly from such combinations. If a German word has the same sound as a Greek word, the two words cannot be the same, unless we ignore that independent process of phonetic growth which made Greek Greek, and German German. Whenever we find in Greek a media, a _g_, we expect in Gothic the corresponding tenuis. Thus the root _gan_, which we have in Greek γιγνώσκω, is in Gothic _kann_. The Greek γόνυ, Lat. _genu_, is in Gothic _kniu_. If, therefore, αὐγή existed in Gothic it would be _auko_, and not _augo_. Secondly, the diphthong _au_ in _augo_ would be different from the Greek diphthong. Grimm supposed that the Gothic _augo_ came from the same etymon which yields the Latin _oc-ulus_, the Sanskrit +ak-sh-i+, eye, the Greek ὄσσε for ὄκι-ε, and likewise the Greek stem ὀπ in ὄπ-ωπ-α, ὄμμα, and ὀφ-θ-αλμός. It is true that the short radical vowel _a_ in Sanskrit, _o_ in Greek, _u_ in Latin, sinks down to _u_ in Gothic, and it is equally true, as Grimm has shown, that, according to a phonetic law peculiar to Gothic, _u_ before _h_ and _r_ is changed to _aú_. Grimm, therefore, takes the Gothic _aúgô_ for *_aúhô_, and this for
- _uhô_, which, as he shows, would be a proper representative in Gothic
of the Sanskrit +ak-an+, or +aksh-an+.
But here Grimm seems wrong. If the _au_ of _augô_ were this peculiar Gothic _aú_, which represents an original short _a_, changed to _u_, and then raised to a diphthong by the insertion of a short _a_, then that diphthong would be restricted to Gothic; and the other Teutonic dialects would have their own representatives for an original short _a_. But in Anglo-Saxon we find _eáge_, in Old High German _augâ_, both pointing to a labial diphthong, _i.e._ to a radical _u_ raised to _au_.[14]
Professor Ebel,[15] in order to avoid this difficulty, proposed a different explanation. He supposed that the _k_ of the root _ak_ was softened to _kv_, and that _augô_ represents an original _agvâ_ or _ahvâ_, the _v_ of _hvâ_ being inserted before the _h_ and changed to _u_. As an analogous case he quoted the Sanskrit enclitic particle _ca_, Latin _que_, Gothic *_hva_, which *_hva_ appears always under the form of _uh_. Leo Meyer takes the same view, and quotes, as an analogon, _haubida_ as possibly identical with _caput_, originally *_kapvat_.
These cases, however, are not quite analogous. The enclitic particle +ca+, in Gothic *_hva_, had to lose its final vowel. It thus became unpronounceable, and the short vowel _u_ was added simply to facilitate its pronunciation.[16] There was no such difficulty in pronouncing *_ah_ or *_uh_ in Gothic, still less the derivative form *_ahvô_, if such a form had ever existed.
Another explanation was therefore attempted by the late Dr. Lottner.[17] He supposed that the root _ak_ existed also with a nasal as _ank_, and that _ankô_ could be changed to _aukô_, and _aukô_ to _augô_. In reply to this we must remark that in the Teutonic dialects the root _ak_ never appears as _ank_, and that the transition of _an_ into _au_, though possible under certain conditions, is not a phonetic process of frequent occurrence.
Besides, in all these derivations there is a difficulty, though not a serious one, viz.: that an original tenuis, the _k_, is supposed irregularly to have been changed into _g_, instead of what it ought to be, an _h_. Although this is not altogether anomalous,[18] yet it has to be taken into account. Professor Curtius, therefore, though he admits a possible connection between Gothic _augô_ and the root _ak_, speaks cautiously on the subject. On page 99 he refers to _augô_ as more distantly connected with that root, and on p. 457 he simply refers to the attempts of Ebel, Grassmann, and Lottner to explain the diphthong _au_, without himself expressing any decided opinion. Nor does he commit himself to any opinion as to the origin of αὐγή, though, of course, he never thinks of connecting the two words, Gothic _augô_ and Greek αὐγή, as coming from the same root.
The etymology of the Greek αὐγή, in the sense of light or splendor, is not known unless we connect it with the Sanskrit +ojas+, which, however, means vigor rather than splendor. The etymology of _oculus_, on the contrary, is clear; it comes from a root _ak_, to be sharp, to point, to fix, and it is closely connected with the Sanskrit word for eye, +akshi+, and with the Greek ὄσσε. The etymology of the German word _Auge_ is, as yet, unknown. All we may safely assert is, that, in spite of the most favorable appearances, it cannot, for the present, be traced back to the same source as either the Greek αὐγή or the Latin _oculus_.
If we simply transliterated the Gothic _augô_ into Sanskrit, we should expect some word like +ohan+, nom. +ohâ+. The question is, may we take the liberty, which many of the most eminent comparative philologists allow themselves, of deriving Gothic, Greek, and Latin words from roots which occur in Sanskrit, only, but which have left no trace of their former presence in any other language? If so, then there would be little difficulty in finding an etymology for the Gothic _augô_. There is in Sanskrit a root +ûh+, which means to watch, to spy, to look. It occurs frequently in the Veda, and from it we have likewise a substantive, +oha-s+, look or appearance. If, in Sanskrit itself this root had yielded a name for eye, such as +ohan+, the instrument of looking, I should not hesitate for a moment to identify this Sanskrit word +ohan+ with the Gothic _augô_. No objection could be raised on phonetic grounds. Phonetically the two words would be one and the same. But as in Sanskrit such a derivation has not been found, and as in Gothic the root +ûh+ never occurs, such an etymology would not be satisfactory. The number of words of unknown origin is very considerable as yet in Sanskrit, in Greek, in Latin, and in every one of the Aryan languages; and it is far better to acknowledge this fact, than to sanction the smallest violation of any of those phonetic laws, which some have called the straight jacket, but which are in reality, the leading strings of all true etymology.
If we now turn to grammar, properly so called, and ask what Comparative Philology has done for it, we must distinguish between two kinds of grammatical knowledge. Grammar may be looked upon as a mere art, and, as taught at present in most schools, it is nothing but an art. We learn to play on a foreign language as we learn to play on a musical instrument, and we may arrive at the highest perfection in performing on any instrument, without having a notion of thorough bass or the laws of harmony. For practical purposes this purely empirical knowledge is all that is required. But though it would be a mistake to attempt in our elementary schools to replace an empirical by a scientific knowledge of grammar, that empirical knowledge of grammar ought in time to be raised to a real, rational, and satisfying knowledge, a knowledge not only of facts, but of reasons; a knowledge that teaches us not only what grammar is, but how it came to be what it is. To know grammar is very well, but to speak all one’s life of gerunds and supines and infinitives, without having an idea what these formations really are, is a kind of knowledge not quite worthy of a scholar.
We laugh at people who still believe in ghosts and witches, but a belief in infinitives and supines is not only tolerated, but inculcated in our best schools and universities. Now, what do we really mean if we speak of an infinitive? It is a time-honored name, no doubt, handed down to us from the Middle Ages; it has its distant roots in Rome, Alexandria, and Athens;--but has it any real kernel? Has it any more body or substance than such names as Satyrs and Lamias?
Let us look at the history of the name before we look at the mischief which it, like many other names, has caused by making people believe that whenever there is a name there must be something behind it. The name was invented by Greek philosophers who, in their first attempts at classifying and giving names to the various forms of language, did not know whether to class such forms as γράφειν, γράψειν, γράψαι, γεγραφέναι, γράφεσθαι, γράψεσθαι, γέγραφθαι, γράψασθαι, γραφθῆναι, γραφθήσεσθαι, as nouns or as verbs. They had established for their own satisfaction the broad distinction between nouns (ὀνόματα) and verbs (ῥήματα); they had assigned to each a definition, but, after having done so, they found that forms like γράφειν would not fit their definition either of noun or verb.[19] What could they do? Some (the Stoics) represented the forms in ειν, etc., as a subdivision of the verb, and introduced for them the name ῥῆμα ἀπαρέμφατον or γενικώτατον. Others recognized them as a separate part of speech, raising their number from eight to nine or ten. Others, again, classed them under the adverb (ἐπιῤῥημα), as one of the eight recognized parts of speech. The Stoics, taking their stand on Aristotle’s definition of ῥῆμα, could not but regard the infinitive as ῥῆμα, because it implied time, past, present, or future, which was with them recognized as the specific characteristic of the verb (_Zeitwort_). But they went further, and called forms such as γράφειν, etc., ῥῆμα, in the highest or most general sense, distinguishing other verbal forms, such as γράφει, etc., by the names of κατηγόρημα or σύμβαμα. Afterwards, in the progress of grammatical science, the definition of ῥῆμα became more explicit and complete. It was pointed out that a verb, besides its predicative meaning (ἔμφασις), is able to[20] express several additional meanings (παρακολουθήματα or παρεμφάσεις), viz.: not only time, as already pointed out by Aristotle, but also person and number. The two latter meanings, however, being absent in γράφειν, this was now called ῥῆμα ἀπαρέμφατον (without by-meanings), or γενικώτατον, and, for practical purposes, this ῥῆμα ἀπαρέμφατον soon became the prototype of conjugation.
So far there was only confusion, arising from a want of precision in classifying the different forms of the verb. But when the Greek terminology was transplanted to Rome, real mischief began. Instead of ῥῆμα γενικώτατον, we now find the erroneous, or, at all events, inaccurate, translation, _modus infinitus_, and _infinitivus_ by itself. What was originally meant as an adjective belonging to ῥῆμα, became a substantive, the infinitive, and though the question arose again and again what this infinitive really was, whether a noun, or a verb, or an adverb; whether a mood or not a mood; the real existence of such a thing as an infinitive could no longer be doubted. One can hardly trust one’s eyes in reading the extraordinary discussions on the nature of the infinitive in grammatical works of successive centuries up to the nineteenth. Suffice it to say that Gottfried Hermann, the great reformer of classical grammars, treated the infinitive again as an adverb, and, therefore, as a part of speech belonging to the particles. We ourselves were brought up to believe in infinitives; and to doubt the existence of this grammatical entity would have been considered in our younger days a most dangerous heresy.
And yet, how much confused thought, and how much controversy might have been avoided, if this grammatical term of infinitive had never been invented.[21] The fact is that what we call infinitives are nothing more or less than cases of verbal nouns, and not till they are treated as what they are shall we ever gain an insight into the nature and the historical development of these grammatical monsters.
Take the old Homeric infinitive in μεναι, and you find its explanation in the Sanskrit termination +mane+, _i.e._ +manai+, the native of the suffix +man+ (not, as others suppose, the locative of a suffix _mana_), by which a large number of nouns are formed in Sanskrit. From _gnâ_, to know, we have +(g)nâman+, Latin _(g)nomén_, that by which a thing is known, its name; from +gan+, to be born, +gán-man+, birth. In Greek this suffix man is chiefly used for forming masculine nouns, such as γνώ-μων, γνώ-μονος, literally a knower; τλή-μων, a sufferer; or as μην in ποι-μήν, a shepherd, literally a feeder. In Latin, on the contrary, _men_ occurs frequently at the end of abstract nouns in the neuter gender, such as _teg-men_, the covering, or _tegu-men_ or _tegi-men_; _solamen_, consolation; _voca-men_, an appellation; _certa-men_, a contest; and many more, particularly in ancient Latin; while in classical Latin the fuller suffix _mentum_ predominates. If then we read in Homer, κύνας ἔτευξε δῶμα φυλασσέμεναι, we may call φυλασσέμεναι an infinitive, if we like, and translate “he made dogs to protect the house;” but the form which we have before us, is simply a dative of an old abstract noun in μεν, and the original meaning was “for the protection of the house,” or “for protecting the house;” as if we said in Latin, _tutamini domum_.
The infinitives in μεν may be corruptions of those in μεναι, unless we take μεν as an archaic accusative, which, though without analogy in Greek, would correspond to Latin accusatives like _tegmen_, and express the general object of certain acts or movements. In Sanskrit, at least in the Veda, infinitives in +mane+ occur, such as +dấ-mane+, to give, Greek δό-μεναι; +vid-máne+, to know, Greek ϝίδ-μεναι.[22]
The question next arises, if this is a satisfactory explanation of the infinitives in μεναι, how are we to explain the infinitives in εναι? We find in Homer, not only ἴμεναι, to go, but also ἰέναι; not only ἔμμεναι, to be, but also εἶναι, _i.e._, ἔσ-εναι. Bopp simply says that the _m_ is lost, but he brings no evidence that in Greek an _m_ can thus be lost without any provocation. The real explanation, here, as elsewhere, is supplied by the _Beieinander_ (the collateral growth), not by the _Nacheinander_ (the successive growth) of language. Besides the suffix _man_, the Aryan languages possessed two other suffixes, _van_ and _an_, which were added to verbal bases just like _man_. By the side of +dâman+, the act of giving, we find in the Veda +dâ-van+, the act of giving, and a dative +dâ-váne+, with the accent on the suffix, meaning for the giving, _i.e._ to give. Now in Greek this _v_ would necessarily disappear, though its former presence might be indicated by the _digamma æolicum_. Thus, instead of Sanskrit +dâváne+, we should have in Greek δοϝέναι, δοέναι, and contracted δοῦναι, the regular form of the infinitive of the aorist, a form in which the diphthong ου would remain inexplicable, except for the former presence of the lost syllable ϝε. In the same manner εἶναι stands for ἐσ-ϝέναι, ἐσ-έναι, ἐέναι, εἶναι. Hence ἰέναι, stands for ἰϝέναι, and even the accent remains on the suffix _van_, just as it did in Sanskrit.
As the infinitives in μεναι were traced back to the suffix _man_, and those in ϝεναι to a suffix _van_, the regular infinitives in εναι after consonants, and ναι after vowels, must be referred to the suffix _an_, dat. _ane_. Here, too, we find analogous forms in the Veda. From +dhûrv+, to hurt, we have +dhû́rv-aṇe+, for the purpose of hurting, in order to hurt; in Rv. IX. 61, 30, we find +vibhv-áne+, Rv. VI. 61, 13, in order to conquer, and by the same suffix the Greeks formed their infinitives of the perfect, λελοιπ-έναι, and the infinitives of the verbs in μι, τιθέ-ναι, διδο-ναι, ἱστα-ναι, etc.
In order to explain, after these antecedents, the origin of the infinitive in ειν, as τύπτειν, we must admit either the shortening of ναι to νι, which is difficult; or the existence of a locative in ι by the side of a dative in αι. That the locative can take the place of the dative we see clearly in the Sanskrit forms of the aorist, +parsháṇi+, to cross, +nesháṇi+, to lead, which, as far as their form, not their origin, is concerned, would well match Greek forms like λύσειν in the future. In either case, τύπτε-νι in Greek would have become τύπτειν, just as τύπτε-σι became τύπτεις. In the Doric dialect this throwing back of the final ι is omitted in the second person singular, where the Dorians may say ἀμέλγες for ἀμέλγεις; and in the same Doric dialect the infinitive, too, occurs in εν instead of ειν; _e.g._, ἀείδεν instead of ἀείδειν. (Buttman, “Greek Gr.,” § 103, 10, 11.)
In this manner the growth of grammatical forms can be made as clear as the sequence of any historical events in the history of the world, nay, I should say far clearer, far more intelligible; and I should think that even the first learning of these grammatical forms might be somewhat seasoned and rendered more really instructive by allowing the pupil, from time to time, a glimpse into the past history of the Greek and Latin languages. In English what we call the infinitive is clearly a dative; _to speak_ shows by its very preposition what it was intended for. How easy, then, to explain to a beginner that if he translates, “able to speak,” by ἱκανὸς εἰπεῖν, the Greek infinitive is really the same as the English, and that εἰπεῖν stands for εἴπενι and this for εἴπεναι, which, to a certain extent, answers the same purpose as the Greek ἔπει, the dative of ἔπος, and therefore originally ἔπεσι.
And remark, these very datives and locatives of nouns formed by the suffix ος in Greek, as in Sanskrit, _es_ in Latin, though they yield no infinitives in Greek, yield the most common form of the infinitive in Latin, and may be traced also in Sanskrit. As from _genus_ we form a dative _generi_, and a locative _genere_, which stands for _genese_, so from _gigno_ an abstract noun would be formed, _gignus_, and from it a dative, _gigneri_, and a locative, _gignere_. I do not say that the intermediate form _gignus_ existed in the spoken Latin, I only maintain that such a form would be analogous to _gen-us_, _op-us_, _fœd-us_, and that in Sanskrit the process is exactly the same. We form in Sanskrit a substantive +càkshas+, sight, +càkshus+, eye; and we find the dative of +càkshas+, _i.e._ +càkshase+, used as what we should call an infinitive, in order to see. But we also find another so-called infinitive, +jîvàse+, in order to live, although there is no noun, +jîvas+, life; we find +áyase+, to go, although there is no noun +áyas+, going. This Sanskrit +áyase+ explains the Latin _i-re_, as *+i-vane+ explained the Greek ἰέναι. The intention of the old framers of language is throughout the same. They differ only in the means which they use, one might almost say, at random; and the differences between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin are often due to the simple fact that out of many possible forms that might be used and had been used before the Aryan languages became traditional, settled, and national, one family or clan or nation fancied one, another another. While this one became fixed and classical, all others became useless, remained perhaps here and there in proverbial sayings or in sacred songs, but were given up at last completely, as strange, obsolete, and unintelligible.
And even then, after a grammatical form has become obsolete and unintelligible, it by no means loses its power of further development. Though the Greeks did not themselves, we still imagine that we feel the infinitive as the case of an abstract noun in many constructions. Thus χαλεπὸν εὑρεῖν, difficult to find, was originally, difficult in the finding, or difficult for the act of finding; δεινὸς λέγειν, meant literally, powerful in speaking; ἄρχομαι λέγειν, I begin to speak, _i.e._, I direct myself to the act of speaking; κέλεαί με μυθήσασθαι, you bid me to speak, _i.e._, you order me towards the act of speaking; φοβοῦμαι διελέγχειν σε, I am afraid of refuting you, _i.e._, I fear in the act, or, I shrink when brought towards the act, of refuting you; σὸν ἔργον λέγειν, your business is in or towards speaking, you have to speak; πᾶσιν ἁδεῖν χαλεπόν, there is something difficult in pleasing everybody, or, in our endeavor after pleasing everybody. In all these cases the so-called infinitive can, with an effort, still be felt as a noun in an oblique case. But in course of time expressions such as χαλεπὸν ἁδεῖν, it is difficult to please, ἀγαθὸν λέγειν, it is good to speak, left in the mind of the speaker the impression that ἁδεῖν and λέγειν were subjects in the nominative, the pleasing is difficult, the speaking is good; and by adding the article, these oblique cases of verbal nouns actually became nominatives, τὸ ἁδειν, the act of pleasing, τὸ λέγειν, the act of speaking, capable of being used in every case, _e.g._, ἐπιθυμια τοῦ πίειν, _desiderium bibendi_. This regeneration, this process of creating new words out of decaying and decayed materials may seem at first sight incredible, yet it is as certain as the change with which we began our discussion of the infinitive. I mean the change of the conception of a ῥῆμα γενικώτατον, a _verbum generalissimum_, into a _generalissimus_ or _infinitivus_. Nor is the process without analogy in modern languages. The French _l’avenir_, the future (_Zukunft_), is hardly the Latin _advenire_. That would mean the arriving, the coming, but not what is to come. I believe _l’avenir_ was (_quod est_) _ad venire_, what is to come, contracted to _l’avenir_. In Low-German _to come_ assumes even the character of an adjective, and we can speak not only of a year to come, but of a to-come year, _de tokum Jahr_.[23]
This process of grammatical vivisection may be painful in the eyes of classical scholars, yet even they must see how great a difference there is in the quality of knowledge imparted by our Greek and Latin grammars, and by comparative grammar. I do not deny that at first children must learn Greek and Latin mechanically, but it is not right that they should remain satisfied with mere paradigms and technical terms, without knowing the real nature and origin of so-called infinitives, gerunds, and supines. Every child will learn the construction of the accusative with the infinitive, but I well remember my utter amazement when I first was taught to say _Miror te ad me nihil scribere_, “I am surprised that you write nothing to me.” How easy would it have been to explain that _scribere_ was originally a locative of a verbal noun, and that there was nothing strange or irrational in saying, “I wonder at thee in the act of not writing to me.” This first step once taken, everything else followed by slow degrees, but even in phrases like _Spero te mihi ignoscere_, we can still see the first steps which led from “I hope or I desire thee, toward the act of forgiving me,” to “I trust thee to forgive me.” It is the object of the comparative philologist to gather up the scattered fragments, to arrange them and fit them, and thus to show that language is something rational, human, intelligible, the very embodiment of the mind of man in its growth from the lowest to the highest stage, and with capabilities for further growth far beyond what we can at present conceive or imagine.
As to writing Greek and Latin verse, I do not maintain that a knowledge of Comparative Philology will help us much. It is simply an art that must be acquired by practice, if in these our busy days it is still worth acquiring. A good memory will no doubt enable us to say at a moment’s notice whether certain syllables are long or short. But is it not far more interesting to know why certain vowels are long and others short, than to be able to string longs and shorts together in imitation of Greek and Latin hexameters? Now in many cases the reason why certain vowels are long or short, can be supplied by Comparative Philology alone. We may learn from Latin grammar that the _i_ in _fîdus_, trusty, and in _fîdo_, I trust, is long, and that it is short in _fides_, trust, and _perfidus_, faithless; but as all these words are derived from the same root, why should some have a long, others a short vowel? A comparison of Sanskrit at once supplies an answer. Certain derivatives, not only in Latin but in Sanskrit and Greek too, require what is called +Guṇa+ of the radical vowel. In _fîdus_ and _fîdo_, the _i_ is really a diphthong, and represents a more ancient _ei_ or _oi_, the former appearing in Greek πείθω, the latter in Latin _foedus_, a truce.
We learn from our Greek grammars that the second syllable in δείκνῡμι is long, but in the plural, δείκνῠμεν, it is short. This cannot be by accident, and we may observe the same change in δάμνημι and δάμναμεν, and similar words. Nothing, however, but a study of Sanskrit would have enabled us to discover the reason of this change, which is really the accent in its most primitive working, such as we can watch it in the Vedic Sanskrit, where it produces exactly the same change, only with far greater regularity and perspicuity.
Why, again, do we say in Greek, οἶδα, I know, but ἴσ-μεν, we know? Why τέτληκα, but τέτλαμεν? Why μέμονα, but μέμαμεν? There is no recollection in the minds of the Greeks of the motive power that was once at work, and left its traces in these grammatical convulsions; but in Sanskrit we still see, as it were, a lower stratum of grammatical growth, and we can there watch the regular working of laws which required these changes, and which have left their impress not only on Greek, but on Sanskrit, and even on German. The same necessity which made Homer say οἶδα and ἴδμεν, and the Vedic poet +véda+ and +vidmás+, still holds good, and makes us say in German, _Ich weiss_, I know, but _wir wissen_, we know.
All this becomes clear and intelligible by the light of Comparative Grammar; anomalies vanish, exceptions prove the rule, and we perceive more plainly every day how in language, as elsewhere, the conflict between the freedom claimed by each individual and the resistance offered by the community at large, establishes in the end a reign of law most wonderful, yet perfectly rational and intelligible.
These are but a few small specimens to show you what Comparative Philology can do for Greek and Latin; and how it has given a new life to the study of languages by discovering, so to say, and laying bare, the traces of that old life, that prehistoric growth, which made language what we find it in the oldest literary monuments, and which still supplies the vigor of the language of our own time. A knowledge of the mere facts of language is interesting enough; nay, if you ask yourself what grammars really are--those very Greek and Latin grammars which we hated so much in our schoolboy days--you will find that they are store-houses, richer than the richest museums of plants or minerals, more carefully classified and labeled than the productions of any of the great kingdoms of nature. Every form of declension and conjugation, every genitive and every so-called infinitive and gerund, is the result of a long succession of efforts, and of intelligent efforts. There is nothing accidental, nothing irregular, nothing without a purpose and meaning in any part of Greek or Latin grammar. No one who has once discovered this hidden life of language, no one who has once found out that what seemed to be merely anomalous and whimsical in language is but, as it were, a petrification of thought, of deep, curious, poetical, philosophical thought, will ever rest again till he has descended as far as he can descend into the ancient shafts of human speech, exploring level after level, and testing every successive foundation which supports the surface of each spoken language.
One of the great charms of this new science is that there is still so much to explore, so much to sift, so much to arrange. I shall not, therefore, be satisfied with merely lecturing on Comparative Philology, but I hope I shall be able to form a small philological society of more advanced students, who will come and work with me, and bring the results of their special studies as materials for the advancement of our science. If there are scholars here who have devoted their attention to the study of Homer, Comparative Philology will place in their hands a light with which to explore the dark crypt on which the temple of the Homeric language was erected. If there are scholars who know their Plautus or Lucretius, Comparative Philology will give them a key to grammatical forms in ancient Latin, which, even if supported by an Ambrosian palimpsest, might still seem hazardous and problematical. As there is no field and no garden that has not its geological antecedents, there is no language and no dialect which does not receive light from a study of Comparative Philology, and reflect light in return on more general problems. As in geology again, so in Comparative Philology, no progress is possible without a division of labor, and without the most general coöperation. The most experienced geologist may learn something from a miner or from a ploughboy; the most experienced comparative philologist may learn something from a schoolboy or from a child.
I have thus explained to you what, if you will but assist me, I should like to do as the first occupant of this new chair of Comparative Philology. In my public lectures I must be satisfied with teaching. In my private lectures, I hope I shall not only teach, but also learn, and receive back as much as I have to give.
NOTES.
NOTE A.
ON THE FINAL DENTAL OF THE PRONOMINAL STEM _tad_.
One or two instances may here suffice to show how compassless even the best comparative philologists find themselves if, without a knowledge of Sanskrit, they venture into the deep waters of grammatical research. What can be clearer at first sight than that the demonstrative pronoun _that_ has the same base in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and German? Bopp places together (§ 349) the following forms of the neuter:--
Sanskrit Zend Greek Latin Gothic
+tat+ _taḍ._ τό _is-tud_ _thata_
and he draws from them the following conclusions:--
In the Sanskrit +ta-t+ we have the same pronominal element repeated twice, and this repeated pronominal element became afterwards the general sign of the neuter after other pronominal stems, such as +ya-t+, +ka-t+.
Such a conclusion seems extremely probable, particularly when we compare the masculine form +sa-s+, the old nom. sing., instead of the ordinary +sa+. But the first question that has to be answered is, whether this is phonetically possible, and how.
If +tat+ in Sanskrit is +ta+ + +ta+, then we expect in Gothic _tha_ + _tha_, instead of which we find _tha_ + _ta_. We expect in Latin _istut_, not _istud_, _illut_, not _illud_, _it_, not _id_, for Latin represents final _t_ in Sanskrit by _t_, not by _d_. The old Latin ablative in _d_ is not a case in point, as we shall see afterwards.
Both Gothic _tha-ta_, therefore, and Latin _istud_, postulate a Sanskrit +tad+, while Zend and Greek at all events do not conflict with an original final media. Everything therefore depends on what was the original form in Sanskrit; and here no Sanskrit scholar would hesitate for one moment between +tat+ and +tad+. Whatever the origin of +tat+ may have been, it is quite certain that Sanskrit knows only of +tad+, never of +tat+. There are various ways of testing the original surd or sonant nature of final consonants in Sanskrit. One of the safest seems to me to see how those consonants behave before +taddhita+ or secondary suffixes, which require no change in the final consonant of the base. Thus before the suffix +îya+ (called +cha+ by Pâṇini) the final consonant is never changed, yet we find +tad-îya+, like +mad-îya+, +tvad-îya+, +asmad-îya+, +yushmad-îya+, etc. Again, before the possessive suffix +vat+ final consonants of nominal bases suffer no change. This is distinctly stated by Pâṇini, I. 4, 19. Hence we have +vidyut-vân+, from +vidyut+, lightning, from the root +dyut+; we have +udaśvit-vân+, from +uda-śvi-t+. In both cases the original final tenuis remains unchanged. Hence, if we find +tad-vân+, +kad-vân+, our test shows us again that the final consonant in +tad+ and +kad+ is a media, and that the _d_ of these words is not a modification of _t_.
Taking our stand therefore on the undoubted facts of Sanskrit grammar, we cannot recognize _t_ as the termination of the neuter of pronominal stems, but only _d_;[24] nor can we accept Bopp’s explanation of +tad+ as a compound of +ta+ + t, unless the transition of an original _t_ into a Sanskrit and Latin _d_ can be established by sufficient evidence. Even then that transition would have to be referred to a time before Sanskrit and Gothic became distinct languages, for the Gothic _tha-ta_ is the counterpart of the Sanskrit +tad+, and not of +tat+.
Bopp endeavors to defend the transition of an original _t_ into Latin _d_ by the termination of the old ablatives, such as _gnaivod_, etc. But here again it is certain that the original termination was _d_, and not _t_. It is so in Latin, it may be so in Zend, where, as Justi points out, the _d_ of the ablative is probably a media.[25] In Sanskrit it is certainly a media in such forms as +mad+, +tvad+, +asmad+, which Bopp considers as old ablatives, and which in +madîya+, etc., show the original media. In other cases it is impossible in Sanskrit to test the nature of the final dental in the ablative, because _d_ is always determined by its position in a sentence. But under no circumstances could we appeal to Latin _gnaivod_ in order to prove a transition of an original _t_ into _d_; while on the contrary all the evidence at present is in favor of a media, as the final letter both of the ablative and of the neuter bases of pronouns, such as +tad+ and +yad+.
These may seem _minutiæ_, but the whole of Comparative Grammar is made up of _minutiæ_, which, nevertheless, if carefully joined together and cemented, lead to conclusions of unexpected magnitude.
NOTE B.
DID FEMININE BASES IN _â_ TAKE _s_ IN THE NOMINATIVE SINGULAR?
I add one other instance to show how a more accurate knowledge of Sanskrit would have guarded comparative philologists against rash conclusions. With regard to the nominative singular of feminine bases ending in derivative _â_, the question arose, whether words like _bona_ in Latin, ἀγαθά in Greek, +sivâ+ in Sanskrit, had originally an _s_ as the sign of the nom. sing., which was afterwards lost, or whether they never took that termination. Bopp (§ 136), Schleicher (§ 246), and others seem to believe in the loss of the _s_, chiefly, it would seem, because the _s_ is added to feminine bases ending in _î_ and _û_. Benfey[26] takes the opposite view, viz. that feminines in _â_ never took the _s_ of the nom. sing. But he adds one exception, the Vedic +gnâ-s+. This remark has caused much mischief. Without verifying Benfey’s statements, Schleicher (l.c.) quotes the same exception, though cautiously referring to the Sanskrit dictionary of Boehtlingk and Roth as his authority. Later writers, for instance Merguet,[27] leave out all restrictions, simply appealing to this Vedic form +gnâ-s+ in support of the theory that feminine bases in _â_ too took originally _s_ as sign of the nom. sing. and afterwards dropped it. Even so careful a scholar as Büchler[28] speaks of the _s_ as lost.
There is, first of all, no reason whatever why the _s_ should have been added[29]; secondly, there is none why it should have been lost. But, whatever opinion we may hold in this respect, the appeal to the Vedic +gnâ-s+ cannot certainly be sustained, and the word should at all events be obelized till there is better evidence for it than we possess at present.[30]
The passage which is always quoted from the Rv. IV. 9, 4, as showing +gnâ-s+ to be a nom. sing. in _s_, is extremely difficult, and as it stands at present, most likely corrupt:--
Utá gnấḥ agníḥ adhvaré utó gṛhá-patiḥ dáme, utá brahmấ ní sídati.
This could only be translated:--
“Agni sits down at the sacrifice as a woman, as lord in the house, and as priest.”
This, however, is impossible, for Agni, the god of fire, is never represented in the Veda as a woman. If we took +gnâḥ+ as a genitive, we might translate, “Agni sits down in the sacrifice of the lady of the house,” but this again would be utterly incongruous in Vedic poetry.
I believe the verse is corrupt, and I should propose to read:--
Utá agnấv agníḥ adhvaré.
“Agni sits down at the sacrifice in the fire, as lord in the house, and as a priest.”
The ideas that Agni, the god of fire, sits down in the fire, or that Agni is lighted by Agni, or that Agni is both the sacrificial fire and the priest, are familiar to every reader of the Veda. Thus we read, I. 12, 6, agnínâ agníḥ sám idhyate, “Agni is lighted by Agni;” X. 88, 1, we find Agni invoked as ấ-hutam agnáu, etc.
But whether this emendation be right or wrong, it must be quite clear how unsafe it would be to support the theory that feminine bases in _â_ ended originally in _s_ by this solitary passage from the Veda.
NOTE C.
GRAMMATICAL FORMS IN SANSKRIT CORRESPONDING TO SO-CALLED INFINITIVES IN GREEK AND LATIN.
There is no trace of such a term as infinitive in Sanskrit, and yet exactly the same forms, or, at all events, forms strictly analogous to those which we call infinitives in Greek and Latin, exist in Sanskrit. Here, however, they are treated in the simplest way.
Sanskrit grammarians when giving the rules according to which nouns and adjectives are derived from verbal roots by means of primary suffixes (Kṛt), mention among the rest the suffixes +tum+ (Pâṇ., III. 3, 10), +se+, +ase+, +adhyai+, +tavai+, +tave+, +shyai+, e, +am+, +tos+, +as+ (IV. 4, 9-17), defining their meaning in general by that of +tum+ (III. 3, 10). This +tum+ is said to express immediate futurity in a verb, if governed by another word conveying an intention. An example will make this clearer. In order to say he goes to cook, where “he goes” expresses an intention, and “to cook” is the object of that intention which is to follow immediately, we place the suffix +tum+ at the end of the verb +pak+, to cook, and say in Sanskrit, vrajati pak-tum. We might also say pâcako vrajati, he goes as one who means to cook, or vrajati pâkâya, he goes to the act of cooking, placing the abstract noun in the dative; and all these constructions are mentioned together by Sanskrit grammarians. The same takes place after verbs which express a wish (III. 3, 158); _e.g._, icchati paktum, he wishes to cook, and after such words as +kâla+, time, +samaya+, opportunity, +velâ+, right moment (III. 3, 167); _e.g._, kâlaḥ paktum, it is time to cook, etc. Other verbs which govern forms in +tum+ are (III. 4, 65) +śak+, to be able; +dhṛsh+, to dare; +jñâ+, to know; +glai+, to be weary; +ghaṭ+, to endeavor; +ârabh+, to begin; +labh+, to get; +prakram+, to begin; +utsah+, to endure; +arh+, to deserve; and words like +asti+, there is; _e.g._, asti bhoktum, it is (possible) to eat; not, it is (necessary) to eat. The forms in +tum+ are also enjoined (III. 4, 66) after words like +alam+, expressing fitness, _e.g._, paryâpto bhoktum, alam bhoktum, kuśalo bhoktum, fit or able to eat.
Here we have everything that is given by Sanskrit grammarians in place of what we should call the Chapter on the Infinitive in Greek and Latin. The only thing that has to be added is the provision, understood in Pâṇini’s grammar, that such suffixes as +tum+, etc., are indeclinable.
And why are they indeclinable? For the simple reason that they are themselves case terminations. Whether Pâṇini was aware of this, we cannot tell with certainty. From some of his remarks it would seem to be so. When treating of the cases, Pâṇini (I. 4, 32) explains what we should call the dative by +Sampradâna+. +Sampradâna+ means giving (δοτική), but Pâṇini uses it here as a technical term, and assigns to it the definite meaning of “he whom one looks to by any act” (not only the act of giving, as the commentators imply). It is therefore what we should call “the remote object.” Ex. Brâhmaṇâya dhanam dadâti, he gives wealth to the Brâhman. This is afterwards extended by several rules explaining that the +Sampradâna+ comes in after verbs expressive of pleasure caused to somebody (I. 4, 33); after +ślâgh+, to applaud, +hnu+, to dissemble, to conceal, +sthâ+,[31] to reveal, +śap+, to curse (I. 4, 34); after +dhâray+, to owe (I. 4, 35); +spṛh+, to long for (I. 4, 36); after verbs expressive of anger, ill-will, envy, detraction (I. 4, 37); after +râdh+ and +îksh+, if they mean to consider concerning a person (I. 4, 39); after +pratiśru+ and +âśru+, in the sense of according (I. 4, 40); +anugṛ+ and +pratigṛ+, in the sense of acting in accordance with (I. 4, 41); after +parikrî+, to buy, to hire (I. 4, 44). Other cases of +Sampradâna+ are mentioned after such words as +namaḥ+, salutation to, +svasti+, hail, +svâhâ+, salutation to the gods, +svadhâ+, salutation to the manes, +alam+, sufficient for, +vashaṭ+, offered to, a sacrificial invocation, etc. (II. 3, 16); and in such expressions as na tvam triṇâya manye, I do not value thee a straw (II. 3, 17); grâmâya gacchati, he goes to the village (II. 2, 12): where, however, the accusative, too, is equally admissible. Some other cases of Sampradâna are mentioned in the Vârttikas; _e.g._, I. 4, 44, muktaye harim bhajati, for the sake of liberation he worships Hari; vâtâya kapilâ vidyut, a dark red lightning indicates wind. Very interesting, too, is the construction with the prohibitive +mâ+; _e.g._ mâ câpalâya, lit. not for unsteadiness, _i.e._, do not act unsteadily.[32]
In all these cases we easily recognize the identity of +Sampradâna+ with the dative in Greek and Latin. If therefore we see that Pâṇini in some of his rules states that +Sampradâna+ takes the place of +tum+, the so called infinitive, we can hardly doubt that he had perceived the similarity in the functions of what we call dative and infinitive. Thus he says that instead of phalâny âhartum yâti, he goes to take the fruits, we may use the dative and say phalebhyo yâti, he goes for the fruits; instead of yashṭum yâti, he goes to sacrifice, yâgâya yâti, he goes to the act of sacrificing (II. 3, 14-15).
But whether Pâṇini recognized this fact or not, certain it is that we have only to look at the forms which in the Veda take the place of +tum+, in order to convince ourselves that most of them are datives of verbal nouns. As far as Sanskrit grammar is concerned, we may safely cancel the name of infinitive altogether, and speak instead boldly of datives and other cases of verbal nouns. Whether these verbal nouns admit of the dative case only, and whether some of those datival terminations have become obsolete, are questions which do not concern the grammarian, and nothing would be more unphilosophical than to make such points the specific characteristic of a new grammatical category, the infinitive. The very idea that every noun must possess a complete set of cases, is contrary to all the lessons of the history of language; and though the fact that some of these forms belong to an antiquated phase of language has undoubtedly contributed towards their being used more readily for certain syntactical purposes, the fact remains that in their origin and their original intention they were datives and nothing else. Neither could the fact that these datives of verbal nouns may govern the same case which is governed by the verb, be used as a specific mark, because it is well known that, in Sanskrit more particularly, many nouns retain the power of governing the accusative. We shall now examine some of these so-called infinitives in Sanskrit.
DATIVES IN _E_.
The simplest dative is that in _e_, after verbal bases ending in consonants or _â_, e.g., +dṛśé+, for the sake of seeing, to see; +vid-é+, to know, +paribhveê+,[33] to overcome; +śraddhé kám+, to believe.
DATIVES IN _AI_.
After some verbs ending in _â_, the dative is irregularly (Grammar, §§ 239, 240) formed in _ai_; Rv. VII. 19, 7, +parâdái+, to surrender. III. 60, 4, +pratimái+, to compare, and the important form +vayodhái+, of which more by and by.
ACCUSATIVES IN _AM_. GENITIVES AND ABLATIVES IN _AS_. LOCATIVES IN _I_.
By the side of these datives we have analogous accusatives in _am_, genitives and ablatives in _as_, locatives in _i_.
Accusative: I. 73, 10, śakéma yámam, May we be able to get. I. 94, 3, śakéma tvâ samídhan, May we be able to light thee. This may be the Oscan and Umbrian infinitive in _um_, _om_ (_u_, _o_), if we take +yama+ as a base in _a_, and _m_ as the sign of the accusative. In Sanskrit it is impossible to determine this question, for that bases in _a_ also are used for similar purposes is clearly seen in datives like +dábhâya+; _e.g._, Rv. V. 44, 2, ná dábhâya, not to conquer; VIII. 96, 1, nṛ́bhyâḥ tárâya síndhavaḥ su-pârấḥ, the rivers easy to cross for men. Whether the Vedic imperatives in +âya+ (+śâyac+) admit of a similar explanation is doubtful on account of the accent.
Genitive: +vilikhaḥ+, in îśvaro vilikhaḥ, cognizant of drawing; and possibly X. 108, 2, atiskádaḥ bhiyásâ, from fear of crossing.
Ablative: Rv. VIII. 1, 12, purâ âtṛ́daḥ, before striking.
Locative: Rv. V. 52, 12, dṛśí tvishé, to shine in glancing(?)
DATIVES IN _S-E_.
The same termination of the dative is added to verbal bases which have taken the increment of the aorist, the s. Thus from +ji+, to conquer, we have +ji-sh+, and +je-sh+, and from both datival forms with infinitival function. I. 111, 4, té naḥ hinvantu sâtáye dhiyé jishé, May they bring us to wealth, wisdom, victory!
I. 100, 11, apấm tokásya tánayasya jeshé, May Indra help us for getting water, children, and descendants. Cf. VI. 44, 18.
Or, after bases ending in consonants, +upaprakshé+; V. 47, 6, upa-prakshé vṛ́shaṇaḥ - - - vadhvấḥ yanti áccha, the men go towards their wives to embrace.
These forms correspond to Greek infinitives like λῦσαι and τύψαι, possibly to Latin infinitives like _ferre_, for _fer-se_, _velle_ for _vel-se_, and _voluis-se_; for _se_, following immediately on a consonant, can never represent the Sanskrit +ase+. With regard to infinitives like _fac-se_, _dic-se_, I do not venture to decide whether they are primitive forms, or contracted, though _fac-se_ could hardly be called a contraction of _fecisse_. The 2d pers. sing. of the imperative of the 1st aorist middle, λῦσαι, is identical with the infinitive in form, and the transition of meaning from the infinitive to the imperative is well known in Greek and other languages. (Παῖδα δ’ ἐμοὶ λῦσαί τε φίλην τά τ’ ἄποινα δέχεσθαι, Deliver up my dear child and accept the ransom). Several of these aoristic forms are sometimes very perplexing in Sanskrit. If we find, for instance, +stushé+, we cannot always tell whether it is the infinitive (λῦσαι); or the 1st pers. sing. of the aor. Âtmanep. in the subjunctive (for +stushai+), Let me praise (λύσωμαι); or lastly, the 2d pers. sing. Âtmanep. in the indicative (λύῃ). If +stushe+ has no accent, we know, of course, that it cannot be the infinitive, as in X. 93, 9; but when it has the accent on the last, it may, in certain constructions, be either infinitive, or 1st pers. sing. aor. Âtm. subj. Here we want far more careful grammatical studies on the language of the Veda, before we can venture to translate with certainty. In places, for instance, where as in I. 122, 7 we have a nominative with +stushé+, it is clear that it must be taken as an infinitive, stushé sâ vâm - - - râtíḥ, your gift, Varuṇa and Mitra, is to be praised; but in other places, such as VIII. 5, 4, the choice is difficult. In VIII. 65, 5, índra griṇîshé u stushé, I should propose to translate, Indra, thou longest for praising, thou desirest to be praised, cf. VIII. 71, 15; while in II. 20, 4, tám u stushe índram tám gṛṇîshe, I translate, Let me praise Indra, let me laud him, admitting here, the irregular retention of Vikaraṇa in the aorist, which can be defended by analogous forms such as gṛ́-ṇî-sh-áṇi, stṛ́-ṇî-sh-áṇi, of which more hereafter. However, all these translations, as every real scholar knows, are, and can be tentative only. Nothing but a complete Vedic grammar, such as we may soon expect from Professor Benfey, will give us safe ground to stand on.
DATIVES IN _ÂYAI_.
Feminine bases in _â_ form their dative in +âyai+, and thus we find +carâyai+ used in the Veda, VII. 77, 1, as what we should call an infinitive, in the sense of to go. No other cases of +carâ+ have as yet been met with. A similar form is +jârâyai+, to praise, I. 38, 13.
DATIVES IN _AYE_.
We have next to consider bases in _i_, forming their dative in +áye+. Here, whenever we are acquainted with the word in other cases, we naturally take _aye_ as a simple dative of a noun. Thus in I. 31, 8, we should translate +sanáye dhánânâm+, for the acquisition of treasures, because we are accustomed to other cases, such as I. 100, 13, +sanáyas+, acquisitions, V. 27, 3, +saním+, wealth. But if we find, V. 80, 5, +dṛśáye naḥ asthât+, she stood to be seen by us, lit., for our seeing, then we prefer, though wrongly, to look upon such datives as infinitives, simply because we have not met with other cases of +dṛśi-s+.
DATIVES IN _TAYE_.
What applies to datives of nouns in _i_, applies with still greater force to datives of nouns in _ti_. There is no reason why in IX. 96, 4 we should call +áhataye+, to be without hurt, an infinitive, simply because no other case of +áhati-s+ occurs in the Rig-Veda; while +ájîtaye+, not to fail, in the same line, is called a dative of +ájîti-s+, because it occurs again in the accusative +ájîti-m+.
DATIVES IN _TYAI_.
In +ityái+, to go, I. 113, 6; 124, 1, we have a dative of +iti-s+, the act of going, of which the instrumental +ityâ+ occurs likewise, I. 167, 5. This +tyâ+, shortened to +tya+, became afterwards the regular termination of the gerund of compound verbs in +tya+ (Grammar § 446), while +ya+ (§ 445) points to an original +ya+ or +yai+.
DATIVES IN _AS-E_.
Next follow datives from bases in +as+, partly with accent on the first syllable, like neuter nouns in +as+, partly with the accent on +as+; partly with Guṇa, partly without. With regard to them it becomes still clearer how impossible it would be to distinguish between datives of abstract nouns, and other grammatical forms, to be called infinitives. Thus Rv. I. 7, 3 we read +dîrghâya cákshase+, Indra made the sun rise for long glancing, _i.e._, that it might glance far and wide. It is quite true that no other cases of +cákshas+, seeing, occur, on which ground modern grammarians would probably class it as an infinitive; but the qualifying dative +dîrghâya+, clearly shows that the poet felt +cákshase+ as the dative of a noun, and did not trouble himself, whether that noun was defective in other cases or not.
These datives of verbal nouns in +as+, correspond exactly to Latin infinitives in _ĕre_, like _vivere_ (+jîváse+), and explain likewise infinitives in _âre_, _êre_, and _îre_, forms which cannot be separated. It has been thought that the nearest approach to an infinitive is to be found in such forms as +jîváse+, +bhiyáse+, to fear (V. 29, 4), because in such cases the ordinary nominal form would be +bháyas-e+. There is, however, the instrumental +bhiyása+, X. 108, 2.
DATIVES IN _MANE_.
Next follow datives from nouns in +man+, +van+, and +an+. The suffix +man+ is very common in Sanskrit, for forming verbal nouns, such as +kar-man+, doing, deed, from +kar+. +Van+ is almost restricted to forming _nomina agentis_, such as +druh-van+, hating; but we find also substantives like +pat-van+, still used in the sense of flying. +An+ also is generally used like +van+, but we can see traces of its employment to form _nomina actionis_ in Greek ἀγών, Lat. _turbo_, etc.
Datives of nouns in +man+, used with infinitival functions, are very common in the Veda; _e.g._ I. 164, 6, pṛccâmi vidmane, I ask to know; VIII. 93, 8, dâmane kṛtáḥ, made to give. We find also the instrumental case +vidmánâ+, _e.g._, VI. 14, 5, vidmánâ urushyáti, he protects by his knowledge. These correspond to Homeric infinitives, like ἴδμεναι, δόμεναι, etc., old datives and not locatives, as Schleicher and Curtius supposed; while forms like δόμεν are to be explained either as abbreviated, or as obsolete accusatives.
DATIVES IN _VANE_.
Of datives in +váne+ I only know +dāvâne+, a most valuable grammatical relic, by which Professor Benfey was enabled to explain the Greek δοῦναι, i.e., δοϝέναι.[34]
DATIVES IN _ANE_.
Of datives in +áne+ I pointed out (l.c.) +dhûrv-ane+ and +vibhv-áne+, VI. 61, 13, taking the latter as synonymous with +vibhvế+, and translating, +Sarasvatî+, the great, made to conquer, like a chariot. Professor Roth, _s.v._ +vibhván+, takes the dative for an instrumental, and translates “made by an artificer.” It is, however, not the chariot that is spoken of, but +Sarasvatî+, and of her it could hardly be said that she was made either by or for an artificer.
LOCATIVES IN _SANI_.
As we saw before that aoristic bases in _s_ take the datival _e_, so that we had +prák-sh-e+ by the side of +pṛ́c-e+, we shall have to consider here aoristic bases in _s_, taking the suffix +an+, not however with the termination of the dative, but with that of the locative _i_. Thus we read X. 126, 3, náyishṭhâḥ u naḥ nesháṇi párshishṭhâḥ u naḥ parsháṇi áti dvíshaḥ, they who are the best leaders to lead us, the best helpers to help us to overcome our enemies, lit. in leading us, in helping us. In VIII. 12, 19, +gṛṇîsháni+, i.e. +gṛ-ṇî-sháṇ-i+ stands parallel with +turv-án-e+, thus showing how both cases can answer nearly the same purpose. If these forms existed in Greek, they would, after consonantal bases, be identical with the infinitives of the future.
CASES OF VERBAL NOUNS IN _TU_.
We next come to a large number of datives, ablatives, or genitives, and accusatives of verbal nouns in +tu+. This +tu+ occurs in Sanskrit in abstract nouns such as +gâtú+, going, way, etc., in Latin in _adven-tus_, etc. As these forms have been often treated, and as some of them occur frequently in later Sanskrit also, it will suffice to give one example of each:--
Dative in +tave+: +gántave+, to go, I. 46, 7.
Old form in +ai+: +gántavái+, X. 95, 14.
Genitive in +toḥ+: +dâtoḥ+, governed by +îśe+, VII. 4, 6.
Ablative in +toḥ+: +gántoḥ+, I. 89, 9.
Accusative in +tum+: +gántum+. This is the supine in _tum_ in Latin.
CASES OF VERBAL NOUNS IN _TVA_.
Next follow cases of verbal nouns in +tvá+, the accent being on the suffix.
Datives in +tvấya+: +hatvấya+, X. 84, 2.
Instrumental in +tvấ+: +hatvấ+, I. 100, 18.
Older form in +tvî́+: +hatvî́+, II. 17, 6; +gatvî́+, IV. 41, 5.
DATIVES IN _DHAI_ AND _DHYAI_.
I have left to the end datives in +dhai+ and +dhyai+, which properly belong to the datives in +ai+, treated before, but differ from them as being datives of compound nouns. As from +máyaḥ+, delight, we have +mayaskará+, delight-making, +mayobhú+, delight-causing, and constructions like +máyo dádhe+, so from +váyas+, life, vigor, we have +váyaskṛ́t+, life-giving, and constructions like +váyo dhât+. From +dhâ+ we can frame two substantival frame, +dhâ+ and +dhi-s+, _e.g._ +puro-dhâ+, and +puro-dhis+, like +vi-dhi-s+. As an ordinary substantive, +purodhâ+ takes the feminine termination _â_, and is declined like +śivâ+. But if the verbal base remains at the end of a compound without the feminine suffix, a compound like vayodhâ would form its dative vayodhe (Grammar, § 239); and as in analogous cases we found old datives in ai, instead of _e_, e.g. +parâdai+, nothing can be said against +vayodhai+, as a Vedic dative of +vayodhâ+. The dative of +purodhi+ would be +purodhaye+, but here again, as, besides forms like dṛśaye, we met with datives, such as +ityai+, +rohishyai+, there is no difficulty in admitting an analogous dative of +purodhi+, viz., +purodhyai+.
The old dative +dhai+ has been preserved to us in one form only, which for that reason is all the more valuable and important, offering the key to the mysterious Greek infinitives in θαι, I mean +vayodhái+, which occurs twice in the Rig-Veda, X. 55, 1, and X. 67, 11. The importance of this relic would have been perceived long ago, if there had not been some uncertainty as to whether such a form really existed in the Veda. By some accident or other, Professor Aufrecht had printed in both passages +vayodhaiḥ+, instead of +vayodhai+. But for this, no one, I believe, would have doubted that in this form +vayodhai+ we have not only the most valuable prototype of the Greek infinitives in (σ)θαι, but at the same time their full explanation. +Vayodhai+ stands for +vayas-dhai+, in which composition the first part +vayas+ is a neuter base in +as+, the second a dative of the auxiliary verb +dhâ+, used as a substantive. If, therefore, we find corresponding to +vayodhai+ a Greek infinitive βέεσθαι, we must divide it into βέεσ-θαι, as we divide ψεύδεσθαι into ψεύδεσ-θαι, and translate it literally by “to do lying.”
It has been common to identify Greek infinitives in σθαι with corresponding Sanskrit forms ending in +dhyai+. No doubt these forms in +dhyai+ are much more frequent than forms in +dhai+, but as we can only take them as old datives of substantives in +dhi+, it would be difficult to identify the two. The Sanskrit +dhy+ appears, no doubt, in Greek, as σσ, +dh+ being represented by the surd θ, and then assibilated by _y_; but we could hardly attempt to explain σθ = θy, because σδ = ζ = δy. Therefore, unless we are prepared to see with Bopp in the σ before θ, in this and similar forms, a remnant of the reflexive pronoun, nothing remains but to accept the explanation offered by the Vedic +vayodhai+, and to separate ψεύδεσθαι into ψεύδεσ-θαι lying to do. That this grammatical compound, if once found successful, should have been repeated in other tenses, giving us not only γράφεσ-θαι, but γράψεσ-θαι, γράψασ-θαι, and even γραφθήσεσ-θαι, is no more than what we may see again and again in the grammatical development of ancient and modern languages. Some scholars have objected on the same ground to Bopp’s explanation of _ama-mini_, as the nom. plur. of a participle, because they think it impossible to look upon _amemini_, _amabâmini_, amaremini, _amabimini_ as participial formations. But if a mould is once made in language, it is used again and again, and little account is taken of its original intention. If we object to γράψεσ-θαι, why not to κελευ-σέ-μεναι or τεθνά-μεναι or μιχθή-μεναι? In Sanskrit, too, we should hesitate to form a compound of a modified verbal base, such as +pṛṇa+, with +dhi+, doing; yet as the Sanskrit ear was accustomed to +yajadhyai+ from +yaja+, +gamadhyai+ from +gama+, it did not protest against +pṛṇadhyai+, +vâvṛdhadhyai+, etc.
HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE OF THESE GRAMMATICAL FORMS.
And while these ancient grammatical forms which supply the foundation of what in Greek, Latin, and other languages we are accustomed to call infinitives are of the highest interest to the grammarian and the logician, their importance is hardly less in the eyes of the historian. Every honest student of antiquity, whether his special field be India, Persia, Assyria, or Egypt, knows how often he is filled with fear and trembling when he meets with thoughts and expressions which, as he is apt to say, cannot be ancient. I have frequently confessed to that feeling with regard to some of the hymns of the Rig-Veda, and I well remember the time when I felt inclined to throw up the whole work as modern and unworthy of the time and labor bestowed upon it. At that time I was always comforted by these so-called infinitives and other relics of ancient language. They could not have been fabricated in India. They are unknown in ordinary Sanskrit, they are unintelligible as far as their origin is concerned in Greek and Latin, and yet in the Vedic language we find these forms, not only identical with Greek and Latin forms, but furnishing the key to their formation in Greece and Italy. The Vedic +vayas-dhái+ compared with Greek βεεσ-θαι, the Vedic +stushe+ compared with λυσαι are to my mind evidence in support of the antiquity and genuineness of the Veda that cannot be shaken by any arguments.
THE INFINITIVE IN ENGLISH.
I add a few words on the infinitive in English, though it has been well treated by Dr. March in his “Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language,” by Dr. Morris, and others. We find in Anglo-Saxon two forms, one generally called the infinitive, _nim-an_, to take, the other the gerund, _to nim-anne_, to take. Dr. March explains the first as identical with Greek νέμ-ειν and νέμ-εν-αι, _i.e._, as an oblique case, probably the dative, of a verbal noun in _an_. He himself quotes only the dative of nominal bases in _a_, e.g. +namanâya+, because he was probably unacquainted with the nearer forms in _an-e_ supplied by the Veda. This infinitive exists in Gothic as _nim-an_, in Old Saxon as _nim-an_, in Old Norse as _nem-a_, in Old High German as _nem-an_. The so-called gerund, to _nimanne_, is rightly traced back by Dr. March to Old Saxon _nim-annia_, but he can hardly be right in identifying these old datival forms with the Sanskrit base +nam-anîya+. In the Second Period of English (1100-1250)[35] the termination of the infinitive became _en_, and frequently dropped the final _n_, as _smelle_ = _smellen_; while the termination of the gerund at the same time became _enne_, (_ende_), _ene_, _en_, or _e_, so that outwardly the two forms appear to be identical, as early as the 12th century.[36] Still later, towards the end of the 14th century, the terminations were entirely lost, though Spenser and Shakespeare have occasionally to _killen_, _passen_, _delven_, when they wished to impart an archaic character to their language. In modern English the infinitive with _to_ is used as a verbal substantive. When we say, “I wish you to do this,” “you are able to do this,” we can still perceive the datival function of the infinitive. Likewise in such phrases, “it is time,” “it is proper,” “it is wrong to do that,” _to do_ may still be felt as an oblique case. But we have only to invert these sentences, and say, “to do this is wrong,” and we have a new substantive in the nom. sing., just as in the Greek τὸ λέγειν. Expressions like _for to do_, show that the simple _to_ was not always felt to be sufficiently expressive to convey the meaning of an original dative.
WORKS ON THE INFINITIVE.
The infinitive has formed the subject of many learned treatises. I divide them into two classes, those which appeared before and after Wilhelm’s excellent essay, written in Latin, “De Infinitivi Vi et Natura,” 1868; and in a new and improved edition, “De Infinitivo Linguarum Sanscritæ, Bactricæ, Persicæ, Græcæ, Oscæ, Umbricæ, Latinæ, Goticæ, forma et usu,” Isenaci, 1873. In this essay the evidence supplied by the Veda was for the first time fully collected, and the whole question of the nature of the infinitive placed in its true historical light. Before Wilhelm the more important works were Hofer’s book, “Vom Infinitiv, besonders im Sanskrit,” Berlin, 1840; Bopp’s paragraphs in his “Comparative Grammar;” Humboldt’s paper, in Schlegel’s “Indische Bibliothek” (II. 74), 1824; and his posthumous paper in Kuhn’s “Zeitschrift” (II. 245), 1853; some dissertations by L. Meyer, Merguet, and Golenski. Benfey’s “Sanskrit Grammar” (1852), too, ought to be mentioned, as having laid the first solid foundations for this and all other branches of grammatical research, as far as Sanskrit is concerned. After Wilhelm the same subject has been treated with great independence by Ludwig, “Der Infinitif im Veda,” 1871, and again “Agglutination oder Adaptation,” 1873; and also by Jolly, “Geschichte des Infinitivs,” 1873.
I had myself discussed some questions connected with the nature of the infinitive in my “Lectures on the Science of Language,” vol. ii. p. 15 seq., and I had pointed out in Kuhn’s “Zeitschrift,” XV. 215 (1866) the great importance of the Vedic +vayodhai+ for unraveling the formation of Greek infinitives in σ-θαι.
THE INFINITIVE IN BENGALI.
At a still earlier time, in 1847, in my “Essay on Bengali,” I said: “As the infinitives of the Indo-Germanic languages must be regarded as the absolute cases of a verbal noun, it is probable that in Bengali the infinitive in _ite_ was also originally a locative, which expressed not only local situation, but also movement towards some object, as an end, whether real or imaginary. Thus the Bengali infinitive corresponds exactly with the English, where the relation of case is expressed by the preposition _to_. Ex. tâhâke mârite âmi âsiyâchi, means, I came to the state of beating him, or, I came to beat him; âmâke mârite deo, give me (permission), let me (go) to the action of beating, _i.e._, allow me to beat. Now as the form of the participle is the same as that of the infinitive, it may be doubted if there is really a distinction between these two forms as to their origin. For instance, the phrase âpan putrake mârite âmi tâhâka dekhilâm, can be translated, I saw him beating his own son; but it can be explained also as, what they nonsensically call in Latin grammar _accusativus cum infinitivo_, that is to say, the infinitive can be taken for a locative of the verbal noun, and the whole phrase be translated, I saw him in the action of beating his own son, (_vidi patrem cædere ipsius filium_). As in every Bengali phrase the participle in _ite_ can be understood in this manner, I think it admissible to ascribe this origin to it, and instead of taking it for a nominative of a verbal adjective, to consider it as a locative of a verbal noun.”
THE INFINITIVE IN THE DRAVIDIAN LANGUAGES.
I also tried to show that the infinitive in the Dravidian languages is a verbal noun with or without a case suffix. This view has been confirmed by Dr. Caldwell, but, in deference to him, I gladly withdraw the explanation which I proposed in reference to the infinitive in Tamil. I quote from Dr. Caldwell’s “Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages,” 2d ed. p. 423: “Professor Max Müller, noticing that the majority of Tamil infinitives terminate in _ka_, supposed this _ka_ to be identical in origin with _kô_, the dative-accusative case-sign of the Hindi, and concluded that the Dravidian infinitive was the accusative of a verbal noun. It is true that the Sanskrit infinitive and Latin supine in _tum_ is correctly regarded as an accusative, and that our English infinitive _to do_, is the dative of a verbal noun; it is also true that the Dravidian infinitive is a verbal noun in origin, and never altogether loses that character; nevertheless, the supposition that the final _ka_ of most Tamil infinitives is in any manner connected with _ku_, the sign of the Dravidian dative, or of _kô_, the Hindi dative-accusative, is inadmissible. A comparison of various classes of verbs and of the various dialects shows that the _kâ_ in question proceeds from a totally different source.”
[Transcriber’s Note:
In the following section the Devanagari letters were printed without virama, but they should be read as the consonant alone.]
ON LABIALIZED AND UNLABIALIZED GUTTURALS.
As in my article on _Vayodhai_, published in Kuhn’s “Zeitschrift,” 1866, p. 215, I had entered a _caveat_ against identifying Greek β with Sanskrit ज, I take this opportunity of frankly withdrawing it. Phonetically, no doubt, these two letters represent totally distinct powers, and to say that Sanskrit ज ever became Greek β is as irrational to-day as it was ten years ago. But historically I was entirely wrong, as will be seen from the last edition of Curtius’ “Grundzüge.” The guttural sonant check was palatalized in the Southeastern Branch, and there became j and _z_, while in the Northwestern Branch the same g was frequently labialized and became gv, v, and b. Hence, where we have ज in Sanskrit, we may and do find β in Greek.
But after withdrawing my former _caveat_, I make bold to propose another, namely, that the original palatal sonant flatus, which in Sanskrit is graphically represented by j, can never be represented in Greek by β. Whether j in Sanskrit represents an original palatal sonant check or an original palatal sonant flatus can generally be determined by a reference to Zend, which represents the former by j, the latter by _z_. We may therefore formulate this phonetic law:--
+“When Sanskrit j is represented by Zend _z_, it cannot be represented by Greek β.”+
In this manner it is possible, I believe, to utilize Ascoli’s and Fick’s brilliant discovery as to a twofold, or even threefold, distinction of the Aryan k, as applied to the Aryan g. They have proved that all Aryan languages show traces of an original distinction between a guttural surd check, k, frequently palatalized in the Southeastern Branch (Sk. c, Zend c) and liable to labialization, in Latin, Greek, Cymric, and Gothic; and another k, never liable to labialization, but changed into a flatus, palatal or otherwise, in Sanskrit, Lithuanian, and Old Slavonic. They showed, in fact,--
[Transcriber’s Note: The following list has been rotated 90° for space.]
Sanskrit. क (च) श
Lith. k sz
Slav. k, č, c s
Gadh. c c
& Cym. p
Lat. c, qu, v c
Greek. κ, κϝ, κκ, κ
π, ππ,
τ, ττ,
Gothic. hv, h h
In the same manner we ought in future to distinguish between a guttural sonant check, g, frequently palatalized in the Southeastern Branch (Sk. j, Zend j), and liable to labialization, like k; and another g, never liable to labialization, but changed into a flatus, palatal or otherwise, in Zend, Lithuanian, and Old Slavonic. As we never have π = श we never have β = ज, if ज in Zend is _z_.
The evidence will be found under Sk. +jan+, +jabh+, +jar+ (to decay, and to praise), +jush+, +jñâ+, +jñu+, +jâmâtar+; +aj+, +bhrâj+, +marj+, +yaj+, +raj(atam)+.
Gothic _quinô_, Gadh. _ben_, Bœot. βάνα depend on Zend +jeni+; Gadh. _baith-is_ on Zend +jaf-ra+. It is wrong to connect σβεσ with +jas+, on account of Zend +zas+, and +gyâ-ni+ with βία, on account of Zend +zyâ-ni+.
[Footnote 1: The following statute was approved by the University of Oxford in 1868 (_Statuta Universitatis Oxoniensis_, iv., i., 37. §§ 1-3):--
“1. Professor philologiæ comparativæ a Vice-Cancellario, et professoribus linguarum Hebraicæ, Sanskriticæ, Græcæ, Latinæ, et Anglo-Saxonicæ eligatur. In æqualitate suffragantium rem decidat Vice-Cancellarius.
“Proviso tamen ut si vir cl. M. Müller, M.A., hodie linguarum modernarum Europæ professor Taylorianus, eam professionem intra mensem post hoc statutum sancitum resignaverit, seque professoris philologiæ comparativæ munus suscipere paratum esse scripto Vice-Cancellarium certiorem fecerit, is primus admittatur professor.
“2. Professor quotannis per sex menses in Universitate incolat et commoretur inter decimum diem Octobris et primum diem Julii sequentis.
“3. Professor duas lectionum series in duobus discretis terminis legat, terminis Paschatis et S. Trinitatis pro uno reputatis; scilicet per sex septimanas in utroque termino, et bis ad minimum in unaquaque septimana: atque insuper per sex septimanas unius alicujus termini bis ad minimum in unaquaque septimana per unius horæ spatium vacet instruendis auditoribus in iis quæ melius sine solennitate tradi possunt. Unam porro ad minimum lectionem quotannis publice habeat ab academicis quibuscunque sine mercede audiendam. De die hora et loco quibus hæc lectio solennis habenda sit academiam modo consueto certiorem faciat.”]
[Footnote 2: An offer to found a professorship of Chinese, to be held by an Englishman whom even Stanislas Julien recognized as the best Chinese scholar of the day, has lately been received very coldly by the Hebdomadal Council of the University.]
[Footnote 3: _Liber Sextus Decretalium_ (Lugduni, 1572), p. 1027: “Ut igitur peritia linguarum hujusmodi possit habiliter per instructionem efficaciam obtinere, hoc sacro approbante concilio scholas in subscriptarum linguarum generibus ubicunque Romanam curiam residere contigerit, necnon in Parisiensi, et Oxoniensi, Bononiensi, et Salmantino studiis providimus erigendas; statuentes ut in quolibet locorum ipsorum teneantur viri catholici, sufficienter habentes Hebraicæ, Arabicæ, et Chaldææ linguarum notitiam.”]
[Footnote 4: Greaves, _Oratio Oxonii habita_, 1637, p. 19: “Paucos ultra centum annos numeramus ex quo Græcæ primum literæ oras hasce appulerunt, antea ignotæ prorsus, nonnullis exosæ etiam et invisæ, indoctissimis scilicet fraterculis, quibus religio erat graece scire, et levissimus Atticæ eruditionis gustus hæresin sapiebat.”]
[Footnote 5: See _Biographia Britannica Literaria_, vol. i. p. 110.]
[Footnote 6: M. M.’s _Lectures on the Science of Language_, vol. i. p. 171.]
[Footnote 7: Ibid., p. 176.]
[Footnote 8: See Notes A and B, pp. 43, 45.]
[Footnote 9: See M. M., _Science of Religion_, 1873, p. 293.]
[Footnote 10: See Weber, _Indische Studien_, vol. i. p. 38.]
[Footnote 11: See Haug, in Ewald’s _Biblische Jahrbücher_, vol. vi. p. 162.]
[Footnote 12: _Anab._, i. 2, 7: Ἐνταῦθα Κύρῳ Βασίλεια ἦν καὶ παράδεισος μέγας, ἀγρίων θηρίων πλήρης, ἅ ἐκεῖνος ἐθήρευεν ἀπὸ ἵππου, ὁπότε γυμνάσαι βούλοιτο ἑαυτόν τε καὶ τοὺς ἵππους. Διὰ μέσου δὲ τοῦ παραδείσου ῥεῖ ὁ Μαίανδρος ποταμός κ.τ.λ. _Hell._, iv. 1, 15: Ἐν περιειργμένοις παραδείσοις κ.τ.λ.]
[Footnote 13: See _Indian Antiquary_, 1874, p. 332.]
[Footnote 14: Grassmann, Kuhn’s _Zeitschrift_, vol. ix. p. 23.]
[Footnote 15: Ebel, Kuhn’s _Zeitschrift_, vol. viii. p. 242.]
[Footnote 16: Schleicher, _Compendium_, § 112.]
[Footnote 17: Lottner, Kuhn’s _Zeitschrift_, vol. ix. p. 319.]
[Footnote 18: Leo Meyer, _Die Gothische Sprache_, § 31.]
[Footnote 19: Choeroboscus, _B. A._, p. 1274, 29: Τὰ ἀπαρέμφατα ἀμφιβάλλεται εἰ ἄρα εἰσὶ ῥήματα ἢ οὐχί. Schoemann, _Rede-theile_, p. 49.]
[Footnote 20: Apollonius, _De Constr._, i. c. 8, p. 32: Δυνάμει αὐτὸ τὸ ῥῆμα οὔτε πρόσωπα ἐπιδέχεται οὔτε ἀριθμούς, ἀλλὰ ἐγγενόμενον ἐν προσώποις τότε καὶ τὰ πρόσωπα διέστειλεν . . . . καὶ ψυχικὴν διάθεσιν. Schoemann, l.c. p. 19.]
[Footnote 21: Note C, p. 47.]
[Footnote 22: Benfey, _Orient und Occident_, vol. i. p. 606; vol. ii. pp. 97, 132.]
[Footnote 23: _Chips_, vol. iii. p. 134.]
[Footnote 24: Dr. Kielhorn in his grammar gives correctly +tad+ as base, +tat+ as nom. and acc. sing., because in the latter case phonetic rules either require or allow the change of _d_ into _t_. Boehtlingk, Roth, and Benfey also give the right forms. Curtius, like Bopp, gives +yat+, Schleicher +tat+, which he supposes to have been changed at an early time into +tad+ (§ 203).]
[Footnote 25: Weich ist es (_ṭ_ oder _ḍ_) wohl im abl. sing., +gafnâṭ+ (+gafnâdha+). Justi, _Handbuch der Zendsprache_, p. 362.]
[Footnote 26: _Orient und Occident_, vol. i. p. 298.]
[Footnote 27: _Entwickelung der Lateinischen Formenlehre_, 1870, p. 20.]
[Footnote 28: _Grundriss der Lateinischen Declination_, 1866, p. 9.]
[Footnote 29: See Benfey, l.c. p. 298.]
[Footnote 30: In the dictionary of Boehtlingk and Roth we read _s.v._ +gnâ+, “scarce in the singular; nom. sing. seems to be +gnâs+, according to the passage Rv. IV. 9, 4, and Naigh. I. 11, in one text, while the other text gives the form +gnâ+.” Against this, it should be remarked, that it would make no difference whether the MSS. of the Naighaṇṭuka give +gnâ+ or +gnâs+. +Gnâ+ would be the nom. sing., +gnâs+ would be the form in which the word occurs most frequently in the Veda. It is easy to see that the collector of the Naighaṇṭuka allowed himself to quote words according to either principle.
Devarâja, in his commentary on +gnâ+, explains it: “Gamer dhâtor dhâpṛ́vasyajyatibhyo naḥ (U. S. III. 6) iti bahulakân napratyayo bhavati ṭilopaś ca; ṭap. Gatyarthâ buddhyarthâḥ jânanti karmeti gnâḥ. Yadvâ gacchati yajñeshu; abhí yajñám gṛṇîhi no gnâvaḥ (patnîvaḥ) Rv. I. 15, 3. Chandâṃsi vai gnâ iti brâhmaṇam iti Mâdhavaḥ. Asmấ îd u gnấś cid (Rv. I. 61, 8) ity api; gâyatryâdyâ devapatnya iti sa eva. Tasmâc chandasâm gâyatryâdînâm vâgrûpatvâd gnâvyapadeśaḥ.”
In his remarks on Nigh. III. 29, it is quite clear that Devarâja takes +gnâḥ+ as a nom. plur., not as a nom. sing. He says: Menâ gnâ iti stríṇâm; ubhâv api śabdau vyâkhyâtau vânnâmasu. Mânayanti hi tâḥ patiśvaśuramátulâdayaḥ, pûjyâ bhûshayitavyâś ceti smaraṇât. Gacchanty enâḥ patayo patyârthinaḥ. The passage quoted in the Nirukta III. 29, gnâs tvâkṛntann apaso ’tanvata vayitryo ’vayan, is taken from the Tâṇḍyabrâhmaṇa I. 8, 9. “O dress! the women cut thee out, the workers stretched thee out, the weavers wove thee.”
Thus every support which the Nighaṇṭu or the Nirukta was supposed to give to the form +gnâḥ+ as a nom. sing. vanishes. And if it is said _s.v._ +gnâspati+, that in this compound +gnâḥ+ might be taken as a nom. sing., and that the Pada-text separates +gnâḥ-patiḥ+, it has been overlooked that the separation in Rv. II. 38, 10, is a mere misprint. See Prâtiśâkhya, 738. The compound +gnâspatiḥ+ has been correctly explained as standing for +gnâyâspatiḥ+, and the same old genitive is also found in +jâspatiḥ+ and +jâspatyam+. See also Vâjasan. Prâtiśâkhya, IV. 39. It is important to observe that the metre requires us to pronounce +gnâspati+ either as +gnăāspătĭḥ+ or as +gănāspătĭḥ+.
There is, as far as I know, no passage where +gnâḥ+ in the Veda can be taken as a nom. sing., and it should be observed that +gnâḥ+ as nom. plur. is almost always disyllabic in the Rig-veda, excepting the tenth Maṇḍala; that the acc. sing. (V. 43, 6) is, however, disyllabic, but the acc. plur. monosyllabic (I. 22, 10). In V. 43, 13, we must either read +gn̆āḥ+ or +ōshădhī̆ḥ.+]
[Footnote 31: Sthâ, svâbhiprâyabodhanânukûlasthiti, to reveal by gestures, a meaning not found in our dictionaries. Wilson renders it wrongly by to stay with, which would govern the instrumental. +Śap+, cursing, means to use curses in order to convey some meaning or intention to another person.]
[Footnote 32: Wilson’s _Sanskrit Grammar_, p. 390.]
[Footnote 33: In verbs compounded with prepositions the accent is on the penultimate: _e.g._, +samídhe+, +atikráme+, etc.]
[Footnote 34: See M. M.’s _Translation of the Rig-Veda_, I. p. 34.]
[Footnote 35: Morris, _Historic Outlines of English Accidence_, p. 52.]
[Footnote 36: Morris, l.c. p. 177.]
II.
REDE LECTURE,
DELIVERED IN THE SENATE HOUSE BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, ON FRIDAY, MAY 29, 1868.[1]
Part I.
ON THE STRATIFICATION OF LANGUAGE.
There are few sensations more pleasant than that of wondering. We have all experienced it in childhood, in youth, and in our manhood, and we may hope that even in our old age this affection of the mind will not entirely pass away. If we analyze this feeling of wonder carefully, we shall find that it consists of two elements. What we mean by wondering is not only that we are startled or stunned,--that I should call the merely passive element of wonder. When we say “I wonder,” we confess that we are taken aback, but there is a secret satisfaction mixed up with our feeling of surprise, a kind of hope, nay, almost of certainty, that sooner or later the wonder will cease, that our senses or our mind will recover, will grapple with these novel impressions or experiences, grasp them, it may be, throw them, and finally triumph over them. In fact we wonder at the riddles of nature, whether animate or inanimate, with a firm conviction that there is a solution to them all, even though we ourselves may not be able to find it.
Wonder, no doubt, arises from ignorance, but from a peculiar kind of ignorance; from what might be called a fertile ignorance: an ignorance which, if we look back at the history of most of our sciences, will be found to have been the mother of all human knowledge. For thousands of years men have looked at the earth with its stratifications, in some places so clearly mapped out; for thousands of years they must have seen in their quarries and mines, as well as we ourselves, the imbedded petrifications of organic creatures: yet they looked and passed on without thinking more about it--they did not wonder. Not even an Aristotle had eyes to see; and the conception of a science of the earth, of Geology, was reserved for the eighteenth century.
Still more extraordinary is the listlessness with which during all the centuries that have elapsed since the first names were given to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field, men have passed by what was much nearer to them than even the gravel on which they trod, namely, the words of their own language. Here, too, the clearly marked lines of different strata seemed almost to challenge attention, and the pulses of former life were still throbbing in the petrified forms imbedded in grammars and dictionaries. Yet not even a Plato had eyes to see, or ears to hear, and the conception of a science of language, of Glottology, was reserved for the nineteenth century.
I am far from saying that Plato and Aristotle knew nothing of the nature, the origin, and the purpose of language, or that we have nothing to learn from their works. They, and their successors, and their predecessors too, beginning with Herakleitos and Demokritos, were startled and almost fascinated by the mysteries of human speech as much as by the mysteries of human thought; and what we call grammar and the laws of language, nay, all the technical terms which are still current in our schools, such as _noun_ and _verb_, _case_ and _number_, _infinitive_ and _participle_, all this was first discovered and named by the philosophers and grammarians of Greece, to whom, in spite of all our new discoveries, I believe we are still beholden, whether consciously or unconsciously, for more than half of our intellectual life.
But the interest which those ancient Greek philosophers took in language was purely philosophical. It was the form, far more than the matter of speech which seemed to them a subject worthy of philosophical speculation. The idea that there was, even in their days, an immense mass of accumulated speech to be sifted, to be analyzed, and to be accounted for somehow, before any theories on the nature of language could be safely started, hardly ever entered their minds; or when it did, as we see here and there in Plato’s “Kratylos,” it soon vanished, without leaving any permanent impression. Each people and each generation has its own problems to solve. The problem that occupied Plato in his “Kratylos” was, if I understand him rightly, the possibility of a perfect language, a correct, true, or ideal language, a language founded on his own philosophy, his own system of types or ideas. He was too wise a man to attempt, like Bishop Wilkins, the actual construction of a philosophical language. But, like Leibniz, he just lets us see that a perfect language is conceivable, and that the chief reason of the imperfections of real language must be found in the fact that its original framers were ignorant of the true nature of things, ignorant of dialectic philosophy, and therefore incapable of naming rightly what they had failed to apprehend correctly. Plato’s view of actual language, as far as it can be made out from the critical and negative rather than didactic and positive dialogue of “Kratylos,” seems to have been very much the same as his view of actual government. Both fall short of the ideal, and both are to be tolerated only in so far as they participate in the perfections of an ideal state and an ideal language.[2] Plato’s “Kratylos” is full of suggestive wisdom. It is one of those books which, as we read them again from time to time, seem every time like new books: so little do we perceive at first all that is pre-supposed in them,--the accumulated mould of thought, if I may say so, in which alone a philosophy like that of Plato could strike its roots and draw its support.
But while Plato shows a deeper insight into the mysteries of language than almost any philosopher that has come after him, he has no eyes for that marvelous harvest of words garnered up in our dictionaries, and in the dictionaries of all the races of the earth. With him language is almost synonymous with Greek, and though in one passage of the “Kratylos” he suggests that certain Greek words might have been borrowed from the Barbarians, and, more particularly from the Phrygians, yet that remark, as coming from Plato, seems to be purely ironical, and though it contains, as we know, a germ of truth that has proved most fruitful in our modern science of language, it struck no roots in the minds of Greek philosophers. How much our new science of language differs from the linguistic studies of the Greeks; how entirely the interest which Plato took in language is now supplanted by new interests, is strikingly brought home to us when we see how the _Société de Linguistique_, lately founded at Paris, and including the names of the most distinguished scholars of France, declares in one of its first statutes that “it will receive no communication concerning the origin of language or the formation of a universal language,” the very subjects which, in the time of Herakleitos and Plato, rendered linguistic studies worthy of the consideration of a philosopher.
It may be that the world was too young in the days of Plato, and that the means of communication were wanting to enable the ancient philosopher to see very far beyond the narrow horizon of Greece. With us it is different. The world has grown older, and has left to us in the annals of its various literatures the monuments of growing and decaying speech. The world has grown larger, and we have before us, not only the relics of ancient civilization in Asia, Africa, and America, but living languages in such number and variety that we draw back almost aghast at the mere list of their names. The world has grown wiser too, and where Plato could only see imperfections, the failures of the founders of human speech, we see, as everywhere else in human life, a natural progress from the imperfect towards the perfect, unceasing attempts at realizing the ideal, and the frequent triumphs of the human mind over the inevitable difficulties of this earthly condition,--difficulties, not of man’s own making, but, as I firmly believe, prepared for him, and not without a purpose, as toils and tasks, by a higher Power and by the highest Wisdom.
Let us look then abroad and behold the materials which the student of language has now to face. Beginning with the language of the Western Isles, we have at the present day, at least 100,000 words, arranged as on the shelves of a Museum, in the pages of Johnson and Webster. But these 100,000 words represent only the best grains that have remained in the sieve, while clouds of chaff have been winnowed off, and while many a valuable grain too has been lost by mere carelessness. If we counted the wealth of English dialects, and if we added the treasures of the ancient language from Alfred to Wycliffe, we should easily double the herbarium of the linguistic flora of England. And what are these Western Isles as compared to Europe; and what is Europe, a mere promontory, as compared to the vast continent of Asia; and what again is Asia, as compared to the whole inhabitable world? But there is no corner of that world that is not full of language: the very desert and the isles of the sea teem with dialects, and the more we recede from the centres of civilization, the larger the number of independent languages, springing up in every valley, and overshadowing the smallest island.
Ἴδαν ἐς πολύδενδρον ἀνὴρ ὑλατόμος ἐνθὼν Παπταίνει, παρέοντος ἄδην, πόθεν ἄρξεται ἔργω.
We are bewildered by the variety of plants, of birds, and fishes, and insects, scattered with lavish prodigality over land and sea;--but what is the living wealth of that Fauna as compared to the winged words which fill the air with unceasing music! What are the scanty relics of fossil plants and animals, compared to the storehouse of what we call the dead languages! How then can we explain it that for centuries and centuries, while collecting beasts, and birds, and fishes, and insects, while studying their forms, from the largest down to the smallest and almost invisible creatures, man has passed by this forest of speech, without seeing the forest, as we say in German, for the very number of its trees (_Man sah den Wald vor lauter Bäumen nicht_), without once asking how this vast currency could have been coined, what inexhaustible mines could have supplied the metal, what cunning hands could have devised the image and superscription,--without once wondering at the countless treasure inherited by him from the fathers of the human race?
Let us now turn our attention in a different direction. After it had been discovered that there was this great mass of material to be collected, to be classified, to be explained, what has the Science of Language, as yet, really accomplished? It has achieved much, considering that real work only began about fifty years ago; it has achieved little, if we look at what still remains to be done.
The first discovery was that languages admit of classification. Now this was a very great discovery, and it at once changed and raised the whole character of linguistic studies. Languages might have been, for all we know, the result of individual fancy or poetry; words might have been created here and there at random, or been fixed by a convention, more or less arbitrary. In that case a scientific classification would have been as impossible as it is if applied to the changing fashions of the day. Nothing can be classified, nothing can be scientifically ruled and ordered, except what has grown up in natural order and according to rational rule.
Out of the great mass of speech that is now accessible to the student of language, a number of so-called families have been separated, such as the _Aryan_, the _Semitic_, the _Ural-Altaic_, the _Indo-Chinese_, the _Dravidian_, the _Malayo-Polynesian_, the _Kafir_ or _Bâ-ntu_ in Africa, and the _Polysynthetic_ dialects of America. The only classes, however, which have been carefully examined, and which alone have hitherto supplied the materials for what we might call the Philosophy of Language, are the Aryan and the Semitic, the former comprising the languages of India, Persia, Armenia, Greece and Italy, and of the Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic races; the latter consisting of the languages of the Babylonians, the Syrians, the Jews, the Ethiopians, the Arabs.
These two classes include, no doubt, the most important languages of the world, if we measure the importance of languages by the amount of influence exercised on the political and literary history of the world by those who speak them. But considered by themselves, and placed in their proper place in the vast realm of human speech, they describe but a very small segment of the entire circle. The completeness of the evidence which they place before us in the long series of their literary treasures, points them out in an eminent degree as the most useful subjects on which to study the anatomy of speech, and nearly all the discoveries that have been made as to the laws of language, the process of composition, derivation, and inflexion, have been gained by Aryan and Semitic scholars.
Far be it from me, therefore, to underrate the value of Aryan and Semitic scholarship for a successful prosecution of the Science of Language. But while doing full justice to the method adopted by Semitic and Aryan scholars in the discovery of the laws that regulate the growth and decay of language, we must not shut our eyes to the fact that our field of observation has been thus far extremely limited, and that we should act in defiance of the simplest rules of sound induction, were we to generalize on such scanty evidence. Let us but clearly see what place these two so-called families, the Aryan and Semitic, occupy in the great kingdom of speech. They are in reality but two centres, two small settlements of speech, and all we know of them is their period of decay, not their period of growth, their descending, not their ascending career, their Being, as we say in German, not their Becoming (_Ihr Gewordensein, nicht ihr Werden_). Even in the earliest literary documents both the Aryan and Semitic speech appear before us as fixed and petrified. They had left forever that stage during which language grows and expands, before it is arrested in its exuberant fertility by means of religious or political concentration, by means of oral tradition, or finally by means of a written literature. In the natural history of speech, writing, or, what in early times takes the place of writing, oral tradition, is something merely accidental. It represents a foreign influence which, in natural history, can only be compared to the influence exercised by domestication on plants and animals. Language would be language still, nay, would be more truly language, if the idea of a literature, whether oral or written, had never entered men’s minds; and however important the effects produced by this artificial domestication of language may be, it is clear that our ideas of what language is in a natural state, and therefore what Sanskrit and Hebrew, too, must have been before they were tamed and fixed by literary cultivation, ought not to be formed from an exclusive study of Aryan and Semitic speech. I maintain that all that we call Aryan and Semitic speech, wonderful as its literary representatives may be, consists of neither more or less than so many varieties which all owe their origin to only two historical concentrations of wild unbounded speech; nay, however perfect, however powerful, however glorious in the history of the world,--in the eyes of the student of language, Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac, are what a student of natural history would not hesitate to call “_monstra_,” unnatural, exceptional formations which can never disclose to us the real character of language left to itself to follow out its own laws without let or hindrance.
For that purpose a study of Chinese and the Turanian dialects, a study even of the jargons of the savages of Africa, Polynesia, and Melanesia is far more instructive than the most minute analysis of Sanskrit and Hebrew. The impression which a study of Greek and Latin and Sanskrit leaves on our minds is, that language is a work of art, most complicated, most wonderful, most perfect. We have given so many names to its outward features, its genders and cases, its tenses and moods, its participles, gerunds, and supines, that at last we are frightened at our own devices. Who can read through all the so-called irregular verbs, or look at the thousands and thousands of words in a Greek Dictionary without feeling that he moves about in a perfect labyrinth? How then, we ask, was this labyrinth erected? How did all this come to be? We ourselves, speaking the language which we speak, move about, as it were, in the innermost chambers, in the darkest recesses of that primeval palace, but we cannot tell by what steps and through what passages we arrived there, and we look in vain for the thread of Ariadne which in leading us out of the enchanted castle of our language, would disclose to us the way by which we ourselves, or our fathers and forefathers before us, entered into it.
The question how language came to be what it is has been asked again and again. Even a school-boy, if he possesses but a grain of the gift of wondering must ask himself why _mensa_ means one table, and _mensæ_ many tables; why I love should be _amo_, I am loved _amor_, I shall love _amabo_, I have loved _amavi_, I should have loved _amavissem_. Until very lately two answers only could have been given to such questions. Both sound to us almost absurd, yet in their time they were supported by the highest authorities. Either, it was said, language, and particularly the grammatical framework of language was made by _convention_, by agreeing to call one table _mensa_, and many tables _mensæ_; or, and this was Schlegel’s view, language was declared to possess an organic life, and its terminations, prefixes, and suffixes were supposed to have sprouted forth from the radicals and stems and branches of language, like so many buds and flowers. To us it seems almost incredible that such theories should have been seriously maintained, and maintained by men of learning and genius. But what better answer could they have given? What better answer has been given even now? We have learnt something, chiefly from a study of the modern dialects, which often repeat the processes of ancient speech, and thus betray the secrets of the family. We have learnt that in some of the dialects of modern Sanskrit, in Bengali for instance,[4] the plural is formed, as it is in Chinese, Mongolian, Turkish, Finnish, Burmese, and Siamese, also in the Dravidian and Malayo-Polynesian dialects, by adding a word expressive of plurality, and then appending again the terminations of the singular. We have learnt from French how a future, _je parlerai_, can be formed by an auxiliary verb: “I to speak have” coming to mean, I shall speak. We have learnt from our own language, whether English or German, that suffixes, such as _head_ in _godhead_, _ship_ in _ladyship_, _dom_ in _kingdom_ were originally substantives, having the meaning of quality, shape, and state. But I doubt whether even thus we should have arrived at a thorough understanding of the real antecedents of language, unless, what happened in the study of the stratification of the earth, had happened in the study of language. If the formation of the crust of the earth had been throughout regular and uniform, and if none of the lower strata had been tilted up, so that even those who run might read, no shaft from the surface could have been sunk deep enough to bring the geologist from the tertiary strata down to the Silurian rocks. The same in language. Unless some languages had been arrested in their growth during their earlier stages, and had remained on the surface in this primitive state exposed only to the decomposing influence of atmospheric action, and to the ill-treatment of literary cultivation, I doubt whether any scholar would have had the courage to say that at one time Sanskrit was like unto Chinese, and Hebrew no better than Malay. In the successive strata of language thus exposed to our view, we have in fact, as in Geology, the very thread of Ariadne, which, if we will but trust to it, will lead us out of the dark labyrinth of language in which we live, by the same road by which we and those who came before us, first entered into it. The more we retrace our steps, the more we advance from stratum to stratum, from story to story, the more shall we feel almost dazzled by the daylight that breaks in upon us; the more shall we be struck, no longer by the intricacy of Greek or Sanskrit grammar, but by the marvelous simplicity of the original warp of human speech, as preserved, for instance, in Chinese; by the child-like contrivances, that are at the bottom of Paulo-post Futures and Conditional Moods.
Let no one be frightened at the idea of studying a Chinese grammar. Those who can take an interest in the secret springs of the mind, in the elements of pure reason, in the laws of thought, will find a Chinese grammar most instructive, most fascinating. It is the faithful photograph of man in his leading-strings, trying the muscles of his mind, groping his way, and so delighted with his first successful grasps that he repeats them again and again. It is child’s play, if you like, but it displays, like all child’s play, that wisdom and strength which are perfect in the mouth of babes and sucklings. Every shade of thought that finds expression in the highly finished and nicely balanced system of Greek tenses, moods, and particles can be expressed, and has been expressed, in that infant language by words that have neither prefix nor suffix, no terminations to indicate number, case, tense, mood, or person. Every word in Chinese is monosyllabic, and the same word, without any change of form, may be used as a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, or a particle. Thus _ta_, according to its position in a sentence, may mean great, greatness, to grow, very much, very.[5]
And here a very important observation has been made by Chinese grammarians, an observation which, after a very slight modification and expansion, contains indeed the secret of the whole growth of language from Chinese to English. If a word in Chinese is used with the _bonâ fide_ signification of a noun or a verb, it is called a _full word_ (_shi-tsé_); if it is used as a particle or with a merely determinative or formal character, it is called an _empty word_ (_hiu-tsé_[6]). There is as yet no outward difference between full and empty words in Chinese, and this renders it all the more creditable to the grammarians of China that they should have perceived the inward distinction, even in the absence of any outward signs.
Let us learn then from Chinese grammarians this great lesson, that words may become empty, and without restricting the meaning of empty words as they do, let us use that term in the most general sense, as expressive of the fact that words may lose something of their full original meaning.
Let us add to this another observation, which the Chinese could not well have made, but which we shall see confirmed again and again in the history of language, viz.: that empty words, or, as we may also call them, dead words, are most exposed to phonetic decay.
It is clear then that, with these two preliminary observations, we can imagine three conditions of language:--
1. There may be languages in which all words, both empty and full, retain their independent form. Even words which are used when we should use mere suffixes or terminations, retain their outward integrity in Chinese. Thus, in Chinese, _jin_ means man, _tu_ means crowd, _jin-tu_, man-crowd. In this compound both _jin_ and _tu_ continue to be felt as independent words, more so than in our own compound _man-kind_; but nevertheless _tu_ has become empty, it only serves to determine the preceding word _jin_, man, and tells us the quantity or number in which _jin_ shall be taken. The compound answers in intention to our plural, but in form it is wide apart from _men_, the plural of _man_.
2. Empty words may lose their independence, may suffer phonetic decay, and dwindle down to mere suffixes and terminations. Thus in Burmese the plural is formed by _to_, in Finnish, Mordvinian, and Ostiakian by _t_. As soon as _to_ ceases to be used as an independent word in the sense of number, it becomes an empty, or if you like, an obsolete word, that has no meaning except as the exponent of plurality; nay, at last, it may dwindle down to a mere letter, which is then called by grammarians the termination of the plural. In this second stage phonetic decay may well-nigh destroy the whole body of an empty word, but--and this is important--no full words, no radicals are as yet attacked by that disintegrating process.
3. Phonetic decay may advance, and does advance still further. Full words also may lose their independence, and be attacked by the same disease that had destroyed the original features of suffixes and prefixes. In this state it is frequently impossible to distinguish any longer between the radical and formative elements of words.
If we wished to represent these three stages of language algebraically, we might represent the first by RR, using R as the symbol of a root which has suffered no phonetic decay; the second, by R + ρ or ρ + R, or ρ + R + ρ, representing by ρ an empty word that has suffered phonetic change; the third, by rρ, or ρr, or ρrρ, when both full and empty words have been changed, and have become welded together into one indistinguishable mass through the intense heat of thought, and by the constant hammering of the tongue.
Those who are acquainted with the works of Humboldt will easily recognize, in these three stages or strata, a classification of language first suggested by that eminent philosopher. According to him languages can be classified as _isolating_, _agglutinative_,[7] and _inflectional_, and his definition of these three classes agrees in the main with the description just given of the three strata or stages of language.
But what is curious is that this threefold classification, and the consequences to which it leads, should not at once have been fully reasoned out, nay, that a system most palpably erroneous should have been founded upon it. We find it repeated again and again in most works on Comparative Philology, that Chinese belongs to the _isolating_ class, the Turanian languages to the _combinatory_, the Aryan and Semitic to the _inflectional_; nay, Professor Pott[8] and his school seem convinced that no evolution can ever take place from _isolating_ to _combinatory_ and from _combinatory_ to _inflectional_ speech. We should thus be forced to believe that by some inexplicable grammatical instinct, or by some kind of inherent necessity, languages were from the beginning created as _isolating_ or _combinatory_, or _inflectional_, and must remain so to the end.
It is strange that those scholars who hold that no transition is possible from one form of language to another, should not have seen that there is really no language that can be strictly called either isolating, or combinatory, or inflectional, and that the transition from one stage to another is in fact constantly taking place under our very noses. Even Chinese is not free from combinatory forms, and the more highly developed among the combinatory languages show the clearest traces of incipient inflection. The difficulty is not to show the transition of one stratum of speech into another, but rather to draw a sharp line between the different strata. The same difficulty was felt in Geology, and led Sir Charles Lyell to invent such pliant names as _Eocene_, _Meiocene_, and _Pleiocene_, names which indicate a mere dawn, a minority, or a majority of new formations, but do not draw a fast and hard line, cutting off one stratum from the other. Natural growth, and even merely mechanical accumulation and accretion, here as elsewhere, are so minute and almost imperceptible that they defy all strict scientific terminology, and force upon us the lesson that we must be satisfied with an approximate accuracy. For practical purposes Humboldt’s classification of languages may be quite sufficient, and we have no difficulty in classing any given language, according to the prevailing character of its formation, as either isolating, or combinatory, or inflectional. But when we analyze each language more carefully we find there is not one exclusively isolating, or exclusively combinatory, or exclusively inflectional. The power of composition, which is retained unimpaired through every stratum, can at any moment place an inflectional on a level with an isolating and a combinatory language. A compound such as the Sanskrit +go-duh+, cow-milking, differs little, if at all, from the Chinese _nieou-jou_, _vaccæ lac_, or in the patois of Canton, _ngau ü_, cow-milk, before it takes the terminations of the nominative, which is, of course, impossible in Chinese.
So again in English _New-town_, in Greek _Nea-polis_, would be simply combinatory compounds. Even _Newton_ would still belong to the combinatory stratum; but _Naples_ would have to be classed as belonging to the inflectional stage.
Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, and the Dravidian languages belong in the main to the combinatory stratum; but having received a considerable amount of literary cultivation, they all alike exhibit forms which in every sense of the word are inflectional. If in Finnish, for instance, we find _käsi_, in the singular, hand, and _kädet_, in the plural, hands, we see that phonetic corruption has clearly reached the very core of the noun, and given rise to a plural more decidedly inflectional than the Greek χεῖρ-ες, or the English _hand-s_. In Tamil, where the suffix of the plural is +gaḷ+, we have indeed a regular combinatory form in +kei-gaḷ+, hands; but if the same plural suffix +gaḷ+ is added to +kal+, stone, the euphonic rules of Tamil require not only a change in the suffix, which becomes +kaḷ+, but likewise a modification in the body of the word, +kal+ being changed to +kar+. We thus get the plural +karkaḷ+ which in every sense of the word is an inflectional form. In this plural suffix +gaḷ+, Dr. Caldwell has recognized the Dravidian +taḷa+ or +daḷa+, a host, a crowd; and though, as he admits himself in the second edition (p. 143), the evidence in support of this etymology may not be entirely satisfactory, the steps by which the learned author of the Grammar of the Dravidian languages has traced the plural termination +lu+ in Telugu back to the same original suffix +kaḷ+ admit of little doubt.
Evidence of a similar kind may easily be found in any grammar, whether of an isolating, combinatory, or inflectional language, wherever there is evidence as to the ascending or descending progress of any particular form of speech. Everywhere amalgamation points back to combination, and combination back to juxtaposition, everywhere isolating speech tends towards terminational forms, and terminational forms become inflectional.
I may best be able to explain the view commonly held with regard to the strata of language by a reference to the strata of the earth. Here, too, where different strata have been tilted up, it might seem at first sight as if they were arranged perpendicularly and side by side, none underlying the other, none presupposing the other. But as the geologist, on the strength of more general evidence, has to reverse this perpendicular position, and to re-arrange his strata in their natural order, and as they followed each other horizontally, the student of language too is irresistibly driven to the same conclusion. No language can by any possibility be inflectional without having passed through the combinatory and isolating stratum; no language can by any possibility be combinatory without clinging with its roots to the underlying stratum of isolation. Unless Sanskrit and Greek and Hebrew had passed through the combinatory stratum, nay, unless, at some time or other, they had been no better than Chinese, their present form would be as great a miracle as the existence of chalk (and the strata associated with it) without an underlying stratum of oolite (and the strata associated with it;) or a stratum of oolite unsupported by the trias or system of new red sandstone. Bunsen’s dictum, that “the question whether a language can begin with inflections, implies an absurdity,” may have seemed too strongly worded: but if he took inflections in the commonly received meaning, in the sense of something that may be added or removed from a base in order to define or to modify its meaning, then surely the simple argument _ex nihilo nihil fit_ is sufficient to prove that the inflections must have been something by themselves, before they became inflections relatively to the base, and that the base too must have existed by itself, before it could be defined and modified by the addition of such inflections.
But we need not depend on purely logical arguments, when we have historical evidence to appeal to. As far as we know the history of language, we see it everywhere confined within those three great strata or zones which we have just described. There are inflectional changes, no doubt, which cannot as yet be explained, such as the _m_ in the accusative singular of masculine, feminine, and in the nominative and accusative of neuter nouns; or the change of vowels between the Hebrew _Piel_ and _Pual_, _Hiphil_ and _Hophal_, where we might feel tempted to admit formative agencies different from juxtaposition and combination. But if we consider how in Sanskrit the Vedic instrumental plural, +aśvebhis+ (Lat. _equobus_), becomes before our very eyes +aśvais+ (Lat. _equis_), and how such changes as _Bruder_, brother, and _Brüder_, brethren, _Ich weiss_, I know, A.S. _wât_, and _Wir wissen_, we know, A.S. _wit-on_, have been explained as the results of purely mechanical, _i.e._, combinatory proceedings, we need not despair of further progress in the same direction. One thing is certain, that, wherever inflection has yielded to a rational analysis, it has invariably been recognized as the result of a previous combination, and wherever combination has been traced back to an earlier stage, that earlier stage has been simple juxtaposition. The primitive blocks of Chinese and the most perplexing agglomerates of Greek can be explained as the result of one continuous formative process, whatever the material elements may be on which it was exercised; nor is it possible even to imagine in the formation of language more than these three strata through which hitherto all human speech has passed.
All we can do is to subdivide each stratum, and thus, for instance, distinguish in the second stratum the suffixing (R + ρ) from the prefixing (ρ + R), and from the affixing (ρ + R + ρ) languages.
A fourth class, the infixing or incapsulating languages, are but a variety of the affixing class, for what in Bask or in the polysynthetic dialects of America has the appearance of actual insertion of formative elements into the body of a base can be explained more rationally by the former existence of simpler bases to which modifying suffixes or prefixes have once been added, but not so firmly as to exclude the addition of new suffixes at the end of the base, instead of, as with us, at the end of the compound. If we could say in Greek δείκ-μι-νυ, instead of δείκ-νυ-μι, or in Sanskrit +yu-mi-na-j+, instead of +yu-na-j-mi+, we should have a real beginning of so-called incapsulating formations.[9]
A few instances will place the normal progress of language from stratum to stratum more clearly before our eyes. We have seen that in Chinese every word is monosyllabic, every word tells, and there are, as yet, no suffixes by which one word is derived from another, no case-terminations by which the relation of one word to another could be indicated. How, then, does Chinese distinguish between the son of the father, and the father of the son? Simply by position. _Fú_ is father, _tzé_, son; therefore _fú tzé_ is son of the father, _tzé fú_, father of the son. This rule admits of no exception but one. If a Chinese wants to say _a wine-glass_, he puts _wine_ first and _glass_ last, as in English. If he wants to say _a glass of wine_, he puts _glass_ first and _wine_ last. Thus _i-pei thsieou_, a cup of wine; _thsieou pei_, a wine-cup. If, however, it seems desirable to mark the word which is in the genitive more distinctly, the word _tchi_ may be placed after it, and we may say, _fú tchi tzé_, the son of the father. In the Mandarin dialect this _tchi_ has become _ti_, and is added so constantly to the governed word, that, to all intents and purposes, it may be treated as what we call the termination of the genitive. Originally this _tchi_ was a relative, or rather a demonstrative, pronoun, and it continues to be used as such in the ancient Chinese.[10]
It is perfectly true that Chinese possesses no derivative suffixes; that it cannot derive, for instance, _kingly_ from a noun, such as _king_, or adjectives like _visible_ and _invisible_ from a verb _videre_, to see. Yet the same idea which we express by invisible, is expressed without difficulty in Chinese, only in a different way. They say _khan-pu-kien_, “I-behold-and-do-not-see,” and this to them conveys the same idea as the English _invisible_, though more exactly _invisible_ might be rendered by _kien_, to see, _pou-te_, one cannot, _tí_, which.
We cannot in Chinese derive from _ferrum_, iron, a new substantive _ferrarius_, a man who works in iron, a blacksmith; _ferraria_, an iron mine, and again _ferrariarius_, a man who works in an iron mine. All this is possible in an inflectional language only. But it is not to be supposed that in Chinese there is an independent expression for every single conception, even for those which are clearly secondary and derivative. If an arrow in Chinese is _shi_, then a maker of arrows (in old French _fléchier_, in English _fletcher_) is called an arrow-man, _shi-jin_. _Shui_ means water, _fu_, man; hence _shui-fu_, a water man, a water carrier. The same word _shui_, water, if followed by _sheu_, hand, stands for steersman, literally, water-hand. _Kin_ means gold, _tsiang_, maker; hence _kin-tsiang_, a goldsmith. _Shou_ means writing, _sheu_, hand; hence _shou-sheu_, a writer, a copyist, literally, a writing-hand.
A transition from such compounds to really combinatory speech is extremely easy. Let _sheu_, in the sense of hand, become obsolete, and be replaced in the ordinary language by another word for hand; and let such names as _shu-sheu_, author, _shui-sheu_, boatsman, be retained, and the people who speak this language will soon accustom themselves to look upon _sheu_ as a mere derivative, and use it by a kind of false analogy, even where the original meaning of _sheu_, hand, would not have been applicable.[11]
We can watch the same process even in comparatively modern languages. In Anglo-Saxon, for instance, _hâd_ means state, order. It is used as an independent word, and continued to be so used as late as Spenser, who wrote:--
“Cuddie, I wote thou kenst little good, So vainly t’ advaunce thy headlesse hood.”
After a time, however, _hâd_, as an independent word, was lost, and its place taken by more classical expressions, such as _habit_, _nature_, or _disposition_. But there remained such compounds as _man-hâd_, the state of man, _God-hâd_, the nature of God; and in these words the last element, being an empty word and no longer understood, was soon looked upon as a mere suffix. Having lost its vitality, it was all the more exposed to phonetic decay, and became both _hood_ and _head_.
Or, let us take another instance, The name given to the fox in ancient German poetry was _Regin-hart_. _Regin_ in Old High German means thought or cunning, _hart_, the Gothic _hardu_, means strong. This _hart_[12] corresponds to the Greek κράτος, which, in its adjectival form of κρατης, forms as many proper names in Greek as _hart_ in German. In Sanskrit the same word exists as _kratu_, meaning intellectual rather than bodily strength, a shade of meaning which is still perceivable even in the German _hart_, and in the English _hard_ and _hardy_. _Reginhart_, therefore, was originally a compound, meaning “thought-strong,” strong in cunning. Other words formed in the same or a very similar manner are: _Peranhart_ and _Bernhart_, literally, bear-minded, or bold like a bear; _Eburhart_, boar-minded; _Engil-hart_, angel-minded; _Gothart_, god-minded; _Egin-hart_, fierce-minded; _Hugihart_, wise-minded or strong in thought, the English _Hogarth_. In Low German the second element, _hart_, lost its _h_ and became _ard_. This _ard_ ceased to convey any definite meaning, and though in some words which are formed by _ard_ we may still discover its original power, it soon became a mere derivative, and was added promiscuously to form new words. In the Low German name for the fox, _Reinaert_, neither the first nor the second word tells us any longer anything, and the two words together have become a mere proper name. In other words the first portion retains its meaning, but the second, _ard_, is nothing but a suffix. Thus we find the Low German _dronk-ard_, a drunkard; _dick-ard_, a thick fellow; _rik-ard_, a rich fellow; _gêrard_, a miser. In English _sweet-ard_, originally a very sweet person, has been changed and resuscitated as _sweet-heart_,[13] by the same process which changed _shamefast_ into _shamefaced_. But, still more curious, this suffix _ard_, which had lost all life and meaning in Low German, was taken over as a convenient derivative by the Romance languages. After having borrowed a number of words such as _renard_, fox, and proper names like _Bernard_, _Richard_, _Gerard_, the framers of the new Romance dialects used the same termination even at the end of Latin words. Thus they formed not only many proper names, like _Abeillard_, _Bayard_, _Brossard_, but appellatives like _leccardo_, a gourmand, _linguardo_, a talker, _criard_, a crier, _codardo_, Prov. _coart_, Fr. _couard_, a coward.[14] That a German word _hart_, meaning strong, and originally strength, should become a Roman suffix may seem strange; yet we no longer hesitate to use even Hindustani words as English suffixes. In Hindustani +válá+ is used to form many substantives. If +Dilli+ is Delhi, then +Dill-vállá+ is a man of Delhi. +Go+ is cow, +go-válá+ a cow-herd, contracted into +gválá+. Innumerable words can thus be formed, and as the derivative seemed handy and useful, it was at last added even to English words, for instance in “Competition wallah.”
These may seem isolated cases, but the principles on which they rest pervade the whole structure of language. It is surprising to see how much may be achieved by an application of those principles, how large results may be obtained by the smallest and simplest means. By means of the single radical î or +yâ+ (originally +ya+), which in the Aryan languages means to go or to send, the almost unconscious framers of Aryan grammar formed not only their neuter, denominative, and causative verbs, but their passives, their optatives, their futures, and a considerable number of substantives and adjectives. Every one of these formations, in Sanskrit as well as in Greek, can be explained, and has been explained, as the result of a combination between any given verbal root and the radical _î_ or +yâ+.
There is, for instance, a root +nak+, expressive of perishing or destruction. We have it in +nak+, night; Latin _nox_, Greek νύξ, meaning originally the waning, the disappearing, the death of day. We have the same root in composition, as, for instance, +jîva-nak+, life-destroying; and by means of suffixes Greek has formed from it νεκ-ρός, a dead body, νέκ-υς, dead, and νέκ-υ-ες in the plural, the departed. In Sanskrit this root is turned into a simple verb, +naś-a-ti+, he perishes. But in order to give to it a more distinctly neuter meaning, a new verbal base is formed by composition with +ya+, +naś-ya-ti+, he goes to destruction, he perishes.
By the same or a very similar process denominative verbs are formed in Sanskrit to a very large extent. From +râjan+, king, we form +râjâ-ya-te+, he behaves like a king, literally, he goes the king, he acts the king, _il a l’allure d’un roi_. From +kumârî+, girl, +kûmârâ-ya-te+, he behaves like a girl, etc.[15]
After raising +naś+ to +nâśa+, and adding the same radical +ya+, Sanskrit produces a causative verb, +nâśa-ya-ti+, he sends to destruction, the Latin _nêcare_.
In close analogy to the neuter verb +naśyati+, the regular passive is formed in Sanskrit by composition with +ya+, but by adding, at the same time, a different set of personal terminations. Thus +náś-yá-ti+ means he perishes, while +naś-yá-te+ means he is destroyed.
The usual terminations of the Optative in Sanskrit are:--
yâm, yâs, yât, yâma, yâta, yus,
or, after bases ending in vowels:--
iyam, is, it, ima, ita, iyus.
In Greek:--
ιην, ιης, ιη, ιημεν, ιητε, ιεν,
or, after bases ending in o:--
ιμι, ις, ι, ιμεν, ιτε, ιεν.
In Latin:--
iêm iês iet ---- ---- ient, îm, îs, it, îmus, îtis, int.
If we add these terminations to the root +AS+, to be, we get the Sanskrit +s-yâm+ for +as-yâm+:--
syâm, syâs, syât, syâma, syâta, syus.
Greek ἐσ-ίην, contracted to εἴην:--
εἴην, εἴης, εἴη, εἴημεν, εἴητε, εἶεν
Latin _es-iem_, changed to _siêm_, _sîm_, and _erîm_:--
siêm, siês, siet,[16] ---- ---- sient. sim, sîs, sit,[17] sîmus, sitis, sint. erîm, erîs, erit, erîmus, erîtis, erint.
If we add the other termination to a verbal base ending in certain vowels, we get the Sanskrit +bhara-iyam+, contracted to +bháreyam+:--
bharêyam, bharês, bharêt, bharêma, bharêta, bharêyus.
in Greek φέρο-ιμι:--
φέρο-ιμι, φέρο-ις, φέρο-ι, φέρο-ιμεν, φέρο-ιτε, φέρο-ιεν
in Latin _fere-im_, changed to _ferem_, used in the sense of a future, but replaced[18] in the first person by _feram_, the subjunctive of the present:--
feram, ferês, feret, ferêmus, ferêtis, ferent.
Perfect Subjunctive:--
tul-erîm, tul-erîs, tul-erit, tul-erimus, tul-eritis,[19] tul-erint.
Here we have clearly the same auxiliary verb, i or +ya+, again, and we are driven to admit that what we now call an optative or potential mood, was originally a kind of future, formed by +ya+, to go, very much like the French _je vais dire_, I am going to say, I shall say, or like the Zulu
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 +ngi-ya-ku-tanda+, I go to love, I shall love.[20]
The future would afterwards assume the character of a civil command, as “thou wilt go” may be used even by us in the sense of “go;” and the imperative would dwindle away into a potential, as we may say: “Go and you will see,” in the same sense as, If you go, you will see.
The terminations of the future are:--
Sanskrit:--
syâmi, syasi, syati, syâmas, syâtha, syanti.
Greek:--
σω, σεις, σει, σομεν, σετε, σοντι.
Latin:--
ero, erĭs, erĭt, erĭmus, erĭtis, erunt.
In these terminations we have really two auxiliary verbs, the verb +as+, to be, and +ya+, to go, and by adding them to any given root, as, for instance, +DA+, to give, we have the Sanskrit (+dâ-as-yâ-mi+):--
dâ-s-yâ-mi, dâ-s-ya-si, dâ-s-ya-ti,
dâ-s-yâ-mas, dâ-s-ya-tha, dâ-s-ya-nti,
Greek (δω-εσ-ιω):--
δώ-σ-ω,[21] δώ-σ-εις, δώ-σ-ει,
δώ-σ-ομεν, δώ-σ-ετε, δώ-σ-ουσι
Latin:--
pot-ero, pot-erĭs, pot-erit, pot-erĭmus, pot-erĭtis, pot-erunt.
A verbal form of very frequent occurrence in Sanskrit is the so-called gerundive participle which signifies that a thing is necessary or proper to be done. Thus from +budh+, to know, is formed +bodh-ya-s+, one who is to be known, _cognoscendus_; from +guh+, to hide, +gúh-ya-s+, or +goh-ya-s+, one who is to be hidden, literally, one who goes to a state of hiding or being hidden; from +yaj+, to sacrifice, +yâj-ya-s+, one who is or ought to be worshipped. Here, again, what is going to be becomes gradually what will be, and lastly, what shall be. In Greek we find but few analogous forms, such as ἅγιος, holy, στύγ-ι-ος, to be hated; in Latin _ex-im-i-us_, to be taken out; in Gothic _anda-nêm-ja_, to be taken on, to be accepted, agreeable, German _angenehm_.[22]
While the gerundive participles in +ya+ are formed on the same principle as the verbal bases in +ya+ of the passive, a number of substantives in +ya+ seem to have been formed in close analogy to the bases of denominative verbs, or the bases of neuter verbs, in all of which the derivative +ya+ expresses originally the act of going, behaving, and at last of simple being. Thus from +vid+, to know, we find in Sanskrit +vid-yâ+, knowing, knowledge; from +śi+, to lie down, +śayyâ+; resting. Analogous forms in Latin are _gaud-i-um_, _stud-i-um_, or with feminine terminations, _in-ed-i-a_, _in-vid-i-a_, _per-nic-i-es_, _scab-i-es_; in Greek, μαν-ί-α, ἁμαρτ-ί-α, or ἁμάρτ-ι-ον; in German, numerous abstract nouns in _i_ and _e_.[23]
This shows how much can be achieved, and has been achieved, in language with the simplest materials. Neuter, denominative, causative, passive verbs, optatives and futures, gerundives, adjectives, and substantives, all are formed by one and the same process, by means of one and the same root. It is no inconsiderable portion of grammar which has thus been explained by this one root +ya+, to go, and we learn again and again how simple and yet how wonderful are the ways of language, if we follow them up from stratum to stratum to their original starting-point.
Now what has happened in these cases, has happened over and over again in the history of language. Everything that is now formal, not only derivative suffixes, but everything that constitutes the grammatical framework and articulation of language, was originally material. What we now call the terminations of cases were mostly local adverbs; what we call the personal endings of verbs were personal pronouns. Suffixes and affixes were mostly independent words, nominal, verbal, or pronominal; there is, in fact, nothing in language that is now empty, or dead, or formal, that was not originally full, and alive, and material. It is the object of Comparative Grammar to trace every formal or dead element back to its life-like form; and though this resuscitating process is by no means complete, nay, though in several cases it seems hopeless to try to discover the living type from which proceeded the petrified fragments which we call terminations or suffixes, enough evidence has been brought together to establish on the firmest basis this general maxim, that _Nothing is dead in any language that was not originally alive_; that nothing exists in a tertiary stratum that does not find its antecedents and its explanation in the secondary or primary stratum of human speech.
After having explained, as far as it was possible in so short a time, what I consider to be the right view of the stratification of human speech, I should have wished to be able to show to you how the aspect of some of the most difficult and most interesting problems of our science is changed, if we look at them again with the new light which we have gained regarding the necessary antecedents of all language. Let me only call your attention to one of the most contested points in the Science of Language. The question whether we may assign a common origin to the Aryan and Semitic languages has been discussed over and over again. No one thinks now of deriving Sanskrit from Hebrew, or Hebrew from Sanskrit; the only question is whether at some time or other the two languages could ever have formed part of one and the same body of speech. There are scholars, and very eminent scholars, who deny all similarity between the two, while others have collected materials that would seem to make it difficult to assign such numerous coincidences to mere chance. Nowhere, in fact, has Bacon’s observation on this radical distinction between different men’s dispositions for philosophy and the sciences been more fully verified than among the students of the Science of Language:--_Maximum et velut radicale discrimen ingeniorum, quoad philosophiam et scientias, illud est, quod alia ingenia sint fortiora et aptiora ad notandas rerum differentias; alia ad notandas rerum similitudines. . . . . . Utrumque autem ingenium facile labitur in excessum, prensando aut gradus rerum, aut umbras._[24] Before, however, we enter upon an examination of the evidence brought forward by different scholars in support of their conflicting theories, it is our first duty to ask a preliminary question, viz.: What kind of evidence have we any right to expect, considering that both Sanskrit and Hebrew belong, in the state in which we know them, to the inflectional stratum of speech?
Now it is quite true that Sanskrit and Hebrew had a separate existence long before they reached the tertiary stratum, before they became thoroughly inflectional; and that consequently they can share nothing in common that is peculiar to the inflectional stratum in each, nothing that is the result of phonetic decay, which sets in after combinatory formations have become unintelligible and traditional. I mean, supposing that the pronoun of the first person had been originally the same in the Semitic and Aryan languages, supposing that in the Hebrew _an-oki_ (Assyrian _an-aku_, Phen. _anak_) the last portion, _oki_, was originally identical with the Sanskrit +ah+ in +aham+, the Greek ἐγ in ἐγ-ώ, it would still be useless to attempt to derive the termination of the first person singular, whether in _kâtal-ti_ or in _ektôl_, from the same type which in Sanskrit appears as +mi+ or +am+ or +a+, in +tudâ-mi+, +atud-am+, +tutod-a+. There cannot be between Hebrew and Sanskrit the same relationship as between Sanskrit and Greek, if indeed the term of relationship is applicable even to Sanskrit and Greek, which are really mere dialectic varieties of one and the same type of speech.
The question then arises, Could the Semitic and Aryan languages have been identical during the second or _combinatory_ period? Here, as before, the answer must be, I believe, decidedly negative, for not only are the empty words which are used for derivative purposes different in each, but, what is far more characteristic, the manner in which they are added to the stems is different too. In the Aryan languages formative elements are attached to the ends of words only; in the Semitic languages they are found both at the end and at the beginning. In the Aryan languages grammatical compounds are all according to the formula rρ; in the Semitic we have formations after the formulas rρ, ρr, and ρrρ.
There remains, therefore, the first or isolating stage only in which Semitic and Aryan speech might have been identical. But even here we must make a distinction. All Aryan roots are monosyllabic, all Semitic roots have been raised to triliteral form. Therefore it is only previous to the time when the Semitic roots assumed this secondary triliteral form that any community could possibly be admitted between these two streams of language. Supposing we knew as an historical fact that at this early period--a period which transcends the limits of everything we are accustomed to call historical--Semitic and Aryan speech had been identical, what evidence of this union could we expect to find in the actual Semitic and Aryan languages such as we know them in their inflectional period? Let us recollect that the 100,000 words of English, nay, the many hundred thousand words in all the dictionaries of the other Aryan languages, have been reduced to about 500 roots, and that this small number of roots admits of still further reduction. Let us, then, bear in mind that the same holds good with regard to the Semitic languages, particularly if we accept the reduction of all triliteral to biliteral roots. What, then, could we expect in our comparison of Hebrew and Sanskrit but a small number of radical coincidences, a similarity in the form and meaning of about 500 radical syllables, everything else in Hebrew and Sanskrit being an after-growth, which could not begin before the two branches of speech were severed once and forever.
But more, if we look at these roots we shall find that their predicative power is throughout very general, and therefore liable to an infinite amount of specification. A root that means to fall (Sk. +pat+, πί-πτ-ω) comes to mean to fly (Sk. +ut-pat+, πέτομαι). The root +dâ+, which means to give, assumes, after the preposition â, the sense of taking. The root +yu+, which means to join, means to separate if preceded by the preposition +vi+. The root +ghar+, which expresses brightness, may supply, and does supply in different Aryan languages, derivations expressive of brightness (gleam), warmth (Sk. +gharma+, heat), joy (χαίρειν), love (χάρις), of the colors of green (Sk. +hari+), yellow (_gilvus_, _flavus_), and red (Sk. +harit+, _fulvus_), and of the conception of growing (_ger-men_). In the Semitic languages this vagueness of meaning in the radical elements forms one of the principal difficulties of the student, for according as a root is used in its different conjugations, it may convey the most startling variety of conception. It is also to be taken into account that out of the very limited number of roots which at that early time were used in common by the ancestors of the Aryan and Semitic races, a certain portion may have been lost by each, so that the fact that there are roots in Hebrew of which no trace exists in Sanskrit, and _vice versâ_, would again be perfectly natural and intelligible.
It is right and most essential that we should see all this clearly, that we should understand how little evidence we are justified in expecting in support of a common origin of the Semitic and Aryan languages, before we commit ourselves to any opinion on this important subject. I have by no means exhausted all the influences that would naturally, nay necessarily, have contributed towards producing the differences between the radical elements of Aryan and Semitic speech, always supposing that the two sprang originally from the same source. Even if we excluded the ravages of phonetic decay from that early period of speech, we should have to make ample allowances for the influence of dialectic variety. We know in the Aryan languages the constant play between gutturals, dentals, and labials (_quinque_, Sk. +panca+, πέντε, Æol. πέμπε, Goth. _fimf_). We know the dialectic interchange of Aspirate, Media, and Tenuis, which, from the very beginning, has imparted to the principal channels of Aryan speech their individual character (τρεῖς, Goth. _threis_, High German _drei_).[25] If this and much more could happen within the dialectic limits of one more or less settled body of speech, what must have been the chances beyond those limits? Considering how fatal to the identity of a word the change of a single consonant would be in monosyllabic languages, we might expect that monosyllabic roots, if their meaning was so general, vague, and changeable, would all the more carefully have preserved their consonantal outline. But this is by no means the case. Monosyllabic languages have their dialects no less than polysyllabic ones; and from the rapid and decisive divergence of such dialects, we may learn how rapid and decisive the divergence of language must have been during the isolating period. Mr. Edkins, who has paid particular attention to the dialects of Chinese, states that in the northern provinces the greatest changes have taken place, eight initial and one final consonant having been exchanged for others, and three finals lost. Along the southern bank of the Yang-tsï-kiang, and a little to the north of it, the old initials are all preserved, as also through Chekiang to Fuh-kien. But among the finals, _m_ is exchanged for _n_; _t_ and _p_ are lost, and also _k_, except in some country districts. Some words have two forms, one used colloquially, and one appropriated to reading. The former is the older pronunciation, and the latter more near to Mandarin. The cities of Su-cheu, Hang-cheu, Ningpo, and When-cheu, with the surrounding country, may be considered as having one dialect, spoken probably by thirty millions of people, _i.e._, by more than the whole population of Great Britain and Ireland. The city of Hwei-cheu has a dialect of its own, in which the soft initial consonants are exchanged for hard and aspirated ones, a process analogous to what we call _Lautverschiebung_ in the Aryan languages. At Fu-cheu-fu, in the eastern part of the province of Kiang-si, the soft initials have likewise been replaced by aspirates. In many parts of the province of Hunan the soft initials still linger on; but in the city of Chang-sha the spoken dialect has the five tones of Mandarin, and the aspirated and other initials distributed in the same manner. In the island of Hai-nan there is a distinct approach to the form which Chinese words assume in the language of Annam. Many of the hard consonants are softened, instead of the reverse taking place as in many other parts of China. Thus _ti_, _di_, both _ti_ in Mandarin, are both pronounced _di_ in Hai-nan. _B_ and _p_ are both used for many words whose initials are _w_ and _f_ in Mandarin. In the dialects of the province of Fuhkien the following changes take place in initial consonants: _k_ is used for _h_; _p_ for _f_; _m_, _b_, for _w_; _j_ for _y_; _t_ for _ch_; _ch_ for _s_; _ng_ for _i_, _y_, _w_; _n_ for _j_.[26] When we have clearly realized to ourselves what such changes mean in words consisting of one consonant and one vowel, we shall be more competent to act as judges, and to determine what right we have to call for more ample and more definite evidence in support of the common origin of languages which became separated during their monosyllabic or isolating stages, and which are not known to us before they are well advanced in the inflectional stage.
It might be said,--Why, if we make allowance for all this, the evidence really comes to nothing, and is hardly deserving of the attention of the scholar. I do not deny that this is, and always has been my own opinion. All I wish to put clearly before other scholars is, that this is not our fault. We see why there can be no evidence, and we find there is no evidence, or very little support of a common origin of Semitic and Aryan speech. But that is very different from dogmatic assertions, so often and so confidently repeated, that there can be no kind of relationship between Sanskrit and Hebrew, that they must have had different beginnings, that they represent, in fact, two independent species of human speech. All this is pure dogmatism, and no true scholar will be satisfied with it, or turn away contemptuously from the tentative researches of scholars like Ewald, Raumer, and Ascoli. These scholars, particularly Raumer and Ascoli, have given us, as far as I can judge, far more evidence in support of a radical relationship between Hebrew and Sanskrit than, from my point of view, we are entitled to expect. I mean this as a caution in both directions. If, on one side, we ought not to demand more than we have a right to demand, we ought, on the other, not to look for, nor attempt to bring forward, more evidence than the nature of the case admits of. We know that words which have identically the same sound and meaning in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and German, cannot be the same words, because they would contravene those phonetic laws that made these languages to differ from each other. _To doom_ cannot have any connection with the Latin _damnare_; _to call_ cannot be the Greek καλεῖν, the Latin _calare_; nor Greek φαῦλος the German _faul_; the English _care_ cannot be identified with Latin _cura_, nor the German _Auge_ with the Greek αὐγή. The same applies, only with a hundred-fold greater force, to words in Hebrew and Sanskrit. If any triliteral root in Hebrew were to agree with a triliteral word in Sanskrit, we should feel certain, at once, that they are not the same, or that their similarity is purely accidental. Pronouns, numerals, and a few imitative rather than predicative names for father and mother, etc., may have been preserved from the earliest stage by the Aryan and Semitic speakers; but if scholars go beyond, and compare such words as Hebrew _barak_, to bless, and Latin _precari_; Hebrew _lab_, heart, and the English _liver_; Hebrew _melech_, king, and the Latin _mulcere_, to smoothe, to quiet, to subdue, they are in great danger, I believe, of proving too much.
Attempts have lately been made to point out a number of roots which Chinese shares in common with Sanskrit. Far be it from me to stigmatize even such researches as unscientific, though it requires an effort for one brought up in the very straitest school of Bopp, to approach such inquiries without prejudice. Yet, if conducted with care and sobriety, and particularly with a clear perception of the limits within which such inquiries must be confined, they are perfectly legitimate; far more so than the learned dogmatism with which some of our most eminent scholars have declared a common origin of Sanskrit and Chinese as out of the question. I cannot bring myself to say that the method which Mr. Chalmers adopts in his interesting work on the “Origin of Chinese” is likely to carry conviction to the mind of the _bonà fide_ skeptic. I believe, before we compare the words of Chinese with those of any other language, every effort should be made to trace Chinese words back to their most primitive form. Here Mr. Edkins has pointed out the road that ought to be followed, and has clearly shown the great advantage to be derived from an accurate study of Chinese dialects. The same scholar has done still more by pointing out how Chinese should at first be compared with its nearest relatives, the Mongolian of the North-Turanian, and the Tibetan of the South-Turanian class, before any comparisons are attempted with more distant colonies that started during the monosyllabic period of speech. “I am now seeking to compare,” he writes, “the Mongolian and Tibetan with the Chinese, and have already obtained some interesting results:--
“1. A large proportion of Mongol words are Chinese. Perhaps a fifth are so. The identity is in the first syllable of the Mongol words, that being the root. The correspondence is most striking in the adjectives, of which perhaps one half of the most common are the same radically as in Chinese; e.g., _sain_, good; _begen_, low; _ic‘hi_, right; _sologai_, left; _c‘hihe_, straight; _gadan_, outside; _c’hohon_, few; _logon_, green; _hung-gun_, light (not heavy). But the identity is also extensive in other parts of speech, and this identity of common roots seems to extend into the Turkish, Tatar, etc.; e.g., _su_, water; _tenri_, heaven.
“2. To compare Mongol with Chinese it is necessary to go back at least six centuries in the development of the Chinese language. For we find in common roots final letters peculiar to the old Chinese, _e.g._, final _m_. The initial letters also need to be considered from another standpoint than the Mandarin pronunciation. If a large number of words are common to Chinese, Mongol, and Tatar, we must go back at least twelve centuries to obtain a convenient epoch of comparison.
“3. While the Mongol has no traces of tones, they are very distinctly developed in Tibetan. Csoma de Körös and Schmidt do not mention the existence of tones, but they plainly occur in the pronunciation of native Tibetans resident in Peking.
“4. As in the case of the comparison with Mongol, it is necessary in examining the connection of Tibetan with Chinese to adopt the old form of the Chinese with its more numerous final consonants, and its full system of soft, hard, and aspirated initials. The Tibetan numerals exemplify this with sufficient clearness.
“5. While the Mongol is near the Chinese in the extensive prevalence of words common to the two languages, the Tibetan is near in phonal structure, as being tonic and monosyllabic. This being so, it is less remarkable that there are many words common to Chinese and Tibetan, for it might have been expected; but that there should be perhaps as many in the Mongol with its long untoned polysyllables, is a curious circumstance.”[27]
This is no doubt the right spirit in which researches into the early history of language should be conducted, and I hope that Mr. Edkins, Mr. Chalmers, and others, will not allow themselves to be discouraged by the ordinary objections that are brought against all tentative studies. Even if their researches should only lead to negative results, they would be of the highest importance. The criterion by which we test the relationship of inflectional languages, such as Sanskrit and Greek, Hebrew and Arabic, cannot, from the nature of the case, be applied to languages which are still in the combinatory or isolating stratum, nor would they answer any purpose, if we tried by them to determine whether certain languages, separated during their inflectional growth, had been united during their combinatory stage, or whether languages, separated during their combinatory progress, had started from a common centre in their monosyllabic age. Bopp’s attempt to work with his Aryan tools on the Malayo-Polynesian languages, and to discover in them traces of Aryan forms, ought to serve as a warning example.
However, there are dangers also, and even greater dangers, on the opposite shore, and if Mr. Chalmers in his interesting work on “the Origin of Chinese,” compares, for instance, the Chinese _tzé_, child, with the Bohemian _tsi_, daughter, I know that the indignation of the Aryan scholars will be roused to a very high pitch, considering how they have proved most minutely that _tsi_ or _dci_ in Bohemian is the regular modification of _dugte_, and that _dugte_ is the Sanskrit +duhitar+, the Greek θυγάτηρ, daughter, originally a pet-name, meaning a milk-maid, and given by the Aryan shepherds, and by them only, to the daughters of their house. Such accidents[28] will happen in so comprehensive a subject as the Science of Language. They have happened to scholars like Bopp, Grimm, and Burnouf, and they will happen again. I do not defend haste or inaccuracy, I only say, we must venture on, and not imagine that all is done, and that nothing remains to conquer in our science. Our watchword, here as elsewhere, should be Festina lente! but, by all means, Festina! Festina! Festina!
Part II.
ON CURTIUS’ CHRONOLOGY OF THE INDO-GERMANIC LANGUAGES.
In a former Lecture on the “Stratification of Language” I ventured to assert that wherever _inflection_ has yielded to a rational analysis, it has invariably been recognized as the result of a previous _combination_, and wherever _combination_ has been traced back to an earlier stage, that earlier stage has been simply _juxtaposition_.
Professor Pott in his “Etymologische Forschungen” (1871, p. 16), a work which worthily holds its place by the side of Bopp’s “Comparative Grammar,” questions the correctness of that statement; but in doing so he seems to me to have overlooked the restrictions which I myself had introduced, in order to avoid the danger of committing myself to what might seem too general a statement. I did not say that every form of inflection had been proved to spring from a previous combination, but I spoke of those cases only where we have succeeded in a rational analysis of inflectional forms, and it was in these that I maintained that inflection had always been found to be the result of previous combination. What is the object of the analysis of grammatical inflections, or of Comparative Grammar in general, if not to find out what terminations originally were, before they had assumed a purely formal character? If we take the French adverb _sincèrement_, sincerely, and trace it back to the Latin _sincerâ mente_, we have for a second time the three stages of juxtaposition, combination, and, to a certain extent, inflection, repeated before our eyes. I say, inflection, for _ment_, though originally an independent word, soon becomes a mere adverbial suffix, the speakers so little thinking of its original purport, that we may say of a stone that it falls _lourdement_, heavily, without wishing to imply that it falls _luridâ mente_, with a heavy, lit., with a lurid mind.
If we take the nom. sing. of a noun in Sanskrit, Greek, or Latin, we find that masculine nouns end frequently in _s_. We have for instance, Sk. +veśa-s+, Gr. οἶκο-ς, Lat. _vîcu-s_. These three words are identical in their termination, in their base, and in their root. The root is the Sk. +viś+, to settle down, to enter upon or into a thing. This root, without undergoing any further change, may answer the purpose both of a verbal and a nominal base. In the precative, for instance, we have +viś-yâ-t+, he may enter, which yields to a rational analysis into +viś+, the root +yâ+, to go, and the old pronominal stem of the third person, _t_, he. We reduplicate the root, and we get the perfect +vi-viś-us+, they have entered. Here I can understand that objections might be raised against accepting us as a mere phonetic corruption of +ant+ and +anti+; but if, as in Greek, we find as the termination of the third pers. plur. of the perfect ᾶσι, we know that this is a merely phonetic change of the original +anti+,[29] and this +anti+ has been traced back by Pott himself (whether rightly or wrongly, we need not here inquire) to the pronominal stems +ana+, that, and +ti+, he. These two stems, when joined together, become +anti+,[30] meaning _those_ and _he_, and are gradually reduced to ᾶσι, and in Sanskrit to +us+ for +ant+. What we call reduplication has likewise been traced back by Pott himself to an original repetition of the whole root, so that +vi-viś+ stands for an original or intentional +viś-viś+; thus showing again the succession of the three stages, juxtaposition, +viś-viś+, combination +vi-viś+, inflection, the same, +vi-viś+, though liable to further phonetic modification.
Used as a nominal base the same root +viś+ appears, without any change, in the nom. plur. +viś-as+, the settlers, the clans, the people. Now here again Professor Pott himself has endeavored to explain the inflection +as+ by tracing it back to the pronominal base +as+, in +asau+, _ille_. He therefore takes the plural +viś-as+ as a compound, meaning “man and that;” that is to say, he traces the inflection back to a combinatory origin.
By raising the simple base +viś+ to +viśa+, we arrive at new verbal forms, such as +viś-â-mi+, I enter, +viś-a-si+, thou enterest, +viś-a-ti+, he enters. In all these inflectional forms, the antecedent combinatory stage is still more or less visible, for +mi+, +si+, +ti+, whatever their exact history may have been, are clearly varieties of the pronominal bases of the first, second, and third persons, +ma+, +tva+, +ta+.
Lastly, by raising +viś+ to +veśa+, we arrive at a new nominal base, and by adding to it the stem of a demonstrative pronoun _s_, we form the so-called nom. sing. +veśa-s+, οἶκο-ς, _vicu-s_, from which we started, meaning originally house-here, this house, the house.
In all this Professor Pott would fully agree, but where he would differ, would be when we proceed to generalize, and to lay it down as an axiom, that all inflectional forms _must_ have had the same combinatory origin. He may be right in thus guarding against too hasty generalization, to which we are but too prone in all inductive sciences. I am well aware that there are many inflections which have not yielded, as yet, to any rational analysis, but, with that reservation, I thought, and I still think, it right to say that, until some other process of forming those inflections has been pointed out, inflection may be considered as the invariable result of combination.
It is impossible in writing, always to repeat such qualifications and reservations. They must be taken as understood. Take for instance the augment in Greek and Sanskrit. Some scholars have explained it as a negative particle, others as a demonstrative pronoun; others, again, took it as a mere symbol of differentiation. If the last explanation could be established by more general analogies, then, no doubt, we should have here an inflection, that cannot be referred to combination. Again, it would be difficult to say, what independent element was added to the pronoun +sa+, he, in order to make it sâ, she. This, too, may, for all we know, be a case of phonetic symbolism, and, if so, it should be treated on its own merits. The lengthening of the vowel in the subjunctive mood was formerly represented by Professor Curtius as a symbolic expression of hesitation, but he has lately recalled that explanation as untenable. I pointed out that when in Hebrew we meet with such forms as _Piel_ and _Pual_, _Hiphil_ and _Hophal_, we feel tempted to admit formative agencies, different from mere juxtaposition and combination. But before we admit this purely phonetic symbolism, we should bear in mind that the changes of _bruder_, brother, into _brüder_, brethren, of _Ich weiss_, I know, into _wir wissen_, we know, which seem at first sight purely phonetic, have after all been proved to be the indirect result of juxtaposition and combination, so that we ought to be extremely careful and first exhaust every possible rational explanation, before we have recourse to phonetic symbolism as an element in the production of inflection forms.
The chief object, however, of my lecture on the “Stratification of Language” was not so much to show that inflection everywhere presupposes combination, and combination juxtaposition, but rather to call attention to a fact that had not been noticed before, viz.: that there is hardly any language, which is not at the same time _isolating_, _combinatory_, and _inflectional_.
It had been the custom in classifying languages morphologically to represent some languages, for instance Chinese, as _isolating_; others, such as Turkish or Finnish, as _combinatory_; others, such as Sanskrit or Hebrew, as _inflectional_. Without contesting the value of this classification for certain purposes, I pointed out that even Chinese, the very type of the isolating class, is not free from combinatory forms, and that the more highly developed among the combinatory languages, such as Hungarian, Finnish, Tamil, etc., show the clearest traces of incipient inflection. “The difficulty is not,” as I said, “to show the transition of one stratum of speech into another, but rather to draw a sharp line between the different strata. The same, difficulty was felt in Geology, and led Sir Charles Lyell to invent such pliant names as _Eocene_, _Meiocene_, and _Pleiocene_, names which indicate a mere dawn, a minority, or a majority of new formations, but do not draw a fast and hard line, cutting off one stratum from the other. Natural growth and even merely mechanical accumulation and accretion, here as elsewhere, are so minute and almost imperceptible that they defy all strict scientific terminology, and force upon us the lesson that we must be satisfied with an approximate accuracy.”
Holding these opinions, and having established them by an amount of evidence which, though it might easily be increased, seemed to me sufficient, I did not think it safe to assign to the three stages in the history of the Aryan languages, the _juxtapositional_, the _combinatory_, and the _inflectional_, a strictly successive character, still less to admit in the growth of the Aryan languages a number of definite stages, which should be sharply separated from each other, and assume an almost chronological character. I fully admit that wherever _inflectional_ forms in the Aryan languages have yielded to a rational analysis, we see that they are preceded chronologically by _combinatory_ formations; nor should I deny for one moment that _combinatory_ forms presuppose an antecedent, and therefore chronologically more ancient stage of mere juxtaposition. What I doubt is whether, as soon as combination sets in, juxtaposition ceases, and whether the first appearance of inflection puts an end to the continued working of combination.
It seems to me, even if we argue only on _à priori_ grounds, that there must have been at least a period of transition during which both principles were at work together, and I hardly can understand what certain scholars mean if they represent the principle of inflection as a sudden psychological change which, as soon as it has taken place, makes a return to combination altogether impossible. If, instead of arguing _à priori_, we look the facts of language in the face, we cannot help seeing that, even after that period during which it is supposed that the United Aryan language had attained its full development, I mean at a time when Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin had become completely separated, as so many national dialects, each with its own fully developed inflectional grammar, the power of combination was by no means extinct. The free power of composition, which is so manifest in Sanskrit and Greek, testifies to the continued working of combination in strictly historical times. I see no real distinction between the transition of _Néa pólis_, i.e., new town, into _Neápolis_, and into _Naples_, and the most primitive combination in Chinese, and I maintain that as long as a language retains that unbounded faculty of composition, which we see in Sanskrit, in Greek, and in German, the growth of new inflectional forms from combinatory germs must be admitted as possible. Forms such as the passive aorist in Greek, ἐτέθην, or the weak preterite in Gothic _nas-i-da_, _nas-i-dédjau_, need not have been formed before the Aryan family broke up into national languages; and forms such as Italian _meco_, _fratelmo_, or the future _avro_, I shall have, though not exactly of the same workmanship, show at all events that analogous powers are at work even in the latest periods of linguistic growth.
Holding these opinions, which, as far as I know, have never been controverted, I ought perhaps, when I came to publish the preceding Lecture, to have defended my position against the powerful arguments advanced in the meantime by my old friend, Professor G. Curtius, in support of a diametrically opposite opinion in his classical essay, “On the Chronology of the Indo-Germanic Languages,” published in 1867, new edition, 1873. While I had endeavored to show that juxtaposition, combination, and inflection, though following each other in succession, do not represent chronological periods, but represent phases, strongly developed, it is true, in certain languages, but extending their influence far beyond the limits commonly assigned to them, Professor Curtius tried to establish the chronological character not only of these three, but of four other phases or periods in the history of Aryan speech. Confining himself to what he considers the undivided Aryan language to have been, before it was broken up into national dialects, such as Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, he proceeds to subdivide the antecedent period of its growth into _seven_ definite stages, each marked by a definite character, and each representing a sum of years in the chronology of the Aryan language. As I had found it difficult to treat Chinese as entirely _juxtapositional_, or Turkish as entirely _combinatory_, or Sanskrit as entirely _inflectional_, it was perhaps not to be wondered at that not even the persuasive pleading of my learned friend could convince me of the truth of the more minute chronological division proposed by him in his learned essay. But it would hardly have been fair if, on the present occasion, I had reprinted my “Rede Lecture” without explaining why I had altered nothing in my theory of linguistic growth, why I retained these three phases and no more, and why I treated even these, not as chronological periods, in the strict sense of the word, but as preponderating tendencies, giving an individual character to certain classes of language, without being totally absent in others. Professor Curtius is one of the few scholars with whom it is pleasant to differ. He has shown again and again that what he cares for is truth, not victory, and when he has defended his position against attacks not always courteous, he has invariably done so, not with hard words, but with hard arguments. I therefore feel no hesitation in stating plainly to him where his theories seem to me either not fully supported, or even contradicted by the facts of language, and I trust that this free exchange of ideas, though in public, will be as pleasant as our conversations in private used to be, now more than thirty years ago.
Let us begin with the _First Period_, which Professor Curtius calls the _Root-Period_. There must have been, as I tried to explain before, a period for the Aryan languages, during which they stood on a level with Chinese, using nothing but roots, or radical words, without having reduced any of them to a purely formal character, without having gone through the process of changing what Chinese grammarians call _full_ words into _empty_ words. I have always held, that to speak of roots as mere abstractions, as the result of grammatical theory, is self-contradictory. Roots which never had any real or historical existence may have been invented both in modern and ancient collections or +Dhâtupâṭhas+; but that is simply the fault of our etymological analysis, and in no way affects the fact, that the Aryan, like all other languages we know, began with roots. We may doubt the legitimacy of certain chemical elements, but not the reality of chemical elements in general. Language, in the sense in which we use the word, begins with roots, which are not only the ultimate facts for the Science of Language, but real facts in the history of human speech. To deny their historical reality would be tantamount to denying cause and effect.
Logically, no doubt, it is possible to distinguish between a root as a mere postulate, and a root used as an actual word. That distinction has been carefully elaborated by Indian grammarians and philosophers, but it does in no way concern us in purely historical researches. What I mean by a root used in real language is this: when we analyze a cluster of Sanskrit words, such as +yodha-s+, a fighter, +yodhaka-s+, a fighter, +yoddhâ+, a fighter, +yodhana-m+, fighting, +yuddhi-s+, a fight, +yuyutsu-s+, wishing to fight, +â-yudha-m+, a weapon, we easily see that they presuppose an element +yudh+, to fight, and that they are all derived from that element by well-known grammatical suffixes. Now is this +yudh+, which we call the root of all these words, a mere abstraction? Far from it. We find it as +yudh+ used in the Veda either as a nominal or as a verbal base, according to suffixes by which it is followed. Thus +yudh+ by itself would be a fighter, only that +dh+ when final, has to be changed into t. We have +goshu-yúdh-am+, an accusative, the fighter among cows. In the plural we have +yúdh-as+, fighters; in the locative +yudh-i+, in the fight; in the instrumental, +yudh-â+, with the weapon. That is to say, we find that as a nominal base, +yudh+, without any determinative suffixes, may express fighting, the place of fighting, the instrument of fighting, and a fighter. If our grammatical analysis is right, we should have +yudh+ as a nominal base in +yúdh-ya-ti+, lit. he goes to fighting, +yudh-yá-te+, pass.; +(a)-yut-smahi+, aor., either we were to fight, or we were fighters; +yú-yut-sa-ti+, he is to fight-fight; +yudh-ya-s+, to be fought (p. 94), etc. As a verbal base we find +yudh+, for instance, or +yu-yudh-e+, I have fought; in +a-yud-dha+, for +a-yudh-ta+, he fought. In the other Aryan languages this root has left hardly any traces; yet the Greek ὑσμῖν, and ὑσμίνη would be impossible without the root +yudh+.
The only difference between Chinese and these Sanskrit forms which we have just examined, is that while in Chinese such a form as +yudh-i+, in the battle, would have for its last element a word clearly meaning middle, and having an independent accent, Sanskrit has lost the consciousness of the original material meaning of the _i_ of the locative, and uses it traditionally as an empty word, as a formal element, as a mere termination.
I also agree with Curtius that during the earliest stage, not of Sanskrit, but of Aryan speech in general, we have to admit two classes of roots, the _predicative_ and _demonstrative_, and that what we now call the plural of +yudh+, +yudh-as+, fighters, was, or may have been, originally a compound consisting of the predicative root +yudh+, and the demonstrative root, +as+ or +sa+, possibly repeated twice, meaning “fight-he-he,” or “fight-there-there,” _i.e._, fighters.
There is another point with regard to the character of this earliest radical stage of the Aryan language, on which formally I should have agreed with Curtius, but where now I begin to feel more doubtful,--I mean the necessarily monosyllabic form of all original roots. There is, no doubt, much to be said for this view. We always like to begin with what is simple. We imagine, as it has been said, that “the simple idea must break forth, like lightning, in a simple body of sound, to be perceived in one single moment.” But, on the other hand, the simple, so far as it is the general, is frequently, to us at least, the last result of repeated complex conceptions, and therefore there is at all events no _à priori_ argument against treating the simplest roots as the latest, rather than the earliest products of language. Languages in a low state of development are rich in words expressive of the most minute differences, they are poor in general expressions, a fact which ought to be taken into account as an important qualification of a remark made by Curtius that language supplies necessaries first, luxuries afterwards (p. 32). I quote the following excellent remarks from Mr. Sayce’s “Principles of comparative Philology” (p. 208): “Among modern savages the individual objects of sense have names enough, while general terms are very rare. The Mohicans have words for cutting various objects, but none to signify cutting simple.”[31] In taking this view we certainly are better able to explain the actual forms of the Aryan roots, viz., by _elimination_, rather than by _composition_. If we look for instance, as I did myself formerly, on such roots as +yudh+, +yuj+, and +yauṭ+, as developed from the simpler root +yu+, or on +mardh+, +marg+, +mark+, +marp+, +mard+, +smar+, as developed from +mar+, then we are bound to account for the modificatory elements, such as _dh_, _g_, _k_, _p_, _d_, _s_, _n_, _t_, _r_, as remnants of other roots, whether predicative or demonstrative. Thus Curtius compares +tar+ or +tra+, with +tras+, +tram+, +trak+, +trap+; +tri+ and +tru+ with +trup+, +trib+, taking the final consonants as modificatory letters. But what are these modificatory letters? Every attempt to account for them has failed. If it could be proved that these modificatory elements, which Curtius calls _Determinatives_, produced always the _same_ modification of meaning, they might then be classed with the verbal suffixes which change simple verbs into causative, desiderative, or intensive verbs. But this is not the case. On the other hand, it would be perfectly intelligible that such roots as +mark+, +marg+, +mard+, +mardh+, expressing different kinds of crushing, became fixed side by side, that by a process of elimination, their distinguishing features were gradually removed, and the root +mar+ left as the simplest form, expressive of the most general meaning. Without entering here on that process of mutual friction by which I believe that the development of roots can best be explained, we may say at least so much, that whatever process will account for the root +yu+, will likewise account for the root +yuj+, nay, that roots like +mark+ or +mard+ are more graphic, expressive, and more easily intelligible than the root mar.
However, if this view of the origin of roots has to be adopted, it need not altogether exclude the other view. In the process of simplification, certain final letters may have become typical, may have seemed invested with a certain function or determinative power, and may therefore have been added independently to other roots, by that powerful imitative tendency which asserts itself again and again through the whole working of language. But however that may be, the sharp line of distinction which Curtius draws between the First Period, represented by simple, and the Second Period represented by derivative roots, seems certainly no longer tenable, least of all as dividing _chronologically_ two distinct periods in the growth of language.
When we approach the Third Period, it might seem that here, at least, there could be no difference of opinion between Professor Curtius and myself. That Third Period represents simply what I called the first setting in of _combination_, following after the _isolating_ stage. Curtius calls it the _primary verbal period_, and ascribes to it the origin of such combinatory forms as +dấ-ma+, give-I, +dâ-tva+, give-thou, +dấ-ta+, give-he; +dâ-ma-tvi+, give-we, +dâ-tva-tvi+, give-you, +dâ-(a)nti+, give-they. These verbal forms he considers as much earlier than any attempts at declension in nouns. No one who has read Curtius’ arguments in support of this chronological arrangement would deny their extreme plausibility; but there are grave difficulties which made me hesitate in adopting this hypothetical framework of linguistic chronology. I shall only mention one, which seemed to me insurmountable. We know that during what we called the First Radical Period the sway of phonetic laws was already so firmly established, that, from that period onward to the present day, we can say, with perfect certainty, which phonetic changes are possible, and which are not. It is through these phonetic laws that the most distant past in the history of the Aryan language is connected with the present. It is on them that the whole science of etymology is founded. Only because a certain root has a tenuis, a media, an aspirate, or a sibilant, is it possible to keep it distinct from other roots. If t and s could be interchanged, then the root +tar+, to cross, would not be distinct from the root +sar+, to go. If d and +dh+ could vary, then +dar+, to tear, would run together with +dhar+, to hold. These phonetic distinctions were firmly established in the radical period, and continue to be maintained, both in the undivided Aryan speech, and in the divided national dialects, such as Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Gothic. How then can we allow an intervening period, during which +ma-tvi+, could become +masi+, +tva-tvi+, +thas+, and the same +tva-tvi+ appear also as +sai+? Such changes, always most startling, may have been possible in earlier periods; but when phonetic order had once been established, as it was in what Curtius calls his first and second periods, to admit them as possible, would be, as far as I can judge, to admit a complete anachronism. Of two things one; either we must altogether surrender those chaotic changes which are required for identifying Sanskrit e with Greek μαι, and Greek μαι with +mâ-ma+, etc., or we must throw them back to a period anterior to the final settlement of the Aryan roots.
I now proceed to point out a second difficulty. If Curtius uses these same personal terminations, +masi+, +tvasi+, and +anti+, as proof positive that they must have been compounded out of +ma+ + +tva+, and +tva-tva+, before there were any case terminations, I do not think his argument is quite stringent. Curtius says: “If plural suffixes had existed before the coining of these terminations, we should expect them here, as well as in the noun” (p. 33). But the plural of the pronoun _I_ could never have been formed by a plural suffix, like the plural of _horse_. _I_ admits of no plural, as little as _thou_, and hence the plural of these very pronouns in the Aryan language is not formed by the mere addition of a plural termination, but by a new base. We say _I_, but _we_; _thou_ but _you_, and so through all the Aryan languages. According to Curtius himself, +masi+, the termination of the plural, is not formed by repeating +ma+, by saying I and I, but by +ma+ and +tva+, I and thou, the most primitive way, he thinks, of expressing _we_. The termination of the second person plural might be expressed by repeating _thou_. “You did it,” might have been rendered by “thou and thou did it;” but hardly by treating _thou_ like a noun, and adding to it a plural termination. The absence of plural terminations, therefore at the end of the personal suffixes of the verbs, does not prove, as far as I can see, that plurals of nouns were unknown when the first, second, and third persons plural of the Aryan verbs were called into existence.
Again, if Curtius says, that “what language has once learnt, it does not forget again, and that therefore if the plural had once found expression in nouns, the verb would have claimed the same distinction,” is true, no doubt, in many cases, but not so generally true as to supply a safe footing for a deductive argument. In so late a formation as the periphrastic future in Sanskrit, we say +dâtâ-smaḥ+, as it were _dator sumus_, not +dâtâraḥ smaḥ+; and in the second person plural of the passive in Latin _amamini_, though the plural is marked, the gender is always disregarded.
Further, even if we admit with Bopp and Curtius that the terminations of the medium are composed of two pronouns, that the _ta_ of the third person singular stands for _ta-ti_, to-him-he, that καλύπτεται in fact meant originally hide-himself-he, it does not follow that in such a compound one pronominal element should have taken the termination of the accusative, any more than the other takes the termination of the nominative. The first element in every composition takes necessarily its Pada or thematic form; the second or final element has suffered so much, according to Bopp’s own explanation, that nothing would be easier to explain than the disappearance of a final consonant, if it had existed. The absence of case-terminations in such compounds cannot therefore be used as proof of the non-existence of case-terminations at a time when the medial and other personal endings took their origin. On the contrary, these terminations seem to me to indicate, though I do not say to prove, that the conception of a subjective, as distinct from an objective case, had been fully realized by those who framed them. I do not myself venture to speak very positively of such minute processes of analysis as that which discovers in the Sk. first pers. sing. ind. pres. of the middle, tude, I strike, an original +tuda+ + a + i, +tuda+ + +ma+ + i, +tuda+ + +ma+ + +mi+, tuda + +mâ+ + +ma+, but admitting that the middle was formed in that way, and that it meant originally _strike-to-me-I_, then surely we have in the first +mâ+ an oblique case, and in the compound itself the clearest indication that the distinction between a nominative and an oblique case, whether dative or accusative, was no longer a mystery. Anyhow, and this is the real point at issue, the presence of such compounds as +mâ-ma+, to-me-I, is in no way a proof that at the time of their formation people could not distinguish between +yudh (s)+, nom., a fighter, and +yudh (am)+, acc., a fighter; and we must wait for more irrefragable evidence before admitting, what would under all circumstances be a most startling conclusion, namely, that the Aryan language was spoken for a long time without case-terminations, but with a complete set of personal terminations, both in the singular and the plural. For though it is quite true that the want of cases could only be felt in a sentence, the same seems to me to apply to personal terminations of the verb. The one, in most languages we know, implies the other, and the very question whether conjugation or declension came first is one of those dangerous questions which take something for granted which has never been proved.
During all this time, according to Curtius, our Aryan language would have consisted of nothing but roots, used for nominal and verbal purposes, but without any purely derivative suffixes, whether verbal or nominal, and without declension. The only advance, in fact, made beyond the purely Chinese standard, would have consisted in a few combinations of personal pronouns with verbal stems, which combinations assumed rapidly a typical character, and led to the formation of a skeleton of conjugation, containing a _present_, _an aorist_ with an augment, and a _reduplicated perfect_. Why, during the same period, nominal bases should not have assumed at least some case-terminations, does not appear; and it certainly seems strange that people who could say +vak-ti+, speak-he, +vak-anti+, speak-this-he, should not have been able to say +vâk-s+, whether in the sense of speak-there, _i.e._, speech or speak-there, _i.e._, speaker.
The next step which, according to Curtius, the Aryan language had to make, in order to emerge from its purely radical phase, was the creation of bases, both verbal and nominal, by the addition of verbal and nominal suffixes to roots, both primary and secondary. Curtius calls this fourth the Period of the _Formation of Themes_. The suffixes are very numerous, and it is by them that the Aryan languages have been able to make their limited number of roots supply the vast materials of their dictionary. From +bhar+, to carry, they formed +bhar-a+, a carrier, but sometimes also a burden. In addition to +bhar-ti+, carry-he, they formed +bhara-ti+, meaning possibly carrying-he. The growth of these early themes may have been very luxuriant, and, as Professor Curtius expresses it, chiefly _paraschematic_. It may have been left to a later age to assign to that large number of possible synonyms more definite meanings. Thus from φέρω, I carry, we have φορά, the act of carrying, used also in the sense of _impetus_ (being carried away), and of _provectus_, i.e., what is brought in. Φορός means carrying, but also violent, and lucrative; φέρετρον, an instrument of carrying, means a bier; φαρέτρα, a quiver, for carrying arrows. Φορμός comes to mean a basket; φόρτος, a burden; φορός, tribute.
All this is perfectly intelligible, both with regard to nominal and verbal themes. Curtius admits four kinds of verbal themes as the outcome of his Fourth Period. He had assigned to his Third Period the simple verbal themes ἐσ-τί, and the reduplicated themes such as δίδω-σι. To these were added, in the Fourth Period, the following four secondary themes:--
(1) πλέκ-ε-(τ)-ι Sanskrit +lipa-ti+ (2) ἀλείφ-ε-(τ)-ι „ +laipa-ti+ (3) δείκ-νυ-σι „ +lip-nau-ti+ (4) δάμ-νη-σι „ +lip-nâ-ti+.
He also explains the formation of the subjunctive in analogy with bases such as +lipa-ti+, as derived from +lip-ti+.
Some scholars would probably feel inclined to add one or two of the more primitive verbal themes, such as
limpa-ti _rumpo_ limpana-ti λαμβάνε(τ)ι
but all would probably agree with Curtius in placing the formation of these themes, both verbal and nominal, between the radical and the latest inflectional period. A point, however, on which there would probably be considerable difference of opinion is this, whether it is credible, that at a time when so many nominal themes were formed,--for Curtius ascribes to this Fourth Period the formation of such nominal bases as
λόγ-ο, intellect, = +lipa-ti+ λοίπ-ο, left, = +laipa-ti+ λιγ-νύ, smoke, = +lip-nau-ti+ δάφ-νη, laurel, = +lip-nâ-ti+--
the simplest nominal compounds, which we now call nominative and accusative, singular and plural, were still unknown; that people could say +dhṛsh-nu-más+, we dare, but not +dhṛsh-ṇú-s+, daring-he; that they had an imperative, +dhṛshṇuhí+, dare, but not a vocative, +dhṛshṇo+? Curtius strongly holds to that opinion, but with regard to this period too, he does not seem to me to establish it by a regular and complete argument. Some arguments which he refers to occasionally have been answered before. Another, which he brings in incidentally, when discussing the abbreviation of certain suffixes, can hardly be said to carry conviction. After tracing the suffixes +ant+ and +tar+ back to what he supposes to have been their more primitive forms, +an-ta+ and +ta-ra+, he remarks that the dropping of the final vowel would hardly be conceivable at a time when there existed case-terminations. Still this dropping of the vowel is very common, in late historical times, in Latin, for instance, and other Italian dialects, where it causes frequent confusion and heteroclitism.[32] Thus the Augustan _innocua_ was shortened in common pronunciation to _innoca_, and this dwindles down in Christian inscriptions to _innox_. In Greek, too, διάκτορος is older than διάκτωρ; φύλακος older than φύλαξ.
Nor can it be admitted that the nominal suffixes have suffered less from phonetic corruption than the terminations of the verb, and that therefore they must belong to a more modern period (pp. 39, 40). In spite of all the changes which the personal terminations are supposed to have undergone, their connection with the personal pronouns has always been apparent, while the tracing back of the nominal suffixes, and, still more, of the case-terminations to their typical elements, forms still one of the greatest difficulties of comparative grammarians.[33]
Professor Curtius is so much impressed with the later origin of declension that he establishes one more period, the fifth, to which he assigns the growth of all compound verbal forms, compound stems, compound tenses, and compound moods, before he allows the first beginnings of declension, and the formation even of such simple forms as the nominative and accusative. It is difficult, no doubt, to disprove such an opinion by facts or dates, because there are none to be found on either side: but we have a right to expect very strong arguments indeed, before we can admit that at a time when an aorist, like ἔδεικ-σα, Sanskrit +a-dik-sha-t+ was possible, that is to say, at a time when the verb +as+, which meant originally to breathe, had by constant use been reduced to the meaning of being; at a time when that verb, as a mere auxiliary, was joined to a verbal base in order to impart to it a general historical power; when the persons of the verb were distinguished by pronominal elements, and when the augment, no longer purely demonstrative, had become the symbol of time past, that at such a time people were still unable to distinguish, except by a kind of Chinese law of position, between “the father struck the child,” and “the child struck the father.” Before we can admit this, we want much stronger proofs than any adduced by Curtius. He says, for instance, that compound verbal bases formed with +yâ+, to go, and afterwards fixed as causatives, would be inconceivable during a period in which accusatives existed. From +naś+, to perish, we form in Sanskrit +nâśa-yâmi+, I make perish. This, according to Curtius, would have meant originally, I send to perishing. Therefore +nâśa+ would have been, in the accusative, +nâśam+, and the causative would have been +nâśamyâmi+, if the accusative had then been known. But we have in Latin[34] _pessum dare_, _venum ire_, and no one would say that compounds like _calefacio_, _liquefacio_, _putrefacio_, were impossible after the first Aryan separation, or after that still earlier period to which Curtius assigns the formation of the Aryan case-terminations. Does Professor Curtius hold that compound forms like Gothic _nasi-da_ were formed not only before the Aryan separation, but before the introduction of case-terminations? I hold, on the contrary, that such really old compositions never required, nay never admitted, the accusative. We say in Sanskrit, +dyu-gat+, going to the sky, +dyu-ksha+, dwelling in the sky, without any case-terminations at the end of the first part of the compound. We say in Greek, σακέσ-παλος, not σάκοσ-παλος, παιδοφόνος, not παιδαφόνος, ὀρεσ-κῷος, mountain-bred, and also ὀρεσί-τροφος, mountain-fed. We say in Latin, _agri-cola_, not _agrum-cola_, _fratri-cīda_, not _fratrem-cīda_, _rēgĭfugium_, not _regis-fugium_. Are we to suppose that all these words were formed before there was an outward mark of distinction between nominative and accusative in the primitive Aryan language? Such compounds, we know, can be formed at pleasure, and they continued to be formed long after the full development of the Aryan declension, and the same would apply to the compound stems of causal verbs. To say, as Curtius does, that composition was possible only before the development of declension, because when cases had once sprung up, the people would no longer have known the bases of nouns, is far too strong an assertion. In Sanskrit[35] the really difficult bases are generally sufficiently visible in the so-called Pada, cases, _i.e._, before certain terminations beginning with consonants, and there is besides a strong feeling of analogy in language, which would generally, though not always (for compounds are frequently framed by false analogy), guide the framers of new compounds rightly in the selection of the proper nominal base. It seems to me that even with us there is still a kind of instinctive feeling against using nouns, articulated with case-terminations, for purposes of composition, although there are exceptions to that rule in ancient, and many more in modern languages. We can hardly realize to ourselves a Latin _pontemfex_, or _pontisfex_, still less _ponsfex_ instead of _pontifex_, and when the Romans drove away their kings, they did not speak of a _regisfugium_ or a _regumfugium_, but they took, by habit or by instinct, the base _regi_, though none of them, if they had been asked, knew what a base was. Composition, we ought not to forget, is after all only another name for combination, and the very essence of combination consists in joining together words which are not yet articulated grammatically. Whenever we form compounds, such as _railway_, we are still moving in the combinatory stage, and we have the strongest proof that the life of language is not capable of chronological division. There was a period in the growth of the Aryan language when the principle of combination preponderated, when inflection was as yet unknown. But inflection itself was the result of combination, and unless combination had continued long after inflection set in, the very life of language would have become extinct.
I have thus tried to explain why I cannot accept the fundamental fact on which the seven-fold division of the history of the Aryan language is founded, viz., that the combinatory process which led to the Aryan system of conjugation would have been impossible, if at the time nominal bases had already been articulated with terminations of case and number. I see no reason why the earliest case-formations, I mean particularly the nominative and accusative in the singular, plural, and dual, should not date from the same time as the earliest formations of conjugation. The same process that leads to the formation of +vak-ti+, speak-he, would account for the formation of +vak-s+, speak-there, _i.e._, speaker. Necessity, which after all is the mother of all inventions, would much sooner have required the clear distinction of singular and plural, of nominative and accusative, than of the three persons, of the verbs. It is far more important to be able to distinguish the subject and the object in such sentences as “the son has killed the father,” or “the father has killed the son,” than to be able to indicate the person and tense of the verb. Of course we may say that in Chinese the two cases are distinguished without any outward signs, and by mere position; but we have no evidence that the law of position was preserved in the Aryan languages, after verbal inflection had once set in. Chinese dispenses with verbal inflection as well as with nominal, and an appeal to it would therefore prove either too much or too little.
At the end of the five periods which we have examined, but still before the Aryan separation, Curtius places the sixth, which he calls the Period of the Formation of Cases, and the seventh, the Period of Adverbs. Why I cannot bring myself to accept the late date here assigned to declension, I have tried to explain before. That adverbs existed before the great branches of Aryan speech became definitely separated has been fully proved by Professor Curtius. I only doubt whether the adverbial period can be separated chronologically from the case period. I should say, on the contrary, that some of the adverbs in Sanskrit and the other Aryan languages exhibit the most primitive and obsolete case-terminations, and that they existed probably long before the system of case-terminations assumed its completeness.
If we look back at the results at which we have arrived in examining the attempt of Professor Curtius to establish seven distinct chronological periods in the history of the Aryan speech, previous to its separation into Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Slavonic, Teutonic, and Celtic, I think we shall find two principles clearly established:--
1. That it is impossible to distinguish more than _three_ successive phases in the growth of the Aryan language. In the first phase or period the only materials were roots, not yet compounded, still less articulated grammatically, a form of language to us almost inconceivable, yet even at present preserved in the literature and conversation of millions of human beings, the Chinese. In that stage of language, “king rule man heap law instrument,” would mean, the king rules men legally.
The _second_ phase is characterized by the combination of roots, by which process one loses its independence and its accent, and is changed from a full and material into an empty or formal element. That phase comprehends the formation of compound roots, of certain nominal and verbal stems, and of the most necessary forms of declension and conjugation. What distinguishes this phase from the inflectional is the consciousness of the speaker, that one part of his word is the stem or the body, and all the rest its environment, a feeling analogous to that which we have when we speak of _man_-hood, _man_-ly, _man_-ful, _man_-kind, but which fails us when we speak of _man_ and _men_, or if we speak of _wo-man_, instead of _wif-man_. The principle of combination preponderated when inflection was as yet unknown. But inflection itself was the result of combination, and unless it had continued long after inflection set in, the very life of language would have become extinct.
The _third_ phase is the inflectional, when the base and the modificatory elements of words coalesce, lose their independence in the mind of the speaker, and simply produce the impression of modification taking place in the body of words, but without any intelligible reason. This is the feeling which we have throughout nearly the whole of our own language, and it is only by means of scientific reflection that we distinguish between the root, the base, the suffix, and the termination. To attempt more than this three-fold division seems to me impossible.
2. The second principle which I tried to establish was that the growth of language does not lend itself to a chronological division, in the strict sense of the word. Whatever forces are at work in the formation of languages, none of them ceases suddenly to make room for another, but they work on with a certain continuity from beginning to end, only on a larger or smaller scale. Inflection does not put a sudden end to combination, nor combination to juxtaposition. When even in so modern a language as English we can form by mere combination such words as _man-like_, and reduce them to _manly_, the power of combination cannot be said to be extinct, although it may no longer be sufficiently strong to produce new cases or new personal terminations. We may admit, in the development of the Aryan language, previous to its division, three successive strata of formation, a _juxtapositional_, a _combinatory_, and an _inflectional_; but we shall have to confess that these strata are not regularly superimposed, but tilted, broken up, and convulsed. They are very prominent each for a time, but even after that time is over, they may be traced at different points, pervading the very latest formations of tertiary speech. The true motive power in the progress of all language is combination, and that power is not extinct even in our own time.
[Footnote 1: This Lecture has been translated by M. Louis Havet, and forms the first fasciculus of the Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études, publiée sous les auspices du Ministère de l’Instruction Publique. Paris, 1869.]
[Footnote 2: See Benfey, _Ueber die Aufgabe des Kratylos_, Göttingen, 1868.]
[Footnote 3: Theokritos, xvii. 9.]
[Footnote 4: In my essay _On the Relation of Bengali to the Aryan and Aboriginal Languages of India_, published in 1848, I tried to explain these plural suffixes, such as +dig+, +gaṇa+, +jâti+, +varga+, +dala+. I had translated the last word by _band_, supposing from Wilson’s Dictionary, and from the Śabda-kalpa-druma that _dala_ could be used in the sense of band or multitude. I doubt, however, whether _dala_ is ever used in Sanskrit in that sense, and I feel certain that it was not used in that sense with sufficient frequency to account for its adoption in Bengali. Dr. Friedrich Müller, in his useful abstracts of some of the grammars discovered by the _Novara_ in her journey round the earth (1857-59), has likewise referred +dal+ to the Sanskrit +dala+, but he renders what I had in English rendered by _band_, by the German word _Band_. This can only be an accident. I meant _band_ in the sense of a band of robbers, which in German would be _Bande_. He seems to have misunderstood me, and to have taken _band_ for the German _Band_, which means a ribbon. Might +dala+ in Bengali be the Dravidian +taḷa+ or +daḷa+, a host, a crowd, which Dr. Caldwell (p. 197) mentions as a possible etymon of the pluralizing suffix in the Dravidian languages? Bengali certainly took the idea of forming its plurals by composition with words expressive of plurality from its Dravidian neighbor, and it is not impossible that in some cases it might have transferred the very word +daḷa+, crowd. This +daḷa+ and +taḷa+ appears in Tamil as _kala_ and _gala_, and as Sanskrit _k_ may in Sinhalese be represented by _v_ (+loka+ = _lova_), I thought that the plural termination used in Sinhalese after inanimate nouns might possibly be a corruption of the Tamil _kala_. Mr. Childers, however, in his able “Essay on the formation of the Plural of Neuter Nouns in Sinhalese” (_J. R. A. S._, 1874, p. 40), thinks that the Sinhalese _vala_ is a corruption of the Sanskrit +vana+, forest, an opinion which seems likewise to be held by Mr. D’Alwis (l.c. p. 48). As a case in point, in support of mv own opinion, Mr. Childers mentioned to me the Sinhalese _malvaru_, Sanskrit +mâlâ-kâra+, a wreath-maker, a gardener. In Persian both _ân_ and _hâ_ are remnants of decayed plural terminations, not collective words added to the base.]
[Footnote 5: Stanislas Julien, _Exercises Pratiques_, p. 14.]
[Footnote 6: Endlicher, _Chinesische Grammatik_, § 122. Wade, _Progressive Course on the Parts of Speech_, p. 102. A different division of words adopted by Chinese grammarians is that into _dead_ and _live words_, _ssè-tsé_ and _sing-tsé_, the former comprising nouns, the latter verbs. The same classes are sometimes called _tsing-tsé_ and _ho-tsé_, unmoved and moved words. This shows how purposeless it would be to try to find out whether language began with noun or verb. In the earliest phase of speech the same word was both noun and verb, according to the use that was made of it, and it is so still to a great extent in Chinese. See Endlicher, _Chinesische Grammatik_, § 219.]
[Footnote 7: _Agglutinative_ seems an unnecessarily uncouth word, and as implying a something which glues two words together, a kind of _Bindevocal_, it is objectionable as a technical term. _Combinatory_ is technically more correct, and less strange than agglutinative.]
[Footnote 8: Professor Pott, in his article entitled “Max Müller und die Kennzeichen der Sprachverwandtschaft,” published in 1855, in the _Journal of the German Oriental Society_, vol. ix. p. 412, says, in confutation of Bunsen’s view of a real historical progress of language from the lowest to the highest stage: “So cautious an inquirer as W. von Humboldt declines expressly, in the last chapter of his work on the _Diversity of the Structure of Human Language_ (p. 414), any conclusions as to a real historical progress from one stage of language to another, or at least does not commit himself to any definite opinion. This is surely something very different from that gradual progress, and it would be a question whether, by admitting such an historical progress from stage to stage, we should not commit an absurdity hardly less palpable than by trying to raise infusoria into horses or still further into men. [What was an absurdity in 1855 does not seem to be so in 1875.] Mr. Bunsen, it is true, does not hesitate to call the monosyllabic idiom of the Chinese an inorganic formation. But how can we get from an inorganic to an organic language? In nature such a thing would be impossible. No stone becomes a plant, no plant a tree, by however wonderful a metamorphosis, except, in a different sense, by the process of nutrition, _i.e._, by regeneration. The former question, which Mr. Bunsen answers in the affirmative, is disposed of by him with the short dictum: ‘The question whether a language can be supposed to begin with inflections, appears to us simply an absurdity;’ but unfortunately he does not condescend, by a clear illustration, to make that absurdity palpable. Why, in inflectional languages, should the grammatical form always have added itself to the matter subsequently and _ab extra_? Why should it not partially from the beginning have been created with it and in it, as having a meaning with something else, but not having antecedently a meaning of its own?”]
[Footnote 9: Cf. D. G. Brinton, _The Myths of the New World_, p. 6, note.]
[Footnote 10: Julien, _Exercises Pratiques_, p. 120. Endlicher, _Chineseische Grammatik_, § 161. See, also, Nöldeke, _Orient und Occident_, vol. i. p. 759. _Grammar of the Bornu Language_ (London, 1853), p. 55: “In the Treaty the genitive is supplied by the relative pronoun _agu_, singularly corroborative of the Rev. R. Garnett’s theory of the genitive case.”]
[Footnote 11: “Time changes the meaning of words as it does their sound. Thus, many old words are retained in compounds, but have lost their original signification. E.g., _’k·eu_, mouth, has been replaced in colloquial usage by _’tsui_, but it is still employed extensively in compound terms and in derived senses. Thus, _k·wai‘ ’k·eu_ a rapid talker, _.men ’k·eu_, door, _,kwan ’k·eu_, custom house. So also _muh_, the original word for eye, has given place to _’yen, tsing_, or _’yen_ alone. It is, however, employed with other words in derived senses. E.g., _muh hia·_, at present; _muh luh_, table of contents.
“The primitive word for head, _’sheu_, has been replaced by _.t‘eu_, but is retained with various words in combination. E.g., _tseh ’sheu_, robber chief.”
Edkins, _Grammar of the Chinese Colloquial Language_, 2d edition, 1864, p. 100.]
[Footnote 12: Grimm, _Deutsche Grammatik_, ii. 339.]
[Footnote 13: Cf. the German Liebhart, mignon, in Anshelm, 1, 335. Grimm, _Deutsche Grammatik_, iii. 707. I feel more doubtful now as to _sweetard_. Dr. Morris mentions it in his _Historical Outlines of English Grammar_, p. 219; but Koch, when discussing the same derivations in his _English Grammar_, does not give the word. Mr. Skeat writes to me: “The form really used in Middle English is _sweeting_. Three examples are given in Stratmann. One of the best is in my edition of William of Palerne, where, however, it occurs not _once_ only (as given by Stratmann), but _four times_, viz.: in lines 916, 1537, 2799, 3088. The lines are:--
‘Nai, sertes, _sweting_, he seide· that schal I neuer.’ 916
‘& seide aswithe· _sweting_, welcome!’ 1537
‘Sertes, _sweting_, thæt is soth. seide william thanne.’ 2799
‘treuli, _sweting_, that is soth· seide william thane.’ 3088
The date of this poem is about A.D. 1360. Shakespeare has both forms, viz.: _sweeting_ and _sweet-heart_. Chaucer has _swete herte_, just as we should use _sweet-heart_.”]
[Footnote 14: Diez, _Grammatik_, ii. 358. Grimm, _Deutsche Grammatik_, i. p. 340, 706.]
[Footnote 15: See _Sanskrit Grammar_, § 497. I doubt whether in Greek ἀγγελλω is a denominative verb and stands for ἀγγελ(ο)ϳω (Curtius, _Chronologie_, p. 58). I should prefer to explain it as ἀνα-γαρ-ίω, to proclaim, as a verb of the fourth class.]
[Footnote 16: Lex Repetund. “ceivis romanus ex hac lege fiet, nepotesque -- ceiveis romanei justei sunto.” Cf. Egger, _Lat, Serm. Vetust. Reliq._, p. 245. Meunier, in _Mémoires de la Societé de Linguistique de Paris_, vol. i. p. 34.]
[Footnote 17: Still used as long by Plautus; of. Neue, _Formenlehre_, ii. p. 340.]
[Footnote 18: In old Latin the termination of the first person singular was _em_. Thus Quintilian, i. 7, 23, says: “Quid? non Cato Censorius _dicam_ et _faciam_, _dicem_ et _faciem_ scripsit, eundemque in ceteris, quæ similiter cadunt, modum tenuit? quod et ex veteribus ejus libris manifestum est, et a Messala in libro de s. littera positum.” Neue, _Formenlehre_, ii. p. 348. The introduction of _feram_, originally a subjunctive, to express the future in the first person, reminds us of the distinction in English between _I shall_ and _thou wilt_, though the analogy fails in the first person plural. In Homer the use of the subjunctive for the future is well known. See Curtius, _Chronologie_, p. 50.]
[Footnote 19: Historically the _i_ in _tuleritis_ should be long in the subjunctive of the perfect, short in the future.]
[Footnote 20: Bleek, _On the Concord_, p. lxvi.]
[Footnote 21: In δώ-σω, for δωσίω, the _i_ or _y_ is lost in Greek as usual. In other verbs _s_ and _y_ are both lost. Hence τενεσίω becomes τενέσω, and τενῶ the so-called Attic future. Bopp, _Vergleich-Grammatik_, first ed., p. 903. In Latin we have traces of a similar future in forms like _fac-so_, _cap-so_, etc. See Neue, _Formenlehre_, ii. p. 421. The Epic dialect sometimes doubles the σ when the vowel is short, αἰδέσσομαι. But this can hardly be considered a relic of the original σι, because the same reduplication takes places sometimes in the Aorist, ἐγέλασσα.]
[Footnote 22: See Bopp, _Vergleichende Grammatik_, §§ 897, 898. These verbal adjectives should be carefully distinguished from nominal adjectives, such as Sanskrit +div-yá-s+, divinus, originally +div-i-a-s+, _i.e._, divi-bhavas, being in heaven; ὀίκεῖος, domesticus, originally οἴκει-ο-ς, being in the house. These are adjectives formed, it would seem, from old locatives, just as in Bask we can form from _etche_, house, _etche-tic_, of the house, and _etche-tic-acoa_, he who is of the house; or from _seme_, son, _semea-ren_, of the son, and _semea-ren-a_, he who is of the son. See W. J. van Eys, _Essai de Grammaire de la Langue Basque_, 1867, p. 16.]
[Footnote 23: Bopp, _Vergleichende Grammatik_, §§ 888-898.]
[Footnote 24: Bacon, _Novum Organum_, i. 55.]
[Footnote 25: Until a rational account of these changes, comprehended under the name of _Lautverschiebung_, is given, we must continue to look upon them, not as the result of phonetic decay, but of dialectic growth. I am glad to find that this is more and more admitted by those who think for themselves, instead of simply repeating the opinions of others. Grimm’s Law stands no longer alone, as peculiar to the Teutonic languages, but analogous changes have been pointed out in the South-African, the Chinese, the Polynesian dialects, showing that these changes are everywhere collateral, not successive. I agree with Professor Curtius and other scholars that the impulse to what we call _Lautverschiebung_ was given by the third modification in each series of consonants, by the _gh_, _dh_, _bh_ in Sanskrit, the χ, θ, φ, in Greek. I differ from him in considering the changes of _Lautverschiebung_ as the result of dialectic variety, while he sees their motive power in phonetic corruption. But whether we take the one view or the other, I do not see that Dr. Scherer has removed any of our difficulties. See Curtius, _Grundzüge_, 4th ed., p. 426, note. Dr. Scherer, in his thoughtful work, _Zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache_, has very nearly, though not quite, apprehended the meaning of my explanation as to the effects of dialectic change contrasted with those of phonetic decay. If it is allowable to use a more homely illustration, one might say with perfect truth, that each dialect chooses its own phonetic garment, as people choose the coats and trousers which best fit them. The simile, like all similes, is imperfect, yet it is far more exact than if we compare the ravages of phonetic decay, as is frequently done, to the wear and tear of these phonetic suits.]
[Footnote 26: Edkins, _Grammar_, p. 84.]
[Footnote 27: Having stated this on the authority of Mr. Edkins, one of our best living Chinese scholars, it is but fair that I should give the opinion of another Chinese scholar, the late Stanislas Julien, whose competence to give an opinion on this subject Mr. Edkins would probably be the first to acknowledge. All that we really want is the truth, not a momentary triumph of our own opinions. M. Julien wrote to me in July, 1868:--
“Je ne suis pas du tout de l’avis d’Edkins qui dit qu’un grand nombre de mots mongols sont chinois; c’est faux, archifaux.
_Sain_ est mandchou et veut dire bon, en chinois _chen_.
_begen_, low: en chinois _hia_.
_itchi_, droit; en chinois _yeou_.
_sologaï_, left, gauche; en chinois _tso_.
_c’hihe_, straight; en chinois _tchi_ (rectus).
_gadan_, outside; en chinois _waï_.
_logon_, green; en chinois _tsing_.
_c’hohon_, few; en chinois _chao_.
_hungun_, light (not heavy); en chinois _king_.
“Je voudrais bien savoir comment M. Edkins prouve que les mots qu’il cite sont chinois.
“Foucaux a échoué également en voulant prouver, autrefois, que 200 mots thibétains qu’il avait choisis ressemblaïent aux mots chinois correspondants.”
M. Stanislas Julien wrote again to me on the 21st of July:--
“J’ai peur que vous ne soyez fâché du jugemont sevère que j’ai porté sur les identifications faites par Edkins du mongol avec le chinois. J’ai d’abord pris dans votre savant article les mots mongols qu’il cite et je vous ai montré qu’ils ne ressemblent pas le moins du monde au chinois.
“Je vais vous en citer d’autres tirés du Dictionnaire de Khienlung chinois mandchou-mongol.
Mongol Chinois
_tegri_, ciel _thien._
_naran_, soleil _ji._
_naram barimoni_, } _ji-chi._
éclipse de soleil }
_saran_, lune _youeï._
_oudoun_, étoile _sing._
_egoulé_, nuages, _yun._
_ayounga_, le tonnerre _louï._
_tchagilgan_, éclair _tien._
_borogan_, la pluie _yu._
_sigouderi_, la rosée _lou._
_kirago_, la gelée _choang_.
_lapsa_, la neige _ sioue._
_salgin_, le vent _fong._
_ousoun_, l’eau _chouï._
_gal_, le feu _ho._
_siroi_, la terre _thou._
_aisin_, l’or _altan._
“Je vous donnerai, si vous le désirez, 1000 mots mongols avec leurs synonymes chinois, et je défie M. Edkins de trouver dans les 1000 mots mongols un seul qui ressemble au mot chinois synonyme.
“Comme j’ai fait assez de thibétain, je puis vous fournir aussi une multitude de mots thibétains avec leurs correspondants en chinois, et je défierai également M. Edkins de trouver un seul mot thibétain dans mille qui ressemble au mot chinois qui a le même sens.”
My old friend, M. Stanislas Julien, wrote to me once more on this subject, the 6th of August, 1868:--
“Depuis une quinzaine d’anneés, j’ai l’avantage d’entretenir les meilleures relations avec M. Edkins. J’ai lu, anciennement dans un journal que publie M. Léon de Rosny (actuellement professeur titulaire de la langue Japanaise) le travail où M. Edkins a tâché de rapprocher et d’identifier, par les sons, des mots mongols et chinois ayant la même signification. Son systême m’a paru mal fondé. Quelques mots chinois peuvent être entrés dans la langue mongole par suite du contact des deux peuples, comme cela est arrivé pour le mandchou, dont beaucoup de mots sont entrés dans la langue mongole en en prenant les terminaisons; mais il ne faudrait pas se servir de ces exemples pour montrer l’identité ou les ressemblances des deux langues.
“Quand les mandchous ont voulu traduire les livres chinois, ils ont rencontré un grand nombre de mots dont les synonymes n’existaient pas dans leur langue. Ils se sont alors emparé des mots chinois en leur donnant des terminaisons mandchoues, mais cette quasi-ressemblance de certains mots mandchous ne prouve point le moins du monde l’identité des deux langues. Par exemple, un préfet se dit en chinois _tchi-fou_, et un sous-préfet _tchi-hien_; les mandchous qui ne possédaient point ces fonctionaires se sont contentés de transcire les sons chinois _dchhifou_, _dchhikhiyan_.
“Le tafetas se dit en chinois _tcheou-tse_; les mandchous, n’ayant point de mots pour dire tafetas, ont transcrit les sons chinois par _tchousé_. Le bambou se dit _tchou-tze_; ils ont écrit l’arbre (moo) _tchousé_. Un titre de noblesse écrit sur du papier doré s’appelle _tsĕ_; les mandchous écrivent _tche_. Je pourrais vous citer un nombre considérable de mots du même genre, qui ne prouvent pas du tout l’identité du mandchou et du chinois.
“L’ambre s’appelle _hou-pe_; les mandchous écrivent _khôba_. La barbe s’appelle _hou-tse_, ils écrivent _khôsé_.
“Voici de quelle manière les mandchous ont fait certains verbes. Une balance s’appelle en chinois _thien ping_, ils écrivent _p’ing-sé_; puis pour dire peser avec une balance, ils ont fait le verbe _p’ingselembi_; _lembi_ est une terminaison commune à beaucoup de verbes.
“Pour dire faire peser, ordonner de peser avec une balance, ils écrivent _p’ingseleboumbi_; _boumbi_ est la forme factive ou causative; cette terminaison sert aussi pour le passif; de sorte que ce verbe peut signifier aussi _être pesé avec une balance_.
“Je pourrais citer aussi des mots mandchous auxquels on a donné la terminaison mongole, et _vice versâ_.”
These remarks, made by one who, during his lifetime, was recognised by friend and foe as the first Chinese scholar in Europe, ought to have their proper weight. They ought certainly to make us cautious before persuading ourselves that the connection between the northern and southern branches of the Turanian languages has been found in Chinese. On the other hand I am quite aware that all that M. Stanislas Julien says against Mr. Edkins may be true, and that nevertheless Chinese may have been the central language from which Mongolian in the north and Tibetan in the south branched off. A language, such as Chinese, with a small number of sounds and an immense number of meanings, can easily give birth to dialects which, in their later development, might branch off in totally different directions. Even with languages so closely connected as Sanskrit and Latin, it would be easy to make out a list of a thousand words in Latin which could not be matched in Sanskrit. The question, therefore, is not decided. What is wanted are researches carried on by competent scholars, in an unprejudiced and at the same time thoroughly scientific spirit.]
[Footnote 28: If Mr. Chalmers’ comparison of the Chinese and Bohemian names for daughter is so unpardonable, what shall we say of Bopp’s comparison of the Bengali and Sanskrit names for sister? Sister in Bengali is +bohinî+, the Hindi +bahin+ and +bhân+, the Prakrit +bahiṇî+, the Sanskrit +bhaginî+. Bopp, in the most elaborate way, derives +bohinî+ from the Sanskrit +svasṛ+, sister. Bopp, _Vergleichende Grammatik_, Vorrede zur vierten Abtheilung, p. x.]
[Footnote 29: Curtius, _Verbum_, p. 72.]
[Footnote 30: Pott, E. F., 1871, p. 21.]
[Footnote 31: Dr. Callaway, in his _Remarks on the Zulu Language_ (1870), p. 2, says: “The Zulu Language contains upwards of 20,000 words in _bonâ fide_ use among the people. Those curious appellations for different colored cattle, or for different maize cobs, to express certain minute peculiarities of color or arrangement of color, which it is difficult for us to grasp, are not synonymous, but instances in which a new noun or name is used instead of adding adjectives to one name to express the various conditions of an object. Neither are these various verbs used to express varieties of the same action, synonyms, such as _ukupata_, to carry in the hand, _ukwetshata_, to carry on the shoulder, _ukubeleta_, to carry on the back.”]
[Footnote 32: Bruppacher, _Lantlere der Oskischen Sprache_, p. 48. Büchler, _Grundriss der Lateinischen Declination_, p. 1.]
[Footnote 33: “Die Entstehung der Casus ist noch das allerdunkelste im weiten Bereich des indogermanischen Formensystems.” Curtius, _Chronologie_, p. 71.]
[Footnote 34: Corssen, ii. 888.]
[Footnote 35: Cf. Clemm, _Die neusten Forschungen auf dem Gebiet der Griechischen Composita_, p. 9.]
III. ON THE MIGRATION OF FABLES.
A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION, ON FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 1870.
“Count not your chickens before they be hatched,” is a well-known proverb in English, and most people, if asked what was its origin, would probably appeal to La Fontaine’s delightful fable, _La Laitière et le Pot au Lait_.[1] We all know Perrette, lightly stepping along from her village to the town, carrying the milk-pail on her head, and in her day-dreams selling her milk for a good sum, then buying a hundred eggs, then selling the chickens, then buying a pig, fattening it, selling it again, and buying a cow with a calf. The calf frolics about, and kicks up his legs--so does Perrette, and, alas! the pail falls down, the milk is spilt, her riches gone, and she only hopes when she comes home that she may escape a flogging from her husband.
Did La Fontaine invent this fable? or did he merely follow the example of Sokrates, who, as we know from the Phædon,[2] occupied himself in prison, during the last days of his life, with turning into verse some of the fables, or, as he calls them, the myths of Æsop.
La Fontaine published the first six books of his fables in 1668,[3] and it is well known that the subjects of most of these early fables were taken from Æsop, Phædrus, Horace, and other classical fabulists, if we may adopt this word “fabuliste,” which La Fontaine was the first to introduce into French.
In 1678 a second edition of these six books was published, enriched by five books of new fables, and in 1694 a new edition appeared, containing one additional book, thus completing the collection of his charming poems.
The fable of Perrette stands in the seventh book, and was published, therefore, for the first time in the edition of 1678. In the preface to that edition La Fontaine says: “It is not necessary that I should say whence I have taken the subjects of these new fables. I shall only say, from a sense of gratitude, that I owe the largest portion of them to Pilpay the Indian sage.”
If, then, La Fontaine tells us himself that he borrowed the subjects of most of his new fables from Pilpay, the Indian sage, we have clearly a right to look to India in order to see whether, in the ancient literature of that country, any traces can be discovered of Perrette with the milk-pail.
Sanskrit literature is very rich in fables and stories; no other literature can vie with it in that respect; nay, it is extremely likely that fables, in particular animal fables, had their principal source in India. In the sacred literature of the Buddhists, fables held a most prominent place. The Buddhist preachers, addressing themselves chiefly to the people, to the untaught, the uncared for, the outcast, spoke to them, as we still speak to children, in fables, in proverbs and parables. Many of these fables and parables must have existed before the rise of the Buddhist religion; others, no doubt, were added on the spur of the moment, just as Sokrates would invent a myth or fable whenever that form of argument seemed to him most likely to impress and convince his hearers. But Buddhism gave a new and permanent sanction to this whole branch of moral mythology, and in the sacred canon, as it was settled in the third century before Christ, many a fable received, and holds to the present day, its recognized place. After the fall of Buddhism in India, and even during its decline, the Brahmans claimed the inheritance of their enemies, and used their popular fables for educational purposes. The best known of these collections of fables in Sanskrit is the Pañcatantra, literally the Pentateuch, or Pentamerone. From it and from other sources another collection was made, well known to all Sanskrit scholars by the name of Hitopadesa, _i.e._, Salutary Advice. Both these books have been published in England and Germany, and there are translations of them in English, German, French, and other languages.[4]
The first question which we have to answer refers to the date of these collections, and dates in the history of Sanskrit literature are always difficult points. Fortunately, as we shall see, we can in this case fix the date of the Pañcatantra at least, by means of a translation into ancient Persian, which was made about 550 years after Christ, though even then we can only prove that a collection somewhat like the Pañkatantra must have existed at that time; but we cannot refer the book, in exactly that form in which we now possess it, to that distant period.
If we look for La Fontaine’s fable in the Sanskrit stories of the Pañcatantra, we do not find, indeed, the milkmaid counting her chickens before they are hatched, but we meet with the following story:--
“There lived in a certain place a Brâhman, whose name was Svabhâvakṛpaṇa, which means ‘a born miser.’ He had collected a quantity of rice by begging (this reminds us somewhat of the Buddhist mendicants), and after having dined off it, he filled a pot with what was left over. He hung the pot on a peg on the wall, placed his couch beneath, and looking intently at it all the night, he thought, ‘Ah, that pot is indeed brimful of rice. Now, if there should be a famine, I should certainly make a hundred rupees by it. With this I shall buy a couple of goats. They will have young ones every six months, and thus I shall have a whole herd of goats. Then, with the goats, I shall buy cows. As soon as they have calved, I shall sell the calves. Then, with the cows, I shall buy buffaloes; with the buffaloes, mares. When the mares have foaled, I shall have plenty of horses; and when I sell them, plenty of gold. With that gold I shall get a house with four wings. And then a Brâhman will come to my house, and will give me his beautiful daughter, with a large dowry. She will have a son, and I shall call him Somaśarman. When he is old enough to be danced on his father’s knee, I shall sit with a book at the back of the stable, and while I am reading the boy will see me, jump from his mother’s lap, and run towards me to be danced on my knee. He will come too near the horse’s hoof, and, full of anger, I shall call to my wife, “Take the baby; take him!” But she, distracted by some domestic work does not hear me. Then I get up, and give her such a kick with my foot.’ While he thought this, he gave a kick with his foot, and broke the pot. All the rice fell over him, and made him quite white. Therefore, I say, ‘He who makes foolish plans for the future will be white all over, like the father of Somaśarman.’”[5]
I shall at once proceed to read you the same story, though slightly modified, from the Hitopadeśa.[6] The Hitopadeśa professes to be taken from the Pañcatantra and some other books; and in this case it would seem as if some other authority had been followed. You will see, at all events, how much freedom there was in telling the old story of the man who built castles in the air.
“In the town of Devîkoṭṭa there lived a Brâhman of the name of Devaśarman. At the feast of the great equinox he received a plate full of rice. He took it, went into a potter’s shop, which was full of crockery, and, overcome by the heat, he lay down in a corner and began to doze. In order to protect his plate of rice, he kept a stick in his hand, and began to think, ‘Now, if I sell this plate of rice, I shall receive ten cowries (kapardaka). I shall then, on the spot, buy pots and plates, and after having increased my capital again and again, I shall buy and sell betel nuts and dresses till I become enormously rich. Then I shall marry four wives, and the youngest and prettiest of the four I shall make a great pet of. Then the other wives will be so angry, and begin to quarrel. But I shall be in a great rage, and take a stick, and give them a good flogging.’ . . . . While he said this, he flung his stick away; the plate of rice was smashed to pieces, and many of the pots in the shop were broken. The potter, hearing the noise, ran into the shop, and when he saw his pots broken, he gave the Brâhman a good scolding, and drove him out of his shop. Therefore I say, ‘He who rejoices over plans for the future will come to grief, like the Brâhman who broke the pots.’”
In spite of the change of a Brahman into a milkmaid, no one, I suppose, will doubt that we have here in the stories of the Pañcatantra and Hitopadeśa the first germs of La Fontaine’s fable.[7] But how did that fable travel all the way from India to France? How did it doff its Sanskrit garment and don the light dress of modern French? How was the stupid Brahman born again as the brisk milkmaid, “_cotillon simple et souliers plats_?”
It seems a startling case of longevity that while languages have changed, while works of art have perished, while empires have risen and vanished again, this simple children’s story should have lived on, and maintained its place of honor and its undisputed sway in every school-room of the East and every nursery of the West. And yet it is a case of longevity so well attested that even the most skeptical would hardly venture to question it. We have the passport of these stories _viséed_ at every place through which they have passed, and, as far as I can judge, _parfaitement en règle_. The story of the migration of these Indian fables from East to West is indeed wonderful; more wonderful and more instructive than many of these fables themselves. Will it be believed that we, in this Christian country and in the nineteenth century, teach our children the first, the most important lessons of worldly wisdom, nay, of a more than worldly wisdom, from books borrowed from Buddhists and Brahmans, from heretics and idolaters, and that wise words, spoken a thousand, nay, two thousand years ago, in a lonely village of India, like precious seed scattered broadcast all over the world, still bear fruit a hundred and a thousand-fold in that soil which is the most precious before God and man, the soul of a child? No lawgiver, no philosopher, has made his influence felt so widely, so deeply, and so permanently as the author of these children’s fables. But who was he? We do not know. His name, like the name of many a benefactor of the human race, is forgotten. We only know he was an Indian--a nigger, as some people would call him--and that he lived at least two thousand years ago.
No doubt, when we first hear of the Indian origin of these fables, and of their migration from India to Europe, we wonder whether it can be so; but the fact is, that the story of this Indo-European migration is not, like the migration of the Indo-European languages, myths, and legends, a matter of theory, but of history, and that it was never quite forgotten either in the East or in the West. Each translator, as he handed on his treasure, seems to have been anxious to show how he came by it.
Several writers who have treated of the origin and spreading of Indo-European stories and fables, have mixed up two or three questions which ought to be treated each on its own merits.
The first question is whether the Aryans, when they broke up their pro-ethnic community, carried away with them, not only their common grammar and dictionary, but likewise some myths and legends which we find that Indians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Germans, Slaves, when they emerge into the light of history, share in common? That certain deities occur in India, Greece, and Germany, having the same names and the same character, is a fact that can no longer be denied. That certain heroes, too, known to Indians, Greeks, and Romans, point to one and the same origin, both by their name and by their history, is a fact by this time admitted by all whose admission is of real value. As heroes are in most cases gods in disguise, there is nothing very startling in the fact that nations, who had worshipped the same gods, should also have preserved some common legends of demi-gods or heroes, nay, even in a later phase of thought, of fairies and ghosts. The case, however, becomes much more problematical when we ask, whether stories also, fables told with a decided moral purpose, formed part of that earliest Aryan inheritance? This is still doubted by many who have no doubts whatever as to common Aryan myths and legends, and even those who, like myself, have tried to establish by tentative arguments the existence of common Aryan fables, dating from before the Aryan separation, have done so only by showing a possible connection between ancient popular saws and mythological ideas, capable of a moral application. To any one, for instance, who knows how in the poetical mythology of the Aryan tribes, the golden splendor of the rising sun leads to conceptions of the wealth of the Dawn in gold and jewels and her readiness to shower them upon her worshippers, the modern German proverb, _Morgenstunde hat Gold im Munde_, seems to have a kind of mythological ring, and the stories of benign fairies, changing everything into gold, sound likewise like an echo from the long-forgotten forest of our common Aryan home. If we know how the trick of dragging stolen cattle backwards into their place of hiding, so that their footprints might not lead to the discovery of the thief, appears again and again in the mythology of different Aryan nations, then the pointing of the same trick as a kind of proverb, intended to convey a moral lesson, and illustrated by fables of the same or a very similar character in India and Greece, makes one feel inclined to suspect that here too the roots of these fables may reach to a pro-ethnic period. _Vestigia nulla retrorsum_ is clearly an ancient proverb, dating from a nomadic period, and when we see how Plato (“Alcibiades,” i. 123) was perfectly familiar with the Æsopian myth or fable,--κατὰ τὸν Αἰσώπου μῦθον, he says--of the fox declining to enter the lion’s cave, because all footsteps went into it and none came out, and how the Sanskrit Pañcatantra (III. 14) tells of a jackal hesitating to enter his own cave, because he sees the footsteps of a lion going in, but not coming out, we feel strongly inclined to admit a common origin for both fables. Here, however, the idea that the Greeks, like La Fontaine, had borrowed their fable from the Pañcatantra would be simply absurd, and it would be much more rational, if the process must be one of borrowing, to admit, as Benfey (“Pantschatantra,” i. 381) does, that the Hindus, after Alexander’s discovery of India, borrowed this story from the Greeks. But if we consider that each of the two fables has its own peculiar tendency, the one deriving its lesson from the absence of backward footprints of the victims, the other from the absence of backward footprints of the lion himself, the admission of a common Aryan proverb such as “_vestigia nulla retrorsum_” would far better explain the facts such as we find them. I am not ignorant of the difficulties of this explanation, and I would myself point to the fact that among the Hottentots, too, Dr. Bleek has found a fable of the jackal declining to visit the sick lion, “because the traces of the animals who went to see him did not turn back.”[8] Without, however, pronouncing any decided opinion on this vexed question, what I wish to place clearly before you is this, that the spreading of Aryan myths, legends, and fables, dating from a pro-ethnic period, has nothing whatever to do with the spreading of fables taking place in strictly historical times from India to Arabia, to Greece and the rest of Europe, not by means of oral tradition, but through more or less faithful translations of literary works. Those who like may doubt whether _Zeus_ was +Dyaus+, whether _Daphne_ was +Ahanâ+, whether _La Belle au Bois_ was the mother of two children, called _L’Aurore_ and _Le Jour_,[9] but the fact that a collection of fables was, in the sixth century of our era, brought from India to Persia, and by means of various translations naturalized among Persians, Arabs, Greeks, Jews, and all the rest, admits of no doubt or cavil. Several thousand years have passed between those two migrations, and to mix them up together, to suppose that Comparative Mythology has anything to do with the migration of such fables as that of Perrette, would be an anachronism of a portentous character.
There is a third question, viz., whether besides the two channels just mentioned, there were others through which Eastern fables could have reached Europe, or Æsopian and other European fables have been transferred to the East. There are such channels, no doubt. Persian and Arab stories, of Indian origin, were through the crusaders brought back to Constantinople, Italy, and France; Buddhist fables were through Mongolian[10] conquerors (13th century) carried to Russia and the eastern parts of Europe. Greek stories may have reached Persia and India at the time of Alexander’s conquests and during the reigns of the Diadochi, and even Christian legends may have found their way to the East through missionaries, travellers, or slaves.
Lastly, there comes the question, how far our common human nature is sufficient to account for coincidences in beliefs, customs, proverbs, and fables, which, at first sight, seem to require an historical explanation. I shall mention but one instance. Professor Wilson (“Essays on Sanskrit Literature,” i. p. 201) pointed out that the story of the Trojan horse occurs in a Hindu tale, only that instead of the horse we have an elephant. But he rightly remarked that the coincidence was accidental. In the one case, after a siege of nine years, the principal heroes of the Greek army are concealed in a wooden horse, dragged into Troy by a stratagem, and the story ends by their falling upon the Trojans and conquering the city of Priam. In the other story a king bent on securing a son-in-law, had an elephant constructed by able artists, and filled with armed men. The elephant was placed in a forest, and when the young prince came to hunt, the armed men sprang out, overpowered the prince and brought him to the king, whose daughter he was to marry. However striking the similarity may seem to one unaccustomed to deal with ancient legends, I doubt whether any comparative mythologist has postulated a common Aryan origin for these two stories. They feel that, as far as the mere construction of a wooden animal is concerned, all that was necessary to explain the origin of the idea in one place was present also in the other, and that while the Trojan horse forms an essential part of a mythological cycle, there is nothing truly mythological or legendary in the Indian story. The idea of a hunter disguising himself in the skin of an animal, or even of one animal assuming the disguise of another,[11] are familiar in every part of the world, and if that is so, then the step from hiding under the skin of a large animal to that of hiding in a wooden animal is not very great.
Every one of these questions, as I said before, must be treated on its own merits, and while the traces of the first migration of Aryan fables can be rediscovered only by the most minute and complex inductive processes, the documents of the latter are to be found in the library of every intelligent collector of books. Thus, to return to Perrette and the fables of Pilpay, Huet, the learned bishop of Avranches, the friend of La Fontaine, had only to examine the prefaces of the principal translations of the Indian fables in order to track their wanderings, as he did in his famous “Traite de l’Origine des Romans,” published at Paris in 1670, two years after the appearance of the first collection of La Fontaine’s fables. Since his time the evidence has become more plentiful, and the whole subject has been more fully and more profoundly treated by Sylvestre de Sacy,[12] Loiseleur Deslongchamps,[13] and Professor Benfey.[14] But though we have a more accurate knowledge of the stations by which the Eastern fables reached their last home in the West, Bishop Huet knew as well as we do that they came originally from India through Persia by way of Bagdad and Constantinople.
In order to gain a commanding view of the countries traversed by these fables, let us take our position at Bagdad in the middle of the eighth century, and watch from that central point the movements of our literary caravan in its progress from the far East to the far West. In the middle of the eighth century, during the reign of the great Khalif Almansur, Abdallah ibn Almokaffa wrote his famous collection of fables, the “Kalila and Dimnah,” which we still possess. The Arabic text of these fables has been published by Sylvestre de Sacy, and there is an English translation of it by Mr. Knatchbull, formerly Professor of Arabic at Oxford. Abdallah ibn Almokaffa was a Persian by birth, who after the fall of the Omeyyades became a convert to Mohammedanism, and rose to high office at the court of the Khalifs. Being in possession of important secrets of state, he became dangerous in the eyes of the Khalif Almansur, and was foully murdered.[15] In the preface, Abdallah ibn Almokaffa tells us that he translated these fables from Pehlevi, the ancient language of Persia; and that they had been translated into Pehlevi (about two hundred years before his time) by Barzûyeh, the physician of Khosru Nushirvan, the King of Persia, the contemporary of the Emperor Justinian. The King of Persia had heard that there existed in India a book full of wisdom, and he had commanded his Vezier, Buzurjmihr, to find a man acquainted with the languages both of Persia and India. The man chosen was Barzûyeh. He travelled to India, got possession of the book, translated it into Persian, and brought it back to the court of Khosru. Declining all rewards beyond a dress of honor, he only stipulated that an account of his own life and opinions should be added to the book. This account, probably written by himself, is extremely curious. It is a kind of _Religio Medici_ of the sixth century, and shows us a soul dissatisfied with traditions and formularies, striving after truth, and finding rest only where many other seekers after truth have found rest before and after him, in a life devoted to alleviating the sufferings of mankind.
There is another account of the journey of this Persian physician to India. It has the sanction of Firdúsi, in the great Persian epic, the Shah Nâmeh, and it is considered by some[16] as more original than the one just quoted. According to it, the Persian physician read in a book that there existed in India trees or herbs supplying a medicine with which the dead could be restored to life. At the command of the king he went to India in search of those trees and herbs; but, after spending a year in vain researches, he consulted some wise people on the subject. They told him that the medicine of which he had read as having the power of restoring men to life had to be understood in a higher and more spiritual sense, and that what was really meant by it were ancient books of wisdom preserved in India, which imparted life to those who were dead in their folly and sins.[17] Thereupon the physician translated these books, and one of them was the collection of fables, the “Kalila and Dimnah.”
It is possible that both these stories were later inventions; the preface also by Ali, the son of Alshah Farési, in which the names of Bidpai and King Dabshelim are mentioned for the first time, is of later date. But the fact remains that Abdallah ibn Almokaffa, the author of the oldest Arabic collection of our fables, translated them from Pehlevi, the language of Persia at the time of Khosru Nushirvan, and that the Pehlevi text which he translated was believed to be a translation of a book brought from India in the middle of the sixth century. That Indian book could not have been the Pañcatantra, as we now possess it, but must have been a much larger collection of fables, for the Arabic translation, the “Kalilah and Dimnah,” contains eighteen chapters instead of the five of the Pañcatantra, and it is only in the fifth, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth chapters that we find the same stories which form the five books of the Pañkatantra in the _textus ornatior_. Even in these chapters the Arabic translator omits stories which we find in the Sanskrit text, and adds others which are not to be found there.
In this Arabic translation the story of the Brahman and the pot of rice runs as follows:--
“A religious man was in the habit of receiving every day from the house of a merchant a certain quantity of butter (oil) and honey, of which, having eaten as much as he wanted, he put the rest into a jar, which he hung on a nail in a corner of the room, hoping that the jar would in time be filled. Now, as he was leaning back one day on his couch, with a stick in his hand, and the jar suspended over his head, he thought of the high price of butter and honey, and said to himself, ‘I will sell what is in the jar, and buy with the money which I obtain for it ten goats, which, producing each of them a young one every five months, in addition to the produce of the kids as soon as they begin to bear, it will not be long before there is a large flock.’ He continued to make his calculations, and found that he should at this rate, in the course of two years, have more than four hundred goats. ‘At the expiration of this term I will buy,’ said he, ‘a hundred black cattle, in the proportion of a bull or a cow for every four goats. I will then purchase land, and hire workmen to plough it with the beasts, and put it into tillage, so that before five years are over I shall, no doubt, have realized a great fortune by the sale of the milk which the cows will give, and of the produce of my land. My next business will be to build a magnificent house, and engage a number of servants, both male and female; and, when my establishment is completed, I will marry the handsomest woman I can find, who, in due time becoming a mother, will present me with an heir to my possessions, who, as he advances in age, shall receive the best masters that can be procured; and, if the progress which he makes in learning is equal to my reasonable expectations, I shall be amply repaid for the pains and expense which I have bestowed upon him; but if, on the other hand, he disappoints my hopes, the rod which I have here shall be the instrument with which I will make him feel the displeasure of a justly-offended parent.’ At these words he suddenly raised the hand which held the stick towards the jar, and broke it, and the contents ran down upon his head and face.”[18] . . . .
You will have observed the coincidences between the Arabic and the Sanskrit versions, but also a considerable divergence, particularly in the winding up of the story. The Brahman and the holy man both build their castles in the air; but, while the former kicks his wife, the latter only chastises his son. How this change came to pass we cannot tell. One might suppose that, at the time when the book was translated from Sanskrit into Pehlevi, or from Pehlevi into Arabic, the Sanskrit story was exactly like the Arabic story, and that it was changed afterwards. But another explanation is equally admissible, viz., that the Pehlevi or the Arabic translator wished to avoid the offensive behavior of the husband kicking his wife, and therefore substituted the son as a more deserving object of castigation.
We have thus traced our story from Sanskrit to Pehlevi, and from Pehlevi to Arabic; we have followed it in its migrations from the hermitages of Indian sages to the court of the kings of Persia, and from thence to the residence of the powerful Khalifs at Bagdad. Let us recollect that the Khalif Almansur, for whom the Arabic translation was made, was the contemporary of Abderrhaman, who ruled in Spain, and that both were but little anterior to Harun al Rashid and Charlemagne. At that time, therefore, the way was perfectly open for these Eastern fables, after they had once reached Bagdad, to penetrate into the seats of Western learning, and to spread to every part of the new empire of Charlemagne. They may have done so, for all we know; but nearly three hundred years pass before these fables meet us again in the literature of Europe. The Carlovingian empire had fallen to pieces, Spain had been rescued from the Mohammedans, William the Conqueror had landed in England, and the Crusades had begun to turn the thoughts of Europe towards the East, when, about the year 1080, we hear of a Jew of the name of Symeon, the son of Seth, who translated these fables from Arabic into Greek. He states in his preface that the book came originally from India, that it was brought to the King Chosroes of Persia, and then translated into Arabic. His own translation into Greek must have been made from an Arabic MS. of the “Kalila and Dimna,” in some places more perfect, in others less perfect, than the one published by De Sacy. The Greek text has been published, though very imperfectly, under the title of “Stephanites and Ichnelates.”[19] Here our fable is told as follows (p. 337):--
“It is said that a beggar kept some honey and butter in a jar close to where he slept. One night he thus thought within himself: ‘I shall sell this honey and butter for however small a sum; with it I shall buy ten goats, and these in five months will produce as many again. In five years they will become four hundred. With them I shall buy one hundred cows, and with them I shall cultivate some land. And what with their calves and the harvests, I shall become rich in five years, and build a house with four wings,[20] ornamented with gold, and buy all kinds of servants, and marry a wife. She will give me a child, and I shall call him Beauty. It will be a boy, and I shall educate him properly; and if I see him lazy, I shall give him such a flogging with this stick. . . . .’ With these words he took a stick that was near him, struck the jar, and broke it, so that the honey and milk ran down on his beard.”
This Greek translation might, no doubt, have reached La Fontaine; but as the French poet was not a great scholar, least of all a reader of Greek MSS., and as the fables of Symeon Seth were not published till 1697, we must look for other channels through which the old fable was carried along from East to West.
There is, first of all, an Italian translation of the “Stephanites and Ichnelates,” which was published at Ferrara in 1583.[21] The title is, “Del Governo de’ Regni. Sotto morali essempi di animali ragionanti tra loro. Tratti prima di lingua Indiana in Agarena da Lelo Demno Saraceno. Et poi dall’ Agarena nella Greca da Simeone Setto, philosopho Antiocheno. Et hora tradotti di Greco in Italiano.” This translation was probably the work of Giulio Nuti.
There is, besides, a Latin translation, or rather a free rendering of the Greek translation by the learned Jesuit, Petrus Possinus, which was published at Rome in 1666.[22] This may have been, and, according to some authorities, has really been one of the sources from which La Fontaine drew his inspirations. But though La Fontaine may have consulted this work for other fables, I do not think that he took from it the fable of Perrette and the milk-pail.
The fact is, these fables had found several other channels through which, as early as the thirteenth century, they reached the literary market of Europe, and became familiar as household words, at least among the higher and educated classes. We shall follow the course of some of these channels. First, then, a learned Jew, whose name seems to have been Joel, translated our fables from Arabic into Hebrew (1250?). His work has been preserved in one MS. at Paris, but has not yet been published, except the tenth book, which was communicated by Dr. Neubauer to Benfey’s journal, “Orient und Occident” (vol. i. p. 658). This Hebrew translation was translated by another converted Jew, Johannes of Capua, into Latin. His translation was finished between 1263-1278, and, under the title of “Directorium Humanæ Vitæ,” it became very soon a popular work with the select reading public of the thirteenth century.[23] In the “Directorium,” and in Joel’s translation, the name of Sendebar is substituted for that of Bidpay. The “Directorium” was translated into German at the command of Eberhard, the great Duke of Würtemberg,[24] and both the Latin text and the German translation occur, in repeated editions, among the rare books printed between 1480 and the end of the fifteenth century.[25] A Spanish translation, founded both on the German and the Latin texts, appeared at Burgos in 1493;[26] and from these different sources flowed in the sixteenth century the Italian renderings of Firenzuola (1548)[27] and Doni (1552).[28] As these Italian translations were repeated in French[29] and English, before the end of the sixteenth century, they might no doubt have supplied La Fontaine with subjects for his fables.
But, as far as we know, it was a third channel that really brought the Indian fables to the immediate notice of the French poet. A Persian poet, of the name of Nasr Allah, translated the work of Abdallah ibn Almokaffa into Persian about 1150. This Persian translation was enlarged in the fifteenth century by another Persian poet, Husain ben Ali called el Vaez, under the title of “Anvári Suhaili.”[30] This name will be familiar to many members of the Indian Civil Service, as being one of the old Haileybury class-books which had to be construed by all who wished to gain high honors in Persia. This work, or at least the first books of it, were translated into French by David Sahid of Ispahan, and published at Paris in 1644, under the title of “Livre des Lumières, ou, la Conduite des Rois, composé par le Sage Pilpay, Indien.” This translation, we know, fell into the hands of La Fontaine, and a number of his most charming fables were certainly borrowed from it.
But Perrette with the milk-pail has not yet arrived at the end of her journey, for if we look at the “Livre des Lumières,” as published at Paris, we find neither the milkmaid nor her prototype, the Brahman who kicks his wife, or the religious man who flogs his boy. That story occurs in the later chapters, which were left out in the French translation; and La Fontaine, therefore, must have met with his model elsewhere.
Remember that in all our wanderings we have not yet found the milkmaid, but only the Brahman or the religious man. What we want to know is who first brought about this metamorphosis.
No doubt La Fontaine was quite the man to seize on any jewel which was contained in the Oriental fables, to remove the cumbersome and foreign-looking setting, and then to place the principal figure in that pretty frame in which most of us have first become acquainted with it. But in this case the charmer’s wand did not belong to La Fontaine, but to some forgotten worthy, whose very name it will be difficult to fix upon with certainty.
We have, as yet, traced three streams only, all starting from the Arabic translation of Abdallah ibn Almokaffa, one in the eleventh, another in the twelfth, a third in the thirteenth century, all reaching Europe, some touching the very steps of the throne of Louis XIV., yet none of them carrying the leaf which contained the story of “Perrette,” or of the “Brahman,” to the threshold of La Fontaine’s home. We must, therefore, try again.
After the conquest of Spain by the Mohammedans, Arabic literature had found a new home in Western Europe, and among the numerous works translated from Arabic into Latin or Spanish, we find towards the end of the thirteenth century (1289) a Spanish translation of our fables, called “Calila é Dymna.”[31] In this the name of the philosopher is changed from Bidpai to Bundobel. This, or another translation from Arabic, was turned into Latin verse by Raimond de Béziers in 1313 (not published).
Lastly, we find in the same century another translation from Arabic straight into Latin verse, by Baldo, which became known under the name of “Æsopus alter.”[32]
From these frequent translations, and translations of translations, in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, we see quite clearly that these Indian fables were extremely popular, and were, in fact, more widely read in Europe than the Bible, or any other book. They were not only read in translations, but having been introduced into sermons,[33] homilies, and works on morality, they were improved upon, acclimatized, localized, moralized, till at last it is almost impossible to recognize their Oriental features under their homely disguises.
I shall give you one instance only.
Rabelais, in his “Gargantua,” gives a long description how a man might conquer the whole world. At the end of this dialogue, which was meant as a satire on Charles V., we read:--
“There was there present at that time an old gentleman well experienced in the wars, a stern soldier, and who had been in many great hazards, named Echephron, who, hearing this discourse, said: ‘J’ay grand peur que toute ceste entreprise sera semblable à la farce _du pot au laict_ duquel un cordavanier se faisoit riche par resverie, puis le pot cassé, n’eut de quoy disner.’”
This is clearly our story, only the Brahman has, as yet, been changed into a shoemaker only, and the pot of rice or the jar of butter and honey into a pitcher of milk. Now it is perfectly true that if a writer of the fifteenth century changed the Brahman into a shoemaker, La Fontaine might, with the same right, have replaced the Brahman by his milkmaid. Knowing that the story was current, was, in fact, common property in the fifteenth century, nay, even at a much earlier date, we might really be satisfied after having brought the germs of “Perrette” within easy reach of La Fontaine. But, fortunately, we can make at least one step further, a step of about two centuries. This step backwards brings us to the thirteenth century, and there we find our old Indian friend again, and this time really changed into a milkmaid. The book I refer to is written in Latin, and is called, “Dialogus Creaturarum optime moralizatus;” in English, the “Dialogue of Creatures moralized.” It was a book intended to teach the principles of Christian morality by examples taken from ancient fables. It was evidently a most successful book, and was translated into several modern languages. There is an old translation of it in English, first printed by Rastell,[34] and afterwards repeated in 1816. I shall read you from it the fable in which, as far as I can find, the milkmaid appears for the first time on the stage, surrounded already by much of that scenery which, four hundred years later, received its last touches at the hand of La Fontaine.
“DIALOGO C. (p. ccxxiii.) For as it is but madnesse to trust to moche in surete, so it is but foly to hope to moche of vanyteys, for vayne be all erthly thinges longynge to men, as sayth Davyd, Psal. xciiii: Wher of it is tolde in fablys that a lady uppon a tyme delyvered to her mayden a _galon of mylke_ to sell at a cite, and by the way, as she sate and restid her by a dyche side, she began to thinke that with the money of the mylke she wold bye an henne, the which shulde bringe forth chekyns, and when they were growyn to hennys she wolde sell them and by piggis, and eschaunge them in to shepe, and the shepe in to oxen, and so whan she was come to richesse she sholde be maried right worshipfully unto some worthy man, and thus she reioycid. And whan she was thus mervelously comfortid and ravisshed inwardly in her secrete solace, thinkynge with howe greate ioye she shuld be ledde towarde the chirche with her husbond on horsebacke, she sayde to her self: ‘Goo we, goo we.’ Sodaynlye she smote the ground with her fote, myndynge to spurre the horse, but her fote slypped, and she fell in the dyche, and there lay all her mylke, and so she was farre from her purpose, and never had that she hopid to have.”[35]
Here we have arrived at the end of our journey. It has been a long journey across fifteen or twenty centuries, and I am afraid our following Perrette from country to country, and from language to language, may have tired some of my hearers. I shall, therefore, not attempt to fill the gap that divides the fable of the thirteenth century from La Fontaine. Suffice it to say, that the milkmaid, having once taken the place of the Brahman, maintained it against all comers. We find her as Dona Truhana, in the famous “Conde Lucanor,” the work of the Infante Don Juan Manuel,[36] who died in 1347, the grandson of St. Ferdinand, the nephew of Alfonso the Wise, though himself not a king, yet more powerful than a king; renowned both by his sword and by his pen, and possibly not ignorant of Arabic, the language of his enemies. We find her again in the “Contes et Nouvelles” of Bonaventure des Periers, published in the sixteenth century, a book which we know that La Fontaine was well acquainted with. We find her after La Fontaine in all the languages of Europe.[37]
[Transcriber’s Note:
This large table could not be reproduced as printed, so the information has been split into two groups. The table itself gives only the years and languages of the translations, with their family relationship. The following lists then give the full text, again divided into two formats: the first strictly chronological, the second sorted by branches.
Words in [brackets] were added by the transcriber.]
A.D. OLD COLLECTION OF INDIAN FABLES.
|
500- 531-579 _Pehlevi_ (lost)
600 570 _Syriac_
700- 754-775 _Arabic_
800 _________|_________________________________________
| | | | |
1000- | | | | 1080
1100 | | | | Greek
| | | | |
1100- | | 1118-53 | _|_____
1200 | | Persian | | |
| | | | | |
1200- | 1289 | 1250 | |
1300 Latin Spanish | Hebrew | |
| | | | |
| | 1263-78 | |
| | Latin | |
| | ______|_______ | |
| | | | | |
1300- 1313 | [pre-1325] | | |
1400 Latin | German | | |
| | | |
1400- 1494 1493 | |
1500 Persian Spanish | |
_______________| | | |
| | | | | |
1500- 1590 “New” | 1540 1548 | |
1600 [Persian] | Turkish Italian | |
| | | ___________|___ | |
Hindustani | | | | | | |
| | 1552 | 1556 | |
| | Italian | French | |
| | |_________|______ | |
| | | | | |
| | 1570 1579 | 1583
| | English French | Italian
1600- 1644 | |
1700 French |--1654 Spanish 1666
| Latin
1700- 1724
1800 French
[Full text, by date:]
531-579. Khosru Nushirvan, King of Persia; his physician, Barzûyeh, translates the Indian fables into _Pehlevi_, s. t. “Qalilag and Damnag” (lost).
570. Translation of the “Qualilag and Damnag,” from Indian into _Syriac_, by Bud Periodeutes (Benfey and Socin).
754-775. Khalif Almansur. Abdallah ibn Almokaffa (d. 760) translates the Pehlevi into _Arabic_ (ed. de Sacy, 1816).
1080. Into _Greek_, by Simeon Seth, s. t. “Ichnelates et Stephanites,” ed. Starkius, 1697.
1118-53. Into _Persian_, by Abul Maali Nasr Allah (prose).
Into _Latin_ by Baldo, s. t. Alter Æsopus (ed. du Méril).
1250. Into _Hebrew_, by Rabbi Joel.
1263-78. Into _Latin_, by Johannes of Capua, s. t. “Directorium humanæ vitæ” (print. 1480).
1289. Into _Spanish_, by order of the Infante Don Alfonso, s. t. “Calila é Dymna” (ed. de Gayangos)
1313. Into _Latin_, by Raimond de Beziers, s. t. “Calila et Dimna.”
Into _German_ under Eberhard, Duke of Würtemberg (d. 1325), printed before 1483.
1400-1500
1493. Into _Spanish_, s. t. “Exemplario contra los Engaños.”
1494. Modernized in _Persian_, by Husain ben Ali, el Vaez, s. t. “Anvari Suhaili.”
1540. Into _Turkish_, by Ali Tchelebi, s. t. “Homayun Nameh.”
1548. Into _Italian_, by Ange Firenzuola, s. t. “Discorsi degli Animali.”
1552. Into _Italian_, by Doni, s. t. “La Filosofia Morale.”
1556. Into _French_, by Gabr. Cottier, s. t. “Le Plaisant Discours des Animaux.”
1570. Into _English_, by North.
1579. Into _French_, by Pierre de La Rivey, s. t. “Deux Livres de Filosofie Fabuleuse.”
1583. Into _Italian_, by G. Nuti, s. t. “Del Governo de’ Regni.”
1590. New, by Abulfazl, for Akbar, “Ayari Danish.”
Translated into _Hindustani_, s. t. “Khirud Ufroz,” the Illuminator of the Understanding.
1644. Into _French_, by David Sahid d’Ispahan (Gaulmin), s. t. “Livre des Lumières, ou la Conduite des Rois, composé par le sage Pilpay, Indien” (4 cap. only).
Into _Spanish_, by Brattuti, “Espejo politico,” 1654.
1666. Into _Latin_, by Petrus Possinus.
1724. Into _French_, by Galland, s. t. “Les Contes et Fables Indiennes de Bibpaï et de Lokman” (4 cap. only); finished in 1778 by Cardonne.
[Full text, by branches; each added indentation is a new branch.]
Into _Latin_ by Baldo, s. t. Alter Æsopus (ed. du Méril).
1289. Into _Spanish_, by order of the Infante Don Alfonso, s. t. “Calila é Dymna” (ed. de Gayangos) 1313. Into _Latin_, by Raimond de Beziers, s. t. “Calila et Dimna.”
1118-53. Into _Persian_, by Abul Maali Nasr Allah (prose).
1494. Modernized in _Persian_, by Husain ben Ali, el Vaez, s. t.
“Anvari Suhaili.”
a: 1590. New, by Abulfazl, for Akbar, “Ayari Danish.”
a: Translated into _Hindustani_, s. t. “Khirud Ufroz,” the
Illuminator of the Understanding.
b: 1644. Into _French_, by David Sahid d’Ispahan (Gaulmin), s. t.
“Livre des Lumières, ou la Conduite des Rois, composé par le
sage Pilpay, Indien” (4 cap. only).
c: 1540. Into _Turkish_, by Ali Tchelebi, s. t. “Homayun Nameh.”
c: Into _Spanish_, by Brattuti, “Espejo politico,” 1654.
c: 1724. Into _French_, by Galland, s. t. “Les Contes et Fables
Indiennes de Bibpaï et de Lokman” (4 cap. only); finished in
1778 by Cardonne.
1250. Into _Hebrew_, by Rabbi Joel.
1263-78. Into _Latin_, by Johannes of Capua, s. t. “Directorium
humanæ vitæ” (print. 1480).
a: Into _German_ under Eberhard, Duke of Würtemberg (d. 1325),
printed before 1483.
b: 1493. Into _Spanish_, s. t. “Exemplario contra los Engaños.”
b: 1548. Into _Italian_, by Ange Firenzuola, s. t. “Discorsi
degli Animali.”
b: 1552. Into _Italian_, by Doni, s. t. “La Filosofia Morale.”
b: 1556. Into _French_, by Gabr. Cottier, s. t. “Le Plaisant
Discours des Animaux.”
b: 1570. Into _English_, by North.
b: 1579. Into _French_, by Pierre de La Rivey, s. t. “Deux
Livres de Filosofie Fabuleuse.”
1080. Into _Greek_, by Simeon Seth, s. t. “Ichnelates et
Stephanites,” ed. Starkius, 1697.
1583. Into _Italian_, by G. Nuti, s. t. “Del Governo de’
Regni.”
1666. Into _Latin_, by Petrus Possinus.
You see now before your eyes the bridge on which our fables came to us
from East to West. The same bridge which brought us Perrette brought us
hundreds of fables, all originally sprung up in India, many of them
carefully collected by Buddhist priests, and preserved in their sacred
canon, afterwards handed on to the Brahminic writers of a later age,
carried by Barzûyeh from India to the court of Persia, then to the
courts of the Khalifs at Bagdad and Cordova, and of the emperors at
Constantinople. Some of them, no doubt, perished on their journey,
others were mixed up together, others were changed till we should hardly
know them again. Still, if you once know the eventful journey of
Perrette, you know the journey of all the other fables that belong to
this Indian cycle. Few of them have gone through so many changes, few of
them have found so many friends, whether in the courts of kings or in
the huts of beggars. Few of them have been to places where Perrette has
not also been. This is why I selected her and her passage through the
world as the best illustration of a subject which otherwise would
require a whole course of lectures to do it justice.
But though our fable represents one large class or cluster of fables, it does not represent all. There were several collections, besides the Pancatantra, which found their way from India to Europe. The most important among them is the “Book of the Seven Wise Masters, or the Book of Sindbad,” the history of which has lately been written, with great learning and ingenuity, by Signor Comparetti.[38]
These large collections of fables and stories mark what may be called the high roads on which the literary products of the East were carried to the West. But there are, beside these high roads, some smaller, less trodden paths on which single fables, sometimes mere proverbs, similes, or metaphors, have come to us from India, from Persepolis, from Damascus and Bagdad. I have already alluded to the powerful influence which Arabic literature exercised on Western Europe through Spain. Again, a most active interchange of Eastern and Western ideas took place at a later time during the progress of the Crusades. Even the inroads of Mongolian tribes into Russia and the East of Europe kept up a literary bartering between Oriental and Occidental nations.
But few would have suspected a Father of the Church as an importer of Eastern fables. Yet so it is.
At the court of the same Khalif Almansur, where Abdallah ibn Almokaffa translated the fables of Calila and Dimna from Persian into Arabic, there lived a Christian of the name of Sergius, who for many years held the high office of treasurer to the Khalif. He had a son to whom he gave the best education that could then be given, his chief tutor being one Cosmas, an Italian monk, who had been taken prisoner by the Saracens, and sold as a slave at Bagdad. After the death of Sergius, his son succeeded him for some time as chief councillor (πρωτοσύμβουλος) to the Khalif Almansur. Such, however, had been the influence of the Italian monk on his pupil’s mind, that he suddenly resolved to retire from the world, and to devote himself to study, meditation, and pious works. From the monastery of St. Saba, near Jerusalem, this former minister of the Khalif issued the most learned works on theology, particularly his “Exposition of the Orthodox Faith.” He soon became the highest authority on matters of dogma in the Eastern Church, and he still holds his place among the saints both of the Eastern and Western Churches. His name was Joannes, and from being born at Damascus, the former capital of the Khalifs, he is best known in history as Joannes Damascenus, or St. John of Damascus. He must have known Arabic, and probably Persian; but his mastery of Greek earned him, later in life, the name of Chrysorrhoas, or Gold-flowing. He became famous as the defender of the sacred images, and as the determined opponent of the Emperor Leo the Isaurian, about 726. It is difficult in his life to distinguish between legend and history, but that he had held high office at the court of the Khalif Almansur, that he boldly opposed the iconoclastic policy of the Emperor Leo, and that he wrote the most learned theological works of his time, cannot be easily questioned.
Among the works ascribed to him is a story called “Barlaam and Joasaph.”[39] There has been a fierce controversy as to whether he was the author of it or not. Though for our own immediate purposes it would be of little consequence whether the book was written by Joannes Damascenus or by some less distinguished ecclesiastic, I must confess that the arguments hitherto adduced against his authorship seem to me very weak.
The Jesuits did not like the book, because it was a religious novel. They pointed to a passage in which the Holy Ghost is represented as proceeding from the Father “and the Son,” as incompatible with the creed of an Eastern ecclesiastic. That very passage, however, has now been proved to be spurious; and it should be borne in mind, besides, that the controversy on the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son, or from the Father through the Son, dates a century later than Joannes. The fact, again, that the author does not mention Mohammedanism,[40] proves nothing against the authorship of Joannes, because, as he places Barlaam and Joasaph in the early centuries of Christianity, he would have ruined his story by any allusion to Mohammed’s religion, then only a hundred years old. Besides, he had written a separate work, in which the relative merits of Christianity and Mohammedanism are discussed. The prominence given to the question of the worship of images shows that the story could not have been written much before the time of Joannes Damascenus, and there is nothing in the style of our author that could be pointed out as incompatible with the style of the great theologian. On the contrary, the author of “Barlaam and Joasaph” quotes the same authors whom Joannes Damascenus quotes most frequently--_e.g._, Basilius and Gregorius Nazianzenus. And no one but Joannes could have taken long passages from his own works without saying where he borrowed them.[41]
The story of “Barlaam and Joasaph”--or, as he is more commonly called, Josaphat--may be told in a few words: “A king in India, an enemy and persecutor of the Christians, has an only son. The astrologers have predicted that he would embrace the new doctrine. His father, therefore, tries by all means in his power to keep him ignorant of the miseries of the world, and to create in him a taste for pleasure and enjoyment. A Christian hermit, however, gains access to the prince, and instructs him in the doctrines of the Christian religion. The young prince is not only baptized, but resolves to give up all his earthly riches; and after having converted his own father and many of his subjects, he follows his teacher into the desert.”
The real object of the book is to give a simple exposition of the principal doctrines of the Christian religion. It also contains a first attempt at comparative theology, for in the course of the story there is a disputation on the merits of the principal religions of the world--the Chaldæan, the Egyptian, the Greek, the Jewish, and the Christian. But one of the chief attractions of this manual of Christian theology consisted in a number of fables and parables with which it is enlivened. Most of them have been traced to an Indian source. I shall mention one only which has found its way into almost every literature of the world:[42]--
“A man was pursued by a unicorn, and while he tried to flee from it, he fell into a pit. In falling he stretched out both his arms, and laid hold of a small tree that was growing on one side of the pit. Having gained a firm footing, and holding to the tree, he fancied he was safe, when he saw two mice, a black and a white one, busy gnawing the root of the tree to which he was clinging. Looking down into the pit, he perceived a horrid dragon with his mouth wide open, ready to devour him, and when examining the place on which his feet rested, the heads of four serpents glared at him. Then he looked up, and observed drops of honey falling down from the tree to which he clung. Suddenly the unicorn, the dragon, the mice, and the serpents were all forgotten, and his mind was intent only on catching the drops of sweet honey trickling down from the tree.”
An explanation is hardly required. The unicorn is Death, always chasing man; the pit is the world; the small tree is man’s life, constantly gnawed by the black and the white mouse--_i.e._, by night and day; the four serpents are the four elements which compose the human body; the dragon below is meant for the jaws of hell. Surrounded by all those horrors, man is yet able to forget them all, and to think only of the pleasures of life, which, like a few drops of honey, fall into his mouth from the tree of life.[43]
But what is still more curious is, that the author of “Barlaam and Josaphat” has evidently taken his very hero, the Indian Prince Josaphat, from an Indian source. In the “Lalita Vistara”--the life, though no doubt the legendary life, of Buddha--the father of Buddha is a king. When his son is born, the Brahman Asita predicts that he will rise to great glory, and become either a powerful king, or, renouncing the throne and embracing the life of a hermit become a Buddha.[44] The great object of his father is to prevent this. He therefore keeps the young prince, when he grows up, in his garden and palaces, surrounded by all pleasures which might turn his mind from contemplation to enjoyment. More especially he is to know nothing of illness, old age, and death, which might open his eyes to the misery and unreality of life. After a time, however, the prince receives permission to drive out; and then follow the four drives,[45] so famous in Buddhist history. The places where these drives took place were commemorated by towers still standing in the time of Fa Hian’s visit to India, early in the fifth century after Christ, and even in the time of Hiouen Thsang, in the seventh century. I shall read you a short account of the three drives:[46]--
“One day when the prince with a large retinue was driving 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 the park.
“Another time the prince was driving 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 was driving 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 forever!’ 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 hesitation. He was driving 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 that 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.”
If we now compare the story of Joannes of Damascus, we find that the early life of Josaphat is exactly the same as that of Buddha. His father is a king, and after the birth of his son, an astrologer predicts that he will rise to glory; not, however, in his own kingdom, but in a higher and better one; in fact, that he will embrace the new and persecuted religion of the Christians. Everything is done to prevent this. He is kept in a beautiful palace, surrounded by all that is enjoyable; and great care is taken to keep him in ignorance of sickness, old age, and death. After a time, however, his father gives him leave to drive out. On one of his drives he sees two men, one maimed, the other blind. He asks what they are, and is told that they are suffering from disease. He then inquires whether all men are liable to disease, and whether it is known beforehand who will suffer from disease and who will be free; and when he hears the truth, he becomes sad, and returns home. Another time, when he drives out, he meets an old man with wrinkled face and shaking legs, bent down, with white hair, his teeth gone, and his voice faltering. He asks again what all this means, and is told that this is what happens to all men; and that no one can escape old age, and that in the end all men must die. Thereupon he returns home to meditate on death, till at last a hermit appears,[47] and opens before his eyes a higher view of life, as contained in the Gospel of Christ.
No one, I believe, can read these two stories without feeling convinced that one was borrowed from the other; and as Fa Hian, three hundred years before John of Damascus, saw the towers which commemorated the three drives of Buddha still standing among the ruins of the royal city of Kapilavastu, it follows that the Greek father borrowed his subject from the Buddhist scriptures. Were it necessary, it would be easy to point out still more minute coincidences between the life of Josaphat and of Buddha, the founder of the Buddhist religion. Both in the end convert their royal fathers, both fight manfully against the assaults of the flesh and the devil, both are regarded as saints before they die. Possibly even a proper name may have been transferred from the sacred canon of the Buddhists to the pages of the Greek writer. The driver who conducts Buddha when he flees by night from his palace where he leaves his wife, his only son, and all his treasures, in order to devote himself to a contemplative life, is called Chandaka, in Burmese, Sanna.[48] The friend and companion of Barlaam is called Zardan.[49] Reinaud in his “Mémoire sur l’Inde,” p. 91 (1849), was the first, it seems, to point out that Youdasf, mentioned by Massoudi as the founder of the Sabæan religion, and Youasaf, mentioned as the founder of Buddhism by the author of the “Kitáb-al-Fihrist,” are both meant for Bodhisattva, a corruption quite intelligible with the system of transcribing that name with Persian letters. Professor Benfey has identified Theudas, the sorcerer in “Barlaam and Joasaph,” with the Devadatta of the Buddhist scriptures.[50]
How palpable these coincidences are between the two stories is best shown by the fact that they were pointed out, independently of each other, by scholars in France, Germany, and England. I place France first, because in point of time M. Laboulaye was the first who called attention to it in one of his charming articles in the “Debats.”[51] A more detailed comparison was given by Dr. Liebrecht.[52] And, lastly, Mr. Beal, in his translation of the “Travels of Fa Hian,”[53] called attention to the same fact--viz., that the story of Josaphat was borrowed from the “Life of Buddha.” I could mention the names of two or three scholars besides who happened to read the two books, and who could not help seeing, what was as clear as daylight, that Joannes Damascenus took the principal character of his religious novel from the “Lalita Vistara,” one of the sacred books of the Buddhists; but the merit of having been the first belongs to M. Laboulaye.
This fact is, no doubt, extremely curious in the history of literature; but there is another fact connected with it which is more than curious, and I wonder that it has never been pointed out before. It is well known that the story of “Barlaam and Josaphat” became a most popular book during the Middle Ages. In the East it was translated into Syriac(?), Arabic, Ethiopic, Armenian, and Hebrew; in the West it exists in Latin, French, Italian, German, English, Spanish, Bohemian, and Polish. As early as 1204, a King of Norway translated it into Icelandic, and at a later time it was translated by a Jesuit missionary into Tagala, the classical language of the Philippine Islands. But this is not all, Barlaam and Josaphat have actually risen to the rank of saints, both in the Eastern and in the Western churches. In the Eastern church the 26th of August is the saints’ day of Barlaam and Josaphat; in the Roman Martyrologium, the 27th of November is assigned to them.
There have been from time to time misgivings about the historical character of these two saints. Leo Allatius, in his “Prolegomena,” ventured to ask the question, whether the story of “Barlaam and Josaphat” was more real than the “Cyropædia” of Xenophon, or the “Utopia” of Thomas More; but, _en bon Catholique_, he replied, that as Barlaam and Josaphat were mentioned, not only in the Menæa of the Greek, but also in the Martyrologium of the Roman Church, he could not bring himself to believe that their history was imaginary. Billius thought that to doubt the concluding words of the author, who says that he received the story of “Barlaam and Josaphat” from men incapable of falsehood, would be to trust more in one’s own suspicions than in Christian charity, which believeth all things. Bellarminus thought he could prove the truth of the story by the fact that, at the end of it, the author himself invokes the two saints Barlaam and Josaphat! Leo Allatius admitted, indeed, that some of the speeches and conversations occurring in the story might be the work of Joannes Damascenus, because Josaphat, having but recently been converted, could not have quoted so many passages from the Bible. But he implies that even this could be explained, because the Holy Ghost might have taught St. Josaphat what to say. At all events, Leo has no mercy for those “quibus omnia sub sanctorum nomine prodita male olent, quemadmodum de sanctis Georgio, Christophoro, Hippolyto, Catarina, aliisque nusquam eos in rerum natura extitisse impudentissime nugantur.” The Bishop of Avranches had likewise his doubts; but he calmed them by saying: “Non pas que je veuille soustenir que tout en soit supposé: il y auroit de la témerité à desavouer qu’il y ait jamais eû de Barlaam ni de Josaphat. Le témoignage du Martyrologe, qui les met au nombre des Saints, et leur intercession que Saint Jean Damascene reclame à la fin de cette histoire ne permettent pas d’en douter.”[54]
With us the question as to the historical or purely imaginary character of Josaphat has assumed a new and totally different aspect. We willingly accept the statement of Joannes Damascenus that the story of “Barlaam and Josaphat” was told him by men who came from India. We know that in India a story was current of a prince who lived in the sixth century B.C., a prince of whom it was predicted that he would resign the throne, and devote his life to meditation, in order to rise to the rank of a Buddha. The story tells us that his father did everything to prevent this; that he kept him in a palace secluded from the world, surrounded by all that makes life enjoyable; and that he tried to keep him in ignorance of sickness, old age, and death. We know from the same story that at last the young prince obtained permission to drive into the country, and that, by meeting an old man, a sick man, and a corpse, his eyes were opened to the unreality of life, and the vanity of this life’s pleasures; that he escaped from his palace, and, after defeating the assaults of all adversaries, became the founder of a new religion. This is the story, it may be the legendary story, but at all events the recognized story of Gautama Śâkyamuni, best known to us under the name of Buddha.
If, then, Joannes Damascenus tells the same story, only putting the name of Joasaph or Josaphat, _i.e._, Bodhisattva, in the place of Buddha; if all that is human and personal in the life of St. Josaphat is taken from the “Lalita Vistara”--what follows? It follows that, in the same sense in which La Fontaine’s Perrette is the Brahman of the Pañcatantra, St. Josaphat is the Buddha of the Buddhist canon. It follows that Buddha has become a saint in the Roman Church; it follows that, though under a different name, the sage of Kapilavastu, the founder of a religion which, whatever we may think of its dogma, is, in the purity of its morals, nearer to Christianity than any other religion, and which counts even now, after an existence of 2,400 years, 455,000,000 of believers, has received the highest honors that the Christian Church can bestow. And whatever we may think of the sanctity of saints, let those who doubt the right of Buddha to a place among them read the story of his life as it is told in the Buddhist canon. If he lived the life which is there described, few saints have a better claim to the title than Buddha; and no one either in the Greek or in the Roman Church need be ashamed of having paid to Buddha’s memory the honor that was intended for St. Josaphat, the prince, the hermit, and the saint.
History, here as elsewhere, is stranger than fiction; and a kind fairy, whom men call Chance, has here, as elsewhere, remedied the ingratitude and injustice of the world.
APPENDIX.
I am enabled to add here a short account of an important discovery made by Professor Benfey with regard to the Syriac translation of our Collection of Fables. Doubts had been expressed by Sylvestre de Sacy and others, as to the existence of this translation, which was mentioned for the first time in Ebedjesu’s catalogue of Syriac writers published by Abraham Ecchellensis, and again later by Assemani (“Biblioth. Orient.,” tom. iii. part 1, p. 219). M. Renan, on the contrary, had shown that the title of this translation, as transmitted to us, “Kalilag and Damnag,” was a guarantee of its historical authenticity. As a final k in Pehlevi becomes h in modern Persian, a title such as “Kalilag and Damnag,” answering to “Kalilak and Damnak” in Pehlevi, in Sanskrit “Karaṭaka and Damanaka,” could only have been borrowed from the Persian before the Mohammedan era. Now that the interesting researches of Professor Benfey on this subject have been rewarded by the happy discovery of a Syriac translation, there remains but one point to be cleared up, viz., whether this is really the translation made by Bud Periodeutes, and whether this same translation was made, as Ebedjesu affirms, from the Indian text, or, as M. Renan supposes, from a Pehlevi version. I insert the account which Professor Benfey himself gave of his discovery in the Supplement to the “Allgemeine Zeitung” of July 12, 1871, and I may add that both text and translation are nearly ready for publication (1875).
_The oldest MS. of the Pantschatantra._
GÖTTINGEN, _July 6, 1871_.
The account I am about to give will recall the novel of our celebrated compatriot Freytag (“Die verlorene Handschrift,” or “The Lost MS.”), but with this essential difference, that we are not here treating of a creation of the imagination, but of a real fact; not of the MS. of a work of which many other copies exist, but of an unique specimen; in short, of the MS. of a work which, on the faith of one single mention, was believed to have been composed thirteen centuries ago. This mention, however, appeared to many critical scholars so untrustworthy, that they looked upon it as the mere result of confusion. Another most important difference is, that this search, which has lasted three years, has been followed by the happiest results: it has brought to light a MS. which, even in this century, rich in important discoveries, deserves to be ranked as of the highest value. We have acquired in this MS. the oldest specimen preserved to our days of a work, which, as translated into various languages, has been more widely disseminated and has had a greater influence on the development of civilization than any other work, excepting the Bible.
But to the point.
Through the researches, which I have published in my edition of the Pantschatantra,[55] it is known that about the sixth century of our era, a work existed in India, which treated of deep political questions under the form of fables, in which the actors were animals. It contained various chapters, but these subdivisions were not, as had been hitherto believed, eleven to thirteen in number, but, as the MS. just found shows most clearly, there were at least twelve, perhaps thirteen or fourteen. This work was afterwards so entirely altered in India, that five of these divisions were separated from the other six or nine, and much enlarged, whilst the remaining ones were entirely set aside. This apparently curtailed, but really enlarged edition of the old work, is the Sanskrit book so well known as the Pantschatantra, “The Five Books.” It soon took the place, on its native soil, of the old work, causing the irreparable loss of the latter in India.
But before this change of the old work had been effected in its own land, it had, in the first half of the sixth century, been carried to Persia, and translated into Pehlevi under King Chosru Nuschirvan (531-579). According to the researches which I have described in my book already quoted, the results of which are fully confirmed by the newly discovered MS., it cannot be doubted that, if this translation had been preserved, we should have in it a faithful reproduction of the original Indian work, from which, by various modifications, the Pantschatantra is derived. But unfortunately this Pehlevi translation, like its Indian original, is irretrievably lost.
But it is known to have been translated into Arabic in the eighth century by a native of Persia, by name Abdallah ibn Almokaffa (d. 760), who had embraced Islamism, and it acquired, partly in this language, partly in translations and retranslations from it (apart from the recensions in India, which penetrated to East, North, and South Asia,) that extensive circulation which has caused it to exercise the greatest influence on civilization in Western Asia, and throughout Europe.
Besides this translation into Pehlevi, there was, according to one account, another, also of the sixth century, in Syriac. This account we owe to a Nestorian writer, who lived in the thirteenth century. He mentions in his catalogue of authors[56] a certain Bud Periodeutes, who probably about 570 had to inspect the Nestorian communities in Persia and India, and who says that, in addition to other books which he names, “he translated the book ‘Qalîlag and Damnag’ from the Indian.”
Until three years ago, not the faintest trace of this old Syrian translation was to be found, and the celebrated Orientalist, Silvestre de Sacy, in the historical memoir which he prefixed to his edition of the Arabic translation, “Calila and Dimna” (Paris, 1816), thought himself justified in seeing in this mention a mere confusion between Barzûyeh, the Pehlevi translator, and a Nestorian Monk.
The first trace of this Syriac version was found in May, 1868. On the sixth of that month, Professor Bickell of Münster, the diligent promoter of Syrian philology, wrote to tell me that he had heard from a Syrian Archdeacon from Urumia, Jochannân bar Bâbisch, who had visited Münster in the spring to collect alms, and had returned there again in May, that, some time previously, several Chaldæan priests who had been visiting the Christians of St. Thomas in India, had brought back with them some copies of this Syriac translation, and had given them to the Catholic Patriarch in Elkosh (near Mossul). He had received one of these.
Though the news appeared so unbelievable and the character of the Syrian priest little calculated to inspire confidence in his statements, it still seemed to me of sufficient importance for me to ask my friends to make further inquiries in India, where other copies ought still to be in existence. Even were the result but a decided negative, it would be a gain to science. These inquiries had no effect in proving the truth of the archdeacon’s assertions; but, at the same time, they did not disprove them. It would of course have been more natural to make inquiries among the Syrians. But from want of friends and from other causes, which I shall mention further on, I could hardly hope for any certain results, and least of all, that if the MS. really existed, I could obtain it, or a copy of it.
The track thus appeared to be lost, and not possible to be followed up, when, after the lapse of nearly two years, Professor Bickell, in a letter of February 22, 1870, drew my attention to the fact that the Chaldæan Patriarch, Jussuf Audo, who, according to Jochannân bar Bâbisch, was in possession of that translation, was now in Rome, as member of the Council summoned by the Pope.
Through Dr. Schöll of Weimar, then in Rome, and one Italian savant, Signor Ignazio Guidi, I was put into communication with the Patriarch, and with another Chaldæan priest, Bishop Qajjât, and received communications, the latest of June 11, 1870, which indeed proved the information of Jochannân bar Bâbisch to be entirely untrustworthy; but at the same time pointed to the probable existence of a MS. of the Syriac translation at Mardîn.
I did not wait for the last letters, which might have saved the discoverer much trouble, but might also have frustrated the whole inquiry; but, as soon as I had learnt the place where the MS. might be, I wrote; May 6, 1870, exactly two years after the first trace of the MS. had been brought to light, to my former pupil and friend, Dr. Albert Socin of Basle, who was then in Asia on a scientific expedition, begging him to make the most careful inquiries in Mardîn about this MS., and especially to satisfy himself whether it had been derived from the Arabian translation, or was independent of and older than the latter. We will let Dr. Socin, the discoverer of the MS., tell us himself of his efforts and their results.
“I received your letter of May 6, 1870, a few days ago, by Bagdad and Mossul, at Yacho on the Chabôras. You say that you had heard that the book was in the library at Mardîn. I must own that I doubted seriously the truth of the information, for Oriental Christians always say that they possess every possible book, whilst in reality they have but few. I found this on my journey through the ‘Christian Mountain,’ the Tûr el’ ’Abedîn, where I visited many places and monasteries but little known. I only saw Bibles in Estrangelo character, which were of value, nowhere profane books; but the people are so fanatical, and watch their books so closely, that it is very difficult to get sight of anything; and one has to keep them in good humor. Unless after a long sojourn, and with the aid of bribery, there can never be any thought of buying anything from a monastic library. Arrived in Mardîn, I set myself to discover the book. I naturally passed by all Moslem libraries, as Syriac books only exist among the Christians. I settled at first that the library in question could only be the Jacobite Cloister, ‘Der ez Zàferân,’ the most important centre of the Christians of Mardîn. I therefore sent to the Patriarch of Diarbekir for most particular introductions, and started for ‘Der ez Zàferân,’ which lies in the mountains, 5½ hours from Mardîn. The recommendations opened the library to me. I looked through four hundred volumes, without finding anything; there was not much of any value. On my return to Mardîn, I questioned people right and left; no one knew anything about it. At length I summoned up courage one day, and went to the Chaldæan monastery. The different sects in Mardîn are most bitter against each other, and as I unfortunately lodged in the house of an American missionary, it was very difficult for me to gain access to these Catholics, who were unknown to me. Luckily my servant was a Catholic, and could state that I had no proselytizing schemes. After a time I asked about their books; Missals and Gospels were placed before me; I asked if they had any books of Fables. ‘Yes, there was one there.’ After a long search in the dust, it was found and brought to me. I opened it, and saw at the first glance, in red letters, ‘Qalîlag and Damnag,’ with the old termination g, which proved to me that the work was not translated from the Arabic ‘Calila ve Dimnah.’ You may be certain that I did not show what I felt. I soon laid the book quietly down. I had indeed before asked the monk specially for ‘Kalila and Dimna,’ and with some persistency, before I inquired generally for books of fables; but he had not the faintest suspicion that the book before him was the one so eagerly sought after. After about a week or ten days, in order to arouse no suspicion, I sent a trustworthy man to borrow the book; but he was asked at once if it were for the ‘Fréngi den Prot’ (Protestant), and my confidant was so good as to deny it, ‘No, it was for himself.’ I then examined the book more carefully. Having it safely in my possession, I was not alarmed at the idea of a little hubbub. I therefore made inquiries, but in all secret, whether they would sell it. ‘No, never,’ was the answer I expected and received, and the idea that I had borrowed it for myself was revived. I therefore began to have a copy made. But I was obliged to leave Mardîn and even the neighboring Diarbekir, before I received the copy. In Mardîn itself the return of the book was loudly demanded, as soon as they knew I was having it copied. I was indeed delighted when, through the kindness of friends, _post tot discrimina rerum_ I received the book at Aleppo.”
So far writes my friend, the fortunate discoverer, who, as early as the 19th of August, 1870, announced in a letter the happy recovery of the book. On April 20, 1871, he kindly sent it to me from Basle.
This is not the place to descant on the high importance of this discovery. It is only necessary to add that there is not the least doubt that it has put us in possession of the old Syriac translation, of which Ebedjesu speaks. There is only one question still to be settled, whether it is derived direct from the Indian, or through the Pehlevi translation? In either case it is the oldest preserved rendering of the original, now lost in India, and therefore of priceless value.
The fuller treatment of this and other questions, which spring from this discovery, will find a place in the edition of the text, with translation and commentary, which Professor Bickell is preparing in concert with Dr. Hoffman and myself.
THEODOR BENFEY.
NOTES.
NOTE A.
In modern times, too, each poet or fabulist tells the story as seems best to him. I give three recensions of the story of Perrette, copied from English schoolbooks.
THE MILKMAID.
A milkmaid who poised a full pail on her head,
Thus mused on her prospects in life, it is said:--
Let me see, I should think that this milk will procure
One hundred good eggs or fourscore, to be sure.
Well then, stop a bit, it must not be forgotten,
Some of these may be broken, and some may be rotten;
But if twenty for accident should be detached,
It will leave me just sixty sounds eggs to be hatched.
Well, sixty sound eggs--no, sound chickens I mean:
Of these some may die--we’ll suppose seventeen;
Seventeen, not so many!--say ten at the most,
Which will leave fifty chickens to boil or to roast.
But then there’s their barley, how much will they need?
Why, they take but one grain at a time when they feed,
So that’s a mere trifle;--now then, let me see,
At a fair market-price how much money there’ll be.
Six shillings a pair, five, four, three-and-six,
To prevent all mistakes that low price I will fix;
Now what will that make? Fifty chickens I said;
Fifty times three-and-six?--I’ll ask brother Ned.
Oh! but stop, three-and-sixpence a pair I must sell them!
Well, a pair is a couple; now then let us tell them.
A couple in fifty will go (my poor brain),
Why just a score times, and five pairs will remain.
Twenty-five pairs of fowls, now how tiresome it is
That I can’t reckon up such money as this.
Well there’s no use in trying, so let’s give a guess--
I’ll say twenty pounds, and it can be no less.
Twenty pounds I am certain will buy me a cow,
Thirty geese and two turkeys, eight pigs and a sow;
Now if these turn out well, at the end of the year
I shall fill both my pockets with guineas, ’tis clear.
Forgetting her burden when this she had said,
The maid superciliously tossed up her head,
When, alas for her prospects! her milkpail descended,
And so all her schemes for the future were ended.
This moral, I think, may be safely attached--
“Reckon not on your chickens before they are hatched!”
JEFFREYS TAYLOR.
FABLE.
A country maid was walking with a pail of milk upon her head, when she fell into the following train of thoughts: “The money for which I shall sell this milk will enable me to increase my stock of eggs to three hundred. These eggs will bring at least two hundred and fifty chickens. The chickens will be fit to carry to market about Christmas, when poultry always bear a good price; so that by May-day I shall have money enough to buy me a new gown. Green?--let me consider--yes, green becomes my complexion best, and green it shall be. In this dress I will go to the fair, where all the young fellows will strive to have me for a partner; but I shall perhaps refuse every one of them, and with an air of distain toss from them.” Charmed with this thought, she could not forbear acting with her head what thus passed in her mind, when down came the pail of milk, and with it all her fancied happiness.--_From Guy’s “British Spelling Book._”
ALNASKER.
Alnasker was a very idle fellow, that would never set his hand to work during his father’s life. When his father died he left him to the value of a hundred pounds in Persian money. In order to make the best of it he laid it out in glasses and bottles, and the finest china. These he piled up in a large open basket at his feet, and leaned his back upon the wall of his shop in the hope that many people would come in to buy. As he sat in this posture, with his eyes upon the basket, he fell into an amusing train of thought, and talked thus to himself: “This basket,” says he, “cost me a hundred pounds, which is all I had in the world. I shall quickly make two hundred of it by selling in retail. These two hundred shall in course of trade rise to ten thousand, when I will lay aside my trade of a glass-man, and turn a dealer in pearls and diamonds, and all sorts of rich stones. When I have got as much wealth as I can desire, I will purchase the finest house I can find, with lands, slaves, and horses. Then I shall set myself on the footing of a prince, and will ask the grand Vizier’s daughter to be my wife. As soon as I have married her, I will buy her ten black servants, the youngest and best that can be got for money. When I have brought this princess to my house, I shall take care to breed her in due respect for me. To this end I shall confine her to her own rooms, make her a short visit, and talk but little to her. Her mother will then come and bring her daughter to me, as I am seated on a sofa. The daughter, with tears in her eyes, will fling herself at my feet, and beg me to take her into my favor. Then will I, to impress her with a proper respect for my person, draw up my leg, and spurn her from me with my foot in such a manner that she shall fall down several paces from the sofa.” Alnasker was entirely absorbed with his ideas, and could not forbear acting with his foot what he had in his thoughts; so that, striking his basket of brittle ware, which was the foundation of all his grand hopes, he kicked his glasses to a great distance into the street, and broke them into a thousand pieces.--“_Spectator._” (From the “Sixth Book,” published by the Scottish School Book Association, W. Collins & Co., Edinburgh).
NOTE B.
Pertsch, in Benfey’s “Orient und Occident,” vol. ii. p. 261. Here the story is told as follows: “Perche si conta che un certo pouer huomo hauea uicino a doue dormiua, un mulino & del buturo, & una notte tra se pensando disse, io uenderò questo mulino, & questo butturo tanto per il meno, che io comprerò diece capre. Le quali mi figliaranno in cinque mesi altre tante, & in cinque anni multiplicheranno fino a quattro cento; Le quali barattero in cento buoi, & con essi seminarò una cãpagna, & insieme da figliuoli loro, & dal frutto della terra in altri cinque anni, sarò oltre modo ricco, & farò un palagio _quadro_, adorato, & comprerò schiaui una infinità, & prenderò moglie, la quale mi farà un figliuolo, & lo nominerò Pancalo, & lo farò ammaestrare come bisogna. Et se vedrò che non si curi con questa bacchetta cosí il percoterò. Con che prendendo la bacchetta che gli era uicina, & battendo di essa il vaso doue era il buturo, e lo ruppe, & fuse il buturo. Dopò gli partorì la moglie un figliuolo, e la moglie un dì gli disse, habbi un poco cura di questo fanciullo o marito, fino che io uo e torno da un seruigio. La quale essendo andata fu anco il marito chiamato dal Signore della terra, & tra tanto auuenne che una serpe salì sopra il fanciullo. Et vna donzella uicina, corsa là l’uccise. Tornato il marito uide insanguito l’vscio, & pensando che costei l’hauesse ucciso, auanti che il uedesse, le diede sul capo, di un bastone, e l’uccise. Entrato poi, & sano trouando il figliuolo, & la serpe morta, si fu grandemente pentito, & piāse amaramente. Cosí adunque i frettolosi in molte cose errano.” (Page 516.)
NOTE C.
This and some other extracts, from books not to be found at Oxford, were kindly copied for me by my late friend, E. Deutsch, of the British Museum.
“Georgii Pachymeris Michael Palæologus, sive Historia rerum a M. P. gestarum,” ed. Petr. Possinus. Romæ, 1666.
Appendix ad observationes Pachymerianas, Specimen Sapientiæ Indorum veterum liber olim ex lingua Indica in Persicam a Perzoe Medico: ex Persica in Arabicam ab Anonymo: ex Arabica in Græcam a Symeone Seth, a Petro Possino Societ. Iesu, novissime e Græca in Latinam translatus.
“Huic talia serio nuganti haud paulo cordatior mulier. Mihi videris, Sponse, inquit, nostri cujusdam famuli egentissimi hominis similis ista inani provisione nimis remotarum et incerto eventu pendentrum rerum. Is diurnis mercedibus mellis ac butyri non magna copia collectâ duobus ista vasis e terra coctili condiderat. Mox secum ita ratiocinans nocte quadam dicebat: Mel ego istud ac butyrum quindecim minimum vendam denariis. Ex his decem Capras emam. Hæ mihi quinto mense totidem alias parient. Quinque annis gregem Caprarum facile quadringentarum confecero. Has commutare tunc placet cum bobus centum, quibus exarabo vim terræ magnam et numerum tritici maximum congeram. Ex fructibus hisce quinquennio multiplicatis, pecuniaæ scilicet tantus existet modus, ut facile in locupletissimis numerer. Accedit dos uxoris quam istis opibus ditissiman nansciscar. Nascetur mihi filius quem jam nunc decerno nominare Panealum. Hunc educabo liberalissime, ut nobilium nulli concedat. Qui si ubi adoleverit, ut juventus solet, contumacem se mihi præbeat, haud feret impune. Baculo enim hoc illum hoc modo feriam. Arreptum inter hæc dicendum lecto vicinum baculum per tenebras jactavit, casuque incurrens in dolia mellis et butyri juxta posita, confregit utrumque, ita ut in ejus etiam os barbamque stillæ liquoris prosilirent; cætera effusa et mixta pulveri prorsus corrumperentur; ac fundamentum spei tantæ, inopem et multum gementem momento destitueret.” (Page 602.)
NOTE D.
“Directorium Humanæ Vitæ alias Parabolæ Antiquorum Sapientum,” fol. s. l. e. a. k. 4 (circ. 1480?): “Dicitque olim quidam fuit heremita apud quendam regem. Cui rex providerat quolibet die pro sua vita. Scilicet provisionem de sua coquina et vasculum de melle. Ille vero comedebat decocta, et reservabat mel in quodam vase suspenso super suum caput donec esset plenum. Erat autem mel percarum in illis diebus. Quadam vero die: dum jaceret in suo lecto elevato capite, respexit vas mellis quod super caput ei pendebat. Et recordatus quoniam mel de die in diem vendebatur pluris solito seu carius, et dixit in corde suo. Quum fuerit hoc vas plenum: vendam ipsum uno talento auri: de quo mihi emam decem oves, et successu temporis he oves facient filios et filias, et erunt viginti. Postea vero ipsis multiplicatis cum filiis et filiabus in quatuor annis erunt quatuor centum. Tunc de quibuslibet quatuor ovibus emam vaccam et bovem et terram. Et vaccæ multiplicabuntur in filiis, quorum masculos accipiam mihi in culturam terre, præter id quod percipiam de eis de lacte et lana, donec non consummatis aliis quinque annis multiplicabuntur in tantum quod habebo mihi magnas substantias et divitias, et ero a cunctis reputatus dives et honestus. Et edificabo mihi tunc grandia et excellentia edificia pre omnibus meis vicinis et consanguinibus, itaque omnes de meis divitiis loquantur, nonne erit mihi illud jocundum, cum omnes homines mihi reverentiam in omnibus locis exhibeant. Accipiam postea uxorem de nobilibus terre. Cumque eam cognovero, concipiet et pariet mihi filium nobilem et delectabilem cum bona fortuna et dei beneplacito qui crescet in scientia virtute, et relinquam mihi per ipsum bonam memoriam post mei obitum et castigabo ipsum dietim: si mee recalcitraverit doctrine; ac mihi in omnibus erit obediens, et si non: percutiam eum isto baclo et erecto baculo ad percutiendum percussit vas mellis et fregit ipsum et defluxit mel super caput ejus.”
NOTE E.
“Das Buch der Weisheit der alter Weisen,” Ulm, 1415. Here the story is given as follows:--
“Man sagt es wohnet eins mals ein brůder der dritten regel der got fast dienet, bei eins künigs hof, den versach der künig alle tag zů auff enthalt seines lebens ein kuchen speiss und ein fleschlein mit honig. diser ass alle tag die speiss von der kuchen und den honig behielt er in ein irden fleschlein das hieng ob seiner petstat so lang biss es voll ward. Nun kam bald eine grosse teür in den honig und eins morgens früe lag er in seinem pett und sach das honig in dem fleschlein ob seinem haubt hangen do fiel ym in sein gedanck die teüre des honigs und fieng an mit ihm selbs ze reden. wann diss fleschlein gantz vol honigs wirt so verkauff ich das umb fünff güldin, darum̅ kauff ich mir zehen gůter schaff und die machen alle des jahrs lember. und dann werden eins jahrs zweintzig und die und das von yn kummen mag in zehen jaren werden tausent. dann kauff ich umb fier schaff ein ku und kauff dobei ochsen und ertrich die meren sich mit iren früchten und do nimb ich dann die frücht zů arbeit der äcker. von den andern küen und schaffen nimb ich milich und woll ee das andre fünff jar fürkommen so wird es sich allso meren das ich ein grosse hab und reichtumb überkumen wird dann will ich mir selbs knecht und kellerin kauffen und hohe und hübsche bäw ton. und darnach so nimm ich mir ein hübsch weib von einem edeln geschlecht die beschlaff ich mit kurtzweiliger lieb. so enpfecht sie und gebirt mir ein schön glückseligten sun und gottförchtigen. und der wirt wachsen in lere und künsten und in weissheit. durch den lass ich mir einen gůten leümde nach meinem tod. aber wird er nit fölgig sein und meiner straff nit achten so wolt ich yn mit meinem stecken über sein rucken on erbermde gar hart schlahen. und nam sein stecken da mit man pflag das pet ze machen ym selbs ze zeigen wie frefelich er sein sun schlagen wölt. und schlůg das irden fass das ob seinem haubt hieng zů stücken dass ym das honig under sein antlit und in das pet troff und ward ym von allen sein gedencken nit dann das er sein antlit und pet weschen můst.”
NOTE F.
This translation has lately been published by Don Pascual de Gayangos in the “Biblioteca de Autores Españoles,” Madrid, 1860, vol. li. Here the story runs as follows (p. 57):--
“Del religioso que vertió la miel et la manteca sobre su cabeza.
“Dijo la mujer: ‘Dicen que un religioso habia cada dia limosna de casa de un mercader rico, pan é manteca é miel e otras cosas, et comia el pan é lo ál condesaba, et ponia la miel é la manteca en un jarra, fasta quel a finchó, et tenia la jarra colgada á la cabecera de su cama. Et vino tiempo que encareció la miel é la manteca, et el religioso fabló un dia consigo mismo, estando asentado en su cama, et dijo así: Venderé cuanto está en esta jarra por tantos maravedís, é comparé con ellos diez cabras, et empreñarse-han, é parirán á cabo de cinco meses; et fizo cuenta de esta guisa, et falló que en cinco años montarian bien cuatrocientas cabras. Desí dijo: Venderlas-he todas, et con el precio dellas compraré cien vacas, por cada cuatro cabezas una vaca, é haberé simiente é sembraré con los bueyes, et aprovecharme-he de los becerros et de las fembras é de la leche é manteca, é de las mieses habré grant haber, et labraré muy nobles casas, é compraré siervos é siervas, et esto fecho casarme-he con una mujer muy rica, é fermosa, é de grant logar, é empreñarla-he de fijo varon, é nacerá complido de sus miembros, et criarlo-he como á fijo de rey, é castigarlo-he con esta vara, si non quisiere ser bueno é obediente’. E él deciendo esto, alzó la vara que tenia en la mano, et ferió en la olla que estaba colgada encima dél, é quebróla, é cayóle la miel é la manteca sobre su cabeza,” etc.
NOTE G.
[Transcriber’s Note: In the following selection, all brackets and parentheses are in the original.]
See “Poésies inédites du Moyen Âge,” par M. Edélstand Du Méril. Paris, 1854. XVI. De Viro et Vase Olei (p. 239):--
“Uxor ab antiquo fuit infecunda marito. Mesticiam (l. mœstitiam) cujus cupiens lenire vix (l. vir) hujus, His blandimentis solatur tristi[ti]a mentis: Cur sic tristaris? Dolor est tuus omnis inanis: Pulchræ prolis eris satis amodo munere felix. Pro nihilo ducens conjunx hæc verbula prudens, His verbis plane quod ait vir monstrat inane: Rebus inops quidam . . . (bone vir, tibi dicam) _Vas oleo plenum_, longum quod retro per ævum Legerat orando, loca per diversa vagando, Fune ligans ar(c)to, tecto[que] suspendit ab alto. Sic præstolatur tempus quo pluris ematur[atur] Qua locupletari se sperat et arte beari. Talia dum captat, hæc stultus inania jactat: Ecce potens factus, fuero cum talia nactus, Vinciar uxori quantum queo nobiliori: Tunc sobolem gignam, se meque per omnia dignam, Cujus opus morum genus omne præibit avorum. Cui nisi tot vitæ fuerint insignia rite, Fustis hic absque mora feriet caput ejus et [h]ora. Quod dum narraret, dextramque minando levaret, Ut percussisset puerum quasi præsto fuisset Vas in prædictum manus ejus dirigit ictum Servatumque sibi vas il[l]ico fregit olivi.”
I owe the following extract to the kindness of M. Paul Meyer:--
_Apologi Phædrii ex ludicris I. Regnerii Belnensis doct. Medici, Divione, apud Petrum Palliot, 1643 in 12, 126 pages et de plus un index._
Le recueil se divise en deux partis, pars I., pars II. La fable en question est à la page 32, pars I. fab. xxv.
XXV.
_Pagana et eius mercis emptor._
Pagana mulier, lac in olla fictili, Ova in canistro, rustici mercem penus, Ad civitatem proximam ibat venditum. In eius aditu factus huic quidam obvius Quanti rogavit ista quæ fers vis emi? Et illa tanti. Tantin’? hoc fuerit nimis. Numerare num me vis quod est æquum? vide Hac merce quod sit nunc opus mihi plus dabo Quam præstet illam cede, et hos nummos cape, Ea quam superbe fœde rusticitas agit, Hominem reliquit additis conviciis, Quasi æstimasset vilius mercem optimam. Aversa primos inde vix tulerat gradus, Cum lubricato corruit strato viæ: Lac olla fundit quassa, gallinaceæ Testæ vitellos congerunt cœno suos Caput cruorem mittit impingens petræ Luxata nec fert coxa surgentem solo: Ridetur ejus non malum, sed mens procax, Qua merx et ipsa mercis et pretium perit; Seque illa deflens tot pati infortunia Nulli imputare quam sibi hanc sortem potest Dolor sed omnis sæviter recruduit Curationis danda cum merces fuit.
In re minori cum quis et fragili tumet Hunc sortis ingens sternit indignatio.
NOTE H.
Hulsbach, “Sylva Sermonum,” Basileæ, 1568, p. 28: “In sylva quadam morabatur heremicola jam satis provectæ ætatis, qui quaque die accedebat civitatem, afferens inde mensuram mellis, qua donabatur. Hoc recondebat in vase terreo, quod pependerat supra lectum suum. Uno dierum jacens in lecto, et habens bacalum in manu sua, hæc apud se dicebat: Quotidie mihi datur vasculum mellis, quod dum indies recondo, fiet tandem summa aliqua. Jam valet mensura staterem unum. Corraso autem ita floreno uno aut altero, emam mihi oves, quæ fœnerabunt mihi plures: quibus divenditis coëmam mihi elegantem uxorculam, cum qua transigam vitam meam lætanter: ex ea suscitabo mihi puellam, quam instituam honeste. Si vero mihi noluerit obedire, hoc baculo eam ita comminuam: atque levato baculo confregit suum vasculum, et effusum est mel, quare cassatum est suum propositum, et manendum adhuc in suo statu.”
NOTE I.
“El Conde Lucanor, compuesto por el excelentissimo Principe don Iuan Manuel, hijo del Infante don Manuel, y nieto del Santo Rey don Fernando,” Madrid, 1642; cap. 29, p. 96. He tells the story as follows: “There was a woman called Dona Truhana (Gertrude), rather poor than rich. One day she went to the market carrying a pot of honey on her head. On her way she began to think that she would sell the pot of honey, and buy a quantity of eggs, that from those eggs she would have chickens, that she would sell them and buy sheep; that the sheep would give her lambs, and thus calculating all her gains, she began to think herself much richer than her neighbors. With the riches which she imagined she possessed, she thought how she would marry her sons and daughters, and how she would walk in the street surrounded by her sons and daughters-in-law; and how people would consider her happy for having amassed so large a fortune, though she had been so poor. While she was thinking over all this, she began to laugh for joy, and struck her head and forehead with her hand. The pot of honey fell down, was broken, and she shed hot tears because she had lost all that she would have possessed if the pot of honey had not been broken.”
NOTE K.
Bonaventure des Periers, “Les Contes ou les Nouvelles.” Amsterdam, 1735. Nouvelle XIV. (vol. i. p. 141). (First edition, Lyon, 1558): “Et ne les (les Alquemistes) sçauroiton mieux comparer qu’à une bonne femme qui portoit une potée de laict au marché, faisant son compte ainsi: qu’elle la vendroit deux liards: de ces deux liards elle en achepteroit une douzaine d’œufs, lesquelz elle mettroit couver, et en auroit une douzaine de poussins: ces poussins deviendroient grands, et les feroit chaponner: ces chapons vaudroient cinq solz la piece, ce seroit un escu et plus, dont elle achepteroit deux cochons, masle et femelle: qui deviendroient grands et en feroient une douzaine d’autres, qu’elle vendroit vingt solz la piece; apres les avoir nourris quelque temps, ce seroient douze francs, dont elle achepteroit une iument, qui porteroit un beau poulain, lequel croistroit et deviendroit tant gentil: il sauteroit et feroit _Hin_. Et en disant _Hin_, la bonne femme, de l’aise qu’elle avoit en son compte, se print à faire la ruade que feroit son poulain: et en ce faisant sa potée de laict va tomber, et se respandit toute. Et voila ses œufs, ses poussins, ses chappons, ses cochons, sa jument, et son poulain, tous par terre.”
[Footnote 1: La Fontaine, _Fables_, livre vii., fable 10.]
[Footnote 2: Phædon, 61, 5: Μετὰ δὲ τὸν θεὸν, ἐννοήσας, ὅτι τὸν ποιητὴν δέοι, εἶπερ μέλλοι ποιητὴς εἶναι, ποιεῖν μύθους, ἀλλ’ οὐ λόγους, καὶ αὐτὸς οὐκ ἦ μυθολογικός, διὰ ταῦτα δὴ οὓς προχείρους εἶχον καὶ ἠπιστάμην μύθους τοὺς Αἰσώπου, τούτων ἐποίησα οἷς πρώτοις ἐνέτυχον.]
[Footnote 3: Robert, _Fables Inédites_, des XIIe, XIIIe, et XIVe Siècles; Paris, 1825; vol. i. p. ccxxvii.]
[Footnote 4: _Pantschatantrum sive Quinquepartitum_, edidit I. G. L. Kosegarten. Bonnæ, 1848.
_Pantschatantra, Fünf Bücher indischer Fablen, aus dem Sanskrit übersetzt._ Von Th. Benfey. Leipzig, 1859.
_Hitopadesa_, with interlinear translation, grammatical analysis, and English translation, in Max Müller’s Handbooks for the study of Sanskrit. London, 1864.
_Hitopadesa, eine alte indische Fabelsammlung aus dem Sanskrit zum ersten Mal in das Deutsche übersetzt._ Von Max Müller. Leipzig, 1844.]
[Footnote 5: _Pañcatantra_, v. 10.]
[Footnote 6: _Hitopadeśa_, ed. Max Müller, p. 120; German translation, p. 159.]
[Footnote 7: Note A, page 188.]
[Footnote 8: _Hottentot Fables and Tales_, by Dr. W. H. I. Bleek, London, 1894, p. 19.]
[Footnote 9: _Academy_, vol. v. p. 548.]
[Footnote 10: _Die Märchen des Siddhi-kür_, or _Tales of an Enchanted Corpse_, translated from Kalmuk into German by B. Jülg, 1866. (This is based on the +Vetâlapañcaviṃśati+.) _Die Geschichte des Ardschi-Bordschi Chan_, translated from Mongolian by Dr. B. Jülg, 1868. (This is based on the +Siṃhâsanadvâtriṃśati+.) A Mongolian translation of the _Kalila and Dimnah_, is ascribed to Mélik Said Iftikhar eddin Mohammed ben Abou Nasr, who died A.D. 1280. See Barbier de Meynard, “Description de la Ville de Kazvin,” _Journal Asiatique_, 1857, p. 284; Lancereau, _Pantchatantra_, p. xxv.]
[Footnote 11: Plato’s expression, “As I have put on the lion’s skin” (_Kratylos_, 411), seems to show that he knew the fable of an animal or a man having assumed the lion’s skin without the lion’s courage. The proverb ὄνος παρὰ Κυμαίους seems to be applied to men boasting before people who have no means of judging. It presupposes the story of a donkey appearing in a lion’s skin.
A similar idea is expressed in a fable of the Pañcatantra (IV. 8) where a dyer, not being rich enough to feed his donkey, puts a tiger’s skin on him. In this disguise the donkey is allowed to roam through all the corn-fields without being molested, till one day he sees a female donkey, and begins to bray. Thereupon the owners of the field kill him.
In the Hitopadeśa (III. 3) the same fable occurs, only that there it is the keeper of the field who on purpose disguises himself as a she-donkey, and when he hears the tiger bray, kills him.
In the Chinese Avadânas, translated by Stanislas Julien (vol. ii. p. 59), the donkey takes a lion’s skin and frightens everybody, till he begins to bray, and is recognized as a donkey.
In this case it is again quite clear that the Greeks did not borrow their fable and proverb from the Pañcatantra; but it is not so easy to determine positively whether the fable was carried from the Greeks to the East, or whether it arose independently in two places.]
[Footnote 12: _Calilah et Dimna, ou, Fables de Bidpai, en Arabe, précédées d’un Mémoire sur l’origine de ce livre._ Par Sylvestre de Sacy. Paris, 1816.]
[Footnote 13: Loiseleur Deslongchamps, _Essai sur les Fables Indiennes, et sur leur Introduction en Europe._ Paris, 1838.]
[Footnote 14: _Pantschatantra, Fünf Bucher indischer Fabeln, Märchen und Erzählungen, mit Einleitung._ Von. Th. Benfey. Leipzig, 1859.]
[Footnote 15: See Weil, _Geschichte der Chalifen_, vol. ii. p. 84.]
[Footnote 16: Benfey, p. 60.]
[Footnote 17: Cf. _Barlaam et Joasaph_, ed. Boissonade, p. 37.]
[Footnote 18: _Kalila and Dimna; or, the Fables of Bidpai, translated from the Arabic._ By the Rev. Wyndham Knatchbull, A.M. Oxford, 1819.]
[Footnote 19: _Specimen Sapientiæ Indorum Veterum, id est Liber Ethico-Politicus pervetustus, dictus Arabice Kalilah ve Dimnah, Græce Stephanites et Ichnelates, nunc primum Græce ex MS. Cod. Holsteiniano prodit cum versione Latina, opera S. G. Starkii._ Berolini, 1697.]
[Footnote 20: This expression, a four-winged house, occurs also in the Pañcatantra. As it does not occur in the Arabic text, published by De Sacy, it is clear that Symeon must have followed another Arabic text in which this adjective, belonging to the Sanskrit, and no doubt to the Pehlevi text, also, had been preserved.]
[Footnote 21: Note B, p. 190.]
[Footnote 22: Note C, p. 191.]
[Footnote 23: Note D, p. 192.]
[Footnote 24: Note E, p. 193.]
[Footnote 25: Benfey, _Orient und Occident_, vol. i. p. 138.]
[Footnote 26: Ibid. vol. i. p. 501. Its title is: “Exemplario contra los engaños y peligros del mundo,” ibid. pp. 167, 168.]
[Footnote 27: _Discorsi degli animali, di Messer Agnolo Firenzuola, in prose di M. A. F._ (Fiorenza, 1548.)]
[Footnote 28: _La Moral Filosophia del Doni, tratta da gli antichi scrittori._ Vinegia, 1552.
_Trattati Diversi di Sendebar Indiano, filosopho morale._ Vinegia, 1552.
P. 65. _Trattato Quarto._
A woman tells her husband to wait till her son is born, and says:--
“Stava uno Romito domestico ne i monti di Brianza a far penitenza e teneva alcune cassette d’ api per suo spasso, e di quelle a suoi tempi ne cavava il _Mele_, e di quello ne vendeva alcuna parte tal volta per i suoi besogni. Avenne che un’ anno ne fu una gran carestia, e egli attendeva a conservarlo, e ogni giorno lo guardava mille volte, e gli pareva cent’ anni ogni hora, che e gli indugiava a empierlo di Mele,” etc.]
[Footnote 29: _Le Plaisant et Facétieux Discours des Animaux, novellement traduict de Tuscan en François._ Lyon, 1556, par Gabriel Cottier.
_Deux Livres de Filosofie Fabuleuse, le Premier Pris des Discours de M. Ange Firenzuola le Second Extraict des Traictez de Sandebar Indien, par Pierre de La Rivey._ Lyon, 1579.
The second book is a translation of the second part of Doni’s _Filosofia Morale_.]
[Footnote 30: _The Anvar-i Suhaili, or the Lights of Canopus, being the Persian version of the Fables of Pilpay, or the Book, Kalilah and Damnah, rendered into Persian by Husain Vá’iz U’l-Káshifi, literally translated by E. B. Eastwick._ Hertford, 1854.]
[Footnote 31: Note F, p. 194.]
[Footnote 32: Note G, p. 194.]
[Footnote 33: Note H, p. 196.]
[Footnote 34: _Dialogues of Creatures moralysed_, sm. 4to, circ. 1517. It is generally attributed to the press of John Rastell, but the opinion of Mr. Haslewood, in his preface to the reprint of 1816, that the book was printed on the continent, is perhaps the correct one. (_Quaritch’s Catalogue_, July, 1870.)]
[Footnote 35: The Latin text is more simple: “Unde cum quedam domina dedisset ancille sue lac ut venderet et lac portaret ad urbem juxta fossatum cogitare cepit quod de p̅cio lactis emerit gallinam quæ faceret pullos quos auctos in gallinas venderet et porcellos emeret eosque mutaret in oves et ipsas in boves. Sic que ditata contraheret cum aliquo nobili et sic gloriabatur. Et cum sic gloriaretur et cogitaret cum quanta gloria duceretur ad illum virum super equum dicendo gio gio cepit pede percutere terram quasi pungeret equum calcaribus. Sed tunc lubricatus est pes ejus et cecidit in fossatum effundendo lac. Sic enim non habuit quod se adepturam sperabat.” _Dialogus Creaturarum optime moralizatus_ (ascribed to Nicolaus Pergaminus, supposed to have lived in the thirteenth century). He quotes Elynandus, in _Gestis Romanorum_. First edition, “per Gerardum leeu in oppido Goudensi inceptum; munere Dei finitus est, Anno Domini, 1480.”]
[Footnote 36: Note I, p. 197.]
[Footnote 37: My learned German translator, Dr. Felix Liebrecht, says in a note: “Other books in which our story appears before La Fontaine are _Esopus_, by Burkhard Waldis, ed. H. Kurz, Leipzig, 1862, ii. 177; note to _Des Bettlers Kaufmannschaft_; and Oesterley, in Kirchoff’s _Wendunmuth_, v. 44, note to i. 171, _Vergebene Anschleg reich zuwerden_ (Bibl. des liter. Vereins zu Stuttg. No. 99).”]
[Footnote 38: _Ricerche intorno al Libro di Sindibad._ Milano, 1869.]
[Footnote 39: The Greek text was first published in 1832 by Boissonade, in his _Anecdota Græca_, vol. iv. The title, as given in some MSS. is: Ἱστορία ψυχωφελὴς ἐκ τῆς ἐνδοτέρας τῶν Αἰθιόπων χώρας, τῆς Ἰνδῶν λεγομένης, πρὸς τὴν ἁγίαν πόλιν μετενεχθεῖσα διὰ Ἰωάννου τοῦ μοναχοῦ [other MSS. read, συγγράφεισα παρα τοῦ ἁγιου πατρος ἠμων Ἰωαννου τοῦ Δαμασκηνοῦ], ἀνδρὸς τιμίου καὶ ἐναρέτου μονῆς τοῦ ἁγίου Σάβα· ἐν ᾗ ὁ βίος Βαρλαάμ καὶ Ἰωάσαφ τῶν ἀοιδίμων καὶ μακαρίων. Joannes Monachus occurs as the name of the author in other works of Joannes Damascenus. See Leo Allatius, Prolegomena, p. L., in _Damasceni Opera Omnia_. Ed. Lequien, 1748. Venice.
At the end the author says: Ἐως ὧδε τὸ πέρας τοῦ παρόντος λόγου, ὃν κατὰ δύναμιν ἐμὴν γεγράφηκα, καθὼς ἀκήκοα παρὰ τῶν ἀψευδῶς παραδεδωκότων μοι τιμίων ἀνδρῶν. Γένοιτο δὲ ἠμᾶς, τοὺς ἀναγινώκοντάς τε καὶ ἀκούοντας τὴν ψυχωφελῆ διήγησιν ταύτην, τῆς μερίδος ἀξιωθῆναι τῶν εὐαρεστησάντων τῷ κυρίῳ εὐχαῖς καὶ πρεσβείαις Βαρλαὰμ καὶ Ἰωάσαφ τῶν μακαρίων, περὶ ὧν ἠ διήγησις. See also Wiener, _Jahrbücher_, vol. lxiii. pp. 44-83; vol. lxxii. pp. 274-288; vol. lxxiii. pp. 176-202.]
[Footnote 40: Littré, _Journal des Savants_, 1865, p. 337.]
[Footnote 41: The _Martyrologium Romanum_, whatever its authority may be, states distinctly that the acts of Barlaam and Josaphat were written by Sanctus Joannes Damascenus. “Apud Indos Persis finitimos sanctorum Barlaam et Josaphat, quorum actus mirandos sanctus Joannes Damascenus conscripsit.” See Leonis Allatii Prolegomena, in _Joannis Damasceni Opera_, ed. Lequien, vol. i. p. xxvi. He adds: “Et Gennadius Patriarcha per Concil. Florent. cap. 5: οὐχ ἥττον δὲ καὶ ὁ Ἰωάννης ὁ μέγας τοῦ Δαμασκοῆ ὀφθαλμὸς ἐν τῷ βίῳ Βαρλαὰμ καὶ Ἰωσάφατ τῶν Ἰνδῶν μαρτυρεῖ λέγων.”]
[Footnote 42: The story of the caskets, well known from the _Merchant of Venice_, occurs in _Barlaam and Josaphat_, though it is used there for a different purpose.]
[Footnote 43: Cf. Benfey, _Pantschatantra_, vol. i. p. 80; vol. ii. p. 528; _Les Avadanas, Contes et Apologues indiens_, par Stanislas Julien, i. pp. 132, 191; _Gesta Romanorum_, cap. 168; _Homáyun Nameh_, cap. iv.; Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, pp. 758, 759; Liebrecht, _Jahrbücher für Rom. und Engl. Literatur_, 1860.]
[Footnote 44: _Lalita Vistara_, ed. Calcutt., p. 126.]
[Footnote 45: Ibid., p. 225.]
[Footnote 46: See M. M.’s _Chips from a German Workshop_, Amer. ed., vol. i. p. 207.]
[Footnote 47: Minayeff, _Mélanges Asiatiques_, vi. 5, p. 584, remarks: “According to a legend in the _Mahâvastu_ of Yaśas or Yaśoda (in a less complete form to be found in Schiefner, _Eine tibetische Lebensbeschreibung Sâkyamunis_, p. 247; Hardy, _Manual of Buddhism_, p. 187; Bigandet, _The Life or Legend of Gaudama_, p. 113), a merchant appears in Yosoda’s house, the night before he has the dream which induces him to leave his paternal house, and proclaims to him the true doctrine.”]
[Footnote 48: _Journal of the American Oriental Society_, vol. iii. p. 21.]
[Footnote 49: In some places one might almost believe that Joannes Damascenus did not only hear the story of Buddha, as he says, from the mouth of people who had brought it to him from India, but that he had before him the very text of the _Lalita Vistara_. Thus in the account of the three or four drives we find indeed that the Buddhist canon represents Buddha as seeing on three successive drives, first an old, then a sick, and at last a dying man, while Joannes makes Joasaph meet two men on his first drive, one maimed, the other blind, and an old man, who is nearly dying, on his second drive. So far there is a difference which might best be explained by admitting the account given by Joannes Damascenus himself, viz: that the story was brought from India, and that it was simply told him by worthy and truthful men. But, if it was so, we have here another instance of the tenacity with which oral tradition is able to preserve the most minute points of the story. The old man is described by a long string of adjectives both in Greek and in Sanskrit, and many of them are strangely alike. The Greek γέρων, old, corresponds to the Sanskrit +jîrṇa+; πεπαλαιώμενος, aged, is Sanskrit +vṛddha+; ἐρρικνώμενος τὸ πρόσωπον, shriveled in his face, is +balînicitakâya+, the body covered with wrinkles; παρείμενος τὰς κνήμας, weak in his knees, is +pravedhayamânaḥ sarvângapratyangaiḥ+, trembling in all his limbs; συγκεκυφώς, bent, is +kubja+; πεπολιώμενος, gray, is +palitakeśa+; ἐστερήμενος τοὺς ὀδόντας, toothless, is +khaṇḍadanta+; ἐγκεκομένα λαλῶν, stammering, is +khurakhurâvaśaktakaṇṭha+.]
[Footnote 50: _Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft_, vol. xxiv p. 480.]
[Footnote 51: _Débats_, 1859, 21 and 26 Juillet.]
[Footnote 52: _Die Quellen des Barlaam und Josaphat, in Jahrbuch für roman. und engl. Litteratur_, vol. ii. p. 314, 1860.]
[Footnote 53: _Travels of Fah-hian and Sung-yun, Buddhist Pilgrims from China to India._ (400 A.D. and 518 A.D.) Translated from the Chinese by Samuel Beal. London, Trübner & Co. 1869.]
[Footnote 54: Littré, _Journal des Savants_, 1865, p. 337.]
[Footnote 55: _Pantschatantra; Fünf. Bücher indischer Fabeln, Märchen und Erzählungen. Aus dem Sanskrit übersetzt mit Einleitung und Ammerkungen_, 2 Theile, Leipzig, 1859; and particularly in the first part, the introduction, called “Ueber das Indische Grundwerk, und dessen Ausflüsse, so wie über die Quellen und die Verbreitung des Inhalts derselben.”]
[Footnote 56: Cf. Assemani, _Biblioth. Orient._ iii. 1, 220, and Renan, in the _Journal Asiatique_, Cinq. Série, t. vii. 1856, p. 251.]
IV.
ON THE RESULTS OF THE
SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE.
INAUGURAL LECTURE, DELIVERED IN THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY OF STRASSBURG, MAY 23, 1872.
You will easily understand that, in giving my first lecture in a German
University, I feel some difficulty in mastering and repressing the
feelings which stir within my heart. I wish to speak to you, as it
becomes a teacher, with perfect calmness, thinking of nothing but of the
subject which 1 have to treat. But here where we are gathered together
to-day, in this old free imperial town, in this University, full of the
brightest recollections of Alsatian history and German literature, even
a somewhat gray-headed German professor may be pardoned if, for some
moments at least, he gives free vent to the thoughts that are foremost
in his mind. You will see, at least, that he feels and thinks as you all
feel and think, and that in living away from Germany he has not
forgotten his German language, or lost his German heart.
The times in which we live are great, so great, that we can hardly conceive them great enough; so great that we, old and young, cannot be great and good and brave and hardworking enough, if we do not wish to appear quite unworthy of the times in which our lot has been cast.
We older people have lived through darker times, when to a German, learning was the only refuge, the only comfort, the only pride; times when there was no Germany except in our recollection, and perhaps in our secret hopes. And those who have lived through those sadder days feel all the more deeply the blessings of the present. We have a Germany again, a united, great, and strong country; and I call this a blessing, not only in a material sense, as giving, at last, to our homes a real and lasting security against the inroads of our powerful neighbors, but also in a moral sense, as placing every German under a greater responsibility, as reminding us of our higher duties, as inspiring us with courage and energy for the battle of the mind even more than for the battle of the arm.
That blessing has cost us dear, fearfully dear, dearer than the friends of humanity had hoped; for, proud as we may be of our victories and our victors, let us not deceive ourselves in this, that there is in the history of humanity nothing so inhuman, nothing that makes us so entirely despair of the genius of mankind, nothing that bows us so low to the very dust, as war--unless even war becomes ennobled and sanctified, as it was with us, by the sense of duty, duty towards our country, duty towards our town, duty towards our home, towards our fathers and mothers, our wives and children. Thus, and thus only, can even war become the highest and brightest of sacrifices; thus, and thus only, may we look history straight in the face, and ask, “Who would have acted differently?”
I do not speak here of politics in the ordinary sense of the word,--nay, I gladly leave the groping for the petty causes of the late war to the scrutiny of those foreign statesmen who have eyes only for the infinitesimally small, but cannot, or will not, see the powerful handiwork of Divine justice that reveals itself in the history of nations as in the lives of individuals. I speak of politics in their true and original meaning, as a branch of ethics, as Kant has proved them to be, and from this point of view, politics become a duty from which no one may shrink, be he young or old. Every nation must have a conscience, like every individual; a nation must be able to give to itself an account of the moral justification of a war in which it is to sacrifice everything that is most dear to man. And that is the greatest blessing of the late war, that every German, however deep he may delve in his heart, can say without a qualm or a quiver, “The German people did not wish for war, nor for conquest. We wanted peace and freedom in our internal development. Another nation or rather its rulers, claimed the right to draw for us lines of the Main, if not new frontiers of the Rhine; they wished to prevent the accomplishment of that German union for which our fathers had worked and suffered. The German nation would gladly have waited longer still, if thereby war could have been averted. We knew that the union of Germany was inevitable, and the inevitable is in no hurry. But when the gauntlet was thrown in our face, and, be it remembered, with the acclamation of the whole French nation, then we knew what, under Napoleonic sway, we might expect from our powerful neighbor, and the whole German people rose as one man for defense, not for defiance. The object of our war was peace, and a lasting peace, and therefore now, after peace has been won, after our often menaced, often violated, western frontier has been made secure forever by bastions, such as nature only can build, it becomes our duty to prove to the world that we Germans are the same after as before the war, that military glory has nothing intoxicating to us, that we want peace with all the world.”
You know that the world at large does not prophesy well for us. We are told that the old and simple German manners will go, that the ideal interests of our life will be forgotten, that, as in other countries, so with us, our love for the True and the Beautiful will be replaced by love of pleasure, enjoyment, and vanities. It rests with us with all our might to confound such evil prophesies, and to carry the banner of the German mind higher than ever. Germany can remain great only by what has made her great--by simplicity of manners, contentment, industry, honesty, high ideals, contempt of luxury, of display, and of vain-glory. “_Non propter vitam vivendi perdere causas_,”-- “Not for the sake of life to lose the real objects of life,” this must be our watchword forever, and the _causæ vitæ_, the highest objects of life, are for us to-day, and will, I trust, remain for coming generations the same as they were in the days of Lessing, of Kant, of Schiller, and of Humboldt.
And nowhere, methinks, can this return to the work of peace be better inaugurated than here in this very place, in Strassburg. It was a bold conception to begin the building of the new temple of learning in the very midst of the old German frontier fortress. We are summoned here, as in the days of Nehemiah, when “the builders every one had his sword girded by his side and so builded.” It rests with us, the young as well as the old, that this bold conception shall not fail. And therefore I could not resist the voice of my heart, or gainsay the wish of my friends who believed that I, too, might bring a stone, however small, to the building of this new temple of German science. And here I am among you to try and do my best. Though I have lived long abroad, and pitched my workshop for nearly twenty-five years on English soil, you know that I have always remained German in heart and mind. And this I must say for my English friends, that they esteem a German who remains German far more than one who wishes to pass himself off as English. An Englishman wishes every man to be what he is. I am, and I always have been, a German living and working in England. The work of my life, the edition of the Rig-Veda, the oldest book of the Indian, aye, of the whole Aryan world, could be carried out satisfactorily nowhere but in England, where the rich collections of Oriental MSS., and the easy communications with India, offer to an Oriental scholar advantages such as no other country can offer. That by living and working in England I have made some sacrifices, that I have lost many advantages which the free intercourse with German scholars in a German university so richly offers, no one knows better than myself. Whatever I have seen of life, I know of no life more perfect than that of a German professor in a German school or university. You know what Niebuhr thought of such a life, even though he was a Prussian minister and ambassador at Rome. I must read you some of his words, they sound so honest and sincere: “There is no more grateful, more serene life than that of a German teacher or professor, none that, through the nature of its duties and its work, secures so well the peace of our heart and our conscience. How many times have I deplored it with a sad heart, that I should ever have left that path of life to enter upon a life of trouble which, even at the approach of old age, will probably never give me lasting peace. The office of a schoolmaster, in particular, is one of the most honorable, and despite of all the evils which now and then disturb its ideal beauty, it is for a truly noble heart the happiest path of life. It was the path which I had once chosen for myself, and how I wish I had been allowed to follow it!”
I could quote to you the words of another Prussian ambassador, Bunsen. He, too, often complained with sadness that he had missed his true path in life. He too, would gladly have exchanged the noisy hotel of the ambassador for the quiet home of a German professor.
From my earliest youth it has been the goal of my life to act as a professor in a German university, and if this dream of my youth was not to be fulfilled in its entirety, I feel all the more grateful that, through the kindness of my friends and German colleagues, I have been allowed, at least once in my life, to act during the present spring and summer as a real German professor in a German university.
This was in my heart, and I wanted to say it, in order that you might know with what purpose I have come, and with what real joy I begin the work which has brought us together to-day.
I shall lecture during the present term on “The Results of the Science of Language;” but you will easily understand that to sum up in one course of lectures the results of researches which have been carried on with unflagging industry by three generations of scholars, would be a sheer impossibility. Besides, a mere detailing of results, though it is possible, is hardly calculated to subserve the real objects of academic teaching. You would not be satisfied with mere results: you want to know and to understand the method by which they have been obtained. You want to follow step by step that glorious progress of discovery which has led us to where we stand now. What is the use of knowing the Pythagorean problem, if we cannot prove it? What would be the use of knowing that the French _larme_ is the same as the German _Zähre_ (tear), if we could not with mathematical exactness trace every step by which these two words have diverged till they became what they are?
The results of the Science of Language are enormous. There is no sphere of intellectual activity which has not felt more or less the influence of this new science. Nor is this to be wondered at. Language is the organ of all knowledge, and though we flatter ourselves that we are the lords of language, that we use it as a useful tool, and no more, believe me there are but few who can maintain their complete independence with respect to language, few who can say of her, Ἔχω Λαΐδα, οὐκ ἔχομαι. To know language historically and genetically, to be able more particularly to follow up the growth of our technical terms to their very roots, this is in every science the best means to keep up a living connection between the past and the present, the only way to make us feel the ground on which we stand.
Let us begin with what is nearest to us, _Philology_. Its whole character has been changed as if by magic. The two classical languages, Greek and Latin, which looked as if they had fallen from the sky or been found behind the hedge, have now recovered their title-deeds, and have taken their legitimate place in that old and noble family which we call the Indo-European, the Indo-Germanic, or by a shorter, if not a better name, the Aryan. In this way not only have their antecedents been cleared up, but their mutual relationship, too, has for the first time been placed in its proper light. The idea that Latin was derived from Greek, an idea excusable in scholars of the Scipionic period, or that Latin was a language made up of Italic, Greek, and Pelasgic elements, a view that had maintained itself to the time of Niebuhr, all this has now been shown to be a physical impossibility. Greek and Latin stand together on terms of perfect equality; they are sisters, like French and Italian:--
“Facies non omnibus una, Nec diversa tamen qualem decet esse sororum.”
If it could be a scientific question which of the two is the elder sister, Greek or Latin, Latin, I believe, could produce better claims of seniority than Greek. Now, as in the modern history of language we are able to explain many things that are obscure in French and Italian by calling in the Provençal, the Spanish, the Portuguese, nay, even the Wallachian and the Churwälsch, we can do the same in the ancient history of language, and get light for many things which are difficult and unintelligible in Greek and Latin, by consulting Sanskrit, Zend, Gothic, Irish, and even Old Bulgarian. We can hardly form an idea of the surprise which was occasioned among the scholars of Europe by the discovery of the Aryan family of languages, reaching with its branches from the Himalayan mountains to the Pyrenees. Not that scholars of any eminence believed at the end of the last century that Greek and Latin were derived from Hebrew: that prejudice had been disposed of once for all, in Germany at least, by Leibniz. But after that theory had been given up, no new truly scientific theory had taken its place. The languages of the world, with the exception of the Semitic, the family type of which was not to be mistaken, lay scattered about as _disjecta membra poëtæ_, and no one thought of uniting them again into one organic whole. It was the discovery of Sanskrit which led to the reunion of the Aryan languages, and if Sanskrit had taught us nothing else, this alone would establish its claim to a place among the academic sciences of our century.
When Greek and Latin had once been restored to their true place in the natural system of the Aryan languages, their special treatment, too, became necessarily a different one. In grammar, for instance, scholars were no longer satisfied to give forms and rules, and to place what was irregular by the side of what was regular. They wished to know the reasons of the rules as well as of the exceptions; they asked why the forms were such as they were, and not otherwise; they required not only a logical, but also an historical foundation of grammar. People asked themselves for the first time, why so small a change as _mensa_ and _mensæ_ could express the difference between one and many tables; why a single letter, like _r_, could possess the charm of changing I love, _amo_, into I am loved, _amor_. Instead of indulging in general speculations on the logic of grammar, the riddles of grammar received their solution from a study of the historical development of language. For every language there was to be a historical grammar, and in this way a revolution was produced in philological studies to be compared only to the revolution produced in chemistry by the discoveries of Lavoisier, or in geology by the theories of Lyell. For instance, instead of attempting an explanation why the genitive singular and the ablative plural of the first and second declensions could express rest in a place--_Romæ_, at Rome; _Tarenti_, at Tarentum; _Athenis_, at Athens; _Gabiis_, at Gabii--one glance at the past history of these languages showed that these so-called genitives were not and never had been genitives, but corresponded to the old locatives in _i_ and _su_ in Sanskrit. No doubt, a pupil can be made to learn anything that stands in a grammar; but I do not believe that it can conduce to a sound development of his intellectual powers if he first learns at school the real meaning of the genitive and ablative, and then has to accept on trust that, somehow or other, the same cases may express rest in a place. A well-known English divine, opposed to reform in spelling, as in everything else, once declared that the fearful orthography of English formed the best psychological foundation of English orthodoxy, because a child that had once been brought to believe that t-h-r-o-u-g-h sounded like “through,” t-h-o-u-g-h like “though,” r-o-u-g-h like “rough,” would afterwards believe anything. Be that as it may, I do not consider that grammatical rules like those just quoted on the genitive and ablative, assuming the power of the locative, are likely to strengthen the reasoning powers of any schoolboy.
Even more pernicious to the growth of sound ideas was the study of etymology, as formerly carried on in schools and universities. Everything here was left to chance or to authority, and it was not unusual that two or three etymologies of the same word had to be learnt, as if the same word might have had more than one parent. Yet it is many years since Otfried Müller told classical scholars that they must either surrender the whole subject of the historical growth of language, etymology, and grammatical morphology, or trust in these matters entirely to the guidance of Comparative Philology. As a student at Leipzig, I lived to see old Gottfried Hermann quoting the paradigms of Sanskrit grammar in one of his last _Programs_; and Boeckh declared in 1850, at the eleventh meeting of German philologists, that, in the present state of the science of language, the grammar of the classical languages cannot dispense with the coöperation of comparative grammar. And yet there are scholars even now who would exclude the Science of Language from schools and universities. What gigantic steps truly scientific etymology has made in Greek and Latin, every scholar may see in the excellent works of Curtius and Corssen. The essential difference between the old and the new systems consists here, too, in this, that while formerly people were satisfied if they knew, or imagined they knew, from what source a certain word was derived, little value is now attached to the mere etymology of a word, unless at the same time it is possible to account, according to fixed phonetic laws, for all the changes which a word has undergone in its passage through Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. How far this conscientiousness may be carried is shown by the fact that the best comparative philologists decline to admit, on phonetic grounds, the identity of such words as the Latin _Deus_, and the Greek Θεός, although the strongest internal arguments may be urged in favor of the identity of these words.[1]
Let us go on to _Mythology_. If mythology is an old dialect, outliving itself, and, on the strength of its sacred character, carried on to a new period of language, it is easy to perceive that the historical method of the Science of Language would naturally lead here to most important results. Take only the one fact, which no one at present would dare to question, that the name of the highest deity among the Greeks and Romans, Ζεύς, and _Jupiter_, is the same as the Vedic +Dyaus+, the sky, and the old German _Zio_, Old Norse _Tyr_, whose name survives in the modern names of _Dienstag_ or _Tuesday_. Does not this one word prove the union of those ancient races? Does it not show us, at the earliest dawn of history, the fathers of the Aryan race, the fathers of our own race, gathered together in the great temple of nature, like brothers of the same house, and looking up in adoration to the sky as the emblem of what they yearned for, a father and a God. Nay, can we not hear in that old name of _Jupiter_, _i.e._, Heaven-Father, the true key-note which still sounds on in our own prayer, “Our Father which art in heaven,” and which imparts to these words their deepest tone, and their fullest import? By an accurate study of these words we are able to draw the bonds of language and belief even more closely together. You know that the nom. sing. of Ζεύς has the acute, and so has the nom. sing. of +Dyaus+; but the vocative of Ζεύς has the circumflex, and so has likewise the vocative of +Dyaus+ in the Veda.[2] Formerly the accent might have been considered as something late, artificial, and purely grammatical: the Science of Language has shown that it is as old as language itself, and it has rightly called it the very soul of words. Thus even in these faint pulsations of language, in the changes of accent in Greek and Sanskrit, may we feel the common blood that runs in the veins of the old Aryan dialects.
History, too, particularly the most ancient history, has received new light and life from a comparative study of languages. Nations and languages were in ancient times almost synonymous, and what constitutes the ideal unity of a nation lies far more in the intellectual factors, in religion and language, than in common descent and common blood. But for that very reason we must here be most cautious. It is but too easily forgotten that if we speak of Aryan and Semitic families, the ground of classification is language, and language only. There are Aryan and Semitic languages, but it is against all rules of logic to speak, without an expressed or implied qualification, of an Aryan race, of Aryan blood, of Aryan skulls, and to attempt ethnological classification on purely linguistic grounds. These two sciences, the Science of Language and the Science of Man, cannot, at least for the present, be kept too much asunder; and many misunderstandings, many controversies, would have been avoided, if scholars had not attempted to draw conclusions from language to blood, or from blood to language. When each of these sciences shall have carried out independently its own classification of men and of languages, then, and then only, will it be time to compare their results; but even then, I must repeat, what I have said many times before, it would be as wrong to speak of Aryan blood as of dolichocephalic grammar.[3]
We have all accustomed ourselves to look for the cradle of the Aryan languages in Asia, and to imagine these dialects flowing like streams from the centre of Asia to the South, the West, and the North. I must confess that Professor Benfey’s protest against this theory seems to me very opportune, and his arguments in favor of a more northern, if not European, origin of the whole Aryan family of speech, deserve, at all events, far more attention than they have hitherto received.
For the same reasons it seems to me at least a premature undertaking to use the greater or smaller number of coincidences between two or more of the Aryan languages as arguments in support of an earlier or later separation of the people who spoke them. First of all, there are few points on which the opinions of competent judges differ more decidedly than when the exact degrees of relationship between the single Aryan languages have to be settled. There is agreement on one point only, viz., that Sanskrit and Zend are more closely united than any other languages. But though on this point there can hardly be any doubt, no satisfactory explanation of this extraordinary agreement has as yet been given. In fact, it has been doubted whether what I called the “Southern Division” of the Aryan family could properly be called a division at all, as it consisted only of varieties of one and the same type of Aryan speech. As soon as we go beyond Sanskrit and Zend, the best authorities are found to be in open conflict. Bopp maintained that the Slavonic languages were most closely allied to Sanskrit, an opinion shared by Pott. Grimm, on the contrary, maintained a closer relationship between Slavonic and German. In this view he was supported by Lottner, Schleicher, and others, while Bopp to the last opposed it. After this, Schleicher (as, before him, Newman in England) endeavored to prove a closer contact between Celtic and Latin, and, accepting Greek as most closely united with Latin, he proceeded to establish a Southwestern European division, consisting of Celtic, Latin, and Greek, and running parallel with the Northwestern division, consisting of Teutonic and Slavonic; or, according to Ebel, of Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic.
But while these scholars classed Greek with Latin, others, such as Grassmann and Sonne, pointed out striking peculiarities which Greek shares with Sanskrit, and with Sanskrit only, as, for instance, the augment, the voiceless aspirates, the _alpha privativum_ (a, not an), the +mâ+ and μή _prohibitivum_, the +tara+ and τερο as the suffix of the comparative, and some others. A most decided divergence of opinion manifested itself as touching the real relation of Greek and Latin. While some regarded these languages not only as sisters, but as twins, others were not inclined to concede to them any closer relationship than that which unites all the members of the Aryan family. While this conflict of opinions lasts (and they are not mere assertions, but opinions supported by arguments), it is clear that it would be premature to establish any historical conclusions, such, for instance, as that the Slaves remained longer united with the Indians and Persians than the Greeks, Romans, Germans, and Celts; or, if we follow Professor Sonne, that the Greeks remained longer united with the Indians than the other Aryan nations. I must confess that I doubt whether the whole problem admits of a scientific solution. If in a large family of languages we discover closer coincidences between some languages than between others, this is no more than we should expect, according to the working of what I call the Dialectic Process. All these languages sprang up and grew and diverged, before they were finally separated; some retained one form, others another, so that even the apparently most distant members of the same family might, on certain points, preserve relics in common which were lost in all the other dialects, and _vice versâ_. No two languages, not even Lithuanian and Old Slavonic, are so closely united as Sanskrit and Zend, which share together even technical terms, connected with a complicated sacrificial ceremonial. Yet there are words occurring in Zend, and absent in Sanskrit, which crop up again sometimes in Greek, sometimes in Latin, sometimes in German.[4] As soon as we attempt to draw from such coincidences and divergences historical conclusions as to the earlier or later separation of the nations who developed these languages, we fall into contradictions like those which I pointed out just now between Bopp, Grimm, Schleicher, Ebel, Grassmann, Sonne, and others. Much depends, in all scientific researches, on seeing that the question is properly put. To me the question, whether the closer relations between certain independent dialects furnish evidence as to the successive times of their separation, seems, by its very nature, fruitless. Nor have the answers been at all satisfactory. After a number of coincidences between the various members of the Aryan family have been carefully collected, we know no more in the end than what we knew at first, viz., that all the Aryan dialects are closely connected with each other. We know--
1. That Slavonic is most closely united with German (Grimm, Schleicher);
2. That German is most closely united with Celtic (Ebel, Lottner);
3. That Celtic is most closely united with Latin (Newman, Schleicher);
4. That Latin is most closely united with Greek (Mommsen, Curtius);
5. That Greek is most closely united with Sanskrit (Grassmann, Sonne, Kern);
6. That Sanskrit is most closely united with Zend (Burnouf).
Let a mathematician draw out the result, and it will be seen that we know in the end no more than we knew at the beginning. Far be it for me to use a mere trick in arguing, and to say that none of these conclusions can be right, because each is contradicted by others. Quite the contrary. I admit that there is some truth in every one of these conclusions, and I maintain, for that very reason, that the only way to reconcile them all is to admit that the single dialects of the Aryan family did not break off in regular succession, but that, after a long-continued community, they separated slowly, and, in some cases, contemporaneously, from their family-circle, till they established at last, under varying circumstances, their complete national independence. This seems to me all that at present one may say with a good conscience, and what is in keeping with the law of development in all dialects.
If now we turn away from the purely philological results of the Science of Language, in order to glance at the advantages which other sciences have derived from it, we shall find that they consist mostly in the light that has been shed on obscure words and old customs. This advantage is greater than, at first sight, it might seem to be. Every word has its history, and the beginning of this history, which is brought to light by etymology, leads us back far beyond its first historical appearance. Every word, as we know, had originally a predicative meaning, and that predicative meaning differs often very considerably from the later traditional or technical meaning. This predicative meaning, however, being the most original meaning of the word, allows us an insight into the most primitive ideas of a nation.
Let us take an instance from jurisprudence. _Pœna_, in classical Latin, means simply punishment, particularly what is either paid or suffered in order to atone for an injury. (_Si injuriam faxit alteri, viginti quinque æris pœnœ sunto, fragm. xii. tab._) The word agrees so remarkably, both in form and meaning, with the Greek ποινή, that Mommsen assigned to it a place in what he calls Græco-Italic ideas.[5] We might suppose, therefore, that the ancient Italians took _pœna_ originally in the sense of ransom, simply as a civil act, by which he who had inflicted injury on another was, as far as he and the injured person were concerned, restored _in integrum_. The etymology of the word, however, leads us back into a far more distant past, and shows us that when the word _pœna_ was first framed, punishment was conceived from a higher moral and religious point of view, as a purification from sin; for _pœna_, as first shown by Professor Pott (and what has he not been the first to show?) is closely connected with the root pu, to purify. Thus we read in the “Atharva-veda,” xix. 33, 3:--
“Tvám bhû́mim átyeshi ójasâ Tvám védyâm sîdasi cấrur adhvaré Tvấm pavítram ṛshayo bhárantas Tvám puníhi duritấni asmát.”
“Thou, O God of Fire, goest mightily across the earth; thou sittest brilliantly on the altar at the sacrifice. The prophets carry Thee as the Purifier; purify us from all misdeeds.”
From this root +pu+ we have, in Latin, _pūrus_, and _pŭtus_, as in _argentum purum putum_, fine silver, or in _purus putus est ipse_, Plaut. Ps. 4, 2, 31. From it we also have the verb _purgare_, for _purigare_, to purge, used particularly with reference to purification from crime by means of religious observances. If this transition from the idea of purging to that of punishing should seem strange, we have only to think of _castigare_, meaning originally to purify, but afterwards in such expressions as _verbis et verberibus castigare_, to chide and to chasten.
I cannot convince myself that the Latin _crimen_ has anything in common with κρίνειν. The Greek κρίνειν is no doubt connected with Latin _cer-no_, from which _cribrum_, sieve. It means to separate, to sift, so that κρῖμα may well signify a judgment, but not a crime or misdeed. _Crīmen_, as every scholar knows or ought to know, meant originally an accusation, not a crime, and, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, has nothing whatever in common with _discrīmen_, which means what separates two things, a difference, a critical point. _In crimen venire_ means to get into bad repute, to be calumniated; _in discrimine esse_ means to be in a critical and dangerous position.
It is one of the fundamental laws of etymology that in tracing words back to their roots, we have to show that their primary, not their secondary meanings agree with the meaning of the root. Therefore, even if _crīmen_ had assumed in later times the meaning of judgment, yet its derivation from the Greek κρίνειν would have to be rejected, because it would explain the secondary only, but not the primary meaning of _crīmen_. Nothing is clearer than the historical development of the meanings of _crīmen_, beginning with accusation, and ending with guilt.
I believe I have proved that _crīmen_ is really and truly the same word as the German _Verleumdung_, calumny.[6] _Verleumdung_ comes from _Leumund_, the Old High-German _hliumunt_, and this _hliumunt_ is the exact representative of the Vedic +śromata+, derived from the root +śru+, to hear, _cluere_, and signifying good report, glory, the Greek κλέος, the Old High-German _hruom_. The German word _Leumund_ can be used in a good and a bad sense, as good or evil report, while the Latin _crī-men_, for _croe-men_ (like _liber_ for _loeber_), is used only _in malam partem_. It meant originally what is heard, report, _on dit_, gossip, accusation; lastly, the object of an accusation, a crime, but never judgment, in the technical sense of the word.
The only important objection that could be raised against tracing _crīmen_ back to the root +śru+, is that this root has in the Northwestern branch of the Aryan family assumed the form +clu+, instead of +cru+, as in κλέος, _cliens_, _gloria_, O.Sl. _slovo_, A.S. _hlûd_, loud, _inclutus_. I myself hesitated for a long time on account of this phonetic difficulty, nor do I think it is quite removed by the fact that Bopp (“Comp. Gr.” § 20) identified the German _scrir-u-mês_, we cry (instead of _scriw-u-mês_), with Sk. +śrâv-ayâ-mas+, we make hear; nor by the _r_ in _in-cre-p-are_, in κράζω, as compared with κλάζω, nor even by the _r_ in ἀ-κρο-ά-ομαι, which Curtius seems inclined to derive from +śru+. The question is whether this phonetic difficulty is such as to force us to surrender the common origin of +śromata+, _hliumunt_, and _crīmen_; but even if this should be the case, the derivation of _crīmen_ from _cerno_ or κρίνειν would remain as impossible as ever.
This will give you an idea in what manner the Science of Language can open before our eyes a period in the history of law, customs, and manners, which hitherto was either entirely closed, or reached only by devious paths. Formerly, for instance, it was supposed that the Latin word _lex_, law, was connected with the Greek λόγος. This is wrong, for λόγος never means law in the sense in which _lex_ does. λόγος, from λέγειν, to collect, to gather, signifies, like κατάλογος, a gathering, a collection, an ordering, be it of words or thoughts. The idea that there is a λόγος, an order or law, for instance, in nature, is not classical, but purely modern. It is not improbable that _lex_ is connected with the English word _law_, only not by way of the Norman _loi_. English _law_ is A.S. _lagu_ (as _saw_ corresponds both to the German _Sage_ and _Säge_), and it meant originally what was laid down or settled, with exactly the same conception as the German _Gesetz_. It has been attempted to derive the Latin _lex_, too, from the same root, though there is this difficulty, that the root of _liegen_ and _legen_ does not elsewhere occur in Latin. The mere disappearance of the aspiration would be no serious obstacle. If, however, the Latin _lex_ cannot be derived from that root, we must, with Corssen, refer it to the same cluster of words to which _ligare_, to bind, _obligatio_, binding, and the Oscan ablative _lig-ud_ belong, and assign to it the original meaning of _bond_. On no account can it be derived from _legere_, to read, as if it meant a bill first read before the people, and afterwards receiving legal sanction by their approval.
From these considerations we gain at least this negative result, that, before their separation, the Aryan languages had no settled word for law; and even such negative results have their importance. The Sanskrit word for law is +dharma+, derived from +dhar+, to hold fast. The Greek word is νόμος, derived from νέμειν, to dispense, from which _Nemesis_, the dispensing deity, and perhaps even _Numa_, the name of the fabulous king and lawgiver of Rome.
Other words might easily be added which, by the disclosure of their original meaning, give us interesting hints as to the development of legal conceptions and customs, such as marriage, inheritance, ordeals, and the like. But it is time to cast a glance at theology, which, more even than jurisprudence, has experienced the influence of the Science of Language. What was said with regard to mythology, applies with equal force to theology. Here, too, words harden, and remain unchanged longer even than in other spheres of intellectual life; nay, their influence often becomes greater the more they harden, and the more their original meaning is forgotten. Here it is most important that an intelligent theologian should be able to follow up the historical development of the _termini technici_ and _sacrosancti_ of his science. Not only words like _priest_, _bishop_, _sacrament_, or _testament_, have to be correctly apprehended in that meaning which they had in the first century, but expressions like λόγος, πνεῦμα ἅγιον, δικαιοσύνη have to be traced historically to the beginnings of Christianity, and beyond, if we wish to gain a conception of their full purport.
In addition to this, the Philosophy of Religion, which must always form the true foundation of theological science, owes it to the Science of Language that the deepest germs of the consciousness of God among the different nations of the world have for the first time been laid open. We know now with perfect certainty that the names, that is, the most original conceptions, of the Deity among the Aryan nations, are as widely removed from coarse fetichism as from abstract idealism. The Aryans, as far as the annals of their language allow us to see, recognized the presence of the Divine in the bright and sunny aspects of nature, and they, therefore, called the blue sky, the fertile earth, the genial fire, the bright day, the golden dawn their +Devas+, that is, their bright ones. The same word, +Deva+ in Sanskrit, _Deus_ in Latin, remained unchanged in all their prayers, their rites, their superstitions, their philosophies, and even to-day it rises up to heaven from thousands of churches and cathedrals,--a word which, before there were Brahmans or Germans, had been framed in the dark workshop of the Aryan mind.
That the natural sciences, too, should have felt the electric shock of our new science is not surprising, considering that man is the crown of nature, the apex to which all other forces of nature point and tend. But that which makes man man, is language. _Homo animal rationale, quia orationale_, as Hobbes said. Buffon called the plant a sleeping animal; living philosophers speak of the animal as a dumb man. Both, however, forget that the plant would cease to be a plant if it awoke, and that the brute would cease to be a brute the moment it began to speak. There is, no doubt, in language a transition from the material to the spiritual: the raw material of language belongs to nature, but the form of language, that which really makes language, belongs to the spirit. Were it possible to trace human language _directly_ back to natural sounds, to interjections or imitations, the question whether the Science of Language belongs to the sphere of the natural or the historical sciences would at once be solved. But I doubt whether this crude view of the origin of language counts one single supporter in Germany. With one foot language stands, no doubt, in the realm of nature, but with the other in the realm of the spirit. Some years ago, when I thought it necessary to bring out as clearly as possible the much neglected natural element in language, I tried to explain in what sense the Science of Language had a right to be called the last and the highest of the natural sciences. But I need hardly say that I did not lose sight, therefore, of the intellectual and historical character of language; and I may here express my conviction that the Science of Language will yet enable us to withstand the extreme theories of the evolutionists, and to draw a hard and fast line between spirit and matter, between man and brute.
This short survey must suffice to show you how omnipresent the Science of Language has become in all spheres of human knowledge, and how far its limits have been extended, so that it often seems impossible for one man to embrace the whole of its vast domain. From this I wish, in conclusion, to draw some necessary advice.
Whoever devotes himself to the study of so comprehensive a science must try never to lose sight of two virtues: conscientiousness and modesty. The older we grow, the more we feel the limits of human knowledge. “Good care is taken,” as Goethe said, “that trees should not grow into the sky.” Every one of us can make himself real master of a small field of knowledge only, and what we gain in extent, we inevitably lose in depth. It was impossible that Bopp should know Sanskrit like Colebrooke, Zend like Burnouf, Greek like Hermann, Latin like Lachmann, German like Grimm, Slavonic like Miklosich, Celtic like Zeuss. That drawback lies in the nature of all comparative studies. But it follows by no means that, as the French proverb says, _qui trop embrasse, mal étreint_. Bopp’s “Comparative Grammar” will always mark an epoch in linguistic studies, and no one has accused the old master of superficiality. There are, in fact, two kinds of knowledge; the one which we take in as real nourishment, which we convert _in succum et sanguinem_, which is always present, which we can never lose; the other which, if I may say so, we put into our pockets, in order to find it there whenever it is wanted. For comparative studies the second kind of knowledge is as important as the first, but in order to use it properly, the greatest conscientiousness is required. Not only ought we, whenever we have to use it, to go back to the original sources, to accept nothing on trust, to quote nothing at second-hand, and to verify every single point before we rely on it for comparative purposes, but, even after we have done everything to guard against error, we ought to proceed with the greatest caution and modesty. I consider, for instance, that an accurate knowledge of Sanskrit is a _conditio sine quâ non_ in the study of Comparative Philology. According to my conviction, though I know it is not shared by others, Sanskrit must forever remain the central point of our studies. But it is clearly impossible for us, while engaged in a scholarlike study of Sanskrit, to follow at the same time the gigantic strides of Latin, Greek, German, Slavonic, and Celtic philology. Here we must learn to be satisfied with what is possible, and apply for advice whenever we want it, to those who are masters in these different departments of philology. Much has of late been said of the antagonism between comparative and classical philology. To me it seems that these two depend so much on each other for help and advice that their representatives ought to be united by the closest ties of fellowship. We must work on side by side, and accept counsel as readily as we give it. Without the help of Comparative Philology, for instance, Greek scholars would never have arrived at a correct understanding of the Digamma--nay, a freer intercourse with his colleague, Bopp, would have preserved Bekker from several mistakes in his restoration of the Digamma in Homer. Latin scholars would have felt far more hesitation in introducing the old _d_ of the ablative in Plautus, if the analogy of Sanskrit had not so clearly proved its legitimacy.
On the other hand, we, comparative philologists, should readily ask and gladly accept the advice and help of our classical colleagues. Without their guidance, we can never advance securely; their warnings are to us of the greatest advantage, their approval our best reward. We are often too bold, we do not see all the difficulties that stand in the way of our speculations, we are too apt to forget that, in addition to its general Aryan character, every language has its peculiar genius. Let us all be on our guard against omniscience and infallibility. Only through a frank, honest, and truly brotherly coöperation can we hope for a true advancement of knowledge. We all want the same thing; we all are _etymologists_--that is, lovers of truth. For this, before all things, the spirit of truth, which is the living spirit of all science, must dwell within us. Whoever cannot yield to the voice of truth, whoever cannot say, “I was wrong,” knows little as yet of the true spirit of science.
Allow me, in conclusion, to recall to your remembrance another passage from Niebuhr. He belongs to the good old race of German scholars. “Above all things,” he writes, “we must in all scientific pursuits preserve our truthfulness so pure that we thoroughly eschew every false appearance; that we represent not even the smallest thing as certain of which we are not completely convinced; that if we have to propose a conjecture, we spare no effort in representing the exact degree of its probability. If we do not ourselves, when it is possible, indicate our errors, even such as no one else is likely to discover; if, in laying down our pen, we cannot say in the sight of God, ‘Upon strict examination, I have knowingly written nothing that is not true;’ and if, without deceiving either ourselves or others, we have not presented even our most odious opponents in such a light only that we could justify it upon our death-beds--if we cannot do this, study and literature serve only to make us unrighteous and sinful.”
Few, I fear, could add, with Niebuhr: “In this I am convinced that I do not require from others anything of which a higher spirit, if He could read my soul, could convict me of having done the contrary.” But all of us, young as well as old, should keep these words before our eyes and in our hearts. Thus, and thus only, will our studies not miss their highest goal: thus, and thus only, may we hope to become true etymologists--_i.e._, true lovers, seekers, and, I trust, finders of truth.
NOTES.
NOTE A.
Θεός AND DEUS.
That Greek θ does not legitimately represent a Sanskrit, Latin, Slavonic, and Celtic _d_ is a fact that ought never to have been overlooked by comparative philologists, and nothing could be more useful than the strong protest entered by Windischmann, Schleicher, Curtius, and others, against the favorite identification of Sk. +deva+, _deus_, and θεός. Considering it as one of the first duties, in all etymological researches, that we should pay implicit obedience to phonetic laws, I have never, so far as I remember, quoted θεός as identical with _deus_, together with the other derivatives of the root +div+, such as +Dyaus+, Ζεύς, _Jupiter_, +deva+, Lith. _deva-s_, Irish _día_.
But with all due respect for phonetic laws, I have never in my own heart doubted that θεός belonged to the same cluster of words which the early Aryans employed to express the brightness of the sky and of the day, and which helped them to utter their first conception of a god of the bright sky (+Dyaus+), of bright beings in heaven, as opposed to the powers of night and darkness and winter (+deva+), and, lastly, of deity in the abstract.[7] I have never become an atheist; and though I did not undervalue the powerful arguments advanced against the identity of _deus_ and θεός, I thought that other arguments also possessed their value, and could not be ignored with impunity. If, with our eyes shut, we submit to the dictates of phonetic laws, we are forced to believe that while the Greeks shared with the Hindus, the Italians, and Germans the name for the bright god of the sky Zeus, +Dyaus+, _Jovis_, _Zio_, and while they again shared with them such derivatives as δῖος, heavenly, Sk. +divyas+, they threw away the intermediate old Aryan word for god, +deva+, _deus_, and formed a new one from a different root, but agreeing with the word which they had rejected in all letters but one. I suppose that even the strongest supporters of the atheistic theory would have accepted δεός, if it existed in Greek, as a correlative of +deva+ and _deus_; and I ask, would it not be an almost incredible coincidence, if the Greeks, after giving up the common Aryan word, which would have been δοιϝός or δειϝός or δεϝός, had coined a new word for god from a different root, yet coming so near to δεϝός as θεϝός? These internal difficulties seem to me nearly as great as the external: at all events it would not be right to attempt to extenuate either.
Now I think that, though much has been said against θεός for δεϝός, something may also be said in support of δεϝός assuming the form of θεός. Curtius is quite right in repelling all arguments derived from Sk. +duhitar+ = θυγάτηρ, or Sk. +dvâr+ = θύρ-α; but I think he does not do full justice to the argument derived from φιάλη and φιαρός. The Greek φιάλη has been explained as originally πιϝάλη, the lost digamma causing the aspiration of the initial π. Curtius says: “This etymology of φιάλη is wrecked on the fact that in Homer the word does not mean a vessel for drinking, but a kind of kettle.” That is true, but the fact remains that in later Greek φιάλη means a drinking cup. Thus Pindar (“Isthm.,” v. 58) says:--
Ἄνδωκε δ’ αὐτῷ φέρτατος οἰνοδόκον φιάλαν χρυσῷ πεφρικυῖαν Τελαμών,
which refers clearly to a golden goblet, and not a kettle. Besides, we have an exactly analogous case in the Sk. +pâtram+. This, too, is clearly derived from +pâ+, to drink, but it is used far more frequently in the sense of vessel in general, and its etymological meaning vanishes altogether when it comes to mean a vessel for something, a fit person. I see no etymology for φιάλη, except πιϝάλη, a drinking vessel.
Secondly, as to φιαρός, which is supposed to be the same as πιαρός, and to represent the Sanskrit +pîvaras+, fat, Curtius says that it occurs in Alexandrian poets only, that it there means bright, resplendent, and is used as an adjective of the dawn, while πιαρός means fat, and fat only. Against this I venture to remark, first, that there are passages where φιαρός means sleek, as in Theocr. ii. 21, φιαρωτέρα ὄμφακος ὠμᾶς, said of a young plump girl, who in Sanskrit would be called +pîvarî+; secondly, that while πῖαρ is used for cream, φιαρός is used as an adjective of cream; and, thirdly, that the application of φιαρός to the dawn is hardly surprising, if we remember the change of meaning in λιπαρός in Greek, and the application in the Veda of such words as +ghṛta pratîka+, to the dawn. Lastly, as in φιάλη, I see no etymology for φιαρός, except πιϝαρός.
I think it is but fair therefore to admit that θεός for δεϝός would find some support by the analogy of φιάλη for πιϝάλη, and of φιαρός for πιϝαρός. There still remain difficulties enough to make us cautious in asserting the identity of θεός and _deus_; but in forming our own opinion these difficulties should be weighed impartially against the internal difficulties involved in placing θεός as a totally independent word, by the side of +deva+ and _deus_. And, as in φιάλη and φιαρός, may we not say of θεός also that there is no etymology for it, if we separate it from Ζεύς and δῖος, from +Dyaus+ and +divyas+? Curtius himself rejects Plato’s and Schleicher’s derivation of θεός from θέω, to run: likewise C. Hoffmann’s from +dhava+, man; likewise Bühler’s from a root +dhi+, to think or to shine; likewise that of Herodotus and A. Göbel from θες, a secondary form of θε, to settle. Ascoli’s analysis is highly sagacious, but it is too artificial. Ascoli[8] identifies θεός, not with +deva+, but with _divyá-s_. +Divyás+ becoming διϝεός (like +satya+, ἐτεός), the accent on the last syllable would produce the change to δϝεό-ς, ϝ would cause aspiration in the preceding consonant and then disappear, leaving θεός = +divyás+. All these changes are just possible phonetically, but, as Curtius observes, the point for which the theists contend is not gained, for we should still have to admit that the Greeks lost the common word for god, +deva+ and _deus_, and that they alone replaced it by a derivative +divya+, meaning heavenly, not bright.
Curtius himself seems in favor of deriving θεός from θες, to implore, which we have in θεσ-σάμενοι, θέσσαντο, πολύθεστος, etc. Θεός, taken as a passive derivative, might, he thinks, have the meaning of ἀρητός in πολυάρητος, and mean the implored being. I cannot think that this is a satisfactory derivation. It might be defended phonetically and etymologically, though I cannot think of any analogous passive derivatives of a root ending in _s_. Where it fails to carry conviction is in leaving unexplained the loss of the common Aryan word for deity, and in putting in its place a name that savors of very modern thought.
I think the strongest argument against the supposed aspirating power of medial _v_, and its subsequent disappearance, lies in the fact that there are so many words having medial _v_, which show no trace of this phonetic process (Curtius, p. 507). On the other hand, it should be borne in mind, that the Greeks might have felt a natural objection to the forms which would have rendered +deva+ with real exactness, I mean δοιός or δέος, the former conveying the meaning of double, the latter of fear. A mere wish to keep the name for god distinct from these words might have produced the phonetic anomaly of which we complain; and, after all, though I do not like to use that excuse, there are exceptions to phonetic laws. No one can explain how ὄγδοος was derived from ὀκτώ or ἕβδομος from ἑπτά, yet the internal evidence is too strong to be shaken by phonetic objections. In the case of θεός and _deus_ the internal evidence seems to me nearly as strong as in ὄγδοος and ἕβδομος, and though unwilling to give a final verdict, I think the question of the loss in Greek of the Aryan word for god and its replacement by another word nearly identical in form, but totally distinct in origin, should be left for the present an open question in Comparative Philology.
NOTE B.
THE VOCATIVE OF +DYAÚS+ AND Ζεύς.
The vocative of +Dyaus+, having the circumflex, is one of those linguistic gems which one finds now and then in the Rig-Veda, and which by right ought to have a place of honor in a Museum of Antiquities. It is a unique form. It occurs but once in the Rig-Veda, never again, as far as we know at present, in the whole of Vedic literature, and yet it is exactly that form which a student of language would expect who is familiar with the working of the laws of accent in Sanskrit and in Greek. Without a thorough knowledge of these laws, the circumflexed vocative in Sanskrit, +Dyaûs+, corresponding to Greek Ζεῦ, would seem a mere anomaly, possibly an accidental coincidence, whereas in reality it affords the most striking proof of the organic working of the laws of accent, and at the same time an unanswerable testimony in favor of the genuineness of the ancient text of the Rig-Veda.
The laws of accent bearing on this circumflexed vocative are so simple that I thought they would have been understood by everybody. As this does not seem to have been the case, I add a few explanatory remarks.
It was Benfey who, as on so many other points, so on the accent of vocatives, was the first to point out (in 1845) that it was a fundamental law of the Aryan language to place the acute on the first syllable of all vocatives, both in the singular, and in the dual and plural.[9] In Sanskrit this law admits of no exception; in Greek and Latin the rhythmic accent has prevailed to that extent that we only find a few traces left of the original Aryan accentuation. It is well known that in vocatives of nouns ending in _ius_, the ancient Romans preserved the accent on the first syllable, that they said _Vírgili_, _Váleri_, from _Virgílius_ and _Valérius_. This statement of Nigidius Figulus, preserved by Gellius, though with the remark that in his time no one would say so, is the only evidence of the former existence of the Aryan law of accentuation in Latin. In Greek the evidence is more considerable, but the vocatives with the accent on the first syllable are, by the supreme law of the rhythmic accent in Greek, reduced to vocatives, drawing back their accent as far as they can, consistently with the law which restricts the accent to the last three syllables. Thus while in Sanskrit a word like Ἀγαμέμνων would in the vocative retract the accent on the first syllable Ἄγαμεμνον, the Greek could do no more than say Ἀγάμεμνον with the accent on the antepenultimate. In the same manner the vocative of Ἀριστοτέλης, can only be Ἀριστότελες, whereas in Sanskrit it would have been Ἄριστοτελες.
Here, however, the question arises, whether in words like Ἀγαμέμνων[10] and Ἀριστοτέλης[11] the accent was not originally on the antepenultimate, but drawn on the penultimate by the rhythmic law. This is certainly the case in ἥδιον, as the vocative of ἡδίων, for we know that both in Sanskrit and Greek, comparatives in ιων retract their accent as far as possible, and have it always on the first syllable in Sanskrit, always on the penultimate in Greek, if the last syllable is long. But, _cessante causâ cessat effectus_, and therefore the accent goes back on the antepenultimate, not only in the vocative, but likewise in the nom. neuter ἥδιον.
It is possible that the same process may explain the vocative δέσποτα from δεσπότης, if we compare Sanskrit compounds with +pati+, such as +dâsápati+, +gấspati+, +dámpati+, which leave the accent on the first member of the compound. In Δημήτηρ also all becomes regular, if we admit the original accentuation to have been Δήμητηρ, changed in Δημήτηρ, but preserved in the genitive Δήμητρος, and the vocative Δήμητερ.[12]
But there are other words in which this cannot be the case, for instance, ἄδελφε, πόνηρε, μόχθερε from ἀδελφός, πονηρός, μοχθηρός. Here the accent is the old Aryan vocatival accent. Again, in πατήρ, πατέρα, Sk. +pitấ+, +pitáram+, in μήτηρ, μητέρα, Sk. +mâtấ+, +mâtáram+, in θυγάτηρ, θυγατέρα, Sk. +duhitấ+, +duhitáram+, the radical accent was throughout on the suffix +tár+, nor would the rules of the rhythmic accent in Greek prevent it from being on the antepenultimate in the accusative. The fact therefore that it is retracted on the penultimate and antepenultimate in the vocative, shows clearly that we have here, too, the last working of the original Aryan accentuation. The irregular accent in the nom. sing. of μήτηρ, instead of μητήρ, is probably due to the frequent use of the vocative (an explanation which I had adopted before I had seen Benfey’s essay), and the same cause may explain the apparently irregular accentuation in θύγατρα, by the side of θυγατέρα, in θύγατρες, and θύγατρας. Similar vocatives with retracted accent are δᾶερ, nom. δαήρ, εἴνατερ, nom. εἰνάτηρ, γύναι, nom. γυνή, σῶτερ, nom. σωτήρ, ἄνερ, nom. ἀνήρ, Ἄπολλον, nom. Ἀπόλλων, Πόσειδον, nom. Ποσειδῶν, Ἥρακλες, nom. Ἡρακλῆς.
We have thus established the fact that one feature of the primitive Aryan accentuation, which consisted in the very natural process of placing the high accent on the first syllable of vocatives, was strictly preserved in Sanskrit, while in Greek and Latin it only left some scattered traces of its former existence. Without the light derived from Sanskrit, the changes in the accent of vocatives in Greek and Latin would be inexplicable, they would be, what they are in Greek grammar, mere anomalies; while, if placed by the side of Sanskrit, they are readily recognized as what they really are, remnants of a former age, preserved by frequent usage or by an agent whom we do not like to recognize, though we cannot altogether ignore him,--viz. chance.
Taking our position on the fact that change of accent in the vocative in Greek is due to the continued influence of an older system of Aryan accentuation, we now see how the change of nom. Ζεύς into voc. Ζεῦ, and of nom. +Dyaús+, into voc. +Dyaû́s+, rests on the same principle. In Sanskrit the change, though at first sight irregular, admits of explanation. What we call the circumflex in Sanskrit, is the combination of a rising and falling of the voice, or, as we should say in Greek, of an acute and grave accent. As +Dyaús+ was originally +Diaús+, and is frequently used as two syllables in the Veda, the vocative would have been +Díaùs+, and this contracted would become +Dyaus+. Thus we have +paribhvế+ from +paribhûs+. In Greek the facts are the same, but the explanation is more difficult. The general rule in Greek is that vocatives in ου, οι, and ευ, from oxytone or perispome nominatives, are perispome; as πλακοῦ, βοῦ, Λητοῖ, Πηλεῦ, βασιλεῦ, from πλακοῦς, οῦντος, placenta, βοῦς, Λητώ, Πηλεύς, βασιλεύς. The rationale of that rule has never been explained, as far as Greek is concerned. Under this rule the vocative of Ζεύς becomes Ζεῦ; but no Greek grammarian has attempted to explain the process by which Ζεύς becomes Ζεῦ, and nothing remains for the present but to admit that we have in it an ancient Aryan relic preserved in Greek long after the causes which had produced it had ceased to act. It would fall into the same category as εἶμι and ἴμεν. Here, too, the efficient cause of the length and shortness of the radical vowel _i_, viz., the change of accent, Sk. +émi+, but +imás+, has disappeared in Greek, while its effect has been preserved. But whatever explanation may hereafter be adopted, the simple fact which I had pointed out remains, the motive power which changed the nom. +dyaús+ into the vocative +dyaû́s+, is the same which changed Ζεύς into Ζεῦ. Those who do not understand, or do not admit this, are bound to produce, from the resources of Greek itself, another motive power to account for the change of Ζεύς into Ζεῦ; but they must not imagine that a mere reference to a Greek elementary grammar suffices for explaining that process.
The passage in the Rig-Veda (VI. 51, 5) to which I referred is unique, and I therefore give it here, though it has in the meantime been most ably discussed by Benfey in his “Essay on the Vocative” (1872).
“Dyaû́ḥ pítaḥ pṛthivi mấtaḥ ádhruk Ζεῦ πάτερ πλατεῖα μῆτερ ἀτρεκ(ές) Ágne bhrấtaḥ vasavaḥ mṛláta naḥ[13] Ignis φράτερ ϝέΣηϝες μέλδετε nos.”
This passage is clearly one of great antiquity, for it still recognizes +Dyaús+, the father, as the supreme god, Earth, the mother, by his side, and Agni, fire, as the brother, not of Heaven and Earth, but of man, because living with men on the hearth of their houses. +Vasu+, as a general name of the bright gods, like +deva+ in other hymns, corresponds, I believe, to the Greek adjective ἐΰς. The genitive plural ἐάων is likewise derived from ἐΰς or +vásus+, by Benfey (l.c. p. 57), and +dâtấ vásûnâm+ (Rv. VIII. 51, 5) comes certainly very near to δοτὴρ ἐάων. The only difficulty would be the ā instead of the η, as in ἐῆος, the gen. sing. of ἐΰς in Homer, a difficulty which might be removed by tracing the gen. plur. ἐάων back to a fem. ἐά, corresponding to a Sk. +vasavî+ or +vasavyâ+. As to μέλδετε, it is phonetically the nearest approach to +mṛlata+, _i.e._, *+mardata+, though in Greek it means “make mild” rather than “be mild.” Mild and _mollis_ come from the same root.
What gives to this passage its special value is, that in all other passages when +dyaus+ occurs as a vocative and as bisyllabic, it appears simply with the _udâtta_, thus showing at how early a time even the Hindus forgot the meaning of the circumflex on _dyaû́s_, and its legitimate appearance in that place. Thus in Rv. VIII. 100, 12, we read,--
“Sákhe Vishṇo vitarám ví kramasva, Dyaúḥ dehí lokám vájrâya viskábhe Hánâva vṛtrám riṇácâva síndhûn Índrasya yantu prasavé vísṛshṭâḥ.”
“Friend Vishṇu, stride further, Dyaus give room for the lightning to leap, Let us both kill Vṛtra and free the rivers, Let them go, sent forth at the command of Indra.”
Here, I have little doubt, the ancient Rishis pronounced +Dyaû́s+, but the later poets, and the still later +Âcâryas+ were satisfied with the acute, and with the acute the word is written here in all the MSS. I know.
NOTE C.
ARYAN WORDS OCCURRING IN ZEND, BUT NOT IN SANSKRIT.
It has been objected that the three instances which I had quoted of Zend words, not occurring in Sanskrit, but preserved in one or the other of the Indo-European languages, were not sufficient to establish the fact which I wished to establish, particularly as one of them, +kehrp+, existed in Sanskrit, or, at least, in Vedic Sanskrit, as +kṛp+. I admit that I ought to have mentioned the Vedic +kṛp+, rather than the later +kalpa+; but I doubt whether the conclusions which I wished to draw would have been at all affected by this. For what I remarked with regard to +kalpa+, applies with equal force to +kṛp+; it does not in Sanskrit mean body or flesh, like +kehrp+, and _corpus_, but simply form. But even if +kehrp+ were not a case in point, nothing would have been easier than to replace it by other words, if at the time of printing my lecture I had had my collectanea at hand. I now subjoin a more complete list of words, present in Zend, absent in Sanskrit, but preserved in Greek, Latin, or German.
Zend +ana+, prep., upon; Greek ἀνά; Goth, _ana_, upon.
Zend +erezataêna+, adj., made of silver; Lat. _argentinus_. In Sk. we have +rajatam+, silver, but no corresponding adjective.
Zend +içi+, ice; O.N. _îss_; A.S. _îs_; O.H.S. _îs_.
Grimm compares the Irish _eirr_, snow, and he remarks that the other Aryan languages have each framed their own words for ice, Lith. _ledas_, O.S. _led_, and distantly connected with these, through the Russian _cholodnyi_, the Latin _glacies_, for _gelacies_, Greek κρύος, κρυμός, κρύσταλλος.
The root from which these Greek words for ice are derived has left several derivatives in other languages, such as Lat. _cru-s-ta_, and O.N. _hrî-m_, rime, hoar-frost, and in Zend +khrûta+, used as an adjective of +zim+, winter, originally the hard winter. In Zend +khrûma+, and +khrûra+, Sk. +krûra+, as in Greek κρυόεις, the meaning has changed to _crudus_, _crudelis_. In the English _raw_, O.H.G. _hrâo_, a similar change of meaning may be observed.
Another name connected with ice and winter is the Zend +zyâo+, frost, from the root +hi+, which has given us χι-ών, Sk. +hi-ma+, Lat. _hiem-s_, O.S. _zima_, but which in the simplest form has been preserved in Zend only and in the O.N. _gȩ_. Fick quotes _gȩ_ with the doubtful meanings of cold and snow, Curtius with that of storm, identifying it with Norw. _gjö_, _nix autumni recens_.
There is still another name for snow, absent in Sanskrit, but fully represented in Zend and the other Aryan languages, viz., Zend _çnizh_, to snow, Lat. _nix_, Goth. _snaív-s_, Lith. _snig-ti_, to snow, Ir. _snechta_, snow, Gr. νίφ-α (acc).[14]
Zend +aêva+, one; Gr. οἶος.
Zend +kamara+, girdle, vault; Gr. καμάρα, vault, covered carriage; A.S. _himil_. Connected with this we find the Zend +kameredhe+, skull, vault of head, very nearly connected with κμέλεθρον, μέλαθρον.
Zend +kareta+, knife; Lith. _kalta-s_, knife; cf. _culter_, Sk. +kart-ari+, etc. The Slav. _korda_, O.N. _kordi_, Hung. _kard_, are treated by Justi as words borrowed from Persian.
Zend +cvant+, Lat. _quantus_. Sk. has +tâvat+, _tantus_, and +yâvat+, but not +kâvat+.
Zend +garaṇh+, reverence; Gr. γέρας.
Zend +thrâfaṇh+, food; Gr. -τρέφες.
Zend +da+, _e.g._ +vaêçmen-da+, towards the house; Gr. οἶκόν-δε; cf. Goth. _du_, to, O.S. _do_.
Zend +daiti+, gift; Gr. δόσις, Lat. _dôs_, _dôti-s_, Lith. _důti-s_.
Zend +dâmi+, creation; Gr. θέμις, law.
Zend +naçu+, corpse; Gr. νέκυς; Goth. _nau-s_.
Zend +napo+, nom. sing.; A.S. _nefa_; O.H.G. _nefo_.
Zend +paithya+ in +qaêpaithya+, own; Lat. _sua-pte_, _ipse_; Lith. _pati-s_, self.
Zend +peretu+, bridge; Lat. _portus_.
Zend +fraêsta+, most, best; Gr. πλεῖστος.
Zend +brvat+, brow; Gr. ἀβροῦτες (Macedon.); Lat. _frons_.
Zend +madh+, to cure; Lat. _mederi_.
Zend +man+, in +upa-man+, to wait; Lat. _manere_.
Zend +mîzhda+; Gr. μισθός; Goth. _mizd-ô_; O.S. _mîzda_.
Zend +yâre+, year; Goth. _jer_; O.S. _jarŭ_, spring.
Zend +yâoṇh+, +yâh+, to gird; +yâonha+, dress; Gr. ζωσ in ζώννυμι; O.S. _po-yasu_, girdle.
Zend +râçta+, straight; Lat. _rectus_; Goth. _raiht-s_.
Zend +rap+, to go; Lat. _repere_.
Zend +varez+, to work, +vareza+, work, +varstva+, work; Goth, _vaurkjan_, to work; Gr. ἔοργα, ῥέζω; Goth. _vaurstv_.
Zend +vaêti+, willow; Lith. _vỹti-s_, withy; Lat. _vîtis_.
Zend +çtaman+, mouth; Gr. στόμα.
[Footnote 1: Note A, p. 227.]
[Footnote 2: Note B, p. 230.]
[Footnote 3: See M. M.’s _Letter to Chevalier Bunsen, on the Turanian Languages_, 1854, second chapter, second section, “Ethnology versus Phonology.”]
[Footnote 4: Note C, p. 235.]
[Footnote 5: “Judgment (_crimen_, κρίνειν), penance (_pœna_, ποινή), retribution (_talio_, ταλάω, τλῆναι, are Græco-Italic conceptions.” Mommsen, _Röm. Geschichte_, vol. i. p. 25.]
[Footnote 6: See my article in Kuhn’s _Zeitschrift_, vol. xix. p. 46.]
[Footnote 7: _Lectures on the Science of Language_, vol. ii. p. 467.]
[Footnote 8: _Rendiconti del Reale Instituto Lombardo, classe de lettre_, iv. fasc. 6.]
[Footnote 9: See Benfey, _Über die Enstehung des Indo-germanischen Vocativs_, Göttingen, 1872, p. 35.]
[Footnote 10: The rule is that vocatives in ον from proper names in ων retract the accent, except Λακεδαῖμον, and those in φρον, as Λυκόφρον from Λυκόφρων.]
[Footnote 11: Vocatives in ες from proper names in ης retract the accent, as Σώκρατες, except those in ωδες, ωλες, ωρες, ηρες, as Δειῶδες.]
[Footnote 12: Benfey, l.c. p. 40.]
[Footnote 13: See, also, M. M.’s _Lectures on the Science of Language_, vol. ii, p. 472.]
[Footnote 14: See M. M.’s _Introduction to the Science of Religion_, p. 372, note.]
V.
WESTMINSTER LECTURE.
ON MISSIONS.[1]
DELIVERED IN THE NAVE OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY, ON THE EVENING OF DECEMBER 3, 1873.
The number of religions which have attained stability and permanence in
the history of the world is very small. If we leave out of consideration
those vague and varying forms of faith and worship which we find among
uncivilized and unsettled races, among races ignorant of reading and
writing, who have neither a literature nor laws, nor even hymns and
prayers handed down by oral teaching from father to son, from mother to
daughter, we see that the number of the real historical religions of
mankind amounts to no more than eight. The Semitic races have produced
three--the Jewish, the Christian, the Mohammedan; the Aryan, or
Indo-European races an equal number--the Brahman, the Buddhist, and the
Parsi. Add to these the two religious systems of China, that of
Confucius and Lao-tse, and you have before you what may be called the
eight distinct languages or utterances of the faith of mankind from the
beginning of the world to the present day; you have before you in broad
outlines the religious map of the whole world.
All these religions, however, have a history, a history more deeply interesting than the history of language, or literature, or art, or politics. Religions are not unchangeable; on the contrary, they are always growing and changing; and if they cease to grow and cease to change, they cease to live. Some of these religions stand by themselves, totally independent of all the rest; others are closely united, or have influenced each other during various stages of their growth and decay. They must therefore be studied together, if we wish to understand their real character, their growth, their decay, and their resuscitations. Thus, Mohammedanism would be unintelligible without Christianity; Christianity without Judaism: and there are similar bonds that hold together the great religions of India and Persia--the faith of the Brahman, the Buddhist, and the Parsi. After a careful study of the origin and growth of these religions, and after a critical examination of the sacred books on which all of them profess to be founded, it has become possible to subject them all to a scientific classification, in the same manner as languages, apparently unconnected and mutually unintelligible, have been scientifically arranged and classified; and by a comparison of those points which all or some of them share in common, as well as by a determination of those which are peculiar to each, a new science has been called into life, a science which concerns us all, and in which all who truly care for religion must sooner or later take their part--_the Science of Religion_.
Among the various classifications[2] which have been applied to the religions of the world, there is one that interests us more immediately to-night, I mean the division into Non-Missionary and Missionary religions. This is by no means, as might be supposed, a classification based on an unimportant or merely accidental characteristic; on the contrary, it rests on what is the very heart-blood in every system of human faith. Among the six religions of the Aryan and Semitic world, there are three that are opposed to all missionary enterprise--Judaism, Brahmanism, and Zoroastrianism; and three that have a missionary character from their very beginning--Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity.
The Jews, particularly in ancient times, never thought of spreading their religion. Their religion was to them a treasure, a privilege, a blessing, something to distinguish them, as the chosen people of God, from all the rest of the world. A Jew must be of the seed of Abraham: and when in later times, owing chiefly to political circumstances, the Jews had to admit strangers to some of the privileges of their theocracy, they looked upon them, not as souls that had been gained, saved, born again into a new brotherhood, but as strangers גְּרֵיים, as Proselytes (προσήλυτοι); which means men who have come to them as aliens, not to be trusted, as their saying was, until the twenty-fourth generation.[3]
A very similar feeling prevented the Brahmans from ever attempting to proselytize those who did not by birth belong to the spiritual aristocracy of their country. Their wish was rather to keep the light to themselves, to repel intruders; they went so far as to punish those who happened to be near enough to hear even the sound of their prayers, or to witness their sacrifices.[4]
The Parsi, too, does not wish for converts to his religion; he is proud of his faith, as of his blood; and though he believes in the final victory of truth and light, though he says to every man, “Be bright as the sun, pure as the moon,” he himself does very little to drive away spiritual darkness from the face of the earth, by letting the light that is within him shine before the world.
But now let us look at the other cluster of religions, at Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity. However they may differ from each other in some of their most essential doctrines, this they share in common--they all have faith in themselves, they all have life and vigor, they want to convince, they mean to conquer. From the very earliest dawn of their existence these three religions were missionary; their very founders, or their first apostles, recognized the new duty of spreading the truth, of refuting error, of bringing the whole world to acknowledge the paramount, if not the divine, authority of their doctrines. This is what gives to them all a common expression, and lifts them high above the level of the other religions of the world.
Let us begin with Buddhism. We know, indeed, very little of its origin and earliest growth, for the earliest beginnings of all religions withdraw themselves by necessity from the eye of the historian. But we have something like contemporary evidence of the Great Council, held at Pâṭaliputra, 246 B.C., in which the sacred canon of the Buddhist scriptures was settled, and at the end of which missionaries were chosen and sent forth to preach the new doctrine, not only in India, but far beyond the frontiers of that vast country.[5] We possess inscriptions containing the edicts of the king who was to Buddhism what Constantine was to Christianity, who broke with the traditions of the old religion of the Brahmans, and recognized the doctrines of Buddha as the state religion of India. We possess the description of the Council of Pâṭaliputra, which was to India what the Council of Nicæa, 570 years later, was to Europe; and we can still read there[6] the simple story, how the chief elder who had presided over the Council, an old man, too weak to travel by land, and carried from his hermitage to the Council in a boat--how that man, when the Council was over, began to reflect on the future, and found that the time had come to establish the religion of Buddha in foreign countries. He therefore dispatched some of the most eminent priests to Cashmere, Cabul, and farther west, to the colonies founded by the Greeks in Bactria, to Alexandria on the Caucasus, and other cities. He sent others northward to Nepal, and to the inhabited portions of the Himalayan mountains. Another mission proceeded to the Dekhan, to the people of Mysore, to the Mahrattas, perhaps to Goa; nay, even Birma and Ceylon are mentioned as among the earliest missionary stations of Buddhist priests. We still possess accounts of their manner of preaching. When threatened by infuriated crowds, one of those Buddhist missionaries said calmly, “If the whole world, including the Deva heavens, were to come and terrify me, they would not be able to create in me fear and terror.” And when he had brought the people to listen, he dismissed them with the simple prayer, “Do not hereafter give way to anger, as before; do not destroy the crops, for all men love happiness. Show mercy to all living beings, and let men dwell in peace.”
No doubt, the accounts of the successes achieved by those early missionaries are exaggerated, and their fights with snakes and dragons and evil spirits remind us sometimes of the legendary accounts of the achievements of such men as St. Patrick in Ireland, or St. Boniface in Germany. But the fact that missionaries were sent out to convert the world seems beyond the reach of reasonable doubt;[7] and this fact represents to us at that time a new thought, new, not only in the history of India, but in the history of the whole world. The recognition of a duty to preach the truth to every man, woman, and child, was an idea opposed to the deepest instincts of Brahmanism; and when, at the end of the chapter on the first missions, we read the simple words of the old chronicler, “who would demur, if the salvation of the world is at stake?” we feel at once that we move in a new world, we see the dawn of a new day, the opening of vaster horizons--we feel, for the first time in the history of the world, the beating of the great heart of humanity.[8]
The Koran breathes a different spirit; it does not invite, it rather compels the world to come in. Yet there are passages, particularly in the earlier portions, which show that Mohammed, too, had realized the idea of humanity, and of a religion of humanity; nay, that at first he wished to unite his own religion with that of the Jews and Christians, comprehending all under the common name of Islâm. Islâm meant originally humility or devotion; and all who humbled themselves before God, and were filled with real reverence, were called Moslim. “The Islâm,” says Mohammed, “is the true worship of God. When men dispute with you, say, ‘I am a Moslim.’ Ask those who have sacred books, and ask the heathen; ‘Are you Moslim?”’ If they are, they are on the right path; but if they turn away, then you have no other task but to deliver the message, to preach to them the Islâm.”[9]
As to our own religion, its very soul is missionary, progressive, world-embracing; it would cease to exist, if it ceased to be missionary--if it disregarded the parting words of its Founder: “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things I have commanded; and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”
It is this missionary character, peculiar to these three religions, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity, which binds them together, and lifts them to a higher sphere. Their differences, no doubt, are great; on some points they are opposed to each other like day and night. But they could not be what they are, they could not have achieved what they have achieved, unless the spirit of truth and the spirit of love had been alive in the hearts of their founders, their first messengers, and missionaries.
The spirit of truth is the life-spring of all religion, and where it exists it must manifest itself, it must plead, it must persuade, it must convince and convert. Missionary work, however, in the usual sense of the word, is only one manifestation of that spirit; for the same spirit which fills the heart of the missionary with daring abroad, gives courage also to the preacher at home, bearing witness to the truth that is within him. The religions which can boast of missionaries who left the old home of their childhood, and parted with parents and friends--never to meet again in this life--who went into the wilderness, willing to spend a life of toil among strangers, ready, if need be, to lay down their life as witnesses to the truth, as martyrs for the glory of God--the same religions are rich also in those honest and intrepid inquirers who, at the bidding of the same spirit of truth, were ready to leave behind them the cherished creed of their childhood, to separate from the friends they loved best, to stand alone among men that shrug their shoulders, and ask, “What is truth?” and to bear in silence a martyrdom more galling often than death itself. There are men who say that, if they held the whole truth in their hand, they would not open one finger. Such men know little of the working of the spirit of truth, of the true missionary spirit. As long as there are doubt and darkness and anxiety in the soul of an inquirer, reticence may be his natural attitude. But when once doubt has yielded to certainty, darkness to light, anxiety to joy, the rays of truth will burst forth; and to close our hand or to shut our lips would be as impossible as for the petals of a flower to shut themselves against the summons of the sun of spring.
What is there in this short life that should seal our lips? What should we wait for, if we are not to speak _here_ and _now_? There is missionary work at home as much as abroad; there are thousands waiting to listen if _one_ man will but speak the truth, and nothing but the truth; there are thousands starving, because they cannot find that food which is convenient for them.
And even if the spirit of truth might be chained down by fear or prudence, the spirit of love would never yield. Once recognize the common brotherhood of mankind, not as a name or a theory, but as a real bond, as a bond more binding, more lasting than the bonds of family, caste, and race, and the questions, Why should I upon my hand? why should I open my heart? why should I speak to my brother? will never be asked again. Is it not far better to speak than to walk through life silent, unknown, unknowing? Has any one of us ever spoken to his friend, and opened to him his inmost soul, and been answered with harshness or repelled with scorn? Has any one of us, be he priest or layman, ever listened to the honest questionings of a truth-loving soul, without feeling his own soul filled with love? aye, without feeling humbled by the very honesty of a brother’s confession?
If we would but confess, friend to friend, if we would be but honest, man to man, we should not want confessors or confessionals.
If our doubts and difficulties are self-made, if they can be removed by wiser and better men, why not give to our brother the opportunity of helping us? But if our difficulties are not self-made, if they are not due either to ignorance or presumption, is it not even then better for us to know that we are all carrying the same burden, the common burden of humanity, if haply we may find, that for the heavy laden there is but one who can give them rest?
There may be times when silence is gold, and speech silver: but there are times also when silence is death, and speech is life--the very life of Pentecost.
How can man be afraid of man? How can we be afraid of those whom we love?
Are the young afraid of the old? But nothing delights the older man more than to see that he is trusted by the young, and that they believe he will tell them the truth.
Are the old afraid of the young? But nothing sustains the young more than to know that they do not stand alone in their troubles, and that in many trials of the soul the father is as helpless as the child.
Are the women afraid of men? But men are not wiser in the things appertaining to God than women, and real love of God is theirs far more than ours.
Are men afraid of women? But though women may hide their troubles more carefully, their heart aches as much as ours, when they whisper to themselves, “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.”
Are the laity afraid of the clergy? But where is the clergyman who would not respect honest doubt more than unquestioning faith?
Are the clergy afraid of the laity? But surely we know, in this place at least, that the clear voice of honesty and humility draws more hearts than the harsh accents of dogmatic assurance or ecclesiastic exclusiveness.
“There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.”
A missionary must know no fear; his heart must overflow with love--love of man, love of truth, love of God; and in this, the highest and truest sense of the word, every Christian is, or ought to be, a missionary.
And now, let us look again at the religions in which the missionary spirit has been at work, and compare them with those in which any attempt to convince others by argument, to save souls, to bear witness to the truth, is treated with pity or scorn. _The former are alive, the latter are dying or dead._
The religion of Zoroaster--the religion of Cyrus, of Darius and Xerxes--which, but for the battles of Marathon and Salamis, might have become the religion of the civilized world, is now professed by only 100,000 souls--that is, by about a ten-thousandth part of the inhabitants of the world. During the last two centuries their number has steadily decreased from four to one hundred thousand, and another century will probably exhaust what is still left of the worshippers of the Wise Spirit, Ahura-mazda.
The Jews are about thirty times the number of the Parsis, and they therefore represent a more appreciable portion of mankind. Though it is not likely that they will ever increase in number, yet such is their physical vigor and their intellectual tenacity, such also their pride of race and their faith in Jehovah, that we can hardly imagine that their patriarchal religion and their ancient customs will soon vanish from the face of the earth.
But though the religions of the Parsis and Jews might justly seem to have paid the penalty of their anti-missionary spirit, how, it will be said, can the same be maintained with regard to the religion of the Brahmans? That religion is still professed by at least 110,000,000 of human souls, and, to judge from the last census, even that enormous number falls much short of the real truth. And yet I do not shrink from saying that their religion is dying or dead. And why? Because it cannot stand the light of day. The worship of Śiva, of Vishṇu, and the other popular deities, is of the same, nay, in many cases of a more degraded and savage character than the worship of Jupiter, Apollo, and Minerva; it belongs to a stratum of thought which is long buried beneath our feet: it may live on, like the lion and the tiger, but the mere air of free thought and civilized life will extinguish it. A religion may linger on for a long time, it may be accepted by the large masses of the people, because it is there, and there is nothing better. But when a religion has ceased to produce defenders of the faith, prophets, champions, martyrs, it has ceased to live, in the true sense of the word; and in that sense the old, orthodox Brahmanism has ceased to live for more than a thousand years.
It is true there are millions of children, women, and men in India who fall down before the stone image of Vishṇu, with his four arms, riding on a creature half bird, half man, or sleeping on the serpent; who worship Śiva, a monster with three eyes, riding naked on a bull, with a necklace of skulls for his ornament. There are human beings who still believe in a god of war, Kârtikêya, with six faces, riding on a peacock, and holding bow and arrow in his hands; and who invoke a god of success, Gaṇeśa, with four hands and an elephant’s head, sitting on a rat. Nay, it is true that, in the broad daylight of the nineteenth century, the figure of the goddess Kali is carried through the streets of her own city, Calcutta,[10] her wild disheveled hair reaching to her feet, with a necklace of human heads, her tongue protruded from her mouth, her girdle stained with blood. All this is true; but ask any Hindu who can read and write and think, whether these are the gods he believes in, and he will smile at your credulity. How long this living death of national religion in India may last, no one can tell: for our purposes, however, for gaining an idea of the issue of the great religious struggle of the future, that religion too is dead and gone.
The three religions which are alive, and between which the decisive battle for the dominion of the world will have to be fought, are the three missionary religions, _Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity_. Though religious statistics are perhaps the most uncertain of all, yet it is well to have a general conception of the forces of our enemies; and it is well to know that, though the number of Christians is double the number of Mohammedans, the Buddhist religion still occupies the first place in the religious census of mankind.[11]
Buddhism rules supreme in Central, Northern, Eastern, and Southern Asia, and it gradually absorbs whatever there is left of aboriginal heathenism in that vast and populous area.
Mohammedanism claims as its own Arabia, Persia, great parts of India, Asia Minor, Turkey, and Egypt; and its greatest conquests by missionary efforts are made among the heathen population of Africa.
Christianity reigns in Europe and America, and it is conquering the native races of Polynesia and Melanesia, while its missionary outposts are scattered all over the world.
Between these three powers, then, the religious battle of the future, the Holy War of mankind, will have to be fought, and is being fought at the present moment, though apparently with little effect. To convert a Mohammedan is difficult; to convert a Buddhist, more difficult still; to convert a Christian, let us hope, well nigh impossible.
What then, it may be asked, is the use of missionaries? Why should we spend millions on foreign missions, when there are children in our cities who are allowed to grow up in ignorance? Why should we deprive ourselves of some of the noblest, boldest, most ardent and devoted spirits and send them into the wilderness, while so many laborers are wanted in the vineyard at home.
It is right to ask these questions; and we ought not to blame those political economists who tell us that every convert costs us £200, and that at the present rate of progress it would take more than 200,000 years to evangelize the world. There is nothing at all startling in these figures. Every child born in Europe is as much a heathen as the child of a Melanesian cannibal; and it costs us more than £200 to turn a child into a Christian man. The other calculation is totally erroneous; for an intellectual harvest must not be calculated by adding simply grain to grain, but by counting each grain as a living seed, that will bring forth fruit a hundred and a thousand fold.
If we want to know what work there is for the missionary to do, what results we may expect from it, we must distinguish between two kinds of work: the one is _parental_, the other _controversial_. Among uncivilized races the work of the missionary is the work of a parent; whether his pupils are young in years or old, he has to treat them with a parent’s love, to teach them with a parent’s authority; he has to win them, not to argue with them. I know this kind of missionary work is often despised; it is called mere religious kidnapping; and it is said that missionary success obtained by such means proves nothing for the truth of Christianity; that the child handed over to a Mohammedan would grow up a Mohammedan, as much as a child taken by a Christian missionary becomes a Christian. All this is true; missionary success obtained by such means proves nothing for the truth of our creeds: but it proves, what is far more important, it proves Christian love. Read only the “Life of Patteson,” the bishop of Melanesia; follow him in his vessel, sailing from island to island, begging for children, carrying them off as a mother her new-born child, nursing them, washing and combing them, clothing them, feeding them, teaching them in his Episcopal Palace, in which he himself is everything, nurse, and housemaid, and cook, schoolmaster, physician, and bishop--read there, how that man who tore himself away from his aged father, from his friends, from his favorite studies and pursuits, had the most loving of hearts for these children, how indignantly he repelled for them the name of savages, how he trusted them, respected them, honored them, and when they were formed and established, took them back to their island home, there to be a leaven for future ages. Yes, read the life, the work, the death of that man, a death in very truth, a ransom for the sins of others--and then say whether you would like to suppress a profession that can call forth such self-denial, such heroism, such sanctity, such love. It has been my privilege to have known some of the finest and noblest spirits which England has produced during this century, but there is none to whose memory I look up with greater reverence, none by whose friendship I feel more deeply humbled than by that of that true saint, that true martyr, that truly parental missionary.
The work of the parental missionary is clear, and its success undeniable, not only in Polynesia and Melanesia, but in many parts of India--(think only of the bright light of Tinnevelly)--in Africa, in China, in America, in Syria, in Turkey, aye, in the very heart of London.
The case is different with the controversial missionary, who has to attack the faith of men brought up in other religions, in religions which contain much truth, though mixed up with much error. Here the difficulties are immense, the results very discouraging. Nor need we wonder at this. We know, each of us, but too well, how little argument avails in theological discussion; how often it produces the very opposite result of what we expected; confirming rather than shaking opinions no less erroneous, no less indefensible, than many articles of the Mohammedan or Buddhist faith.
And even when argument proves successful, when it forces a verdict from an unwilling judge, how often has the result been disappointing; because in tearing up the rotten stem on which the tree rested, its tenderest fibres have been injured, its roots unsettled, its life destroyed.
We have little ground to expect that these controversial weapons will carry the day in the struggle between the three great religions of the world.
But there is a third kind of missionary activity, which has produced the most important results, and through which alone, I believe, the final victory will be gained. Whenever two religions are brought into contact, when members of each live together in peace, abstaining from all direct attempts at conversion, whether by force or by argument, though conscious all the time of the fact that they and their religion are on their trial, that they are being watched, that they are responsible for all they say and do--the effect has always been the greatest blessing to both. It calls out all the best elements in each, and at the same time keeps under all that is felt to be of doubtful value, of uncertain truth. Whenever this has happened in the history of the world, it has generally led either to the reform of both systems, or to the foundation of a new religion.
When after the conquest of India the violent measures for the conversion of the Hindus to Mohammedanism had ceased, and Mohammedans and Brahmans lived together in the enjoyment of perfect equality, the result was a purified Mohammedanism, and a purified Brahmanism.[12] The worshippers of Vishṇu, Śiva, and other deities became ashamed of these mythological gods, and were led to admit that there was, either over and above these individual deities, or instead of them, a higher divine power (the Para-Brahma), the true source of all being, the only and almighty ruler of the world. That religious movement assumed its most important development at the beginning of the twelfth century, when Râmânuja founded the reformed sect of the worshippers of Vishṇu; and again, in the fourteenth century, when his fifth successor, Râmânanda, imparted a still more liberal character to that powerful sect. Not only did he abolish many of the restrictions of caste, many of the minute ceremonial observances in eating, drinking, and bathing, but he replaced the classical Sanskrit--which was unintelligible to the large masses of the people--by the living vernaculars, in which he preached a purer worship of God.
The most remarkable man of that time was a weaver, the pupil of Râmânanda, known by the name of Kabir. He indeed deserved the name which the members of the reformed sect claimed for themselves, Avadhûta, which means one who has shaken off the dust of superstition. He broke entirely with the popular mythology and the customs of the ceremonial law, and addressed himself alike to Hindu and Mohammedan. According to him, there is but one God, the creator of the world, without beginning and end, of inconceivable purity, and irresistible strength. The pure man is the image of God, and after death attains community with God. The commandments of Kabir are few: Not to injure anything that has life, for life is of God; to speak the truth; to keep aloof from the world; to obey the teacher. His poetry is most beautiful, hardly surpassed in any other language.
Still more important in the history of India was the reform of Nânak, the founder of the Sikh religion. He, too, worked entirely in the spirit of Kabir. Both labored to persuade the Hindus and Mohammedans that the truly essential parts of their creeds were the same, that they ought to discard the varieties of practical detail, and the corruptions of their teachers, for the worship of the _One Only Supreme_, whether he was termed Allah or Vishṇu.
The effect of these religious reforms has been highly beneficial; it has cut into the very roots of idolatry, and has spread throughout India an intelligent and spiritual worship, which may at any time develop into a higher national creed.
The same effect which Mohammedanism produced on Hinduism is now being produced, in a much higher degree, on the religious mind of India by the mere presence of Christianity. That silent influence began to tell many years ago, even at a time when no missionaries were allowed within the territory of the old East India Company. Its first representative was Ram Mohun Roy, born just one hundred years ago, in 1772, who died at Bristol in 1833, the founder of the Brahma-Samâj. A man so highly cultivated and so highly religious as he was, could not but feel humiliated at the spectacle which the popular religion of his country presented to his English friends. He drew their attention to the fact that there was a purer religion to be found in the old sacred writings of his people, the Vedas. He went so far as to claim for the Vedas a divine origin, and to attempt the foundation of a reformed faith on their authority. In this attempt he failed.
No doubt the Vedas and other works of the ancient poets and prophets of India, contain treasures of truth, which ought never to be forgotten, least of all by the sons of India. The late good Bishop Cotton, in his address to the students of a missionary institution at Calcutta, advised them to use a certain hymn of the Rig-Veda in their daily prayers.[13] Nowhere do we find stronger arguments against idolatry, nowhere has the unity of the Deity been upheld more strenuously against the errors of polytheism than by some of the ancient sages of India. Even in the oldest of their sacred books, the Rig-Veda, composed three or four thousand years ago--where we find hymns addressed to the different deities of the sky, the air, the earth, the rivers--the protest of the human heart against many gods, breaks forth from time to time with no uncertain sound. One poet, after he has asked to whom sacrifice is due, answers, “to Him who is God above all gods.”[14] Another poet, after enumerating the names of many deities, affirms, without hesitation, that “these are all but names of Him who is One.” And even when single deities are invoked, it is not difficult to see that, in the mind of the poet, each one of the names is meant to express the highest conception of deity of which the human mind was _then_ capable. The god of the sky is called Father and Mother and Friend; he is the Creator, the Upholder of the Universe; he rewards virtue and punishes sin; he listens to the prayers of those who love him.
But granting all this, we may well understand why an attempt to claim for these books a divine origin, and thus to make them an artificial foundation for a new religion, failed. The successor of Ram Mohun Roy, the present head of the Brahma-Samâj, the wise and excellent Debendranâth Tagore, was for a time even more decided in holding to the Vedas as the sole foundation of the new faith. But this could not last. As soon as the true character of the Vedas,[15] which but few people in India can understand, became known, partly through the efforts of native, partly of European scholars, the Indian reformers relinquished the claim of divine inspiration in favor of their Vedas, and were satisfied with a selection of passages from the works of the ancient sages of India, to express and embody the creed which the members of the Brahma-Samâj hold in common.[16]
The work which these religious reformers have been doing in India is excellent, and those only who know what it is, in religious matters, to break with the past, to forsake the established custom of a nation, to oppose the rush of public opinion, to brave adverse criticism, to submit to social persecution, can form any idea of what those men have suffered, in bearing witness to the truth that was within them.
They could not reckon on any sympathy on the part of Christian missionaries; nor did their work attract much attention in Europe till very lately, when a schism broke out in the Brahma-Samâj between the old conservative party and a new party, led by Keshub Chunder Sen. The former, though willing to surrender all that was clearly idolatrous in the ancient religion and customs of India, wished to retain all that might safely be retained: it did not wish to see the religion of India denationalized. The other party, inspired and led by Keshub Chunder Sen, went further in their zeal for religious purity. All that smacked of the old leaven was to be surrendered; not only caste, but even that sacred cord--the religious riband which makes and marks the Brahman, which is to remind him at every moment of his life, and whatever work he may be engaged in, of his God, of his ancestors, and of his children--even that was to be abandoned; and instead of founding their creed exclusively on the utterances of the ancient sages of their own country, all that was best in the sacred books of the whole world was selected and formed into a new sacred code.[17]
The schism between these two parties is deeply to be deplored; but it is a sign of life. It augurs success rather than failure for the future. It is the same schism which St. Paul had to heal in the Church of Corinth, and he healed it with the words, so often misunderstood, “Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.”
In the eyes of our missionaries this religious reform in India has not found much favor: nor need we wonder at this. Their object is to transplant, if possible, Christianity in its full integrity from England to India, as we might wish to transplant a full-grown tree. They do not deny the moral worth, the noble aspirations, the self-sacrificing zeal of these native reformers; but they fear that all this will but increase their dangerous influence, and retard the progress of Christianity, by drawing some of the best minds of India, that might have been gained over to our religion, into a different current. They feel towards Keshub Chunder Sen[18] as Athanasius might have felt towards Ulfilas, the Arian Bishop of the Goths: and yet, what would have become of Christianity in Europe but for those Gothic races, but for those Arian heretics, who were considered more dangerous than downright pagans?
If we think of the future of India, and of the influence which that country has always exercised on the East, the movement of religious reform which is now going on appears to my mind the most momentous in this momentous century. If our missionaries feel constrained to repudiate it as their own work, history will be more just to them than they themselves.[19] And if not as the work of Christian missionaries, it will be recognized hereafter as the work of those missionary Christians who have lived in India, as examples of a true Christian life, who have approached the natives in a truly missionary spirit, in the spirit of truth and in the spirit of love; whose bright presence has thawed the ice, and brought out beneath it the old soil, ready to blossom into new life. These Indian puritans are not against us; for all the highest purposes of life they are with us, and we, I trust, with them. What would the early Christians have said to men, outside the pale of Christianity, who spoke of Christ and his doctrine as some of these Indian reformers? Would they have said to them, “Unless you speak our language and think our thoughts, unless you accept our Creed and sign our Articles, we can have nothing in common with you.”
O that Christians, and particularly missionaries, would lay to heart the words of a missionary Bishop![20] “I have for years thought,” writes Bishop Patteson, “that we seek in our missions a great deal too much to make _English_ Christians. . . . . Evidently the heathen man is not treated fairly, if we encumber our message with unnecessary requirements. The ancient Church had its ‘selection of fundamentals.’ . . . . Any one can see what mistakes we have made in India. . . . Few men think themselves into the state of the Eastern mind. . . . We seek to denationalize these races, as far as I can see; whereas we ought surely to change as little as possible--only what is clearly incompatible with the simplest form of Christian teaching and practice. I do not mean that we are to compromise truth . . . . but do we not overlay it a good deal with human traditions!”
If we had many such missionaries as Bishop Patteson and Bishop Cotton, if Christianity were not only preached, but lived in that spirit, it would then prove itself what it is--the religion of humanity at large, large enough itself to take in all shades and diversities of character and race.
And more than that--if this true missionary spirit, this spirit of truth and love, of forbearance, of trust, of toleration, of humility, were once to kindle the hearts of all those chivalrous ambassadors of Christ, the message of the Gospel which they have to deliver would then become as great a blessing to the giver as to the receiver. Even now, missionary work unites, both at home and abroad, those who are widely separated by the barriers of theological sects.[21]
It might do so far more still. When we stand before a common enemy, we soon forget our own small feuds. But why? Often, I fear, from motives of prudence only and selfishness. Can we not, then, if we stand in spirit before a common friend--can we not, before the face of God, forget our small feuds, for very shame? If missionaries admit to their fold converts who can hardly understand the equivocal abstractions of our creeds and formulas, is it necessary to exclude those who understand them but too well to submit the wings of their free spirit to such galling chains! When we try to think of the majesty of God, what are all those formulas but the stammerings of children, which only a loving father can interpret and understand! The fundamentals of our religion are not in these poor creeds; true Christianity lives, not in our belief, but in our love--_in our love of God, and in our love of man, founded on our love of God_.
That is the whole Law and the Prophets, that is the religion to be preached to the whole world, that is the Gospel which will conquer all other religions--even Buddhism and Mohammedanism--which will win the hearts of all men.
There can never be too much love, though there may be too much faith--particularly when it leads to the requirement of exactly the same measure of faith in others. Let those who wish for the true success of missionary work learn to throw in of the abundance of their faith; let them learn to demand less from others than from themselves. That is the best offering, the most valuable contribution which they can make to-day to the missionary cause.
Let missionaries preach the Gospel again as it was preached when it began the conquest of the Roman Empire and the Gothic nations; when it had to struggle with powers and principalities, with time-honored religions and triumphant philosophies, with pride of civilization and savagery of life--and yet came out victorious. At that time conversion was not a question to be settled by the acceptance or rejection of certain formulas or articles; a simple prayer was often enough: “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
There is one kind of faith that revels in words, there is another that can hardly find utterance: the former is like riches that come to us by inheritance; the latter is like the daily bread, which each of us has to win in the sweat of his brow. We cannot expect the former from new converts; we ought not to expect it or to exact it, for fear that it might lead to hypocrisy or superstition. The mere believing of miracles, the mere repeating of formulas requires no effort in converts, brought up to believe in the Purâṇas of the Brahmans or the Buddhist Jâtakas. They find it much easier to accept a legend than to love God, to repeat a creed than to forgive their enemies. In this respect they are exactly like ourselves. Let missionaries remember that the Christian faith at home is no longer what it was, and that it is impossible to have one Creed to preach abroad, another to preach at home. Much that was formerly considered as essential is now neglected; much that was formerly neglected is now considered as essential. I think of the laity more than of the clergy; but what would the clergy be without the laity? There are many of our best men, men of the greatest power and influence in literature, science, art, politics, aye even in the Church itself, who are no longer Christian in the old sense of the word. Some imagine they have ceased to be Christians altogether, because they feel that they cannot believe as much as others profess to believe. We cannot afford to lose these men, nor shall we lose them if we learn to be satisfied with what satisfied Christ and the Apostles, with what satisfies many a hard-working missionary. If Christianity is to retain its hold on Europe and America, if it is to conquer in the Holy War of the future, it must throw off its heavy armor, the helmet of brass and the coat of mail, and face the world like David, with his staff, his stones, and his sling. We want less of creeds, but more of trust; less of ceremony, but more of work; less of solemnity, but more of genial honesty; less of doctrine, but more of love. There is a faith, as small as a grain of mustard-seed, but that grain alone can move mountains, and more than that, it can move hearts. Whatever the world may say of us, of us of little faith, let us remember that there was one who accepted the offering of the poor widow. She threw in but two mites, but that was all she had, even all her living.
NOTES.
NOTE A.
Mahâdayassâpi jinassa kaḍḍhanaṃ, Vihâya pattaṃ amataṃ sukham pi te Kariṃsu lokassa hitaṃ tahiṃ tahiṃ, Bhaveyya ko lokahite pamâdavâ?
The first line is elliptical.
(Imitating) the resignation of the all-merciful Conqueror, They also, resigning the deathless bliss within their reach, Worked the welfare of mankind in various lands. What man is there who would be remiss in doing good to mankind?
Hardy, in his “Manual of Buddhism” (p. 187), relates how fifty-four princes and a thousand fire-worshippers became the disciples of Buddha. “Whilst Buddha remained at Isipatana, Yasa, the son of Sujatá, who had been brought up in all delicacy, one night went secretly to him, was received with affection, became a priest, and entered the first path. The father, on discovering that he had fled, was disconsolate: but Buddha delivered to him a discourse, by which he became a rahat. The fifty-four companions of Yasa went to the monastery to induce him to return, and play with them as usual; but when they saw him, they were so struck with his manner and appearance, that they also resolved on becoming priests. When they went to Buddha, they were admitted, by the power of +irdhi+ received the +pirikara+ requisites of the priesthood, and became rahats. Buddha had now sixty disciples who were rahats, and he commanded them to go by different ways, and proclaim to all that a supreme Buddha had appeared in the world.”
Mr. Childers has kindly sent me the following extract from Fausböll’s “Dhammapada” (p. 119), where the same story is told:--
. . . . Yasakulaputtassa upanissayasampattiṃ disvâ taṃ rattibhâge nibbijjitvâ gehaṃ pahâya nikkhantaṃ “ehi Yasati” pakkositvâ, tasmiñ ñeva rattibhâge sotâpattiphalaṃ punadivase arahattuṃ pâpesi. Apare pi tassa sahâyake catupaṇṇâsajane ehibhikkhupabbajjâya pabbâjetvâ arahattuṃ pâpesi. Evaṃ loke ekasaṭṭhiyâ arahantesu jâtesu vutthavasso pavâretva “caratha bhikkhave cârikan” ti saṭṭhiṃ bhikkhû disâsu pesetvâ. . . . . “Seeing that the young nobleman Yasa was ripe for conversion, in the night, when weary with the vanities of the world he had left his home and embraced the ascetic life,--he called him, saying, ‘Follow me, Yasa,’ and that very night he caused him to obtain the fruition of the first path, and on the following day arhatship. And fifty-four other persons, who were friends of Yasa’s, he ordained with the formula, ‘Follow me, priest,’ and caused them to attain arhatship. Thus when there were sixty-one arhats in the world, having passed the period of seclusion during the rains and resumed active duties, he sent forth the sixty priests in all directions, saying, ‘Go forth, priests, on your rounds (or travels).’”
Another passage, too, showing Buddha’s desire to see his doctrine preached in the whole world, was pointed out to me by Mr. Childers from the “Mahâparinibbâna Sutta,” which has since been published by this indefatigable scholar in the “Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,” vol. vii., p. 77:--
“Three months before his death, when Gautama’s health and strength is fast failing, he is tempted by Mâra, who comes to him and urges him to bring his life and mission at once to a close by attaining Nirvâṇa (dying). Buddha replies that he will not die until his disciples are perfect on all points, and able to maintain the Truth with power against all unbelievers. Mâra replies that this is already the case, whereupon Buddha uses these striking words: Na tâvâhaṃ pâpima parinibbayissâmi yâva me imaṃ brahmacariyaṃ na iddhañ c’ eva bhavissati phîtañ ca vitthârikaṃ bâhujaññaṃ puthubhûtaṃ, yâvad eva manusschi suppakâsitan ti. ‘O wicked one, I will not die until this my holy religion thrives and prospers, until it is widely spread, known to many peoples, and grown great, until it is completely published among men.’ Mara again asserts that this is already the case, and Buddha replies, ‘Strive no more, wicked one, the death of the Tathagata is at hand, at the end of three months from this time, the Tathâgata will attain Nirvâṇa.’”
NOTE B.
THE SCHISM IN THE BRAHMA-SAMÂJ.[22]
The present position of the two parties in the Brahma-Samâj is well described by Rajnarain Bose (the “Adi Brahmo Samaj,” Calcutta, 1873, p. 11). “The particular opinions above referred to can be divided into two comprehensive classes--conservative and progressive. The conservative Brahmos are those who are unwilling to push religious and social reformation to any great extreme. They are of opinion that reformation should be gradual, the law of gradual progress being universally prevalent in nature. They also say that the principle of Brahmic harmony requires a harmonious discharge of all our duties, and that, as it is a duty to take a part in reformation, so there are other duties to perform, namely, those towards parents and society, and that we should harmonize all these duties as much as we can. However unsatisfactory such arguments may appear to a progressive Brahmo, they are such as could not be slighted at first sight. They are certainly such as to make the conservative Brahmo think sincerely that he is justified in not pushing religious and social reformation to any great extreme. The progressive Brahmo cannot therefore call him a hypocrite. A union of both the conservative and the progressive elements in the Brahmo church is necessary for its stability. The conservative element will prevent the progressive from spoiling the cause of reformation by taking premature and abortive measures for advancing that cause; the progressive element will prevent the conservative from proving a stolid obstruction to it. The conservative element will serve as a link between the progressive element and the orthodox community, and prevent the progressive Brahmo from being completely estranged from that community, as the native Christians are; while the progressive element will prevent the conservative from remaining inert and being absorbed by the orthodox community. The common interests of Brahmo Dharma should lead both classes to respect, and be on amicable terms with each other. It is true the progressive of the present half century will prove the conservative of the next; but there could never come a time when the two classes would cease to exist in the bosom of the church. She should, like a wise mother, make them live in peace with each other, and work harmoniously together for her benefit.
“As idolatry is intimately interwoven with our social fabric, conservative Brahmos, though discarding it in other respects, find it very difficult to do so on the occasion of such very important domestic ceremonies as marriage, +shradh+ (ancestral sacrifices), and +upanayana+ (spiritual apprenticing); but they should consider that Brahmoism is not so imperative on any other point as on the renunciation of idolatry. It can allow conservatism in other respects, but not on the point of idolatry. It can consider a man a Brahmo if he be conservative in other respects than idolatry; but it can never consider an idolater to be a Brahmo. The conservative Brahmo can do one thing, that is, observe the old ritual, leaving out only the idolatrous portion of it, if he do not choose to follow the positive Brahmo ritual laid down in the ‘Anushthána Paddhati.’ Liberty should be given by the progressive Brahmo to the conservative Brahmo in judging of the idolatrous character of the portions of the old ritual rejected by him. If a progressive Brahmo requires a conservative one to reject those portions which the former considers to be idolatrous, but the latter does not, he denies liberty of conscience to a fellow-Brahmo.
“The Adi Brahmo-Samaj is the national Hindu Theistic Church, whose principles of church reformation we have been describing above. Its demeanor towards the old religion of the country is friendly, but corrective and reformative. It is this circumstance which preëminently distinguishes it from the Brahmo-Samaj of India, whose attitude to that religion is antagonistic and offensive. The mission of the Adi Samaj is to fulfill the old religion, and not to destroy it. The attitude of the Adi Samaj to the old religion is friendly, but it is not at the same time opposed to progress. It is a mistake to call it a conservative church. It is rather a conservative-progressive church, or, more correctly, simply a church or religious body, leaving matters of social reformation to the judgments of individual members or bodies of such members. It contains both progressive and conservative members. As the ultra-progressive Brahmos, who wanted to eliminate the conservative element from it, were obliged to secede from it, so if a high conservative party arise in its bosom which would attempt to do violence to the progressive element and convert the church into a partly conservative one, that party also would be obliged to secede from it. Only men who can be tolerant of each others opinions, and can respect each others earnest convictions, progressive and conservative, can remain its members.”
The strong national feeling of the Indian reformers finds expression in the following passage from “Brahmic Questions,” p. 9:--
“A Samaj is accessible to all. The minds of the majority of our countrymen are not deeply saturated with Christian sentiments. What would they think of a Brahmo minister who would quote on the Vedi (altar) sayings from the Bible? Would they not from that time conceive an intolerable hatred towards Brahmoism and everything Brahmo? If quoting a sentence from the Bible or Koran offend our countrymen, we shall not do so. Truth is as catholic when taken from the Sâstras as from the Koran or the Bible. True liberality consists, not in quoting texts from the religious Scriptures of other nations, but in bringing up, as we advance, the rear who are groveling in ignorance and superstition. We certainly do not act against the dictates of conscience, if we quote texts from the Hindu Sâstras only, and not from all the religious Scriptures of all the countries on the face of the globe. Moreover, there is not a single saying in the Scriptures of other nations, which has not its counterpart in the Sâstras.”
And again in “The Adi Brahma-Samaj, its Views and Principles,” p. 1:--
“The members of the Adi Samaj, aiming to diffuse the truths of Theism among their own nation, the Hindus, have naturally adopted a Hindu mode of propagation, just as an Arab Theist would adopt an Arabian mode of propagation, and a Chinese Theist a Chinese one. Such differences in the aspect of Theism in different countries must naturally arise from the usual course of things, but they are adventitious, not essential, national, not sectarian. Although Brahmoism is universal religion, it is impossible to communicate a universal form to it. It must wear a particular form in a particular country. A so-called universal form would make it appear grotesque and ridiculous to the nation or religious denomination among whom it is intended to be propagated, and would not command their veneration. In conformity with such views, the Adi Samaj has adopted a Hindu form to propagate Theism among Hindus. It has therefore retained many innocent Hindu usages and customs, and has adopted a form of divine service containing passages extracted from the Hindu Sâstras only, a book of Theistic texts containing selections from those sacred books only, and a ritual containing as much of the ancient form as could be kept consistently with the dictates of conscience.”
NOTE C.
EXTRACTS FROM KESHUB CHUNDER SEN’S LECTURE ON CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY, 1870.
“Why have I cherished respect and reverence for Christ? . . . Why is it that, though I do not take the name of ‘Christian,’ I still persevere in offering my hearty thanksgivings to Jesus Christ? There must be something in the life and death of Christ,--there must be something in his great gospel which tends to bring comfort and light and strength to a heart heavy-laden with iniquity and wickedness. . . . I studied Christ ethically, nay spiritually,--and I studied the Bible also in the same spirit, and I must acknowledge candidly and sincerely that I owe a great deal to Christ and to the gospel of Christ. . . .
“My first inquiry was, What is the creed taught in the Bible? . . . Must I go through all the dogmas and doctrines which constitute Christianity in the eye of the various sects, or is there something simple which I can at once grasp and turn to account?
“I found Christ spoke one language, and Christianity another. I went to him prepared to hear what he had to say, and was immensely gratified when he told me: ‘Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and love thy neighbor as thyself;’ and then he added, ‘This is the whole law and the prophets,’ in other words, the whole philosophy, theology, and ethics of the law and the prophets are concentrated in these two great doctrines of love to God and love to man; and then elsewhere he said, ‘This do and ye shall inherit everlasting life.’ . . . If we love God and love man we become Christ-like, and so attain everlasting life.
“Christ never demanded from me worship or adoration that is due to God, the Creator of the Universe. . . . He places himself before me as the spirit I must imbibe in order to approach the Divine Father, as the great Teacher and guide who will lead me to God.
“There are some persons who believe that if we pass through the ceremony of baptism and sacrament, we shall be accepted by God, but if you accept baptism as an outward rite, you cannot thereby render your life acceptable to God, for Christ wants something internal, a complete conversion of the heart, a giving up the yoke of mammon and accepting the yoke of religion, and truth, and God. He wants us to baptize our hearts not with cold water, but with the fire of religious and spiritual enthusiasm; he calls upon us not to go through any outward rite, but to make baptism a ceremony of the heart, a spiritual enkindling of all our energies, of all our loftiest and most heavenly aspirations and activities. That is true baptism. So with regard to the doctrine of the sacrament. There are many who eat the bread and drink the wine at the sacramental table, and go through the ceremony in the most pious and fervent spirit; but, after all, what does the sacrament mean? If men simply adopt it as a tribute of respect and honor to Christ, shall he be satisfied? Shall they themselves be satisfied? Can we look upon them as Christians simply because they have gone through this rite regularly for twenty or fifty years of their lives? I think not. Christ demands of us absolute sanctification and purification of the heart. In this matter, also, I see Christ on one side, and Christian sects on the other.
“What is that bread which Christ asked his disciples to eat? what that wine which he asked them to taste? Any man who has simple intelligence in him, would at once come to the conclusion that all this was metaphorical, and highly and eminently spiritual. Now, are you prepared to accept Christ simply as an outward Christ, an outward teacher, an external atonement and propitiation, or will you prove true to Christ by accepting his solemn injunctions in their spiritual importance and weight? He distinctly says, every follower of his must eat his flesh and drink his blood. If we eat, bread is converted into strength and health, and becomes the means of prolonging our life; so, spiritually, if we take truth into our heart, if we put Christ into the soul, we assimilate the spirit of Christ to our spiritual being, and then we find Christ incorporated into our existence and converted into spiritual strength, and health, and joy, and blessedness. Christ wants something that will amount to self-sacrifice, a casting away of the old man, and a new growth in the heart. I thus draw a line of demarcation between the visible and outward Christ, and the invisible and inward Christ, between bodily Christ and spiritual Christ, between the Christ of images and pictures, and the Christ that grows in the heart, between dead Christ and living Christ, between Christ that lived and that was, and Christ that does live and that is. . . . .
“To be a Christian then is to be Christ-like. Christianity means becoming like Christ, not acceptance of Christ as a proposition or as an outward representation, but spiritual conformity with the life and character of Christ. And what is Christ? By Christ I understand one who said, ‘Thy will be done;’ and when I talk of Christ, I talk of that spirit of loyalty to God, that spirit of absolute determinedness and preparedness to say at all times and in all circumstances, ‘Thy will be done, not mine.’ . . . .
“This prayer about forgiving an enemy and loving an enemy, this transcendental doctrine of love of man, is really sweet to me, and when I think of that blessed Man of God, crucified on the cross, and uttering those blessed words, ‘Father, forgive them, they know not what they do;’ oh! I feel that I must love that being, I feel that there is something within me which is touched by these sweet and heavenly utterances, I feel that I must love Christ, let Christians say what they like against me; that Christ I must love, for he preached love for an enemy. . . . .
“When every individual man becomes Christian in spirit--repudiate the name, if you like--when every individual man becomes as prayerful as Christ was, as loving and forgiving towards enemies as Christ was, as self-sacrificing as Christ was, then these little units, these little individualities, will coalesce and combine together by the natural affinity of their hearts; and these new creatures, reformed, regenerated, in the child-like and Christ-like spirit of devotion and faith, will feel drawn towards each other, and they shall constitute a real Christian church, a real Christian nation. Allow me, friends, to say, England is not yet a Christian nation.”
EXTRACTS FROM A CATECHISM ISSUED BY A MEMBER OF THE ADI BRAHMO-SAMAJ.
_Q._ Who is the deity of the Brahmos?
_A._ The One True God, one only without a second, whom all Hindu Śâstras proclaim.
_Q._ What is the divine worship of the Brahmos?
_A._ Loving God, and doing the works He loveth.
_Q._ What is the temple of the Brahmos?
_A._ The pure heart.
_Q._ What are the ceremonial observances of the Brahmos?
_A._ Good works.
_Q._ What is the sacrifice of the Brahmos?
_A._ Renunciation of selfishness.
_Q._ What are the austerities of the Brahmos?
_A._ Not committing sin. The Mahábhárata says, He who does not commit sin in mind, speech, action, or understanding, performs austerities; not he who drieth up his body.
_Q._ What is the place of pilgrimage of the Brahmos?
_A._ The company of the good.
_Q._ What is the Veda of the Brahmos?
_A._ Divine knowledge. It is superior to all Vedas. The Veda itself says: The inferior knowledge is the Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama Veda, the Atharva Veda, etc.; the superior knowledge is that which treats of God.
_Q._ What is the most sacred formula of the Brahmos?
_A._ Be good and do good.
_Q._ Who is the true Brahman?
_A._ He who knows Brahma. The Brihadâraṇyaka-Upanishad says: He who departs from this world knowing God, is a Brahman. (See “Brahmic Questions of the Day,” 1869.)
THE END AND THE MEANS OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS.
A SERMON[23] PREACHED BY ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D., DEAN OF WESTMINSTER, ON THE DAY OF INTERCESSION FOR MISSIONS, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1873.
_Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. And Paul said, I would to God, that, not only thou, but all that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I am, except these bonds._
Ὁ δὲ Ἀγρίππας πρὸς τὸν Παῦλον ἔφη· Ἐν ὀλίγῳ με πείθεις Χριστιανὸν γενέσθαι. Ὁ δὲ Παῦλος εἶπεν· Εὐξαίμην ἂν τῷ Θεῳ, καὶ ἐν ὀλίγῳ καὶ ἐν πολλῷ οὐ μόνον σε, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάντας τοὺς ἀκούοντάς μου σήμερον γενέσθαι τοιούτους, ὁποῖος κἀγώ εἰμι παρεκτὸς τῶν δεσμῶν τούτων. ACTS xxvi. 28, 29.
When I preached on a like occasion last year, I spoke at some length of the prospects of Christian missions,[24] and I ventured to give seven grounds which the peculiar circumstances of our time afforded for greater confidence in the future. First, the better knowledge of the Divine nature acquired by the extinction of the once universal belief that all heathens were everlastingly lost; secondly, the increased acquaintance with the heathen religions themselves; thirdly, the instruction which Christian missionaries have gained or may gain from their actual experience in foreign parts; fourthly, the recognition of the fact that the main hindrance to the success of Christian missions arises from the vices and sins of Christendom; fifthly, an acknowledgment of the indirect influences of Christianity through legislation and civilization; sixthly, the newly awakened perception of the duty of making exact, unvarnished, impartial statements on this subject; seventhly, the testimony borne by missionary experience to the common elements and essential principles of the Christian religion.
On these--the peculiar grounds for hope and for exertion in this our generation--I content myself with referring to the observations which I then made, and which I will not now repeat.
I propose on this occasion to make a few remarks on the End and on the Means of Christian Missions; remarks which must of necessity be general in their import, but which for that reason are the more suitable to be offered by one who cannot speak from personal and special experience.
The text is taken from a striking incident in the life of the greatest of apostolic missionaries. It was in the presence of Festus and Agrippa that Paul had poured forth those few burning utterances which to Festus seemed like madness, but which Paul himself declared to be words of truth and soberness. Then it was that the Jewish prince, Agrippa--far better instructed and seeing deeper into Paul’s mind than the heathen Festus, yet still unconvinced--broke in upon the conversation with the words which in the English translation have well nigh passed into a proverb, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” The sense which they thus give would be in itself perfectly suitable to the halting, fickle character of the Herodian family, and would accurately describe the numerous half-converts throughout the world--“Almost,” but not quite, “thou persuadest me to join the good cause.” But the sense which, by the nearly universal consent of modern scholars, they really bear in the original is something still more instructive. The only meaning of which the Greek words are capable is an exclamation, half in jest and half in earnest, “It is but a very brief and simple argument that you offer to work so great a change;” or, if we may venture to bring out the sense more forcibly, “So few words, and such a vast conclusion!” “So slight a foundation, and so gigantic a superstructure!” “So scanty an outfit, and so perilous an enterprise!” The speech breathes something of the spirit of Naaman, when he was told to wash in the Jordan--“Are not Abana and Pharpar better than all the waters of Israel?” It is like the complaint of the popular prophets in the time of Hezekiah, whose taste demanded stronger flavor than the noble simplicity of Isaiah, “Thou givest us only line upon line, precept upon precept.” It breathes the spirit of the Ephesian Christians who, when they heard St. John’s repeated maxim of “Little children, love one another,” said, “Is this all that he has to tell us?” It expresses the spirit of many an one since, who has stumbled at the threshold of the genuine Gospel--“So vague, so simple, so universal. Is this worth the sacrifice that you demand? Give us a demonstrative argument, a vast ceremonial, a complex system, a uniform government. Nothing else will satisfy us.”
As Agrippa’s objection, so is Paul’s answer. It would have indeed borne a good sense had he meant what in our English version he is made to say, “I would that thou wert converted both ‘almost and altogether.’ Halfness or wholeness--I admire them both. Half a soul is better than none at all. To have come half way is better than never to have started at all; but half is only good, because it leads towards the whole.” Nevertheless, following the real meaning of Agrippa’s remark, St. Paul’s retort, in fact, bears a yet deeper significance--“I would to God, that whether by little or by much, whether by brief arguments or by long arguments, somehow and somewhere, the change were wrought. The means to me are comparatively nothing, so long as the end is accomplished.” It is the same spirit as that which dictated the noble expression in the Epistle to the Philippians: “Some preach Christ of envy and strife, some also of good will. The one preach Christ of contention, the other of love. What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is preached.”[25]
And then he proceeds to vindicate the end which makes him indifferent as to the means. Agrippa, in his brief taunt, had said, “Such are the arguments by which you would fain make me a _Christian_.” It is one of the few, one of the only three occasions on which that glorious name is used in the New Testament. It is here charged not with the venerable meaning which we now attach to it, but with the novel and degrading associations which it bore in the mouth of every Jew and every Roman at that time--of Tacitus or Josephus, no less than of Festus or Agrippa. “Is it,” so the king meant to say, “is it that you think to make me a _Christian_, a member of that despised, heretical, innovating sect, of which the very name is a sufficient condemnation?”
It is only by bearing this in mind that we see the force of St. Paul’s answer. He does not insist on the word; he does not fight even for this sacred title; he does not take it up as a pugnacious champion might take up the glove which his adversary had thrown down; he does not say, “I would that thou wast a Christian.” In his answer he bears his testimony to one of the gravest, the most fruitful, of all theological truths--that it is not the name but the thing, not the form but the reality, on which stress must be laid; and he gives the most lucid, heart-stirring illustration of what the reality is. “I would that not only thou, but all those who hear me were (I ask for no ambiguous catchword or byword, but) what you see before you; I would that you all were such as I am--such as I am, upheld by the hopes, filled with the affections, that sustain my charmed existence;” and then, with that exquisite courtesy which characterizes so many traits of the Apostle’s history, glancing at the chains which bound him to the Roman guard--“‘except these bonds.’ This, whether you call it Christian or not, is what I desire to see you and all the world.” “You see it before you in the life, the character, the spirit, of one who knows what Christianity is, and who wishes that all his fellow-creatures should partake of the happiness that he has gained, repose on the same principles that give him strength.” This, then, is the statement of the greatest of missionaries, both as to the end which he sought to attain, and the means by which he and we should seek to attain it.
I. Let us first take the End: “Such as I am, except these bonds.” That is the state to which St. Paul desired to bring all those who heard him. That, according to him, was the description of a Christian. No doubt if he had been pressed yet further, he would have said that he meant, “Such as Jesus Christ, my Lord.” But he was satisfied with taking such a living, human, imperfect exemplification as he whom Festus and Agrippa saw in their presence. “Such as Paul was.” Here is no ambiguous definition, no obsolete form. What manner of man he was we know even better than Festus or Agrippa knew. Look at him with all his characteristic peculiarities; a man passionately devoted to his own faithful friends, and clinging to the reminiscences of his race and country, yet with a heart open to embrace all mankind; a man combining the strongest convictions with an unbounded toleration of differences, and an unbounded confidence in truth; a man penetrated with the freedom of the Spirit, but with a profound appreciation of the value of great existing institutions, whether civil or religious--a thorough Roman citizen and a thorough Eastern gentleman; embarked on a career of daring fortitude and endurance, undertaken in the strength of the persuasion that in Jesus Christ of Nazareth he had seen the highest perfection of Divine and human goodness--a Master worth living for and worth dying for, whose Spirit was to be the regenerating power of the whole world. This character, this condition it was to which St. Paul desired that his hearers should be brought. One only reservation he makes; “except these bonds,” except those limitations, those circumscriptions, those vexations, those irritations, which belonged to the suffering, toil-worn circumstances in which he was at that moment placed.
Such is the aim which, following the example of their most illustrious predecessor, all missionaries ought to have before their eyes. To create, to preach, to exhibit those elements of character, those apostolical graces, those Divine intuitions, which even the hard Roman magistrate and the superficial Jewish prince recognized in Paul of Tarsus. Where these are, there is Christianity. In proportion as any of these are attained, in that proportion has a human being become a Christian. Wherever and in proportion as these are not, there the missionary’s labor has failed--there the seed has been sown to no purpose--there the name of Christian may be, but the reality is not.
This preëminence of the object of Christian missions--namely, the formation of heroic, apostolic, and therefore Christian characters--has a wide practical importance. In these days--when there is so much temptation to dwell on the scaffolding, the apparatus, the organization of religion, as though it were religion itself--it is doubly necessary to bear in mind what true Religion is, wherein lies the essential superiority of Christianity to all the other forms of religion on the surface of the earth. It is not merely the baptism of thousands of infants, such as filled a large part of the aspirations even of so great a missionary as Francis Xavier; nor the adoption of the name of Christ, as was done on so vast a scale by the ferocious rebels of China; nor the repetition, with ever so much accuracy, of the Christian creed, as was done by the pretended converts from Mahommedanism or Judaism, under the terrible compulsion of the Catholic sovereigns of Spain. Nor is it the assurance ever so frequently repeated, that we are saved; nor is it the absolution, ever so solemnly pronounced by a priest; nor is it the shedding of floods of tears; nor is it the adoption of voluntary self-degradation or solitary seclusion. All these may be found in other religions in even greater force than in Christianity. That which alone, if anything, stamps Christianity as the supreme religion, is that its essence, its object, is in none of these things, valuable as some of them may be as signs and symptoms of the change which every mission is intended to effect. The change itself, the end itself, Christianity itself, is at once greater and simpler. It is to be such as Paul was; it is to produce characters, which in truthfulness, in independence, in mercy, in purity, in charity, may recall something of the great Apostle, even as he recalled something of the mind which was in Christ Jesus. It was this clear vision of what he desired to see as the fruits of his teaching that made St. Paul so ready to admire whatsoever things were lovely and of good report wherever he found them. In Gentile or in Jew, in heathen or in Christian, he recognized at once the spirits kindred to his own, and welcomed them accordingly. He felt that he could raise them yet higher; but he was eager to claim them as his brethren even from the first.[26] Even in the legends which surround his history there has been preserved something of this genuine apostolic sympathy. It was a fine touch in the ancient Latin hymn which described how, when he landed at Puteoli, he turned aside to the hill of Pausilipo to shed a tear over the tomb of Virgil, and thought how much he might have made of that noble soul if he had found him still on earth:--
“Ad Maronis mausoleum
Ductus, fudit super eum
Piæ rorem lacrymæ--
‘Quantum,’ dixit, ‘te fecissem
Si te vivum invenissem,
Poetarum maxime.’”
It was this which made him cling with such affectionate interest to his converts, to his friends, to his sons, as he calls them, in Christ Jesus. All that he sought, all that he looked for in them, was that they should show in their characters the seal of the spirit that animated himself. Whether they derived this character from himself or from Apollos or Cephas he cared not to ask. He was their pupil as much as their master. He disclaimed all dominion over their independent faith; he claimed only to be a helper in their joy.
This reproduction of Paul--this reproduction of all that is best in ourselves or better than ourselves--in the minds and hearts of mankind, is the true work of the Christian missionary; and, in order to do this, he must be himself that which he wishes to impress upon them in humility, goodness, courtesy, and holiness, except only the straitening bonds which cramp or confine each separate character, nation, and church. No disparager of Christian missions can dispute this *--no champion of Christian missions need go beyond this. When, in the last century, the Danish missionary, Schwarz, was pursuing his labors at Tanjore, and the Rajah Hyder Ali desired to treat with the English government, he said: “Do not send to me any of your agents, for I trust neither their words nor their treaties. But send to me the missionary of whose character I hear so much from every one; him will I receive and trust.” That was the electrifying, vivifying effect of the apparition of such an one as Paul--“a man who had indeed done nothing worthy of bonds or of death”--a man in whose entire disinterestedness and in whose transparent honor the image and superscription of his Master was written so that no one could mistake it. “In every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness” is the noblest work of God our Creator--the most precious result of human endeavor. If any such--by missionary efforts, either of convert or teacher, either direct or indirect--have been produced, then the prayers uttered, the labors inspired, the hopes expressed in these and like services have not been altogether in vain. One of the most striking facts to which our attention has been called as demanding our thankfulness on this day is the solemn testimony borne by the Government of India to the fruits of “the blameless lives and self-denying labors of its six hundred Protestant missionaries.” And what are those fruits? Not merely the adoption of this or that outward form of Christianity by this or that section of the Indian community. It is something which is in appearance less, but in reality far greater than this. It is something less like the question of Agrippa, but more like the answer of Paul. It is that they have “infused new vigor into the stereotyped life of the vast populations placed under English rule;” it is that they are “preparing those populations to be in every way better men and better citizens of the great Empire under which they dwell.” That is a verdict on which we can rest with the assurance that it is not likely to be reversed. Individual conversions may relapse--may be accounted for by special motives; but long-sustained, wide-reaching changes of the whole tenor and bent of a man or of a nation are beyond suspicion. When we see the immovable, and, as the official document says, “the stereotyped” forms of Indian life re-animated with a vigor unknown to the Oriental races in earlier days, this is a regeneration as surprising as that which, to a famous missionary of the past generation, seemed as impossible as the restoration of a mummy to life--namely, the conversion of a single Brahmin.
This, then, is the End of Christian missions, whether to heathens or to Christians, namely, to make better men and better citizens--to raise the whole of society by inspiring it with a higher view of duty, with a stronger sense of truth; with a more powerful conviction that only by goodness and truth can God be approached or Christ be served--that God is goodness and truth, and that Christ is the Image of God, because He is goodness and truth. If this be the legitimate result of Christianity, no further arguments are needed to prove that it contains a light which is worth imparting, and which, wherever it is imparted, vindicates its heavenly origin and its heavenly tendency.
II. This is the End; and now what are the Means? They are what we might expect in the view of so great an end. Anything (so the Apostle tells us), be it small or great, short or long, scanty or ample,--the manners of a Jew for Jews, the manners of a Gentile for Gentiles, “all things for all men,”[27]--are worth considering if “by any of these means he might save,” that is, elevate, sanctify, purify any of those to whom he spoke. When we reflect upon the many various efforts to do good in this manifold world--the multitude of sermons, societies, agencies, excitements, which to some seem as futile and fruitless as to others they seem precious and important--it is a true consolation to bear in mind the Apostle’s wise and generous maxim, “Whether by little or by much, whether in pretence or in truth, whether of strife or of good will, Christ is preached, and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.” It may be by a short, sudden, electric shock, or it may be by a long course of civilizing, humanizing tendencies. It may be by a single text, such as that which awoke the conscience of Augustine; or a single interview like Justin’s with the unknown philosopher; or it may be by a long systematic treatise--Butler’s “Analogy,” or Lardner’s “Credibilia,” or the “Institutes” of Calvin, or the “Summa Theologiæ” of Aquinas. It may be by the sudden flush of victory in battle, such as convinced Clovis on the field of Tolbiac; or the argument of a peaceful conference, such as convinced our own Ethelbert. It may be by teachers steeped in what was by half the Christian world regarded as deadly heresy, such as the Arian Bishop Ulfilas, by whom were converted to the faith those mighty Gothic tribes which formed the first elements of European Christendom, and whose deeds Augustine regarded, notwithstanding their errors, as the glory of the Christian name.[28] It may be by teachers immersed in superstitions as barbarous, as completely repudiated by the civilized world, as were those of the famous Roman Pontiff who sent the first missionaries to these shores. Sometimes the change has been effected by the sight of a single picture, as when Vladimir of Russia was shown the representation of the Last Judgment; sometimes by a dream or a sign, known only to those who were affected by it--such as the vision of the Cross which arrested Constantine on his way to Rome, or changed Colonel Gardiner’s dissolute youth to a manhood of strict and sober piety. Sometimes it has been by the earnest preaching of missionaries, confessedly ill-educated and ill-prepared for the work which they had to accomplish; sometimes by the slow infiltration of Christian literature and Christian civilization; the grandeur, in old days, of Rome and Constantinople; in our days, the superiority of European genius, the spread of English commerce, the establishment of just laws, pure homes, merciful institutions.
We do not say that all these means are equally good or equally efficacious. St. Paul, in his argument with Agrippa, did not mean to say that “almost and altogether,” that “much and little,” were the same; he did not mean that it was equally good that Christ should be preached in strife or in good-will; he did not mean that a good end justified bad means, or that we may do evil that good may come; he did not mean to justify the falsehoods which are profanely called pious frauds, nor the persecutions which have been set on foot by those who thought to do God service, or the attempt to stimulate artificial excitement by undermining the moral strength and manly independence of the human spirit. God forbid! But what he meant, and what we mean with him, is this: In true Christian missions, in the conversion of human souls from dead works, from sin, from folly, from barbarism, from hardness, from selfishness, to goodness and purity, justice and truth, the field is so vast, the diversity of character in men and nations is so infinite, the enterprise so arduous, the aspects of Divine truth so various, that it is on the one hand a duty for each one to follow out that particular means of conversion which seems to him most efficacious, and on the other hand to acquiesce in the converging use of many means which cannot, by the nature of the case, appear equally efficacious to every one. Such a toleration, such an adoption of the different modes of carrying on what John Bunyan called “the Holy War,” “the Siege of Man’s Soul,” must indeed be always controlled by the determination to keep the high, paramount, universal end always in view; by the vigilant endeavor to repress the exaggeration, to denounce the follies and the falsehoods which infect even the best attempts of narrow and fallible, though good and faithful, servants of their Lord. But, if once we have this principle fixed in our minds, it surely becomes a solace to remember that the soul of man is won by a thousand different approaches--that thus the instruments which often seem most unworthy may yet serve to produce a result far above themselves--that when “we have toiled all night and taken nothing” by keeping close to the shore, or by throwing out our nets always on one side, yet if we have courage “to launch out into the deep, and cast out our nets on the other side of the ship,” we shall “enclose a great multitude of fishes, so that the net shall break.”
He is a traitor to the cause who exalts the means above the end, or who seeks an end altogether different from that to which his allegiance binds him; but he is not a traitor, but a faithful soldier, who makes the best use of all the means that are placed in his hands. Long after the imperfect instruments have perished the results will endure, and in forms wholly unlike the insufficiency or the meagreness of the first propelling cause. The preaching of Henry Martyn may have been tinged by a zeal often not according to knowledge; but the savor of his holy and self-denying life has passed like a sweet-smelling incense through the whole framework of Indian society. “Even,” so he said himself, “if I should never see a native converted, God may design by my patience and continuance in the work to encourage future missionaries.”
The more profoundly we are impressed with the degradation of the heathen nations, with the corruption of the Christian churches, the more thankful should we be for any attempts, however slight and however various, to quicken the sluggish mass, and enlighten the blackness of the night, provided only that the mass is permanently quickened, and the darkness is in any measure dispelled. “I have lived too long,” said Lord Macaulay on his return from India to England, “I have lived too long in a country where people worship cows, to think much of the differences which part Christians from Christians.” And, in fact, as the official report to which I have referred testifies in strong terms, the presence of the great evils which Indian missionaries have to confront, has often produced in them a noble and truly Christian indifference to the trivial divergences between themselves. “Even a one-eyed man,” says the proverb, “is a king amongst the blind.” Even the shepherd’s sling may perchance smite down the Goliath of Gath. The rough sledge-hammer of a rustic preacher may strike home, where the most polished scholar would plead in vain. The calm judgment of the wise and good, or the silent example, or the understanding sympathy, or the wide survey of the whole field of the religions of mankind, may awaken convictions which all the declamations of all the churches would fail to arouse.
The misery of the war on the coast of Africa, the terrible prospect of the Indian famine, may furnish the very opening which we most desire. They may be the very touchstones by which these suffering heathens will test the practical efficiency of a Christian government and a Christian nation, of Christian missionaries and Christian people, and, having so tested it, will judge.
When the first Napoleon suddenly found himself among the quicksands of the Red Sea he ordered his generals to ride out in so many opposite directions, and the first who arrived on firm ground to call on the rest to follow. This is what we may ask of all the various schemes and agencies--all the various inquiries after truth now at work in all the different branches and classes of Christendom--“Ride out amongst those quicksands! Ride out in the most opposite directions, and let him that first finds solid ground call out to us! It may perchance be the very ground in the midst of this quaking morass where we shall be able to stand firm and move the world.”
There is one special variety of means which I would venture to name in conclusion. Ever since the close of the Apostolic age there have been two separate agencies in the Christian Church by which the work of conversion has been carried on. The chief, the recognized, the ordinary agency has been that of the clergy. Every presbyter, every bishop in the Church of the first ages, and again in the beginning of Christian Europe, was, in the strict sense of the word, a missionary; and although their functions have in these latter days been for the most part best fulfilled by following their stationary, fixed, pastoral charges, yet it is still from their ranks in all the different churches that the noble army of missionaries and martyrs in foreign lands has been, and is and must be recruited. Most unwise and unworthy would be any word which should underrate the importance of this mighty element in the work of renewing the face of the earth. But there has always been recognized, more or less distinctly, the agency of Christian laymen in this same work of evangelization. Not only in that more general sense in which I have already indicated the effect of the laws, and literature, and influence of Christian Europe--not only in that unquestionable sense in which the best of all missionaries is a high-minded governor, or an upright magistrate, or a devout and pure-minded soldier, who is always “trusting in God and doing his duty;” not only in these senses do we look for the coöperation of laymen, but also in the more direct forms of instruction, of intelligent and far-seeing interest in labors, which, though carried on mainly by the clergy, must, if they are to be good for anything, concern all mankind alike. In the early centuries of Christianity the aid of laymen was freely invoked and freely given in this great cause. Such was Origen, the most learned and the most gifted of the Fathers, who preached as a layman in the presence of presbyters and bishops. Such was one of the first evangelizers of India, Pantænus; such was the hermit Telemachus, whose earnest protest, aided by his heroic death, extinguished at Rome the horrors of the gladiatorial games; such was Antony, the mighty preacher in the wilds of the Thebaid and the streets of Alexandria; such, in later days, was Francis of Assisi, when first he began his career as the most famous preacher of the Middle Ages; such, just before the Reformation, was our own Sir Thomas More.[29] In these instances, as in many others, the influence, the learning, the zeal of laymen, was directly imported into the work of Christianizing the nations of Europe. It is for this reason that we in our age also, so far as the law and order of our churches permit, have frequently received the assistance of laymen; who, by the weight of their character or their knowledge, can render a fresh testimony, or throw a fresh light on subjects where we, the clergy, should perhaps be heard less willingly. As their voices have been raised on this sacred subject of missions in many a humble parish church; as also on other sacred topics, such as Christian art and history, their words have often been heard within the consecrated walls of this and other great abbeys and cathedrals;--so, in the hope that a more systematic form may thus be given to our knowledge, and a more concentrated direction to our zeal, we shall have the privilege of listening this evening in the nave of this church to a scholar renowned throughout the world, whose knowledge of all heathen religions, ancient and modern, in their relation to the experience of Christian missions, probably exceeds that of any other single person in Europe.
I conclude by once more applying the Apostle’s words to the Means and the End of Christian missions. We would to God that whether by little or by much, whether by sudden stroke or by elaborate reasoning, whether in a brief moment or by long process of years, whether by the fervor of active clergy, or by the learning of impartial laymen, whether by illiterate simplicity or by wide philosophy--not only those who hear me, but all on whom the services of this day, far and near, have any influence, may become, at least in some degree, such as was Paul the Apostle, such as have been the wisest and best of Christian missionaries, except only those bonds which belong to time and place, not to the Eternal Spirit and the Everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ. We cannot wish a better wish, or pray a better prayer to God on this day than that amongst the missionaries who teach, amongst the heathens who hear, there should be raised up men who should exhibit that type of Christian truth and of Christian life which was seen by Festus and Agrippa in Paul of Tarsus. May the Giver of all good gifts give to us some portion of his cheerful and manly faith, of his fearless energy, of his horror of narrowness and superstition, of his love for God and for mankind, of his absolute faith in the triumph of his Redeemer’s cause. May God our Father waken in us the sense that we are all his children; may the whole earth become more and more one fold under one Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ his Son; may the Holy Spirit of Heaven
“Our souls inspire, And lighten with celestial fire.”
ON THE VITALITY OF BRAHMANISM.
The delivery of a lecture on Missions in Westminster Abbey by a layman, and that layman a German, caused great excitement at the time. While some persons of great experience and authority in Church and State expressed their full approval of the bold step which the Dean of Westminister had taken, and while some of the most devoted missionaries conveyed to me their hearty thanks for what I had said in my lecture, others could not find terms sufficiently violent to vent their displeasure against the Dean, and to proclaim their horror at the heretical opinions embodied in my address. I was publicly threatened with legal proceedings, and an eminent lawyer informed me in the “Times” of the exact length of imprisonment I should have to undergo.
I did not reply. I had lived long enough in England to know that no good cause can ever be served by a breach of the law, and neither the Dean nor I myself would have acted as we did unless it had been ascertained beforehand from the highest authorities that, with the sanction of the Dean, there was nothing illegal in a layman delivering such a lecture within the precincts of his Abbey. As to the opinions which I expressed on that occasion, I had expressed them before in my published “Lectures on the Science of Religion.” Whether they are orthodox or heretical, others are more competent to determine than I am. I simply hold them to be true, and at my time of life, mere contradictions, abuse, or even threats are not likely to keep me from expressing opinions which, whether rightly or wrongly, seem to me founded in truth.
But while I refrained from replying to mere outbursts of anger, I gladly availed myself of the opportunity offered by an article published in the “Fortnightly Review” (July, 1874), by Mr. Lyall, a highly distinguished Indian civilian, in order to explain more fully some of the views expressed in my lecture which seemed liable to misapprehension. Unfortunately the writer of the article “On Missionary Religions” had not the whole of my lecture before him when writing his criticisms, but had to form his opinion of it from a condensed report which appeared in the “Times” of December 5th, 1873. The limits of a lecture are in themselves very narrow, and when so large a subject as that of which I had to treat in Westminster Abbey had to be condensed within sixty minutes, not only those who wish to misunderstand, but those also who try to judge fairly, may discover in what has been said, or what has not been said, a very different meaning from that which the lecturer wished to convey. And if a closely-packed lecture is compressed once more into one column of the “Times,” it is hardly possible to avoid what has happened in this case. Mr. Lyall has blamed me for not quoting facts or statements which, as he will have seen by this time, I had quoted in my lecture. I am reminded by him, for instance, of the remarks made by Sir George Campbell in his report upon the government of Bengal in 1871-72, when he wrote, “It is a great mistake to suppose that the Hindu religion is not proselytizing; the system of castes gives room for the introduction of any number of outsiders; so long as people do not interfere with existing castes, they may form a new caste and call themselves Hindus; and the Brahmans are always ready to receive all who will submit to them and pay them. The process of manufacturing Rajputs from ambitious aborigines goes on before our eyes.” “This,” Mr. Lyall observes, “is one recently recorded observation out of many that might be quoted.”
It is this very passage which I had quoted in my third note, only that in quoting it from the “Report on the Progress and Condition of India,” laid before Parliament in 1873, I had added the caution of the reporter, that “this assertion must be taken with reserve.”
With such small exceptions, however, I have really nothing to complain of in the line of argument adopted by Mr. Lyall. I believe that, after having read my paper, he would have modified some portions of what he has written, but I feel equally certain that it is well that what he has written should have been written, and should be carefully pondered both by those who have the interests of the natives, and by those who have the interests of Christian missions at heart. The few remarks which I take the liberty of making are made by way of explanation only; on all truly essential points I believe there is not much difference of opinion between Mr. Lyall and myself.
As my lecture in Westminister Abbey was delivered shortly after the publication of my “Introduction to the Science of Religion,” I ventured to take certain points which I had fully treated there as generally known. One of them is the exact value to be ascribed to canonical books in a scientific treatment of religion. When Mr. Lyall observes _in limine_, that inferences as to the nature and tendency of various existing religions which are drawn from study and exegetic comparison of their scriptures, must be qualified by actual observation of these religions and their popular form and working effects, he expresses an opinion which I hold as strongly as he holds it himself. After enumerating the books which are recognized as sacred or authoritative by large religious communities in India, books of such bulk and such difficulty that it seems almost impossible for any single scholar to master them in their entirety, I added (p. 111), “And even then our eyes would not have reached many of the sacred recesses in which the Hindu mind has taken refuge, either to meditate on the great problems of life, or to free itself from the temptations and fetters of worldly existence by penances and mortifications of the most exquisite cruelty. India has always been teeming with religious sects, and its religious life has been broken up into countless local centres which it required all the ingenuity and perseverance of a priestly caste to hold together with a semblance of dogmatic uniformity.”
We must take care, however, in all scientific studies, not to render a task impossible by attaching to it conditions which, humanly speaking, cannot be fulfilled. It is desirable, no doubt, to study some of the local varieties of faith and worship in every religion, but it is impossible to do this with anything like completeness. Were we to wait till we had examined every Christian sect before trusting ourselves to form a general judgment of Christianity, not one of us could honestly say that he knew his own religion. It seems to me that in studying religions we must expect to meet with the same difficulties which we have to encounter in the comparative study of languages. It may, no doubt, be argued with great force that no one knows English who is ignorant of the spoken dialects, of the jargon of sailors and miners, or of the slang of public-houses and prisons. It is perfectly true that what we call the literary and classical language is never the really living language of a people, and that a foreigner may know Shakespeare, Milton, and Byron, and yet fail to understand, if not the debates in Parliament, at all events the wrangling of sellers and buyers in the markets of the city. Nevertheless, when we learn English, or German, or French, or any of the dead languages, such as Latin and Greek, we must depend on grammars, which grammars are founded on a few classical writers; and when we speak of these languages in general, when we subject them to a scientific treatment, analyze them, and attempt to classify them, we avail ourselves for all such purposes almost exclusively of classical works, of literary productions of recognized authority. It is the same, and it can hardly be otherwise, when we approach the study of religions, whether for practical or for scientific purposes. Suppose a Hindu wished to know what the Christian religion really was, should we tell him to go first to Rome, then to Paris, then to St. Petersburg, then to Athens, then to Oxford, then to Berlin, that he might hear the sermons of Roman Catholics, Greeks, and Protestants, or read their so-called religious papers, in order to form out of these scattered impressions an idea of the real nature of the working effects of Christianity? Or should we not rather tell him to take the Bible, and the hymns of Christian Churches, and from them to form his ideal of true Christianity? A religion is much more likely to become “a mysterious thing,” when it is sought for in the heart of each individual believer, where alone, no doubt, it truly lives, or in the endless shibboleths of parties, or in the often contradictory tenets of sects, than when it is studied in those sacred books which are recognized as authoritative by all believers, however much they may vary in their interpretations of certain passages, and still more in the practical application of the doctrines contained in their sacred codes to the ordering of their daily life. Let the dialects of languages or religions be studied by all means, let even the peculiarities in the utterances of each town, village, or family, be carefully noted; but let it be recognized at the same time that, for practical purposes, the immense variety of individual expression has to be merged in one general type, and that this alone supplies the chance of a truly scientific treatment.
So much in justification of the principle which I have followed throughout in my treatment of the so-called Book-religions, holding that they must be judged, first of all, out of their own mouths, _i.e._, out of their sacred writings. Although each individual believer is responsible for his religion, no religion can be made responsible for each individual believer. Even if we adopt the theory of development in religion, and grant to every thinking man his right of private interpretation, there remains, and their must always remain, to the historian of religion, an appeal to the statutes of the original code with which each religion stands and falls, and by which alone it can justly be judged.
It may be, as Mr. Lyall says, an inveterate modern habit to assume all great historic names to represent something definite, symmetrical, and organized. It may be that Asiatic institutions, as he asserts, are incapable of being circumscribed by rules and formal definitions. But Mr. Lyall, if he directed his attention to European institutions, would meet with much the same difficulties there. Christianity, in the largest sense of the word, is as difficult to define as Brahmanism, the English constitution is as unsymmetrical as the system of caste. Yet, if we mean to speak and argue about them, we must attempt to define them, and with regard to any religion, whether Asiatic or European, no definition, it seems to me, can be fairer than that which we gain from its canonical books.
I now come to a more important point. I had divided the six great religions of the world into _Missionary_ and _non-Missionary_, including Judaism, Brahmanism, and Zoroastrianism, under the latter; Buddhism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism, under the former category. If I had followed the good old rule of always giving a definition of technical terms, the objections raised by Mr. Lyall and others would probably never have been urged. I thought, however, that from the whole tenor of my lecture it would have been clear that by missionary religions I meant _those in which the spreading of the truth and the conversion of unbelievers are raised to the rank of a sacred duty by the founder or his immediate successors_. In explaining the meaning of the word proselyte, or προσήλυτος, I had shown that literally it means those who come to us, not those to whom we go, so that even a religion so exclusive as Judaism might admit proselytes, might possibly, if we insisted only on the etymological meaning of the word, be called proselytizing, without having any right to the name of a missionary religion. But I imagined that I had said enough to make such a misunderstanding impossible. We may say that the English nobility grows, but we should never say that it proselytizes, and it would be a mere playing with words if, because Brahmanism admits new-comers, we were to claim for it the title of a proselytizing religion. The Brahmanic Scriptures have not a word of welcome for converts, quite the contrary; and as long as these Scriptures are recognized as the highest authority by the Hindus themselves, we have no right to ascribe to Brahmanism what is in direct contradiction with their teaching. The burning of widows was not enjoined in the Vedas, and hence, in order to gain a sanction for it, a passage in the Veda was falsified. No such necessity was ever felt with regard to gaining converts for the Brahmanic faith, and this shows that, though admission to certain Brahmanic privileges may be easier at present than it was in the days of Viśvâmitra, conversion by persuasion has never become an integral portion of the Brahmanic law.
However, as Mr. Lyall does not stand alone in his opinions, and as others have claimed for Judaism and Zoroastrianism the same missionary character which he claims in the name of Brahmanism, a few explanations may not be out of place.
Till very lately, an orthodox Jew was rather proud of the fact that he and his people had never condescended to spread their religion among Christians by such means as Christians use for the conversion of Jews. The Parsi community, too, seemed to share with the Quakers a prudent reluctance in admitting outsiders to the advantages conferred by membership of so respectable and influential a community, while the Brahmans certainly were the very last to compass heaven and earth for the conversion of Mlecchas or outcasts. Suddenly, however, all this is changed. The Chief Rabbi in London, stung to the quick by the reproach of the absence of the missionary spirit in Judaism, has delivered a sermon to show that I had maligned his people, and that, though they never had missionaries, they had been the most proselytizing people in the world. Some strong arguments in support of the same view have been brought forward by the Rev. Charles Voysey, whose conception of Judaism, however, is founded rather on what the great prophets wished it should have been than on what history teaches us it was. As the facts and arguments advanced by the Jewish advocates did not modify my judgment of the historical character of Judaism, I did not think it necessary to reply, particularly as another eminent Rabbi, the editor of the “Jewish World,” fully endorsed my views of Judaism, and expressed his surprise at the unorthodox theories advanced by so high an authority as Dr. Adler. I am informed, however, that the discussion thus originated will not remain without practical results, and that something like a Jewish Missionary Society is actually forming in London, to prove that, if missionary zeal is a test of life, the Jewish religion will not shrink from such a test. “We have done something,” the Rev. Charles Voysey remarks, “to stir them up; but let us not forget that our reminder was answered, not by a repulse or expression of surprise, but by an assurance that many earnest Jews had already been thinking of this very work, and planning among themselves how they could revive some kind of missionary enterprise. Before long, I feel sure they will give practical evidence that the missionary spirit is still alive and striving in their religion.” And again: “The Jews will soon show whether their religion is alive or dead, will soon meet the rival religions of the world on more than equal terms, and will once more take the lead in these days of enlightened belief, and in search after conceptions worthy of a God, just as of old Judaism stood on a lofty height, far above all the religions of mankind.”
What has happened in London seems to have happened in Bombay also. The Zoroastrians, too, did not like to be told that their religion was dying, and that their gradual decay was due to the absence of the missionary spirit among them. We read in the “Oriental” of April, 1874, “There is a discussion as to whether it is contrary to the creed of Zoroaster to seek converts to the faith. While conceding that Zoroaster was himself opposed to proselytizing heathens, most of the Parsis hold that the great decrease in the number of his followers renders it absolutely necessary to attempt to augment the sect.”
Lastly, Mr. Lyall stands up for Brahmanism, and maintains that in India Brahmanism had spread out during the last hundred years, while Islam and Christianity have contracted. “More persons in India,” he says, “become every year Brahmanists, than all the converts to all the other religions in India, put together.” “The number of converts,” he maintains, “added to Brahmanism in the last few generations, especially in this country, must be immense; and _if the word proselyte may be used in the sense of one that has come, not necessarily being one that has been invited or persuaded to come_, then Brahmanism may lay claim to be by far the most successful proselytizing religion of modern times in India.”
The words which I have ventured to put in italics, will show at once how little difference of opinion there is between Mr. Lyall and myself, as long as we use the same words in the same sense. If proselytizing could be used in the etymological sense, here assigned to it by Mr. Lyall, then, no doubt, Brahmanism would be a proselytizing or missionary religion. But this is mere playing with words. In English, proselytizing is never used in that sense. If I meant by missionary religions nothing more than religions which are capable of increase by admitting those that wish to be admitted, religions which say to the world at large, “Knock and it shall be opened unto you,” but no more, then, no doubt, Brahmanism, or at least some phases of it, might be called by that name. But what, according to my explanation, constitutes a missionary religion is something totally different. It is the spirit of truth in the hearts of believers which cannot rest unless it manifests itself in thought, word, and deed, which is not satisfied till it has carried its message to every human soul, till what it believes to be the truth is accepted as the truth by all members of the human family.
That spirit imparts to certain religions a character of their own, a character which, if I am not mistaken, constitutes the vital principle of our own religion, and of the other two which, in that respect, stand nearest to Christianity--Buddhism and Mohammedanism. This is not a mere outward difference, depending on the willingness of others to join or not to join; it is an inward difference which stamped Christianity as a missionary religion, when as yet it counted no more than twelve apostles, and which lays on every one that calls himself a Christian the duty of avowing his convictions, whatever they may be, and gaining others to embrace the truth. In that sense every true Christian is a missionary. Mr. Lyall is evidently aware of all this, if we may judge by the expressions which he uses when speaking of the increase of Brahmanism. He speaks of the clans and races which inhabit the hill-tracts, the out-lying uplands, and the uncleared jungle districts of India, as _melting_ into Hinduism. He represents the ethnical frontier, described by Mr. Hunter in the “Annals of Rural Bengal,” as an ever-breaking shore of primitive beliefs, which _tumble_ constantly into the ocean of Brahmanism. And even when he dwells on the fact that non-Aryans are invited by the Brahmans to enter in, he adds that this is done for the sake of profit and repute, not from a wish to eradicate error, to save souls, or to spread the truth. Such instances occurred even in the ancient history of India; and I had myself, in my “History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,” pointed out the case of the Rathakaras or carpenters who were admitted to the Vedic sacrifices, and who, probably from a mere similarity of name--their leader being called Bribu,--had the old Vedic Ribhus assigned to them as their peculiar deities. But these were exceptions, they were _concessions aux nègres_, deviations from traditional rules, entirely owing to the pressure of circumstances; not manifestations springing from religious impulses. If Mr. Lyall remarks himself, that a religion which thus, half involuntarily, enlarges its borders, is not, in the strict sense of the word, a missionary religion, he shows that he is fully aware of the profound difference between a religion that grows by mere agglomeration and a religion that grows by its own strength, by its irrepressible missionary zeal. In answer to his concluding remark, that this ground was _not_ taken in my lecture, I can only say that it was, nay, that it formed the very foundation on which the whole argument of my lecture was meant to rest.
There is more force in the objections which Mr. Lyall raises against my calling Brahmanism already dead. The word was too strong; at all events, it was liable to be misunderstood. What I meant to say was that the popular worship of Śiva and Vishṇu belongs to the same intellectual stratum as the worship of Jupiter and Apollo, that it is an anachronism in the nineteenth century, and that, for our purposes, for prognosticating the issues of the religious struggles of the future, it may simply be set aside. For settling any of the questions that may be said to be pending between Christianity, Mohammedanism, and Buddhism, Brahmanism is dead. For converting any number of Christians, Mohammedans, and Buddhists back to idolworship, Brahmanism is dead. It may absorb Sonthals, and Gonds, and Bhils, and other half savage races, with their rough-hewn jungle deities, it may even raise them to a higher stage of civilization, and imbue them with the first principles of a truer faith and a purer worship, but for carrying any of the strong positions of Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity, Brahmanism is powerless and dead. In India itself, where it clings to the soil with a thousand roots, it was beaten by Buddhism, and, if it afterwards recovered its position, that was due to physical force, not to persuasion and conversion. The struggle between Mohammedanism and Brahmanism in India was on both sides a political rather than a religious struggle: still when a change of religion arose from conviction, we see Brahmanism yielding to the purer light of Islam, not Islam to Brahmanism.
I did not undervalue the actual power of Brahmanism, particularly its power of resistance; nor did I prophesy its speedy extinction. I said on the contrary that “a religion may linger on for a long time, and be accepted by the large masses of the people, because it is there, and there is nothing better.” “It is true,” I added, “there are millions of children, women, and men in India who fall down before the stone image of Vishṇu, with his four arms, riding on a creature, half-bird, half-man, or sleeping on the serpent; who worship Śiva, a monster with three eyes, riding naked on a bull, with a necklace of skulls for his ornament. There are human beings who still believe in a god of war, Kârtikeya, with six faces, riding on a peacock, and holding bow and arrow in his hands; and who invoke a god of success, Gaṇeśa, with four hands and an elephant’s head, sitting on a rat. Nay, it is true that, in the broad daylight of the nineteenth century, the figure of the goddess Kali is carried through the streets of her own city, Calcutta, her wild disheveled hair reaching to her feet, with a necklace of human heads, her tongue protruded from her mouth, her girdle stained with blood. All this is true; but ask any Hindu who can read and write and think, whether these are the gods he believes in, and he will smile at your credulity. How long this living death of national religion in India may last, no one can tell: for our purposes, however, for gaining an idea of the issue of the great religious struggle of the future, that religion is dead and gone.”
I ask Mr. Lyall, is this true or is it not? He says himself, “that Brahmanism may possibly melt away of a heap and break up, I would not absolutely deny.” Would Mr. Lyall say the same of Buddhism, Mohammedanism, or Christianity? He points himself to the description which Gibbon gives of the ancient Roman religion in the second century of the Christian era, and shows how closely applicable it is to the present state of Brahmanism in India. “The tolerant superstition of the people, ‘not confined by the claims of any speculative system,’ the ‘devout polytheist, whom fear, gratitude, and curiosity, a dream, or an omen, a singular disorder, or a distant journey, perpetually disposed to multiply the articles of his belief, and to enlarge the list of his protectors;’ the ‘ingenious youth alike instructed in every school to reject and despise the religion of the multitude;’ the philosophic class who ‘look with indulgence on the errors of the vulgar, diligently practice the ceremonies of their fathers, and devoutly frequent the temples of their gods;’ the ‘magistrates who know and value the advantages of religion as it is connected with civil government;’--all these scenes and feelings are represented in India at this moment, though by no means in all parts of India.” If, then, in the second century a student of religious pathology had expressed his conviction that in spite of the number of its professors, in spite of its antiquity, in spite of its indigenous character, in spite of its political, civil, and social influences, in spite of its temples and priests, in spite of its schools and philosophers, the ancient religion of Jupiter had lost its vitality, was sick unto death, nay, for all real purposes was dead, would he have been far wrong? It may be replied, no doubt, that similar corruptions have crept into other religions also, that gaudy dolls are carried about in Christian cathedrals, that people are invited to see tears rolling down from the eyes of images, or to worship wine changed into blood, to say nothing of even more terrible hallucinations on the Eucharist propounded from so-called Protestant pulpits, and that, in spite of all this, we should not call the Christian religion dying or dead. This is true, and I thought that by my remarks on the different revivals of Hinduism from the twelfth to the nineteenth century, I had sufficiently indicated that new life may spring even from such apparently hopeless corruption. If it is Brahmanism that lives in the sects of Râmânuja and Râmânanda, in the poetry of Kabir and the wisdom of Nànak, in the honest purposes of Ram Mohun Roy and in the high aspirations of Keshub Chunder Sen, then I quite agree with Mr. Lyall that Brahmanism is not dead, but lives more intensely than ever.
But here, for some reason or other, Mr. Lyall seems to demur to my hopeful estimate of Brahmoism. He had expressed his own conviction that Brahmanism, though it might suddenly collapse and vanish, was more likely gradually to spiritualize and centralize its Pantheon, reduce its theology to a compact system, soften down its morals by symbolisms and interportations, discard “dogmatic extremes,” and generally to bring itself into accordance with improved standards of science and intelligence. He had also quoted with implied approval the remark of qualified observers, “that we might at any time witness a great Brahmanic reforming revival in India, if some really gifted and singularly powerful prophet were to arise among the Hindus.” But when I hinted that this prophet had actually arisen, and that in Brahmoism, as preached by Ram Mohun Roy, Debendranath Tagore, and Keshub Chunder Sen, we ought to recognize a transition from Brahmanism to a purer faith; when I pointed out that, though Christian missionaries might not wish to recognize Brahmoism as their work, it was the work of those missionary Christians who have lived in India as examples of a true Christian life, who have approached the natives in a truly missionary spirit, in the spirit of truth and in the spirit of love, Mr. Lyall replies that “Brahmoism, as propagated by Keshub Chunder Sen, seems to be Unitarianism of an European type, and, so far as one can understand its argument, appears to have no logical stability or _locus standi_ between revelation and pure rationalism; that it propounds either too much or too little to its hearers.” “A faith,” he continues, “which contains mere fervent sentiments, and high conceptions of morality, does not partake of the complexion or nature of those religions which have encompassed the heart of great nations, nor is it generally supposed in India that Brahmoism is perceptibly on the increase.”
_Mutatis mutandis_, this is very much what an orthodox Rabbi might have said of Christianity. Let us wait. I am not given to prophecy, but though I am no longer young, I still hold to a belief that a cause upheld with such honesty of purpose, purity, and unselfishness as Brahmoism has been, must and will meet with ultimate success. Does Mr. Lyall think that Unitarian Christianity is no Christianity? Does he find logical stability in Trinitarianism? Does he consider pure rationalism incompatible with revelation? Does he know of any teacher who might not be accused of saying either too little or too much? In A.D. 890 the Double Procession was as much a burning question as the Homoousia in 324,--are, therefore, both Channing and Dr. Döllinger to be anathematized now? Brahmoism may not be like the religions of old, but must the religions of the future be like the religions of the past? However, I do not wish to draw Mr. Lyall into a theological argument. His estimate of the real value and vitality of Brahmoism may be right, mine may be wrong. His presence in India, and his personal intercourse with the Brahmos, may have given him opportunities of judging which I have not. Only let us not forget that for watching the movements of a great struggle, and for judging of its successful issue, a certain distance from the field of battle has its advantages, and that judges in India have not always proved the best judges of India.
One point, however, I am quite willing to concede. If Brahmoism and similar movements may be considered as reforms and resuscitations of Brahmanism, then I withdraw my expression that Brahmanism is dead. Only let us remember that we are thus using Brahmanism in two very different senses, that we are again playing with words. In the one sense it is stark idolatry, in the other the loftiest spiritual worship. The former asserts the existence of many personal gods, the latter shrinks even from the attribute of personality as too human a conception of the Highest Spirit. The former makes the priest a kind of god on earth, the latter proclaims the priesthood of all men; the former is guided by scriptures which man calls sacred, the latter knows of no sacred oracles but the still small voice in the heart of every man. The two are like two opposite poles. What is negative on one side is positive on the other; what is regarded by the one as the most sacred truth is anathematized by the other as deadly error.
Mr. Lyall tells us of Ghási Dás, an inspired prophet, who sojourned in the wilderness for six months, and then issued forth preaching to the poor and ignorant the creed of the True Name (Satnám). He gathered about half a million people together before he died in 1850. He borrowed his doctrines from the well-known Hindu sect of the Satnâmis, and though he denounced Brahmanic abuses, he instituted caste rules of his own, and his successor was murdered, not for heresy, but because he aped Brahmanic insignia and privileges. Mr. Lyall thinks that this community, if left alone, will relapse into a modified Brahmanism. This may be so, but it can hardly be said, that a reform, the followers of which are murdered for aping Brahmanic insignia and privileges, represents Brahmanism which Mr. Lyall defines as “the broad denomination of what is recognized by all Hindus as the supreme theological faculty and the comprehensive scheme of authoritative tradition to which all minor beliefs are referred for sanction.”
When I spoke of Brahmanism as dead, I meant the popular orthodox Brahmanism, which is openly patronized by the Brahmans, though scorned by them in secret; I did not, and could not, mean the worship of Bramah as the Supreme Spirit, which has existed in India from the time of the Upanishads to the present day, and has lately assumed the name of Brahmoism,--a worship so pure, so exalted, so deeply human, so truly divine, that every man can join in it without apostasy, whether he be born a Jew, a Gentile, or a Christian.
That many antagonistic forms of religious faith, some the most degraded, others the most exalted, should live on the same soil, among the same people, is indeed a disheartening truth, enough almost to shake one’s belief in the common origin and the common destinies of the human race. And yet we must not shut our eyes to the fact that amongst ourselves, too, men who call themselves Christians are almost as widely separated from each other in their conceptions of the Divine and the Human, in their grounds of belief and in their sense of duty, as, in India, the worshippers of Gaṇeśa, the god of success, with four hands and an elephant’s head, sitting on a rat, on one side, and the believers in the true Brahma on the other. There is a Christianity that is dead, though it may be professed by millions of people, but there is also, let us trust, a Christianity that is alive, though it may count but twelve apostles. As in India, so in Europe, many would call death what we call life, many would call life what we call death. Here, as elsewhere, it is high time that men should define the exact meaning of their words, trusting that definiteness, frankness, and honesty may offer a better chance of mutual understanding, and serve as a stronger bond of union between man and man, than vague formulas, faint-hearted reticence, and what is at the root of it all, want of true love of Man, and of true faith in God.
If Mr. Lyall imagined that the object of my Lecture was to discourage missionary efforts, he must have found out his mistake, when he came to read it, as I delivered it in Westminster Abbey. I know of no nobler life than that of a true missionary. I tried to defend the labors of the paternal missionary against disparaging criticisms. I tried to account for the small success of controversial missions, by showing how little is gained by mere argument and casuistry at home. And I pointed to the indirect missionary influence, exercised by every man who leads a Christian life in India or elsewhere, as the most encouraging sign of the final triumph of a pure and living Christianity. It is very possible, as Mr. Lyall says somewhat sarcastically, that “missionaries will even yet hardly agree that the essentials of their religion are not in the creeds, but in love; because they are sent forth to propound scriptures which say clearly that what we believe or disbelieve is literally a _burning_ question.” But those who, with Mr. Lyall, consider love of man founded on love of God, nothing but “flat morality,” must have forgotten that a Higher One than they declared, that on these two hang all the law and the commandments. By placing abstruse tenets, the handiwork of Popes and Councils, in the place of Christ’s teaching, and by making a belief in these positive articles a _burning_ question, weak mortals have driven weak mortals to ask, “Are we Christians still?” Let them for once “by observation and experience” try the oldest and simplest and most positive article of Christianity, real love of man founded on real love of God, and I believe they will soon ask themselves, “When shall we be Christians at last?”
[Footnote 1: “NOTICE.
“Westminster Abbey. Day of Intercession for Missions, Wednesday, December 3d, 1873. Lecture in the Nave, at eight o’clock, p.m.
Hymn 25 (_Bp. Heber_)
_Wittenberg_ (p. 50).
“From Greenland’s icy mountains,
From India’s coral strands,
Where Afric’s sunny fountains,
Roll down their golden sands;
From many an ancient river,
From many a palmy plain,
They call us to deliver
Their land from error’s chain.
“What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle;
Though every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile!
In vain with lavish kindness
The gifts of God are strown;
The heathen in his blindness
Bows down to wood and stone.
“Can we whose souls are lighted
With wisdom from on high,
Can we to men benighted
The lamp of life deny?
Salvation, O Salvation!
The joyful sound proclaim,
Till earth’s remotest nation
Has learnt Messiah’s name.
“Waft, waft, ye winds, his story;
And you, ye waters, roll;
Till, like a sea of glory,
It spreads from pole to pole;
Till o’er our ransomed nature,
The Lamb for sinners slain,
Redeemer, King, Creator,
In bliss returns to reign. Amen.
“There will be a Lecture delivered in the Nave, on Missions, by Professor Max Müller, M.A.
Ps. 100 (_New Version_)
_Old Hundredth_ (p. 21).
“With one consent let all the earth
To God their cheerful voices raise;
Glad homage pay with awful mirth,
And sing before Him songs of praise.
“Convinced that He is God alone,
From Whom both we and all proceed;
We whom He chooses for His own,
The flock that He vouchsafes to feed.
“O enter then His temple gate,
Thence to His courts devoutly press;
And still your grateful hymns repeat,
And still His Name with praises bless.
“For He’s the Lord supremely good,
His mercy is forever sure;
His truth, which all times firmly stood,
To endless ages shall endure. Amen.”]
[Footnote 2: Different systems of classification applied to the religions of the world are discussed in my _Introduction to the Science of Religion_, pp. 122-143.]
[Footnote 3: “Proselyto ne fidas usque ad vigesimam quartam generationem,” Jalkut Ruth, f. 163. d; Danz, in Meuschen, _Nov. Test, ex Talm. illustr._, p. 651.]
[Footnote 4: _India, Progress and Condition_, Blue Book presented to Parliament, 1873, p. 99. “It is asserted (but the assertion must be taken with reserve) that it is a mistake to suppose that the Hindu religion is not proselytizing. Any number of outsiders, so long as they do not interfere with established castes, can form a new caste, and call themselves Hindus, and the Brahmans are always ready to receive all who submit to and pay them.” Can this be called proselytizing?]
[Footnote 5: Cf. _Mahavanso_, cap. 5.]
[Footnote 6: Cf. _Mahavanso_, cap. 12.]
[Footnote 7: In some of the places mentioned by the _Chronicle_ as among the earliest stations of Buddhist missions, relics have been discovered containing the names of the very missionaries mentioned by the _Chronicle_. See Koeppen, _Die Religion des Buddha_, p. 188.]
[Footnote 8: Note A, p. 266.]
[Footnote 9: “_Islâm_ is the verbal noun, and _Moslim_ the participle of the same root, which also yields _Salâm_, peace, and _salim_ and _salym_, whole, honest. _Islâm_ means, therefore, to satisfy or pacify by forbearance; it also means simply subjection.” Sprenger, _Mohammad_, i. p. 69; iii. 486.]
[Footnote 10: Lassen, _Indische Alterthumskunde_, vol. iv. p. 635. Cf. _Indian Antiquary_, 1873, p. 370. _Academy_, 1874, p. 61.]
[Footnote 11: _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. i.; _Essays on the Science of Religion_, pp. 161, 216.]
[Footnote 12: Lassen, _Indische Alterthumskunde_, vol. iv. p. 606; Wilson, _Asiatic Researches_, xvi. p. 21.]
[Footnote 13: See _Brahmic Questions of the Day_, 1869, p. 16.]
[Footnote 14: _History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature_, by M. M. (2d ed.) p. 569.]
[Footnote 15: _The Adi Brahma-Samaj, Its views and Principles_, Calcutta, 1870, p. 10.]
[Footnote 16: _A Brief History of the Calcutta Brahma-Samâj_, 1868, p. 15.]
[Footnote 17: See Note B, p. 269.]
[Footnote 18: See Note C, p. 272.]
[Footnote 19: The _Indian Mirror_ (Sept. 10, 1869) constantly treats of missionary efforts of various kinds in a spirit which is not only friendly, but even desirous of reciprocal sympathy; and hopeful that whatever differences may exist between them (the missionaries) and the Brahmos, the two parties will heartily combine as brethren to exterminate idolatry, and promote true morality in India.
Many of our ministers and leading men, says the _Indian Mirror_, are recruited from missionary schools, which, by affording religious education, prove more favorable to the growth and spread of Brahmoism than government schools with Comte and Secularism (_Indian Theism_, by S. D. Collet, 1870, p. 22).]
[Footnote 20: _Life of John Coleridge Patteson_, by C. M. Yonge, ii. p. 167.]
[Footnote 21: “The large body of European and American missionaries settled in India bring their various moral influences to bear upon the country with the greater force, because they act together with a compactness which is but little understood. Though belonging to various denominations of Christians, yet from the nature of their work, their isolated position, and their long experience, they have been led to think rather of the numerous questions on which they agree, than of those on which they differ, and they coöperate heartily together. Localities are divided among them by friendly arrangements, and, with a few exceptions, it is a fixed rule among them that they will not interfere with each other’s converts and each other’s spheres of duty. School books, translations of the Scriptures and religious works, prepared by various missions, are used in common; and help and improvements secured by one mission are freely placed at the command of all. The large body of missionaries resident in each of the presidency towns form missionary conferences, hold periodic meetings, and act together on public matters. They have frequently addressed the Indian government on important social questions involving the welfare of the native community, and have suggested valuable improvements in existing laws. During the past twenty years, on five occasions, general conferences have been held for mutual consultation respecting their missionary work; and in January last, at the latest of these gatherings, at Allahabad, 121 missionaries met together, belonging to twenty different societies, and including several men of long experience who have been twenty years in India.” _India, Progress and Condition_, 1873, p. 134.]
[Footnote 22: Brahma-Samâj, the Church of Brahma, is the general title. When the schism took place, the original Samâj was called Adi Brahma-Samâj, _i.e._, the First Church of Brahma, while the progressive party, under Keshub Chunder Sen was distinguished by the name of the Brahma-Samâj of India. The vowels _u_ and _o_ are often the same in Bengali, and are sometimes used for _a_.]
[Footnote 23: This sermon, which was preached by the Dean of Westminster in the forenoon of Wednesday, December 3d, 1873, and in which his reasons are stated for inviting a layman to speak on the subject of missions in the evening of the same day, and within the same sacred precincts, is here reprinted with his kind permission.]
[Footnote 24: _Prospects of Christian Missions_, a sermon preached in Westminster Abbey on December 20, 1872. Strahan & Co., London.]
[Footnote 25: Phil. i. 13-16.]
[Footnote 26: Acts xiv. 16, 17; xvii. 23, 28; xix. 37; xxi. 26; xxii. 28; xxv. 11. Rom. ii. 6-15; xiii. 1-7; xiv. 9; 1 Cor. ix. 20-22; xx. 33. Phil. iv. 8.]
[Footnote 27: 1 Cor. ix. 20-22.]
[Footnote 28: In the well-known passage where, speaking of the moderation and humanity of these heretical Arians in the capture of Rome, he concludes: “Hoc Christi nomini, hoc Christiano tempori tribuendum quisquis non videt, cæecus; quisquis non laudat, ingratus; quisquis laudanti reluctatur, ingratus est.” _De Civitate Dei_, i. c. 7. Compare Ibid. c. 1, and Sermon cv., _De. Ev. S. Luc._]
[Footnote 29: “Sir Thomas More, after he was called to the Bar in Lincoln’s Inn, did, for a considerable time, read a public lecture out of S. Augustine, _De Civitate Dei_, in the Church of S. Lawrence in the Old Jewry to which the learneder sort of the City of London did resort.” Wood’s _Athenæ Oxonienses_, fol. ed. 1721, pp. 182, 183.]
VII.
OPENING ADDRESS.
DELIVERED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE ARYAN SECTION AT THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF ORIENTALISTS, HELD IN LONDON, SEPTEMBER 14-21, 1874.
No one likes to be asked, what business he has to exist, and yet,
whatever we do, whether singly or in concert with others, the first
question which the world never fails to address to us, is _Dic cur hic?_
Why are you here? or to put it into French, What is your _raison
d’être_? We have had to submit to this examination even before we
existed, and many a time have I been asked the question, both by friend
and foe, What is the good of an International Congress of Orientalists?
I shall endeavor, as shortly as possible, to answer that question, and show that our Congress is not a mere fortuitous congeries of barren atoms or molecules, but that we are at least Leibnizian monads, each with his own self, and force and will, and each determined, within the limits of some preëstablished harmony, to help in working out some common purpose, and to achieve some real and lasting good.
It is generally thought that the chief object of a scientific Congress is social, and I am not one of those who are incapable of appreciating the delights and benefits of social intercourse with hard-working and honest-thinking men. Much as I detest what is commonly called society, I willingly give up glaciers and waterfalls, cathedrals and picture galleries, for one half hour of real society, of free, frank, fresh, and friendly intercourse, face to face, and mind to mind, with a great, and noble, and loving soul, such as was Bunsen; with a man intrepid in his thoughts, his words, and his deeds, such as was John Stuart Mill; or with a scholar who, whether he had been quarrying heavy blocks, or chiseling the most brittle filigree work, poured out all his treasures before you with the pride and pleasure of a child, such as was Eugéne Burnouf. A Congress therefore, and particularly an International Congress, would certainly seem to answer some worthy purpose, were it only by bringing together fellow workers of all countries and ages, by changing what were to us merely great names into pleasant companions, and by satisfying that very right and rational curiosity which we all feel, after having read a really good book, of seeing what the man looks like who could achieve such triumphs.
All this is perfectly true; yet, however pleasant to ourselves this social intercourse may appear, in the eyes of the world at large it will hardly be considered a sufficient excuse for our existence. In order therefore to satisfy that outer world that we are really doing something, we point of course to the papers which are read at our public meetings, and to the discussions which they elicit. Much as I value that feature also in a scientific congress, I confess I doubt, and I know that many share that doubt, whether the same result might not be obtained with much less trouble. A paper that contains something really new and valuable, the result, it may be, of years of toil and thought, requires to be read with care in a quiet corner of our own study, before the expression of our assent or dissent can be of any weight or value. There is too much hollow praise, and occasionally too much wrangling and ill-natured abuse at our scientific tournaments, and the world at large, which is never without a tinge of malice and a vein of quiet humor, has frequently expressed its concern at the waste of “oil and vinegar” which is occasioned by the frequent meetings of our British and Foreign Associations.
What then is the real use of a Congress, such as that which has brought us together this week from all parts of the world? What is the real excuse for our existence? Why are we here, and not in our workshops?
It seems to me that the real and permanent use of these scientific gatherings is twofold.
(1) They enable us to take stock, to compare notes, to see where we are, and to find out where we ought to be going.
(2) They give us an opportunity, from time to time, to tell the world where we are, what we have been doing for the world, and what, in return, we expect the world to do for us.
The danger of all scientific work at present, not only among Oriental scholars, but, as far as I can see, everywhere, is the tendency to extreme specialization. Our age shows in that respect a decided reaction against the spirit of a former age, which those with gray heads among us can still remember, an age represented in Germany by such names as Humboldt, Ritter, Böckh, Johannes, Müller, Bopp, Bunsen, and others; men who look to us like giants, carrying a weight of knowledge far too heavy for the shoulders of such mortals as now be; aye, men who _were_ giants, but whose chief strength consisted in this, that they were never entirely absorbed or bewildered by special researches, but kept their eye steadily on the highest objects of all human knowledge; who could trace the vast outlines of the kosmos of nature or the kosmos of the mind with an unwavering hand, and to whose maps and guide books we must still recur, whenever we are in danger of losing our way in the mazes of minute research. At the present moment such works as Humboldt’s “Kosmos,” or Bopp’s “Comparative Grammar,” or Bunsen’s “Christianity and Mankind,” would be impossible. No one would dare to write them, for fear of not knowing the exact depth at which the _Protogenes Haeckelii_ has lately been discovered or the lengthening of a vowel in the +Saṃhitapâṭha+ of the Rig-Veda. It is quite right that this should be so, at least, for a time; but all rivers, all brooks, all rills, are meant to flow into the ocean, and all special knowledge, to keep it from stagnation, must have an outlet into the general knowledge of the world. Knowledge for its own sake, as it is sometimes called, is the most dangerous idol that a student can worship. We despise the miser who amasses money for the sake of money, but still more contemptible is the intellectual miser who hoards up knowledge instead of spending it, though, with regard to most of our knowledge, we may be well assured and satisfied that, as we brought nothing into the world so we may carry nothing out.
Against this danger of mistaking the means for the end, of making bricks without making mortar, of working for ourselves instead of working for others, meetings such as our own, bringing together so large a number of the first Oriental scholars of Europe, seem to me a most excellent safeguard. They draw us out of our shell, away from our common routine, away from that small orbit of thought in which each of us moves day after day, and make us realize more fully, that there are other stars moving all around us in our little universe, that we all belong to one celestial system, or to one terrestrial commonwealth, and that, if we want to see real progress in that work with which we are more especially entrusted, the re-conquest of the Eastern world, we must work with one another, for one another, like members of one body, like soldiers of one army, guided by common principles, striving after common purposes, and sustained by common sympathies. Oriental literature is of such enormous dimensions that our small army of scholars can occupy certain prominent positions only; but those points, like the stations of a trigonometrical survey, ought to be carefully chosen, so as to be able to work in harmony together. I hope that in that respect our Congress may prove of special benefit. We shall hear, each of us, from others, what they wish us to do. “Why don’t you finish this?” “Why don’t you publish that?” are questions which we have already heard asked by many of our friends. We shall be able to avoid what happens so often, that two men collect materials for exactly the same work, and we may possibly hear of some combined effort to carry out great works, which can only be carried out _viribus unitis_, and of which I may at least mention one, a translation of the “Sacred Books of Mankind.” Important progress has already been made for setting on foot this great undertaking, an undertaking which I think the world has a right to demand from Oriental scholars, but which can only be carried out by joint action. This Congress has helped us to lay the foundation-stone, and I trust that at our next Congress we shall be able to produce some tangible results.
I now come to the second point. A Congress enables us to tell the world what we have been doing. This, it seems to me, is particularly needful with regard to Oriental studies which, with the exception of Hebrew, still stand outside the pale of our schools and universities, and are cultivated by the very smallest number of students. And yet, I make bold to say, that during the last hundred, and still more during the last fifty years, Oriental studies have contributed more than any other branch of scientific research to change, to purify, to clear, and intensify the intellectual atmosphere of Europe, and to widen our horizon in all that pertains to the Science of Man, in history, philology, theology, and philosophy. We have not only conquered and annexed new worlds to the ancient empire of learning, but we have leavened the old world with ideas that are already fermenting even in the daily bread of our schools and universities. Most of those here present know that I am not exaggerating; but as the world is skeptical while listening to orations _pro domo_, I shall attempt to make good my assertions.
At first, the study of Oriental literature was a matter of curiosity only, and it is so still to a great extent, particularly in England. Sir William Jones, whose name is the only one among Oriental scholars that has ever obtained a real popularity in England, represents most worthily that phase of Oriental studies. Read only the two volumes of his life, and they will certainly leave on your mind the distinct impression that Sir William Jones was not only a man of extensive learning and refined taste, but undoubtedly a very great man--one in a million. He was a good classical scholar of the old school, a well-read historian, a thoughtful lawyer, a clear-headed politician, and a true gentleman, in the old sense of the word. He moved in the best, I mean the most cultivated society, the great writers and thinkers of the day listened to him with respect, and say what you like, we still live by his grace, we still draw on that stock of general interest which he excited in the English mind for Eastern subjects.
Yet the interest which Sir William Jones took in Oriental literature was purely æsthetic. He chose what was beautiful in Persian and translated it, as he would translate an ode of Horace. He was charmed with Kâlidâsa’s play of “Sakuntala”--and who is not?--and he left us his classical reproduction of one of the finest of Eastern gems. Being a judge in India, he thought it his duty to acquaint himself with the native law-books in their original language, and he gave us his masterly translation of the “Laws of Manu.” Sir William Jones was fully aware of the startling similarity between Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek. More than a hundred years ago, in a letter written to Prince Adam Czartoryski, in the year 1770, he says: “Many learned investigators of antiquity are fully persuaded, that a very old and almost primeval language was in use among the northern nations, from which not only the Celtic dialect, but even Greek and Latin are derived; in fact, we find πατήρ and μήτηρ in Persian, nor is θυγάτηρ so far removed from _dockter_, or even ὄνομα and _nomen_ from Persian _nâm_, as to make it ridiculous to suppose that they sprang from the same root. We must confess,” he adds, “that these researches are very obscure and uncertain, and you will allow, not so agreeable as an ode of Hafez, or an elegy of Amr’alkeis.” In a letter, dated 1787, he says: “You will be surprised at the resemblance between Sanskrit and both Greek and Latin.”
Colebrooke also, the great successor of Sir William Jones, was fully aware of the relationship between Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, and even Slavonic. I possess some curious MS. notes of his, of the year 1801 or 1802, containing long lists of words, expressive of the most essential ideas of primitive life, and which he proved to be identical in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, and Slavonic.[1]
Yet neither Colebrooke nor Sir William Jones perceived the full import of these facts. Sir William Jones died young; Colebrooke’s energies, marvelous as they were, were partly absorbed by official work, so that it was left to German and French scholars to bring to light the full wealth of the mine which those great English scholars had been the first to open. We know now that in language, and in all that is implied by language, India and Europe are one; but to prove this, against the incredulity of all the greatest scholars of the day, was no easy matter. It could be done effectually in one way only, viz., by giving to Oriental studies a strictly scientific character, by requiring from Oriental students not only the devotion of an _amateur_, but the same thoroughness, minuteness, and critical accuracy which were long considered the exclusive property of Greek and Latin scholars. I could not think of giving here a history of the work done during the last fifty years. It has been admirably described in Benfey’s “History of the Science of Language.”[2] Even if I attempted to give merely the names of those who have been most distinguished by really original discoveries--the names of Bopp, Pott, Grimm, Burnouf, Rawlinson, Miklosich, Benfey, Kuhn, Zeuss, Whitley, Stokes--I am afraid my list would be considered very incomplete.
But let us look at what has been achieved by these men, and many others who followed their banners! The East, formerly a land of dreams, of fables, and fairies, has become to us a land of unmistakable reality; the curtain between the West and the East has been lifted, and our old forgotten home stands before us again in bright colors and definite outlines. Two worlds, separated for thousands of years, have been reunited as by a magic spell, and we feel rich in a past that may well be the pride of our noble Aryan family. We say no longer vaguely and poetically _Ex Oriente Lux_, but we know that all the most vital elements of our knowledge and civilization,--our languages, our alphabets, our figures, our weights and measures, our art, our religion, our traditions, our very nursery stories, come to us from the East; and we must confess that but for the rays of Eastern light, whether Aryan or Semitic or Hamitic, that called forth the hidden germs of the dark and dreary West, Europe, now the very light of the world, might have remained forever a barren and forgotten promontory of the primeval Asiatic continent. We live indeed in a new world; the barrier between the West and the East, that seemed insurmountable, has vanished. The East is ours, we are its heirs, and claim by right our share in its inheritance.
We know what it was for the Northern nations, the old barbarians of Europe, to be brought into spiritual contact with Rome and Greece, and to learn that beyond the small, poor world in which they had moved, there was an older, richer, brighter world, the ancient world of Rome and Athens, with its arts and laws, its poetry and philosophy, all of which they might call their own and make their own by claiming the heritage of the past. We know how, from that time, the Classical and Teutonic spirits mingled together and formed that stream of modern thought on whose shores we ourselves live and move. A new stream is now being brought into the same bed, the stream of Oriental thought, and already the colors of the old stream show very clearly the influence of that new tributary. Look at any of the important works published during the last twenty years, not only on language, but on literature, mythology, law, religion, and philosophy, and you will see on every page the working of a new spirit. I do not say that the East can ever teach us new things, but it can place before us old things, and leave us to draw from them lessons more strange and startling than anything dreamt of in our philosophy.
Before all, a study of the East has taught us the same lesson which the Northern nations once learnt in Rome and Athens, that there are other worlds beside our own, that there are other religions, other mythologies, other laws, and that the history of philosophy from Thales to Hegel is not the whole history of human thought. In all these subjects the East has supplied us with parallels, and with all that is implied in parallels, viz., the possibility of comparing, measuring, and understanding. The _comparative spirit_ is the truly scientific spirit of our age, nay of all ages. An empirical acquaintance with single facts does not constitute knowledge in the true sense of the word. All human knowledge begins with the Two or the Dyad, the comprehension of two single things as one. If in these days we may still quote Aristotle, we may boldly say that “there is no science of that which is unique.” A single event may be purely accidental, it comes and goes, it is inexplicable, it does not call for an explanation. But as soon as the same fact is repeated, the work of comparison begins, and the first step is made in that wonderful process which we call generalization, and which is at the root of all intellectual knowledge and of all intellectual language. This primitive process of comparison is repeated again and again, and when we now give the title of _Comparative_ to the highest kind of knowledge in every branch of science, we have only replaced the old word _intelligent_ (_i.e._, interligent) or inter-twining, by a new and more expressive term, _comparative_. I shall say nothing about the complete revolution of the study of languages by means of the comparative method, for here I can appeal to such names as Mommsen and Curtius, to show that the best among classical scholars are themselves the most ready to acknowledge the importance of the results obtained by the intertwining of Eastern and Western philology.
But take mythology. As long as we had only the mythology of the classical nations to deal with, we looked upon it simply as strange, anomalous, and irrational. When, however, the same strange stories, the same hallucinations, turned up in the most ancient mythology of India, when not only the character and achievements, but the very names of some of the gods and heroes were found to be the same, then every thoughtful observer saw that there must be a system in that ancient madness, that there must be some order in that strange mob of gods and heroes, and that it must be the task of comparative mythology to find out, what reason there is in all that mass of unreason.
The same comparative method has been applied to the study of religion also. All religions are Oriental, and with the exception of the Christian, their sacred books are all written in Oriental languages. The materials, therefore, for a comparative study of the religious systems of the world had all to be supplied by Oriental scholars. But far more important than those materials, is the spirit in which they have been treated. The sacred books of the principal religions of mankind had to be placed side by side with perfect impartiality, in order to discern the points which they share in common as well as those that are peculiar to each. The results already obtained by this simple juxtaposition are full of important lessons, and the fact that the truths on which all religions agree far exceed those on which they differ, has hardly been sufficiently appreciated. I feel convinced, however, that the time will come when those who at present profess to be most disquieted by our studies, will be the most grateful for our support,--for having shown by evidence which cannot be controverted, that all religions spring from the same sacred soil, the human heart; that all are quickened by the same divine spirit, the still small voice; and that, though the outward forms of religion may change, may wither and decay, yet, as long as man is what he is and what he has been, he will postulate again and again the Infinite as the very condition of the Finite, he will yearn for something which the world cannot give, he will feel his weakness and dependence, and in that weakness and dependence discover the deepest sources of his hope, and trust, and strength.
A patient study of the sacred scriptures of the world is what is wanted at present more than anything else, in order to clear our own ideas of the origin, the nature, the purposes of religion. There can be no science of one religion, but there can be a science of many. We have learnt already one lesson, that behind the helpless expressions which language has devised, whether in the East or in the West, for uttering the unutterable, be it _Dyaushpitâ_ or _Ahuramazda_, be it _Jehovah_ or _Allah_, be it the All or the Nothing, be it the First Cause or Our Father in heaven, there is the same intention, the same striving, the same stammering, the same faith. Other lessons will follow, till in the end we shall be able to restore that ancient bond which unites not only the East with the West, but all the members of the human family, and may learn to understand what a Persian poet meant when he wrote many centuries ago (I quote from Mr. Conway’s “Sacred Anthology”), “Diversity of worship has divided the human race into seventy-two nations. From among all their dogmas I have selected one--the Love of God.”
Nor is this comparative spirit restricted to the treatment of language, mythology, and religion. While hitherto we knew the origin and spreading of most of the ancient arts and sciences in one channel only, and had to be satisfied with tracing their sources to Greece and Rome, and thence down the main stream of European civilization, we have now for many of them one or two parallel histories in India and in China. The history of geometry, for instance,--the first formation of geometrical conceptions or technical terms--was hitherto known to us from Greece only: now we can compare the gradual elaboration of geometrical principles both in Greece and India, and thus arrive at some idea of what is natural or inevitable, and what is accidental or purely personal in each. It was known, for instance, that in Greece the calculation of solid figures began with the building of altars, and you will hear to-day from Dr. Thibaut, that in India also the first impulse to geometric science was given, not by the measuring of fields, as the name implies, but by the minute observances in building altars.
Similar coincidences and divergences have been brought to light by a comparative study of the history of astronomy, of music, of grammar, but, most of all, by a comparative study of philosophic thought. There are indeed few problems in philosophy which have not occupied the Indian mind, and nothing can exceed the interest of watching the Hindu and the Greek, working on the same problems, each in his own way, yet both in the end arriving at much the same results. Such are the coincidences between the two, that but lately an eminent German professor,[3] published a treatise to show that the Greeks had borrowed their philosophy from India, while others lean to the opinion that in philosophy the Hindus are the pupils of the Greeks. This is the same feeling which impelled Dugald Stewart, when he saw the striking similarity between Greek and Sanskrit, to maintain that Sanskrit must have been put together after the model of Greek and Latin by those arch-forgers and liars, the Brahmans, and that the whole of Sanskrit literature was an imposition. The comparative method has put an end to such violent theories. It teaches us that what is possible in one country is possible also in another; it shows us that, as there are antecedents for Plato and Aristotle in Greece, there are antecedents for the Vedânta and Sânkhya philosophies in India, and that each had its own independent growth. It is true, that when we first meet in Indian philosophy with our old friends, the four or five elements, the atoms, our metaphysics, our logic, our syllogism, we are startled; but we soon discover that, given the human mind and human language, and the world by which we are surrounded, the different systems of philosophy of Thales and Hegel, of Vyâsa and Kapila, are inevitable solutions. They all come and go, they are maintained and refuted, till at last all philosophy ends where it ought to begin, with an inquiry into the necessary conditions and the inevitable forms of knowledge, represented by a criticism of Pure Reason and, what is more important still, by a criticism of Language.
Much has been done of late for Indian philosophy, particularly by Ballantyne and Hall, by Cowell and Gough, by the editors of the “Bibliotheca Indica,” and the “Pandit.” Yet it is much to be desired, that some young scholars, well versed in the history of European philosophy, should devote themselves more ardently to this promising branch of Indian literature. No doubt they would find it a great help, if they were able to spend some years in India, in order to learn from the last and fast disappearing representatives of some of the old schools of Indian philosophy what they alone can teach. What can be done by such a combination of Eastern and Western knowledge, has lately been shown by the excellent work done by Dr. Kielhorn, the Professor of Sanskrit at the Deccan College in Punah. But there is now so much of published materials, and Sanskrit MSS. also are so easily obtained from India, that much might be done in England, or in France, or in Germany--much that would be of interest not only to Oriental scholars, but to all philosophers whose powers of independent appreciation are not entirely blunted by their study of Plato and Aristotle, of Berkeley, Hume, and Kant.
I have so far dwelt chiefly on the powerful influence which the East, and more particularly India, has exercised on the intellectual life and work of the West. But the progress of Oriental scholarship in Europe, and the discovery of that spiritual relationship which binds India and England together, have likewise produced practical effects of the greatest moment in the East. The Hindus, in their first intercourse with English scholars, placed before them the treasures of their native literature with all the natural pride of a nation that considered itself the oldest, the wisest, the most enlightened nation in the world. For a time, but for a short time only, the claims of their literature to a fabulous antiquity were admitted, and dazzled by the unexpected discovery of a new classical literature, people raved about the beauty of Sanskrit poetry in truly Oriental strains. Then followed a sudden reaction, and the natives themselves, on becoming more and more acquainted with European history and literature, began to feel the childishness of their claims, and to be almost ashamed of their own classics. This was a national misfortune. A people that can feel no pride in the past, in its history and literature, loses the mainstay of its national character. When Germany was in the very depth of its political degradation, it turned to its ancient literature, and drew hope for the future from the study of the past. Something of the same kind is now passing in India. A new taste, not without some political ingredients, has sprung up for the ancient literature of the country; a more intelligent appreciation of their real merits has taken the place of the extravagant admiration for the masterworks of their old poets; there is a revival in the study of Sanskrit, a surprising activity in the republication of Sanskrit texts, and there are traces among the Hindus of a growing feeling, not very different from that which Tacitus described, when he said of the Germans: “Who would go to Germany, a country without natural beauty, with a wretched climate, miserable to cultivate or to look at--_unless it be his fatherland_?”
Even the discovery that Sanskrit, English, Greek, and Latin are cognate languages, has not been without its influence on the scholars and thinkers, or the leaders of public opinion, in India. They, more than others, had felt for a time most keenly the intellectual superiority of the West, and they rose again in their own estimation by learning that, physically, or at all events, intellectually, they had been and might be again, the peers of Greeks and Romans and Saxons. These silent influences often escape the eye of the politician and the historian, but at critical moments they decide the fate of whole nations and empires.[4]
The intellectual life of India at the present moment is full of interesting problems. It is too much the fashion to look only at its darker sides, and to forget that such intellectual regenerations as we are witnessing in India, are impossible without convulsions and failures. A new race of men is growing up in India, who have stepped, as it were, over a thousand years, and have entered at once on the intellectual inheritance of Europe. They carry off prizes at English schools, take their degrees in English universities, and are in every respect our equals. They have temptations which we have not, and now and then they succumb; but we, too, have temptations of our own, and we do not always resist. One can hardly trust one’s eyes in reading their writings, whether in English or Bengali, many of which would reflect credit on our own Quarterlies. With regard to what is of the greatest interest to us, their scholarship, it is true that the old school of Sanskrit scholars is dying out, and much will die with it which we shall never recover; but a new and most promising school of Sanskrit students, educated by European professors, is springing up, and they will, nay, to judge from recent controversies, they have already become most formidable rivals to our own scholars. The essays of Dr. Bhao Daji, whom, I regret to say, we have lately lost by death, on disputed points in Indian archæology and literature, are most valuable. The indefatigable Rajendra Lal Mitra is rendering most excellent service in the publications of the Asiatic Society at Calcutta, and he discusses the theories of European Orientalists with all the ease and grace of an English reviewer. The Râjah of Besmah, Giriprasâda-sinha, has just finished his magnificent edition of the “White Yajurveda.” The Sanskrit books published at Calcutta by Târânâtha, and others, form a complete library, and Târânâtha’s new “Dictionary of the Sanskrit Language” will prove most useful and valuable. The editions of Sanskrit texts published at Bombay by Professor Bhâṇḍârkar, Shankar Pandurang Pandit, and others, need not fear comparison with the best work of European scholars. There is a school of native students at Benares whose publications, under the auspices of Mr. Griffith, have made their journal, the “Pandit,” indispensable to every Sanskrit scholar. Râjârâmasâstrî’s and Bâlaśâstrî’s edition of the “Mahâbhâshya” has received the highest praise from European students. In the “Antiquary,” a paper very ably conducted by Mr. Burgess, we meet with contributions from several learned natives, among them from his Highness the Prince of Travancore, from Ram Dass Sen, the Zemindar of Berhampore, from Kâshinâth Trimbak Telang, from Sashagiriśâstrî, and others, which are read with the greatest interest and advantage by European scholars. The collected essays of Ram Dass Sen well deserve a translation into English, and Rajanîkânta’s “Life of the Poet Jajadeva,” just published, bears witness to the same revival of literary tastes and patriotic feelings.
Besides this purely literary movement, there is a religious movement going on in India, the Brahmo-Samâj, which, both in its origin and its later development, is mainly the result of European influences. It began with an attempt to bring the modern corrupt forms of worship back to the purity and simplicity of the Vedas; and by ascribing to the Veda the authority of a Divine Revelation, it was hoped to secure that infallible authority without which no religion was supposed to be possible. How was that movement stopped, and turned into a new channel? Simply by the publication of the Veda, and by the works of European scholars, such as Stevenson, Mill, Rosen, Wilson, and others, who showed to the natives what the Veda really was, and made them see the folly of their way.[5] Thus the religion, the literature, the whole character of the people of India are becoming more and more Indo-European. They work for us, as we work for them. Many a letter have I received from native scholars in which they express their admiration for the wonderful achievements of European ingenuity, for railways, and telegraphs, and all the rest; and yet what, according to their own confession, has startled them and delighted them most, is the interest we have taken in their literature, and the new life which we have imparted to their ancient history. I know these matters seem small, when we are near to them, when we are in the very midst of them. Like the tangled threads hanging on a loom, they look worthless, purposeless. But history weaves her woof out of all of them, and after a time, when we see the full and finished design, we perceive that no color, however quiet, could have been dropped, no shade, however slight, could have been missed, without spoiling the whole.
And now, after having given this account of our stewardship, let me say in conclusion a few words on the claims which Oriental studies have on public sympathy and support.
Let me begin with the Universities--I mean, of course the English Universities--and more particularly that University which has been to me for many years an _Alma Mater_, Oxford. While we have there, or are founding there, professorships for every branch of Theology, Jurisprudence, and Physical Science, we have hardly any provision for the study of Oriental languages. We have a chair of Hebrew, rendered illustrious by the greatest living theologian of England, and we have a chair of Sanskrit, which has left its mark in the history of Sanskrit literature; but for the modern languages of India, whether Aryan or Dravidian, for the language and literature of Persia, both ancient and modern, for the language and antiquities of Egypt and Babylon, for Chinese, for Turkish, nay even for Arabic, there is nothing deserving the name of a chair. When in a Report on University Reform, I ventured to point out these gaps, and to remark that in the smallest of German Universities most of these subjects were represented by professors, I was asked whether I was in earnest in maintaining that Oxford, the first University in what has rightly been called the greatest Oriental Empire, ought really to support the study of Oriental languages.
The second claim we prefer is on the Missionary Societies. I have lately incurred very severe obloquy for my supposed hostility to missionary enterprise. All I can say is, I wish that there were ten missionaries for every one we have now. I have always counted missionaries among my best friends; I have again and again acknowledged how much Oriental studies and linguistic studies in general, owe to them, and I am proud to say that, even now, while missionaries at home have abused me in unmeasured language, missionaries abroad, devoted, hard-working missionaries, have thanked me for what I said of them and their work in my lay-sermon in Westminster Abbey last December.
Now it seems to me that, first of all, our Universities, and I think again chiefly of Oxford, might do much more for missions than they do at present. If we had a sufficient staff of professors for Eastern languages, we could prepare young missionaries for their work, and should be able to send out from time to time such men as Patteson, the Bishop of Melanesia, who was every inch an Oxford man. And in these missionaries we might have not only apostles of religion and civilization, but at the same time, the most valuable pioneers of scientific research. I know there are some authorities at home who declare that such a combination is impossible, or at least undesirable; that a man cannot serve two masters, and that a missionary must do his own work and nothing else. Nothing, I believe, can be more mistaken. First of all, some of our most efficient missionaries have been those who have done also the most excellent work as scholars, and whenever I have conversed on this subject with missionaries who have seen active service, they all agree that they cannot be converting all day long, and that nothing is more refreshing and invigorating to them than some literary or scientific work. Now what I should like to see is this: I should like to see ten or twenty of our non-resident fellowships, which at present are doing more harm than good, assigned to missionary work, to be given to young men who have taken their degree, and who, whether laymen or clergymen, are willing to work as assistant missionaries on distant stations, with the distinct understanding that they should devote some of their time to scientific work, whether the study of languages, or flowers, or stars, and that they should send home every year some account of their labors. These men would be like scientific consuls, to whom students at home might apply for information and help. They would have opportunities of distinguishing themselves by really useful work, far more than in London, and after ten years, they might either return to Europe with a well-established reputation, or if they find that they have a real call for missionary work, devote all their life to it. Though to my own mind there is no nobler work than that of a missionary, yet I believe that some such connection with the Universities and men of science would raise their position, and would call out more general interest, and secure to the missionary cause the good-will of those whose will is apt to become law.
Thirdly, I think that Oriental studies have a claim on the colonies and the colonial governments. The English colonies are scattered all over the globe, and many of them in localities where an immense deal of useful scientific work might be done, and would be done with the slightest encouragement from the local authorities, and something like a systematic supervision on the part of the Colonial Office at home. Some years ago I ventured to address the Colonial Secretary of State on this subject, and a letter was sent out in consequence to all the English colonies, inviting information on the languages, monuments, customs, and traditions of the native races. Some most valuable reports have been sent home during the last five or six years, but when it was suggested that these reports should be published in a permanent form, the expense that would have been required for printing every year a volume of Colonial Reports, and which would not have amounted to more than a few hundred pounds for all the colonies of the British Empire, part of it to be recovered by the sale of the book, was considered too large.
Now we should bear in mind that at the present moment some of the tribes living in or near the English colonies in Australia, Polynesia, Africa, and America, are actually dying out, their languages are disappearing, their customs, traditions, and religions will soon be completely swept away. To the student of language, the dialect of a savage tribe is as valuable as Sanskrit or Hebrew, nay, for the solution of certain problems, more so; every one of these languages is the growth of thousands and thousands of years, the workmanship of millions and millions of human beings. If they were now preserved, they might hereafter fill the most critical gaps in the history of the human race. At Rome at the time of the Scipios, hundreds of people might have written down a grammar and dictionary of the Etruscan language, of Oscan, or Umbrian; but there were men then, as there are now, who shrugged their shoulders and said, What can be the use of preserving these barbarous, uncouth idioms?--What would we not give now for some such records?
And this is not all. The study of savage tribes has assumed a new interest of late, when the question of the exact relation of man to the rest of the animal kingdom has again roused the passions not only of scientific inquirers, but also of the public at large. Now what is wanted for the solution of this question, are more facts and fewer theories, and these facts can only be gained by a patient study of the lowest races of mankind. When religion was held to be the specific character of man, it was asserted by many travellers that they had seen races without any religious ideas; when language was seen to be the real frontier line between man and beast, it was maintained that there were human beings without language. Now all we want to know are facts, let the conclusions be whatever they may. It is by no means easy to decide whether savage tribes have a religion or not; at all events it requires the same discernment, and the same honesty of purpose as to find out whether men of the highest intellect among us have a religion or not. I call the Introduction to Spencer’s “First Principles” deeply religious, but I can well understand that a missionary, reporting on a tribe of Spencerian savages, might declare that they had no idea whatsoever of religion. Looking at a report sent home lately by the indefatigable Governor of New South Wales, Sir Hercules Robinson, I find the following description of the religious ideas of the Kamilarois, one of the most degraded tribes in the Northwestern district of the colony:--
“Bhaiami is regarded by them as the maker of all things. The name signifies ‘maker,’ or ‘cutter-out,’ from the verb +bhai+, +baialli+, +baia+. He is regarded as the rewarder and punisher of men according to their conduct. He sees all, and knows all, if not directly, through the subordinate deity Turramûlan, who presides at the Bora. Bhaiami is said to have been once on the earth. Turramûlan is mediator in all the operations of Bhaiami upon man, and in all man’s transactions with Bhaiami. Turramûlan means ‘leg on one side only,’ ‘one-legged.’”
This description is given by the Rev. C. Greenway, and if there is any theological bias in it, let us make allowance for it. But there remains the fact that Bhaiami, their name for deity, comes from a root +bhai+, to “make,” to “cut out,” and if we remember that hardly any of the names for deity, either among the Aryan or Semitic nations, comes from a root with so abstract a meaning, we shall admit, I think, that such reports as these should not be allowed to lie forgotten in the pigeon-holes of the Colonial Office, or in the pages of a monthly journal.
What applies to religion, applies to language. We have been told again and again that the Veddahs in Ceylon have no language. Sir Emerson Tennant wrote “that they mutually make themselves understood by signs, grimaces, and guttural sounds, which have little resemblance to definite words or language in general.” When these statements were repeated, I tried to induce the Government of Ceylon to send a competent man to settle the question. I did not receive all I wanted, and therefore postponed the publication of what was sent me. But I may say so much, that more than half of the words used by the Veddahs, are, like Singhalese itself, mere corruption of Sanskrit; their very name is the Sanskrit word for hunter, +veddhâ+, or, as Mr. Childers supposes, +vyâdha+. There is a remnant of words in their language of which I can make nothing as yet. But so much is certain; either the Veddahs started with the common inheritance of Aryan words and ideas; or, at all events, they lived for a long time in contact with Aryan people, and adopted from them such words as were wanting in their language. If they now stand low in the scale of humanity, they once stood higher, nay they may possibly prove, in language, if not in blood, the distant cousins of Plato, and Newton, and Goethe.
It is most essential to keep _la carrière ouverte_ for facts, even more than for theories, and for the supply of such facts the Colonial Government might render most useful service.
It is but right to state that whenever I have applied to the Governors of any of the Colonies, I have invariably met with the greatest kindness and readiness to help. Some of them take the warmest interest in these researches. Sir George Grey’s services to the science of language have hardly been sufficiently appreciated as yet, and the Linguistic Library which he founded at the Cape, places him of right by the side of Sir Thomas Bodley. Sir Hercules Robinson, Mr. Musgrave in South Australia, Sir Henry Barkley at the Cape, and several others, are quite aware of the importance of linguistic and ethnological researches. What is wanted is encouragement from home, and some systematic guidance. Dr. Bleek, the excellent librarian of Sir George Grey’s Library at the Cape, who has devoted the whole of his life to the study of savage dialects, and whose Comparative Grammar of the South African languages will hold its place by the side of Bopp’s, Diez’s, and Caldwell’s Comparative Grammars, is most anxious that there should be a permanent linguistic and ethnological station established at the Cape; in fact, that there should be a linguist attached to every zoölogical station. At the Cape there are not only the Zulu dialects to be studied, but two most important languages, that of the Hottentots and that of the Bushmen. Dr. Bleek has lately been enabled to write down several volumes of traditional literature from the mouths of some Bushman prisoners, but he says, “my powers and my life are drawing to an end, and unless I have some young men to assist me, and carry on my work, much of what I have done will be lost.” There is no time to be lost, and I trust therefore that my appeal will not be considered importunate by the present Colonial Minister.
Last of all, we turn to India, the very cradle of Oriental scholarship, and here, instead of being importunate and urging new claims for assistance, I think I am expressing the feelings of all Oriental scholars in publicly acknowledging the readiness with which the Indian Government, whether at home or in India, whether during the days of the old East India Company, or now under the auspices of the Secretary of State, has always assisted every enterprise tending to throw light on the literature, the religion, the laws and customs, the arts and manufactures of that ancient Oriental Empire.
Only last night I received the first volume of a work which will mark a new era in the history of Oriental typography. Three valuable MSS. of the Mahâbhâshya have been photolithographed at the expense of the Indian Government, and under the supervision of one whom many of us will miss here to-day, the late Professor Goldstücker. It is a magnificent publication, and as there are only fifty copies printed, it will soon become more valuable than a real MS.
There are two surveys carried on at the present moment in India, a literary and an archæological survey. Many years ago, when Lord Elgin went to India as Governor-general, I suggested to him the necessity of taking measures in order to rescue from destruction whatever could still be rescued of the ancient literature of the country. Lord Elgin died before any active measures could be taken, but the plan found a more powerful advocate in Mr. Whitley Stokes, who urged the Government to appoint some Sanskrit scholars to visit all places containing collections of Sanskrit MSS., and to publish lists of their titles, so that we might know, at all events, how much of a literature, that had been preserved for thousands of years, was still in existence at the present moment. This work was confided to Dr. Bühler, Dr. Kielhorn, Mr. Burnell, Rajendralal Mitra, and others. Several of their catalogues have been published, and there is but one feeling among all Sanskrit scholars as to the value of their work. But they also feel that the time has come for doing more. The mere titles of the MSS. whet our appetite, but do not satisfy it. There are, of course, hundreds of books where the title, the name of the author, the _locus et annus_ are all we care to know. But of books which are scarce, and hitherto not known out of India, we want to know more. We want some information of the subject and its treatment, and if possible, of the date, of the author, and of the writers quoted by him. We want extracts, intelligently chosen, in fact, we want something like the excellent catalogue which Dr. Aufrecht has made for the Bodleian Library. In Mr. Burnell, Dr. Bühler, Dr. Kielhorn, the Government possesses scholars who could do that work admirably; what they want is more leisure, more funds, more assistance.
Contemporaneously with the Literary Survey, there is the Archæological Survey, carried on by that gallant and indefatigable scholar, General Cunningham. His published reports show the systematic progress of his work, and his occasional communications in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal tell us of his newest discoveries. The very last number of that journal brought us the news of the discovery of the wonderful ruins of the Buddhist temple of Bharahut,[6] which, with their representations of scenes from the early Buddhist literature, with their inscriptions and architectural style, may enable us to find a _terminus a quo_ for the literary and religious history of India. We should not forget the services which Mr. Fergusson has rendered to the history of Indian architecture, both by awakening an interest in the subject, and by the magnificent publication of the drawings of the sculptures of Sanchi and Amravati, carried on under the authority of the Secretary of State for India. Let us hope that these new discoveries may supply him with materials for another volume, worthy of its companion.
It was supposed for a time that there was a third survey carried on in India, ethnological and linguistic, and the volume, published by Colonel Dalton, “Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal,” with portraits from photographs, was a most excellent beginning. But the other India Governments have not hitherto followed the example of the Bengal Government, and nothing has of late come to my knowledge in this important line of research. Would not Dr. Hunter, who has done so much for a scientific study of the non-Aryan languages and races of India, take up this important branch of research, and give us, not only photographs and graphic description, but also, what is most wanted, scholarlike grammars of the principal races of India? Lists of words, if carefully chosen, like those in Colonel Dalton’s work and in Sir George Campbell’s “Specimens,” are, no doubt, most valuable for preliminary researches, but without grammars, none of the great questions which are still pending in Indian Ethnology will ever be satisfactorily and definitely settled. No real advance has been made in the classification of Indian dialects since the time when I endeavored, some twenty years ago, to sum up what was then known on that subject, in my letter to Bunsen “On the Turanian Languages.” What I then for the first time ventured to maintain against the highest authorities in Indian linguistic ethnology, viz., that the dialects of the Mundas or the Koles constituted a third and totally independent class of languages in India, related neither to the Aryan nor to the Dravidian families, has since been fully confirmed by later researches, and is now, I believe, generally accepted. The fact also, on which I then strongly insisted, that the Uraon Koles, and Rajmahal Koles, might be Koles in blood, but certainly not in language, their language being, like that of the Gonds, Dravidian, is now no longer disputed. But beyond this, all is still as hypothetical as it was twenty years ago, simply because we can get no grammars of the Munda dialects. Why do not the German missionaries at Ranchi, who have done such excellent work among the Koles, publish a grammatical analysis of that interesting cluster of dialects? Only a week ago, one of them, Mr. Jellinghaus, gave me a grammatical sketch of the Mundári language, and even this, short as it is, was quite sufficient to show that the supposed relationship between the Munda dialects and the Khasia language, of which we have a grammar, is untenable. The similarities pointed out by Mason between the Munda dialects and the Talaing of Pegu, are certainly startling, but equally startling are the divergences; and here again no real result will be obtained without a comparison of the grammatical structure of the two languages. The other classes of Indian languages, the Taic, the Gangetic, subdivided into Trans-Himalayan and Sub-Himalayan, the Lohitic, and Tamulic, are still retained, though some of their names have been changed. Without wishing to defend the names which I had chosen for these classes, I must say that I look upon the constant introduction of new technical terms as an unmixed evil. Every classificatory term is imperfect. Aryan, Semitic, Hamitic, Turanian, all are imperfect, but, if they are but rightly defined, they can do no harm, whereas a new term, however superior at first sight, always makes confusion worse confounded. The chemists do not hesitate to call sugar an acid rather than part with an old established term; why should not we in the science of language follow their good example?
Dr. Leitner’s labors in Dardistan should here be mentioned. They date from the year 1866. Considering the shortness of the time allotted to him for exploring that country, he has been most successful in collecting his linguistic materials. We owe him a vocabulary of two Shinâ dialects (the Ghilghiti and Astori), and of the Arnyia, the Khayuna, and the Kalâsha-Mânder. These vocabularies are so arranged as to give us a fair idea of the systems of conjugation and declension. Other vocabularies, arranged according to subjects, allow us an insight into the intellectual life of the Shinas, and we also receive most interesting information on the customs, legends, superstitions, and religion of the Dardus. Some of the important results, obtained by the same enterprising scholar in his excavations on the Takht-i-bahai hills will be laid before the Archæological Section of this Congress. It is impossible to look at the Buddhist sculptures which he has brought home without perceiving that there is in them a foreign element. They are Buddhist sculptures, but they differ both in treatment and expression from what was hitherto known of Buddhist art in various parts of the world. Dr. Leitner thinks that the foreign element came from Greece, from Greek or Macedonian workmen, the descendants of Alexander’s companions; others think that local and individual influences are sufficient to account for apparent deviations from the common Buddhist type. On this point I feel totally incompetent to express an opinion, but whatever the judgment of our archæological colleagues may be, neither they nor we ourselves can have any doubt that Dr. Leitner deserves our sincere gratitude as an indefatigable explorer and successful discoverer.
Many of the most valuable treasures of every kind and sort, collected during these official surveys, and by private enterprise, are now deposited in the Indian Museum in London, a real mine of literary and archæological wealth, opened with the greatest liberality to all who are willing to work in it.
It is unfortunate, no doubt, that this meeting of Oriental scholars should have taken place at a time when the treasures of the Indian Museum are still in their temporary exile; yet, if they share in the regret felt by every friend of India, at the delay in the building of a new museum, worthy both of England and of India, they will also carry away the conviction, that such delay is simply due to a desire to do the best that can be done, in order to carry out in the end something little short of that magnificent scheme of an Indian Institute, drawn by the experienced hand of Mr. Forbes Watson.
And now, in conclusion, I have to express my own gratitude for the liberality both of the Directors of the old East India Company and of the present Secretary of State for India in Council, for having enabled me to publish that work the last sheet of which I am able to present to this Meeting to-day, the “Rig-Veda, with the Commentary of Sâyaṇâcârya.” It is the oldest book of the Aryan world, but it is also one of the largest, and its publication would have been simply impossible without the enlightened liberality of the Indian Government. For twenty-five years I find, that taking the large and small editions of the Rig-Veda together, I have printed every year what would make a volume of about six hundred pages octavo. Such a publication would have ruined any bookseller, for it must be confessed, that there is little that is attractive in the Veda, nothing that could excite general interest. From an æsthetic point of view, no one would care for the hymns of the Rig-Veda, and I can well understand how, in the beginning of our century, even so discriminating a scholar as Colebrooke could express his opinion that, “The Vedas are too voluminous for a complete translation, and what they contain would hardly reward the labor of the reader, much less that of the translator. The ancient dialect in which they are composed, and specially that of the three first Vedas, is extremely difficult and obscure; and, though curious, as the parent of a more polished and refined language, its difficulties must long continue to prevent such an examination of the whole Vedas, as would be requisite for extracting all that is remarkable and important in those voluminous works. But they well deserve to be occasionally consulted by the Oriental scholar.” Nothing shows the change from the purely æsthetic to the purely scientific interest in the language and literature of India more clearly than the fact that for the last twenty-five years the work of nearly all Sanskrit scholars has been concentrated on the Veda. When some thirty years ago I received my first lessons in Sanskrit from Professor Brockhaus, whom I am happy and proud to see to-day among us, there were but few students who ventured to dive into the depths of Vedic literature. To-day among the Sanskrit scholars whom Germany has sent to us--Professors Stenzler, Spiegel, Weber, Hang, Pertsch, Windisch--there is not one who has not won his laurels on the field of Vedic scholarship. In France also a new school of Sanskrit students has sprung up who have done most excellent work for the interpretation of the Veda, and who bid fair to rival the glorious school of French Orientalists at the beginning of this century, both by their persevering industry and by that “sweetness and light” which seems to be the birthright of their nation. But, I say again, there is little that is beautiful, in our sense of the word, to be found in the hymns of the Rig-Veda, and what little there is, has been so often dwelt on, that quite an erroneous impression as to the real nature of Vedic poetry has been produced in the mind of the public. My old friend, the Dean of St. Paul’s, for instance, in some thoughtful lectures which he delivered this year on the “Sacred Poetry of Early Religions,” has instituted a comparison between the Psalms and the hymns of the Veda, and he arrives at the conclusion that the Psalms are superior to the Vedic hymns. No doubt they are, from the point of view which he has chosen, but the chief value of these hymns lies in the fact that they are so different from the Psalms, or, if you like, that they are so inferior to the Psalms. They are Aryan, the Psalms Semitic; they belong to a primitive and rude state of society, the Psalms, at least most of them, are contemporaneous with or even later than the heydays of the Jewish monarchy. This strange misconception of the true character of the Vedic hymns seemed to me to become so general, that when some years ago I had to publish the first volume of my translation, I intentionally selected a class of hymns which should in no way encourage such erroneous opinions. It was interesting to watch the disappointment. What, it was said, are these strange, savage, grotesque invocations of the Storm-gods, the inspired strains of the ancient sages of India? Is this the wisdom of the East? Is this the primeval revelation? Even scholars of high reputation joined in the outcry, and my friends hinted to me that they would not have wasted their life on such a book.
Now, suppose a geologist had brought to light the bones of a fossil animal, dating from a period anterior to any in which traces of animal life had been discovered before, would any young lady venture to say by way of criticism, “Yes, these bones are very curious, but they are not pretty!” Or suppose a new Egyptian statue had been discovered, belonging to a dynasty hitherto unrepresented by any statues, would even a school-boy dare to say, “Yes, it is very nice, but the Venus of Milo is nicer?” Or suppose an old MS. is brought to Europe, do we find fault with it, because it is not neatly printed? If a chemist discovers a new element, is he pitied because it is not gold? If a botanist writes on germs, has he to defend himself, because he does not write on flowers? Why, it is simply because the Veda is so different from what it was expected to be, because it is not like the Psalms, not like Pindar, not like the Bhagavadgîtâ, it is because it stands alone by itself, and reveals to us the earliest germs of religious thought, such as they really were; it is because it places before us a language, more primitive than any we knew before; it is because its poetry is what you may call savage, uncouth, rude, horrible, it is for that very reason that it was worth while to dig and dig till the old buried city was recovered, showing us what man was, what we were, before we had reached the level of David, the level of Homer, the level of Zoroaster, showing us the very cradle of our thoughts, our words, and our deeds. _I_ am not disappointed with the Veda, and I shall conclude my address with the last verses of the last hymn, which you have now in your hands,--verses which thousands of years ago may have been addressed to a similar meeting of Aryan fellow-men, and which are not inappropriate to our own:--
Sám gacchadhvam sám vadadhvam sám vaḥ mánâṃsi jànatâm, Devâh bhâgám yáthâ pû́rve[7] saṃjânânấḥ upấsate, Samânáh mántraḥ sámitiḥ samánî́ samânám mánaḥ sahá cittám eshâm, Samnám mántram abhí mantraye vaḥ samânéna vaḥ havíshâ juhomi. Samânî́ vaḥ ấkûtiḥ samânấ hṛdayâni vaḥ, Samânám astu vaḥ mánaḥ yáthâ vaḥ súsaha ásati.
“Come together! Speak together! Let your minds be concordant--the gods by being concordant receive their share, one after the other. Their word is the same, their counsel is the same, their mind is the same, their thoughts are at one; I address to you the same word, I worship you with the same sacrifice. Let your endeavor be the same! Let your hearts be the same! Let your mind be the same, that it may go well with you.”
NOTES.
NOTE A.
In the “Indian Mirror,” published at Calcutta, 20 September, 1874, a native writer gave utterance almost at the same time to the same feelings:--
“When the dominion passed from the Mogul to the hands of Englishmen, the latter regarded the natives as little better than niggers, having a civilization perhaps a shade better than that of the barbarians. . . . The gulf was wide between the conquerors and the conquered. . . . There was no affection to lessen the distance between the two races. . . . The discovery of Sanskrit entirely revolutionized the course of thought and speculations. It served as the ‘open sesame’ to many hidden treasures. It was then that the position of India in the scale of civilization was distinctly apprehended. It was then that our relations with the advanced nations of the world were fully realized. We were niggers at one time. We now become brethren. . . . The advent of the English found us a nation low sunk in the mire of superstitions, ignorance, and political servitude. The advent of scholars like Sir William Jones found us fully established in a rank above that of every nation as that from which modern civilization could be distinctly traced. It would be interesting to contemplate what would have been our position if the science of philology had not been discovered. . . . It was only when the labor of scholars brought to light the treasures of our antiquity that they perceived how near we were to their races in almost all things that they held dear in their life. It was then that our claims on their affection and regard were first established. As Hindus we ought never to forget the labor of scholars. We owe them our life as a nation, our freedom as a recognized society, and our position in the scale of races. It is the fashion with many to decry the labors of those men as dry, unprofitable, and dreamy. We should know that it is to the study of the roots and inflections of the Sanskrit language that we owe our national salvation. . . . Within a very few years after the discovery of Sanskrit, a revolution took place in the history of comparative science. Never were so many discoveries made at once, and from the speculations of learned scholars like ----, the dawnings of many truths are even now visible to the world. . . . Comparative mythology and comparative religion are new terms altogether in the world. . . . We say again that India has no reason to forget the services of scholars.”
NOTE B.
The following letter addressed by me to the “Academy,” October 17, 1874, p. 433, gives the reasons for this statement:--
“I was aware of the mission of the four young Brahmans sent to Benares in 1845, to copy out and study the four Vedas respectively. I had read of it last in the ‘Historical Sketch of the Brahmo Samaj,’ which Miss Collet had the kindness to send me. But what I said in my address before the Oriental Congress referred to earlier times. That mission in 1845 was, in fact, the last result of much previous discussion, which gradually weakened and destroyed in the mind of Ram Mohun Roy and his followers their traditional faith in the Divine origin of the Vedas. At first Ram Mohun Roy met the arguments of his English friends by simply saying, ‘If you claim a Divine origin for your sacred books, so do we;’ and when he was pressed by the argument derived from internal evidence, he appealed to a few hymns, such as the Gâyatrî, and to the Upanishads, as by no means inferior to passages in the Bible, and not unworthy of a divine author. The Veda with him was chiefly in the Upanishads, and he had hardly any knowledge of the hymns of the Rig-Veda. I state this on the authority of a conversation that passed between him and young Rosen, who was then working at the MSS. of the Rig-Veda-Sanhitâ in the British Museum, and to whom Ram Mohun Roy expressed his regret at not being able to read his own sacred books.
“There were other channels, too, through which, after Ram Mohun Roy’s death in 1833, a knowledge of the studies of European scholars may have reached the still hesitating reformers of the Brahma Sabhá. Dvarka Náth Tagore paid a visit to Europe in the year 1845. I write from memory. Though not a man of deep religious feelings, he was an enlightened and shrewd observer of all that passed before his eyes. He was not a Sanskrit scholar; and I well recollect, when we paid a visit together to Eugène Burnouf, Dvarka Náth Tagore putting his dark delicate hand on one side of Burnouf’s edition of the ‘Bhagavat Purâṇa,’ containing the French translation, and saying he could understand that, but not the Sanskrit original on the opposite page. I saw him frequently at Paris, where I was then engaged in collecting materials for a complete edition of the Vedas and the commentary of Sâyaṇâcârya. Many a morning did I pass in his rooms, smoking, accompanying him on the pianoforte, and discussing questions in which we took a common interest. I remember one morning, after he had been singing some Italian, French, and German music, I asked him to sing an Indian song. He declined at first, saying that he knew I should not like it; but at last he yielded, and sang, not one of the modern Persian songs, which commonly go by the name of Indian, but a genuine native piece of music. I listened quietly, but when it was over, I told him that it seemed strange to me, how one who could appreciate Italian and German music could find any pleasure in what sounded to me like mere noise, without melody, rhythm, or harmony. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘that is exactly like you Europeans! When I first heard your Italian and German music I disliked it; it was no music to me at all. But I persevered, I became accustomed to it, I found out what was good in it, and now I am able to enjoy it. But you despise whatever is strange to you, whether in music, or philosophy, or religion; you will not listen and learn, and we shall understand you much sooner than you will understand us.’
“In our conversations on the Vedas he never, as far as I recollect, defended the divine origin of his own sacred writings in the abstract, but he displayed great casuistic cleverness in maintaining that every argument that had ever been adduced in support of a supernatural origin of the Bible could be used with equal force in favor of a divine authorship of the Veda. His own ideas of the Veda were chiefly derived from the Upanishads, and he frequently assured me that there was much more of Vedic literature in India than we imagined. This Dvarka Náth Tagore was the father of Debendra Náth Tagore, the true founder of the Brahmo Samáj, who, in 1845, sent the four young Brahmans to Benares to copy out and study the four Vedas. Though Dvarka Náth Tagore was so far orthodox that he maintained a number of Brahmans, yet it was he also who continued the grant for the support of the Church, founded at Calcutta by Ram Mohun Roy. One letter written by Dvarka Náth Tagore from Paris to Calcutta in 1845, would supply the missing link between what was passing at that time in a room of a hotel on the Place Vendôme, and the resolution taken at Calcutta to find out, once for all, what the Vedas really are.
“In India itself the idea of a critical and historical study of the Veda originated certainly with English scholars. Dr. Mill once showed me the first attempt at printing the sacred Gâyatrî in Calcutta; and, if I am not mistaken, he added that unfortunately the gentleman who had printed it died soon after, thus confirming the prophecies of the Brahmans that such a sacrilege would not remain unavenged by the gods. Dr. Mill, Stevenson, Wilson, and others were the first to show to the educated natives in India that the Upanishads belonged to a later age than the hymns of the Rig-Veda, and likewise the first to exhibit to Ram Mohun Roy and his friends the real character of these ancient hymns. On a mind like Ram Mohun Roy’s the effect was probably much more immediate than on his followers, so that it took several years before they decided on sending their commissioners to Benares to report on the Veda and its real character. Yet that mission was, I believe, the result of a slow process of attrition produced by the contact between native and European minds, and as such I wished to present it in my address at the Oriental Congress.”
[Footnote 1: These lists of common Aryan words were published in the _Academy_, October 10, 1874, and are reprinted at the end of the next article “On the Life of Colebrooke.”]
[Footnote 2: _Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft und Orientalischen Philologie in Deutschland_, von Theodor Benfey. München, 1869.]
[Footnote 3: _Aristoteles’ Metaphysik, eine Tochter der Sânkhya-Lehre des Kapila_, von Dr. C. B. Schlüter. 1874.]
[Footnote 4: See Note A, p. 355.]
[Footnote 5: See Note B, p. 356.]
[Footnote 6: _Academy_, August 1, 1874.]
[Footnote 7: I read +yathâpûrve+ as one word.]
VIII.
LIFE OF COLEBROOKE.[1]
The name and fame of Henry Thomas Colebrooke are better known in India,
France, Germany, Italy--nay, even in Russia--than in his own country. He
was born in London on the 15th of June, 1765; he died in London on the
10th of March, 1837; and if now, after waiting for thirty-six years, his
only surviving son, Sir Edward Colebrooke, has at last given us a more
complete account of his father’s life, the impulse has come chiefly from
Colebrooke’s admirers abroad, who wished to know what the man had been
whose works they know so well. If Colebrooke had simply been a
distinguished, even a highly distinguished, servant of the East India
Company, we could well understand that, where the historian has so many
eminent services to record, those of Henry Thomas Colebrooke should have
been allowed to pass almost unnoticed. The history of British India has
still to be written, and it will be no easy task to write it. Macaulay’s
“Lives” of Clive and Warren Hastings are but two specimens to show how
it ought to be, and yet how it cannot be, written. There is in the
annals of the conquest and administrative tenure of India so much of the
bold generalship of raw recruits, the statesmanship of common clerks,
and the heroic devotion of mere adventurers, that even the largest
canvas of the historian must dwarf the stature of heroes; and characters
which, in the history of Greece or England, would stand out in bold
relief, must vanish unnoticed in the crowd. The substance of the present
memoir appeared in the “Journal” of the Royal Asiatic Society soon after
Mr. Colebrooke’s death. It consisted originally of a brief notice of his
public and literary career, interspersed with extracts from his letters
to his family during the first twenty years of residence in India. Being
asked a few years since to allow this notice to appear in a new edition
of his “Miscellaneous Essays,” which Mr. Fitz-Edward Hall desired to
republish, Sir Edward thought it incumbent on him to render it more
worthy of his father’s reputation. The letters in the present volume
are, for the most part, given in full; and some additional
correspondence is included in it, besides a few papers of literary
interest, and a journal kept by him during his residence at Nagpur,
which was left incomplete. Two addresses delivered to the Royal Asiatic
and Astronomical Societies, and the narrative of a journey to and from
the capital of Berar, are given in an appendix and complete the volume,
which is now on the eve of publication.
Although, as we shall see, the career of Mr. Colebrooke, as a servant of the East India Company, was highly distinguished, and in its vicissitudes, as here told by his son, both interesting and instructive, yet his most lasting fame will not be that of the able administrator, the learned lawyer, the thoughtful financier and politician, but that of the founder and father of true Sanskrit scholarship in Europe. In that character Colebrooke has secured his place in the history of the world, a place which neither envy nor ignorance can ever take from him. Had he lived in Germany, we should long ago have seen his statue in his native place, his name written in letters of gold on the walls of academies; we should have heard of Colebrooke jubilees and Colebrooke scholarships. In England, if any notice is taken of the discovery of Sanskrit--a discovery in many respects equally important, in some even more important, than the revival of Greek scholarship in the fifteenth century--we may possibly hear the popular name of Sir William Jones and his classical translation of Sakuntala; but of the infinitely more important achievements of Colebrooke, not one word. The fact is, the time has not yet come when the full importance of the Sanskrit philology can be appreciated by the public at large. It was the same with Greek philology. When Greek began to be studied by some of the leading spirits in Europe, the subject seemed at first one of purely literary curiosity. When its claims were pressed on the public, they were met by opposition, and even ridicule; and those who knew least of Greek were most eloquent in their denunciations. Even when its study had become more general, and been introduced at universities and schools, it remained in the eyes of many a mere accomplishment--its true value for higher than scholastic purposes being scarcely suspected. At present we know that the revival of Greek scholarship affected the deepest interests of humanity, that it was in reality a revival of that consciousness which links large portions of mankind together, connects the living with the dead, and thus secures to each generation the full intellectual inheritance of our race. Without that historical consciousness the life of man would be ephemeral and vain. The more we can see backward, and place ourselves in real sympathy with the past, the more truly do we make the life of former generations our own, and are able to fulfill our own appointed duty in carrying on the work which was begun centuries ago in Athens and at Rome. But while the unbroken traditions of the Roman world, and the revival of Greek culture among us, restored to us the intellectual patrimony of Greece and Rome only, and made the Teutonic race in a certain sense Greek and Roman, the discovery of Sanskrit will have a much larger influence. Like a new intellectual spring, it is meant to revive the broken fibres that once united the Southeastern with the Northwestern branches of the Aryan family; and thus to rëestablish the spiritual brotherhood, not only of the Teutonic, Greek, and Roman, but likewise of the Slavonic, Celtic, Indian, and Persian branches. It is to make the mind of man wider, his heart larger, his sympathies world-embracing; it is to make us truly _humaniores_, richer and prouder in the full perception of what humanity has been, and what it is meant to be. This is the real object of the more comprehensive studies of the nineteenth century, and though the full appreciation of this their true import may be reserved to the future, no one who follows the intellectual progress of mankind attentively can fail to see that, even now, the comparative study of languages, mythologies, and religions has widened our horizon; that much which was lost has been regained; and that a new world, if it has not yet been occupied, is certainly in sight. It is curious to observe that those to whom we chiefly owe the discovery of Sanskrit were as little conscious of the real importance of their discovery as Columbus was when he landed at St. Salvador. What Mr. Colebrooke did, was done from a sense of duty, rather than from literary curiosity; but there was also a tinge of enthusiasm in his character, like that which carries a traveller to the wastes of Africa or the icebound regions of the Pole. Whenever there was work ready for him, he was ready for the work. But he had no theories to substantiate, no preconceived objects to attain. Sobriety and thoroughness are the distinguishing features of all his works. There is in them no trace of haste or carelessness; but neither is there evidence of any extraordinary effort, or minute professional scholarship. In the same business-like spirit in which he collected the revenue of his province he collected his knowledge of Sanskrit literature; with the same judicial impartiality with which he delivered his judgments he delivered the results at which he had arrived after his extensive and careful reading; and with the same sense of confidence with which he quietly waited for the effects of his political and financial measures, in spite of the apathy or the opposition with which they met at first, he left his written works to the judgment of posterity, never wasting his time in the repeated assertion of his opinions, or in useless controversy, though he was by no means insensible to his own literary reputation. The biography of such a man deserves a careful study; and we think that Sir Edward Colebrooke has fulfilled more than a purely filial duty in giving to the world a full account of the private, public, and literary life of his great father.
Colebrooke was the son of a wealthy London banker, Sir George Colebrooke, a Member of Parliament, and a man in his time of some political importance. Having proved himself a successful advocate of the old privileges of the East India Company, he was invited to join the Court of Directors, and became in 1769 chairman of the Company. His chairmanship was distinguished in history by the appointment of Warren Hastings to the highest office in India, and there are in existence letters from that illustrious man to Sir George, written in the crisis of his Indian Administration, which show the intimate and confidential relations subsisting between them. But when, in later years, Sir George Colebrooke became involved in pecuniary difficulties, and Indian appointments were successively obtained for his two sons, James Edward and Henry Thomas, it does not appear that Warren Hastings took any active steps to advance them, beyond appointing the elder brother to an office of some importance on his secretariat. Henry, the younger brother, had been educated at home, and at the age of fifteen he had laid a solid foundation in Latin, Greek, French, and particularly in mathematics. As he never seems to have been urged on, he learned what he learned quietly and thoroughly, trying from the first to satisfy himself rather than others. Thus a love of knowledge for its own sake remained firmly engrained in his mind through life, and explains much of what would otherwise remain inexplicable in his literary career.
At the age of eighteen he started for India, and arrived at Madras in 1783, having narrowly escaped capture by French cruisers. The times were anxious times for India, and full of interest to an observer of political events. In his very first letter from India Colebrooke thus sketches the political situation:--
“The state of affairs in India seems to bear a far more favorable aspect than for a long time past. The peace with the Mahrattas and the death of Hyder Ally, the intended invasion of Tippoo’s country by the Mahrattas, sufficiently removed all alarm from the country powers; but there are likewise accounts arrived, and which seem to be credited, of the defeat of Tippoo by Colonel Matthews, who commands on the other coast.”
From Madras Colebrooke proceeded, in 1783, to Calcutta, where he met his elder brother, already established in the service. His own start in official life was delayed, and took place under circumstances by no means auspicious. The tone, both in political and private life, was at that time at its lowest ebb in India. Drinking, gambling, and extravagance of all kinds were tolerated even in the best society, and Colebrooke could not entirely escape the evil effects of the moral atmosphere in which he had to live. It is all the more remarkable that his taste for work never deserted him, and “that he would retire to his midnight Sanskrit studies unaffected by the excitement of the gambling-table.” It was not till 1786--a year after Warren Hastings had left India--that he received his first official appointment, as Assistant Collector of Revenue in Tirhut. His father seems to have advised him from the first to be assiduous in acquiring the vernacular languages, and we find him at an early period of his Indian career thus writing on this subject: “The one, and that the most necessary, Moors (now called Hindustani), by not being written, bars all close application; the other, Persian, is too dry to entice, and is so seldom of any use, that I seek its acquisition very leisurely.” He asked his father in turn to send him the Greek and Latin classics, evidently intending to carry on his old favorite studies, rather than begin a new career as an Oriental scholar. For a time he seemed, indeed, deeply disappointed with his life in India, and his prospects were anything but encouraging. But although he seriously thought of throwing up his position and returning to England, he was busy nevertheless in elaborating a scheme for the better regulation of the Indian service. His chief idea was, that the three functions of the civil service--the commercial, the revenue, and the diplomatic--should be separated; that each branch should be presided over by an independent board, and that those who had qualified themselves for one branch should not be transferred to another. Curiously enough, he lived to prove by his own example the applicability of the old system, being himself transferred from the revenue department to a judgeship, then employed on an important diplomatic mission, and lastly raised to a seat in Council, and acquitting himself well in each of these different employments. After a time his discontent seems to have vanished. He quietly settled down to his work in collecting the revenue of Tirhut; and his official duties soon became so absorbing, that he found little time for projecting reforms of the Indian Civil Service.
Soon also his Oriental studies gave him a new interest in the country and the people. The first allusions to Oriental literature occur in a letter dated Patna, December 10, 1786. It is addressed to his father, who had desired some information concerning the religion of the Hindus. Colebrooke’s own interest in Sanskrit literature was from the first scientific rather than literary. His love of mathematics and astronomy made him anxious to find out what the Brahmans had achieved in these branches of knowledge. It is surprising to see how correct is the first communication which he sends to his father on the four modes of reckoning time adopted by Hindu astronomers, and which he seems chiefly to have drawn from Persian sources. The passage (pp. 23-26) is too long to be given here, but we recommend it to the careful attention of Sanskrit scholars, who will find it more accurate than what has but lately been written on the same subject. Colebrooke treated, again, of the different measures of time in his essay “On Indian Weights and Measures,” published in the “Asiatic Researches,” 1798; and in stating the rule for finding the planets which preside over the day, called _Horâ_, he was the first to point out the coincidence between that expression and our name for the twenty-fourth part of the day. In one of the notes to his Dissertation on the Algebra of the Hindus he showed that this and other astrological terms were evidently borrowed by the Hindus from the Greeks, or other external sources; and in a manuscript note published for the first time by Sir E. Colebrooke, we find him following up the same subject, and calling attention to the fact that the word _Horâ_ occurs in the Sanskrit vocabulary--the _Medinî-Kosha_, and bears there, among other significations, that of the rising of a sign of the zodiac, or half a sign. This, as he remarks, is in diurnal motion one _hour_, thus confirming the connection between the Indian and European significations of the word.
While he thus felt attracted towards the study of Oriental literature by his own scientific interests, it seems that Sanskrit literature and poetry by themselves had no charms for him. On the contrary, he declares himself repelled by the false taste of Oriental writers; and he speaks very slightingly of “the _amateurs_ who do not seek the acquisition of useful knowledge, but would only wish to attract notice, without the labor of deserving it, which is readily accomplished by an ode from the Persian, an apologue from the Sanskrit, or a song from some unheard-of dialect of Hinduee, of which _amateur_ favors the public with a _free_ translation, without understanding the original, as you will immediately be convinced, if you peruse that repository of nonsense, the ‘Asiatic Miscellany.’” He makes one exception, however, in favor of Wilkins. “I have never yet seen any book,” he writes, “which can be depended on for information concerning the real opinions of the Hindus, except Wilkins’s ‘Bhagvat Geeta.’ That gentleman was Sanskrit mad, and has more materials and more general knowledge respecting the Hindus than any other foreigner ever acquired since the days of Pythagoras.” Arabic, too, did not then find much more favor in his eyes than Sanskrit. “Thus much,” he writes, “I am induced to believe, that the Arabic language is of more difficult acquisition than Latin, or even than Greek; and, although it may be concise and nervous, it will not reward the labor of the student, since, in the works of science, he can find nothing new, and, in those of literature, he could not avoid feeling his judgment offended by the false taste in which they are written, and his imagination being heated by the glow of their imagery. A few dry facts might, however, reward the literary drudge. . . . .”
It may be doubted, indeed, whether Colebrooke would ever have overcome these prejudices, had it not been for his father’s exhortations. In 1789, Colebrooke was transferred from Tirhut to Purneah; and such was his interest in his new and more responsible office, that, according to his own expression, he felt for it all the solicitude of a young author. Engrossed in his work, a ten years’ settlement of some of the districts of his new collectorship, he writes to his father in July, 1790:--
“The religion, manners, natural history, traditions, and arts of this country may, certainly, furnish subjects on which my communications might, perhaps, be not uninteresting; but to offer anything deserving of attention would require a season of leisure to collect and digest information. Engaged in public and busy scenes, my mind is wholly engrossed by the cares and duties of my station; in vain I seek, for relaxation’s sake, to direct my thoughts to other subjects; matters of business constantly recur. It is for this cause that I have occasionally apologized for a dearth of subjects, having no occurrences to relate, and the matters which occupy my attention being uninteresting as a subject of correspondence.”
When, after a time, the hope of distinguishing himself impelled Colebrooke to new exertions, and he determined to become an author, the subject which he chose was not antiquarian or philosophical, but purely practical.
“Translations,” he writes, in 1790, “are for those who rather need to fill their purses than gratify their ambition. For original compositions on Oriental history and sciences is required more reading in the literature of the East than I possess, or am likely to attain. My subject should be connected with those matters to which my attention is professionally led. One subject is, I believe, yet untouched--the agriculture of Bengal. On this I have been curious of information; and, having obtained some, I am now pursuing inquiries with some degree of regularity. I wish for your opinion, whether it would be worth while to reduce into form the information which may be obtained on a subject necessarily dry, and which (curious, perhaps) is, certainly, useless to English readers.”
Among the subjects of which he wishes to treat in this work we find some of antiquarian interest, _e.g._, what castes of Hindus are altogether forbid cultivating, and what castes have religious prejudices against the culture of particular articles. Others are purely technical; for instance, the question of the succession and mixture of crops. He states that the Hindus have some traditional maxims on the succession of crops to which they rigidly adhere; and with regard to mixture, he observes that two, three, or even four different articles are sown in the same field, and gathered successively, as they ripen; that they are sometimes all sown on the same day, sometimes at different periods, etc.
His letters now became more and more interesting, and they generally contain some fragments which show us how the sphere of his inquiries became more and more extended. We find (p. 39) observations on the Psylli of Egypt and the snake-charmers of India, on the Sikhs (p. 45), on human sacrifices in India (p. 46). The spirit of inquiry which had been kindled by Sir W. Jones, more particularly since the foundation of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784, had evidently reached Colebrooke. It is difficult to fix the exact date when he began the study of Sanskrit. He seems to have taken it up and left it again in despair several times. In 1793 he was removed from Purneah to Nattore. From that place he sent to his father the first volumes of the “Asiatic Researches,” published by the members of the Asiatic Society. He drew his father’s attention to some articles in them, which would seem to prove that the ancient Hindus possessed a knowledge of Egypt and of the Jews, but he adds: “No historical light can be expected from Sanskrit literature; but it may, nevertheless, be curious, if not useful, to publish such of their legends as seem to resemble others known to European mythology.” The first glimmering of comparative mythology in 1793!
Again he writes in 1793, “In my Sanskrit studies, I do not confine myself now to particular subjects, but skim the surface of all their sciences. I will subjoin, for your amusement, some remarks on subjects treated in the ‘Researches.’”
What the results of that skimming were, and how far more philosophical his appreciation of Hindu literature had then become, may be seen from the end of the same letter, written from Rajshahi, December, 6, 1793:--
“Upon the whole, whatever may be the true antiquity of this nation, whether their mythology be a corruption of the pure deism we find in their books, or their deism a refinement from gross idolatry; whether their religious and moral precepts have been engrafted on the elegant philosophy of the Nyâya and Mimânsâ, or this philosophy been refined on the plainer text of the Veda; the Hindu is the most ancient nation of which we have valuable remains, and has been surpassed by none in refinement and civilization; though the utmost pitch of refinement to which it ever arrived preceded, in time, the dawn of civilization in any other nation of which we have even the name in history. The further our literary inquiries are extended here, the more vast and stupendous is the scene which opens to us; at the same time, that the true and false, the sublime and the puerile, wisdom and absurdity, are so intermixed, that, at every step, we have to smile at folly, while we admire and acknowledge the philosophical truth, though couched in obscure allegory and puerile fable.”
In 1794, Colebrooke presented to the Asiatic Society his first paper, “On the Duties of a Faithful Hindu Widow,” and he told his father at the same time, that he meant to pursue his Sanskrit inquiries diligently, and in a spirit which seems to have guided all his work through life: “The only caution,” he says, “which occurs to me is, not to hazard in publication anything crude or imperfect, which would injure my reputation as a man of letters; to avoid this, the precaution may be taken of submitting my manuscripts to private perusal.”
Colebrooke might indeed from that time have become altogether devoted to the study of Sanskrit, had not his political feelings been strongly roused by the new Charter of the East India Company, which, instead of sanctioning reforms long demanded by political economists, confirmed nearly all the old privileges of their trade. Colebrooke was a free-trader by conviction, and because he had at heart the interests both of India and of England. It is quite gratifying to find a man, generally so cold and prudent as Colebrooke, warm with indignation at the folly and injustice of the policy carried out by England with regard to her Indian subjects. He knew very well that it was personally dangerous for a covenanted servant to discuss and attack the privileges of the Company, but he felt that he ought to think and act, not merely as the servant of a commercial company, but as the servant of the British Government. He wished, even at that early time, that India should become an integral portion of the British Empire, and cease to be, as soon as possible, a mere appendage, yielding a large commercial revenue. He was encouraged in these views by Mr. Anthony Lambert, and the two friends at last decided to embody their views in a work, which they privately printed, under the title of “Remarks on the Present State of the Husbandry and Commerce of Bengal.” Colebrooke, as we know, had paid considerable attention to the subject of husbandry, and he now contributed much of the material which he had collected for a purely didactic work, to this controversial and political treatise. He is likewise responsible, and he never tried to shirk that responsibility, for most of the advanced financial theories which it contains. The volume was sent to England, and submitted to the Prime Minister of the day and several other persons of influence. It seems to have produced an impression in the quarters most concerned, but it was considered prudent to stop its further circulation on account of the dangerous free-trade principles, which it supported with powerful arguments. Colebrooke had left the discretion of publishing the work in England to his friends, and he cheerfully submitted to their decision. He himself, however, never ceased to advocate the most liberal financial opinions, and being considered by those in power in Leadenhall Street as a dangerous young man, his advancement in India became slower than it would otherwise have been.
A man of Colebrooke’s power, however, was too useful to the Indian Government to be passed over altogether, and though his career was neither rapid nor brilliant, it was nevertheless most successful. Just at the time when Sir W. Jones had died suddenly, Colebrooke was removed from the revenue to the judicial branch of the Indian service, and there was no man in India, except Colebrooke, who could carry on the work which Sir W. Jones had left unfinished, viz.: “The Digest of Hindu and Mohammedan Laws.” At the instance of Warren Hastings, a clause had been inserted in the Act of 1772, providing that “Maulavies and Pundits should attend the Courts, to expound the law and assist in passing the decrees.” In all suits regarding inheritance, marriage, caste, and religious usages and institutions, the ancient laws of the Hindus were to be followed, and for that purpose a body of laws from their own books had to be compiled. Under the direction of Warren Hastings, nine Brahmans had been commissioned to draw up a code, which appeared in 1776, under the title of “Code of Gentoo Laws.”[2] It had been originally compiled in Sanskrit, then translated into Persian, and from that into English. As that code, however, was very imperfect, Sir W. Jones had urged on the Government the necessity of a more complete and authentic compilation. Texts were to be collected, after the model of Justinian’s Pandects, from law-books of approved authority, and to be digested according to a scientific analysis, with references to original authors. The task of arranging the text-books and compiling the new code fell chiefly to a learned Pandit, Jagannâtha, and the task of translating it was now, after the death of Sir W. Jones, undertaken by Colebrooke. This task was no easy one, and could hardly be carried out without the help of really learned pandits. Fortunately Colebrooke was removed at the time when he undertook this work, to Mirzapur, close to Benares, the seat of Brahmanical learning, in the north of India, and the seat of a Hindu College. Here Colebrooke found not only rich collections of Sanskrit MSS, but likewise a number of law pandits, who could solve many of the difficulties which he had to encounter in the translation of Jagannâtha’s Digest. After two years of incessant labor, we find Colebrooke on January 3, 1797, announcing the completion of his task, which at once established his position as the best Sanskrit scholar of the day. Oriental studies were at that time in the ascendant in India. A dictionary was being compiled, and several grammars were in preparation. Types also had been cut, and for the first time Sanskrit texts issued from the press in Devanâgarî letters. Native scholars, too, began to feel a pride in the revival of their ancient literature. The Brahmans, as Colebrooke writes, were by no means averse to instruct strangers; they did not even conceal from him the most sacred texts of the Veda. Colebrooke’s “Essays on the Religious Ceremonies of the Hindus,” which appeared in the fifth volume of the “Asiatic Researches” in the same year as his translation of the “Digest,” show very clearly that he had found excellent instructors, and had been initiated in the most sacred literature of the Brahmans. An important paper on the Hindu schools of law seems to date from the same period, and shows a familiarity, not only with the legal authorities of India, but with the whole structure of the traditional and sacred literature of the Brahmans, which but few Sanskrit scholars could lay claim to even at the present day. In the fifth volume of the “Asiatic Researches” appeared also his essay “On Indian Weights and Measures,” and his “Enumeration of Indian Classes.” A short, but thoughtful memorandum on the origin of caste, written during that period, and printed for the first time in his “Life,” will be read with interest by all who are acquainted with the different views of living scholars on this important subject.
Colebrooke’s idea was that the institution of caste was not artificial or conventional, but that it began with the simple division of freemen and slaves, which we find among all ancient nations. This division, as he supposes, existed among the Hindus before they settled in India. It became positive law after their emigration from the northern mountains into India, and was there adapted to the new state of the Hindus, settled among the aborigines. The class of slaves or +Śûdras+ consisted of those who came into India in that degraded state, and those of the aborigines who submitted and were spared. Menial offices and mechanical labor were deemed unworthy of freemen in other countries besides India, and it cannot therefore appear strange that the class of the +Śûdras+ comprehended in India both servants and mechanics, both Hindus and emancipated aborigines. The class of freemen included originally the priest, the soldier, the merchant, and the husbandman. It was divided into three orders, the +Brâhmaṇas+, +Kshatriyas+, and +Vaiśyas+, the last comprehending merchants and husbandmen indiscriminately, being the yeomen of the country and the citizens of the town. According to Colebrooke’s opinion, the +Kshatriyas+ consisted originally of kings and their descendants. It was the order of princes, rather than of mere soldiers. The +Brâhmaṇas+ comprehended no more than the descendants of a few religious men who, by superior knowledge and the austerity of their lives, had gained an ascendency over the people. Neither of these orders was originally very numerous, and their prominence gave no offense to the far more powerful body of the citizens and yeomen.
When legislators began to give their sanction to this social system, their chief object seems to have been to guard against too great a confusion of the four orders--the two orders of nobility, the sacerdotal and the princely, and the two orders of the people, the citizens and the slaves, by either prohibiting intermarriage, or by degrading the offspring of alliances between members of different orders. If men of superior married women of inferior, but next adjoining, rank, the offspring of their marriage sank to the rank of their mothers, or obtained a position intermediate between the two. The children of such marriages were distinguished by separate titles. Thus, the son of a +Brâhmaṇa+ by a +Kshatriya+ woman was called +Mûrdhâbhishikta+, which implies royalty. They formed a distinct tribe of princes or military nobility, and were by some reckoned superior to the +Kshatriya+. The son of a +Brâhmaṇa+ by a +Vaiśya+ woman was a +Vaidya+ or +Ambashṭha+; the offspring of a +Kshatriya+ by a +Vaisya+ was a +Mahishya+, forming two tribes of respectable citizens. But if a greater disproportion of rank existed between the parents--if, for instance, a +Brâhmaṇa+ married a +Śûdra+, the offspring of their marriage, the +Nishâda+, suffered greater social penalties; he became impure, notwithstanding the nobility of his father. Marriages, again, between women of superior with men of inferior rank were considered more objectionable than marriages of men of superior with women of inferior rank, a sentiment which continues to the present day.
What is peculiar to the social system, as sanctioned by Hindu legislators, and gives it its artificial character, is their attempt to provide by minute regulations for the rank to be assigned to new tribes, and to point out professions suitable to that rank. The tribes had each an internal government, and professions naturally formed themselves into companies. From this source, while the corporations imitated the regulations of tribes, a multitude of new and arbitrary tribes sprang up, the origin of which, as assigned by Manu and other legislators, was probably, as Colebrooke admits, more or less fanciful.
In his “Remarks on the Husbandry and Internal Commerce of Bengal,” the subject of caste in its bearing on the social improvement of the Indian nation was likewise treated by Colebrooke. In reply to the erroneous views then prevalent as to the supposed barriers which caste placed against the free development of the Hindus, he writes:--
“An erroneous doctrine has been started, as if the great population of these provinces could not avail to effect improvements, notwithstanding opportunities afforded by an increased demand for particular manufactures or for raw produce: because, ‘professions are hereditary among the Hindus; the offspring of men of one calling do not intrude into any other; professions are confined to hereditary descent; and the produce of any particular manufacture cannot be extended according to the increase of the demand, but must depend upon the population of the caste, or tribe, which works on that manufacture; or, in other words, if the demand for any article should exceed the ability of the number of workmen who produce it, the deficiency cannot be supplied by calling in assistance from other tribes.’
“In opposition to this unfounded opinion, it is necessary that we not only show, as has been already done, that the population is actually sufficient for great improvement, but we must also prove, that professions are not separated by an impassable line, and that the population affords a sufficient number whose religions prejudices permit, and whose inclination leads them to engage in, those occupations through which the desired improvement may be effected.
“The Muselmans, to whom the argument above quoted cannot in any manner be applied, bear no inconsiderable proportion to the whole population. Other descriptions of people, not governed by Hindu institutions, are found among the inhabitants of these provinces; in regard to these, also, the objection is irrelevant. The Hindus themselves, to whom the doctrine which we combat is meant to be applied, cannot exceed nine tenths of the population; probably, they do not bear so great a proportion to the other tribes. They are, as is well known, divided into four grand classes; but the three first of them are much less numerous than the +Śûdra+. The aggregate of +Brâhmaṇa+, +Kshatriya+, and +Vaiśya+ may amount, at the most, to a fifth of the population; and even these are not absolutely restricted to their own appointed occupations. Commerce and agriculture are universally permitted; and, under the designation of servants of the other three tribes, the +Śûdras+ seem to be allowed to prosecute any manufacture.
“In this tribe are included not only the true +Śûdras+, but also the several castes whose origin is ascribed to the promiscuous intercourse of the four classes. To these, also, their several occupations were assigned; but neither are they restricted, by rigorous injunctions, to their own appointed occupations. For any person unable to procure a subsistence by the exercise of his own profession may earn a livelihood in the calling of a subordinate caste, within certain limits in the scale of relative precedence assigned to each; and no forfeiture is now incurred by his intruding into a superior profession. It was, indeed, the duty of the Hindu magistrate to restrain the encroachments of inferior tribes on the occupations of superior castes; but, under a foreign government, this restraint has no existence.
“In practice, little attention is paid to the limitations to which we have here alluded: daily observation shows even Brâhmanas exercising the menial profession of a Sûdra. We are aware that every caste forms itself into clubs, or lodges, consisting of the several individuals of that caste residing within a small distance; and that these clubs, or lodges, govern themselves by particular rules and customs, or by laws. But, though some restrictions and limitations, not founded on religious prejudices, are found among their by-laws, it may be received, as a general maxim, that the occupation appointed for each tribe is entitled merely to a preference. Every profession, with few exceptions, is open to every description of persons, and the discouragement arising from religious prejudices is not greater than what exists in Great Britain from the effects of municipal and corporation laws. In Bengal, the numbers of people actually willing to apply to any particular occupation are sufficient for the unlimited extension of any manufacture.
“If these facts and observations be not considered as a conclusive refutation of the unfounded assertion made on this subject, we must appeal to the experience of every gentleman who may have resided in the provinces of Bengal, whether a change of occupation and profession does not frequently and indefinitely occur? Whether Brâhmanas are not employed in the most servile offices? And whether the Sûdra is not seen elevated to situations of respectability and importance? In short, whether the assertion above quoted be not altogether destitute of foundation?”
It is much to be regretted that studies so auspiciously begun were suddenly interrupted by a diplomatic mission, which called Colebrooke away from Mirzapur, and retained him from 1798 to 1801 at Nagpur, the capital of Berar. Colebrooke himself had by this time discovered that, however distinguished his public career might be, his lasting fame must depend on his Sanskrit studies. We find him even at Nagpur continuing his literary work, particularly the compilation and translation of a Supplementary Digest. He also prepared, as far as this was possible in the midst of diplomatic avocations, some of his most important contributions to the “Asiatic Researches,” one on Sanskrit prosody, which did not appear till 1808, and was then styled an essay on Sanskrit and Prakrit poetry; one on the Vedas, another on Indian Theogonies (not published), and a critical treatise on Indian plants. At last, in May, 1801, he left Nagpur to return to his post at Mirzapur. Shortly afterwards he was summoned to Calcutta, and appointed a member of the newly constituted Court of Appeal. He at the same time accepted the honorary post of Professor of Sanskrit at the college recently established at Fort William, without, however, taking an active part in the teaching of pupils. He seems to have been a director of studies rather than an actual professor, but he rendered valuable service as examiner in Sanskrit, Bengali, Hindustani, and Persian. In 1801 appeared his essay on the Sanskrit and Prakrit languages, which shows how well he had qualified himself to act as professor of Sanskrit, and how well, in addition to the legal and sacred literature of the Brahmans, he had mastered the _belles lettres_ of India also, which at first, as we saw, had rather repelled him by their extravagance and want of taste.
And here we have to take note of a fact which has never been mentioned in the history of the science of language, viz., that Colebrooke at that early time devoted considerable attention to the study of Comparative Philology. To judge from his papers, which have never been published, but which are still in the possession of Sir E. Colebrooke, the range of his comparisons was very wide, and embraced not only Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, with their derivatives, but also the Germanic and Slavonic languages.[3]
The principal work, however, of this period of his life was his Sanskrit Grammar. Though it was never finished, it will always keep its place, like a classical _torso_, more admired in its unfinished state than other works which stand by its side; finished, yet less perfect. Sir E. Colebrooke has endeavored to convey to the general reader some idea of the difficulties which had to be overcome by those who, for the first time, approached the study of the native grammarians, particularly of Pâṇini. But this grammatical literature, the 3,996 grammatical _sûtras_ or rules, which determine every possible form of the Sanskrit language in a manner unthought of by the grammarians of any other country, the glosses and commentaries, one piled upon the other, which are indispensable for a successful unraveling of Pâṇini’s artful web, which start every objection, reasonable or unreasonable, that can be imagined, either against Pâṇini himself or against his interpreters, which establish general principles, register every exception, and defend all forms apparently anomalous of the ancient Vedic language; all this together is so completely _sui generis_, that those only who have themselves followed Colebrooke’s footsteps can appreciate the boldness of the first adventurer, and the perseverance of the first explorer of that grammatical labyrinth. Colebrooke’s own Grammar of the Sanskrit language, founded on works of native grammarians, has sometimes been accused of obscurity, nor can it be denied that for those who wish to acquire the elements of the language, it is almost useless. But those who know the materials which Colebrooke worked up in his grammar, will readily give him credit for what he has done in bringing the _indigesta moles_ which he found before him into something like order. He made the first step, and a very considerable step it was, in translating the strange phraseology of Sanskrit grammarians into something at least intelligible to European scholars. How it could have been imagined that their extraordinary grammatical phraseology was borrowed by the Hindus from the Greeks, or that its formation was influenced by the grammatical schools established among the Greeks in Bactria, is difficult to understand, if one possesses but the slightest acquaintance with the character of either system, or with their respective historical developments. It would be far more accurate to say that the Indian and Greek systems of grammar represent two opposite poles, exhibiting the two starting-points from which alone the grammar of a language can be attacked, viz., the theoretical and the empirical. Greek grammar begins with philosophy, and forces language into the categories established by logic. Indian grammar begins with a mere collection of facts, systematizes them mechanically, and thus leads in the end to a system which, though marvelous for its completeness and perfection, is nevertheless, from a higher point of view, a mere triumph of scholastic pedantry.
Colebrooke’s grammar, even in its unfinished state, will always be the best introduction to a study of the native grammarians--a study indispensable to every sound Sanskrit scholar. In accuracy of statement it still holds the first place among European grammars, and it is only to be regretted that the references to Pânini and other grammatical authorities, which existed in Colebrooke’s manuscript, should have been left out when it came to be printed. The modern school of Sanskrit students has entirely reverted to Colebrooke’s views on the importance of a study of the native grammarians. It is no longer considered sufficient to know the correct forms of Sanskrit declension or conjugation: if challenged, we must be prepared to substantiate their correctness by giving chapter and verse from Pâṇini, the fountain-head of Indian grammar. If Sir E. Colebrooke says that “Bopp also drew deeply from the fountain-head of Indian grammar in his subsequent labors,” he has been misinformed. Bopp may have changed his opinion that “the student might arrive at a critical knowledge of Sanskrit by an attentive study of Foster and Wilkins, without referring to native authorities;” but he himself never went beyond, nor is there any evidence in his published works that he himself tried to work his way through the intricacies of Pâṇini.
In addition to his grammatical studies, Colebrooke was engaged in several other subjects. He worked at the Supplement to the “Digest of Laws,” which assumed very large proportions; he devoted some of his time to the deciphering of ancient inscriptions, in the hope of finding some fixed points in the history of India; he undertook to supply the Oriental synonymes for Roxburgh’s “Flora Indica”--a most laborious task, requiring a knowledge of botany as well as an intimate acquaintance with Oriental languages. In 1804 and 1805, while preparing his classical essay on the Vedas for the press, we find him approaching the study of the religion of Buddha. In all these varied researches, it is most interesting to observe the difference between him and all the other contributors to the “Asiatic Researches” at that time. They were all carried away by theories or enthusiasm; they were all betrayed into assertions or conjectures which proved unfounded. Colebrooke alone, the most hard-working and most comprehensive student, never allows one word to escape his pen for which he has not his authority; and when he speaks of the treatises of Sir W. Jones, Wilford, and others, he readily admits that they contain curious matter, but as he expresses himself, “very little conviction.” When speaking of his own work, as for instance, what he had written on the Vedas, he says: “I imagine my treatise on the Vedas will be thought curious; but, like the rest of my publications, little interesting to the general reader.”
In 1805, Colebrooke became President of the Court of Appeal--a high and, as it would seem, lucrative post, which made him unwilling to aspire to any other appointment. His leisure, though more limited than before, was devoted, as formerly, to his favorite studies; and in 1807 he accepted the presidency of the Asiatic Society--a post never before or after filled so worthily. He not only contributed himself several articles to the “Asiatic Researches,” published by the Society, viz., “On the Sect of Jina,” “On the Indian and Arabic Divisions of the Zodiack,” and “On the Frankincense of the Ancients;” but he encouraged also many useful literary undertakings, and threw out, among other things, an idea which has but lately been carried out, viz., a _Catalogue raisonné_ of all that is extant in Asiatic literature. His own studies became more and more concentrated on the most ancient literature of India, the Vedas, and the question of their real antiquity led him again to a more exhaustive examination of the astronomical literature of the Brahmans. In all these researches, which were necessarily of a somewhat conjectural character, Colebrooke was guided by his usual caution. Instead of attempting, for instance, a free and more or less divinatory translation of the hymns of the Rig-Veda, he began with the tedious but inevitable work of exploring the native commentaries. No one who has not seen his MSS., now preserved at the India Office, and the marginal notes with which the folios of Sâyaṇa’s commentary are covered, can form any idea of the conscientiousness with which he collected the materials for his essay. He was by no means a blind follower of Sâyaṇa, or a believer in the infallibility of traditional interpretation. The question on which so much useless ingenuity has since been expended, whether in translating the Veda we should be guided by native authorities or by the rules of critical scholarship, must have seemed to him, as to every sensible person, answered as soon as it was asked. He answered it by setting to work patiently, in order to find out, first, all that could be learnt from native scholars, and afterwards to form his own opinion. His experience as a practical man, his judicial frame of mind, his freedom from literary vanity, kept him, here as elsewhere, from falling into the pits of learned pedantry. It will seem almost incredible to later generations that German and English scholars should have wasted so much of their time in trying to prove, either that we should take no notice whatever of the traditional interpretation of the Veda, or that, in following it, we should entirely surrender our right of private judgment. Yet that is the controversy which has occupied of late years some of our best Sanskrit scholars, which has filled our journals with articles as full of learning as of acrimony, and has actually divided the students of the history of ancient religion into two hostile camps. Colebrooke knew that he had more useful work before him than to discuss the infallibility of fallible interpreters--a question handled with greater ingenuity by the Maimânsaka philosophers than by any living casuists. He wished to leave substantial work behind him; and though he claimed no freedom from error for himself, yet he felt conscious of having done all his work carefully and honestly, and was willing to leave it, such as it was, to the judgment of his contemporaries and of posterity. Once only during the whole of his life did he allow himself to be drawn into a literary controversy; and here, too, he must have felt what most men feel in the end--that it would have been better if he had not engaged in it. The subject of the controversy was the antiquity and originality of Hindu astronomy. Much had been written for and against it by various writers, but by most of them without a full command of the necessary evidence. Colebrooke himself maintained a doubtful attitude. He began, as usual, with a careful study of the sources at that time available, with translations of Sanskrit treatises, with astronomical calculations and verifications; but, being unable to satisfy himself, he abstained from giving a definite opinion. Bentley, who had published a paper in which the antiquity and originality of Hindu astronomy were totally denied, was probably aware that Colebrooke was not convinced by his arguments. When, therefore, an adverse criticism of his views appeared in the first number of our Review, Bentley jumped at the conclusion that it was written or inspired by Colebrooke. Hence arose his animosity, which lasted for many years, and vented itself from time to time in virulent abuse of Colebrooke, whom Bentley accused not only of unintentional error, but of willful misrepresentation and unfair suppression of the truth. Colebrooke ought to have known that in the republic of letters scholars are sometimes brought into strange society. Being what he was, he need not--nay, he ought not--to have noticed such literary rowdyism. But as the point at issue was of deep interest to him, and as he himself had a much higher opinion of Bentley’s real merits than his reviewer, he at last vouchsafed an answer in the “Asiatic Journal” of March, 1826. With regard to Bentley’s personalities, he says: “I never spoke nor wrote of Mr. Bentley with disrespect, and I gave no provocation for the tone of his attack on me.” As to the question itself, he sums up his position with simplicity and dignity. “I have been no favorer,” he writes, “no advocate of Indian astronomy. I have endeavored to lay before the public, in an intelligible form, the fruits of my researches concerning it. I have repeatedly noticed its imperfections, and have been ready to admit that it has been no scanty borrower as to theory.”
Colebrooke’s stay in India was a long one. He arrived there in 1782, when only seventeen years of age, and he left it in 1815, at the age of fifty. During all this time we see him uninterruptedly engaged in his official work, and devoting all his leisure to literary labor. The results which we have noticed so far, were already astonishing, and quite sufficient to form a solid basis of his literary fame. But we have by no means exhausted the roll of his works. We saw that a supplement to the “Digest of Laws” occupied him for several years. In it he proposed to recast the whole title of inheritance, so imperfectly treated in the “Digest” which he translated, and supplement it with a series of compilations on the several heads of Criminal Law, Pleading, and Evidence, as treated by Indian jurists. In a letter to Sir T. Strange he speaks of the Sanskrit text as complete, and of the translation as considerably advanced; but it was not till 1810 that he published, as a first installment, his translation of two important treatises on inheritance, representing the views of different schools on this subject. Much of the material which he collected with a view of improving the administration of law in India, and bringing it into harmony with the legal traditions of the country, remained unpublished, partly because his labors were anticipated by timely reforms, partly because his official duties became too onerous to allow him to finish his work in a manner satisfactory to himself.
But although the bent of Colebrooke’s mind was originally scientific, and the philological researches which have conferred the greatest lustre on his name grew insensibly beneath his pen, the services he rendered to Indian jurisprudence would deserve the highest praise and gratitude if he had no other title to fame. Among his earlier studies he had applied himself to the Roman law with a zeal uncommon among Englishmen of his standing, and he has left behind him a treatise on the Roman Law of Contracts. When he directed the same powers of investigation to the sources of Indian law he found everything in confusion. The texts and glosses were various and confused. The local customs which abound in India had not been discriminated. Printing was of course unknown to these texts; and as no supreme judicial intelligence and authority existed to give unity to the whole system, nothing could be more perplexing than the state of the law. From this chaos Colebrooke brought forth order and light. The publication of the “Dhaya-bhâga,” as the cardinal exposition of the law of inheritance, which is the basis of Hindu society, laid the foundation of no less a work than the revival of Hindu jurisprudence, which had been overlaid by the Mohammedan conquest. On this foundation a superstructure has now been raised by the combined efforts of Indian and English lawyers: but the authority which is to this day most frequently invoked as one of conclusive weight and learning is that of Colebrooke. By the collection and revision of the ancient texts which would probably have been lost without his intervention, he became in some degree the legislator of India.
In 1807 he had been promoted to a seat in Council--the highest honor to which a civilian, at the end of his career, could aspire. The five years’ tenure of his office coincided very nearly with Lord Minto’s Governor-generalship of India. During these five years the scholar became more and more merged in the statesman. His marriage also took place at the same time, which was destined to be happy, but short. Two months after his wife’s death he sailed for England, determined to devote the rest of his life to the studies which had become dear to him, and which, as he now felt himself, were to secure to him the honorable place of the father and founder of true Sanskrit scholarship in Europe. Though his earliest tastes still attracted him strongly towards physical science, and though, after his return to England, he devoted more time than in India to astronomical, botanical, chemical, and geological researches, yet, as an author, he remained true to his vocation as a Sanskrit scholar, and he added some of the most important works to the long list of his Oriental publications. How high an estimate he enjoyed among the students of physical science is best shown by his election as President of the Astronomical Society, after the death of Sir John Herschel in 1822. Some of his published contributions to the scientific journals, chiefly on geological subjects, are said to be highly speculative, which is certainly not the character of his Oriental works. Nay, judging from the tenor of the works which he devoted to scholarship, we should think that everything he wrote on other subjects would deserve the most careful and unprejudiced attention, before it was allowed to be forgotten; and we should be glad to see a complete edition of all his writings, which have a character at once so varied and so profound.
We have still to mention some of his more important Oriental publications, which he either began or finished after his return to England. The first is his “Algebra, with Arithmetic and Mensuration, from the Sanskrit of Brahmagupta and Bhâskara, preceded by a Dissertation on the State of the Sciences as known to the Hindus,” London, 1817. It is still the standard work on the subject, and likely to remain so, as an intimate knowledge of mathematics is but seldom combined with so complete a mastery of Sanskrit as Colebrooke possessed. He had been preceded by the labors of Burrow and E. Strachey; but it is entirely due to him that mathematicians are now enabled to form a clear idea of the progress which the Indians had made in this branch of knowledge, especially as regards indeterminate analysis. It became henceforth firmly established that the “Arabian Algebra had real points of resemblance to that of the Indians, and not to that of the Greeks; that the Diophantine analysis was only slightly cultivated by the Arabs; and that, finally, the Indian was more scientific and profound than either.” Some of the links in his argument, which Colebrooke himself designated as weak, have since been subjected to renewed criticism; but it is interesting to observe how here, too, hardly anything really new has been added by subsequent scholars. The questions of the antiquity of Hindu mathematics--of its indigenous or foreign origin, as well as the dates to be assigned to the principal Sanskrit writers, such as Bhâskara, Brahmagupta, Aryabhaṭṭa, etc.,--are very much in the same state as he left them. And although some living scholars have tried to follow in his footsteps, as far as learning is concerned, they have never approached him in those qualities which are more essential to the discovery of truth than mere reading, viz., caution, fairness, and modesty.
Two events remain still to be noticed before we close the narrative of the quiet and useful years which Colebrooke spent in England. In 1818 he presented his extremely valuable collection of Sanskrit MSS. to the East India Company, and thus founded a treasury from which every student of Sanskrit has since drawn his best supplies. It may be truly said, that without the free access to this collection--granted to every scholar, English or foreign--few of the really important publications of Sanskrit texts, which have appeared during the last fifty years, would have been possible; so that in this sense also, Colebrooke deserves the title of the founder of Sanskrit scholarship in Europe.
The last service which he rendered to Oriental literature was the foundation of the Royal Asiatic Society. He had spent a year at the Cape of Good Hope, in order to superintend some landed property which he had acquired there; and after his return to London, in 1822, he succeeded in creating a society which should do in England the work which the Asiatic Society of Bengal, founded in 1784 at Calcutta, by Sir W. Jones, had done in India. Though he declined to become the first president, he became the director of the new society. His object was not only to stimulate Oriental scholars living in England to greater exertions, but likewise to excite in the English public a more general interest in Oriental studies. There was at that time far more interest shown in France and Germany for the literature of the East than in England, though England alone possessed an Eastern Empire. Thus we find Colebrooke writing in one of his letters to Professor Wilson:--
“Schlegel, in what he said of some of us (English Orientalists) and of our labors, did not purpose to be uncandid, nor to undervalue what has been done. In your summary of what he said you set it to the right account. I am not personally acquainted with him, though in correspondence. I do think, with him, that as much has not been done by the English as might have been expected from us. Excepting you and me, and two or three more, who is there that has done anything! In England nobody cares about Oriental literature, or is likely to give the least attention to it.”
And again:--
“I rejoice to learn that your great work on the Indian drama may be soon expected by us. I anticipate much gratification from a perusal. Careless and indifferent as our countrymen are, I think, nevertheless, you and I may derive some complacent feelings from the reflection that, following the footsteps of Sir W. Jones, we have, with so little aid of collaborators, and so little encouragement, opened nearly every avenue, and left it to foreigners, who are taking up the clue we have furnished, to complete the outline of what we have sketched. It is some gratification to national pride that the opportunity which the English have enjoyed has not been wholly unemployed.”
Colebrooke’s last contributions to Oriental learning, which appeared in the “Transactions” of the newly-founded Royal Asiatic Society, consist chiefly in his masterly treatises on Hindu philosophy. In 1823 he read his paper on the Sânkhya system; in 1824 his paper on the Nyâya and Vaiśeshika systems; in 1826 his papers on the Mîmânsâ; and, in 1827, his two papers on Indian Sectaries and on the Vedânta. These papers, too, still retain their value, unimpaired by later researches. They are dry, and to those not acquainted with the subject they may fail to give a living picture of the philosophical struggles of the Indian mind. But the statements which they contain can, with very few exceptions, still be quoted as authoritative, while those who have worked their way through the same materials which he used for the compilation of his essays, feel most struck by the conciseness with which he was able to give the results of his extensive reading in this, the most abstruse domain of Sanskrit literature. The publication of these papers on the schools of Indian metaphysics, which anticipated with entire fidelity the materialism and idealism of Greece and of modern thought, enabled Victor Cousin to introduce a brilliant survey of the philosophy of India into his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, first delivered, we think, in 1828. Cousin knew and thought of Colebrooke exclusively as a metaphysician. He probably cared nothing for his other labors. But as a metaphysician he placed him in the first rank, and never spoke of him without an expression of veneration, very unusual on the eloquent but somewhat imperious lips of the French philosopher.
The last years of Colebrooke’s life were full of suffering, both bodily and mental. He died, after a lingering illness, on March 10, 1837.
To many even among those who follow the progress of Oriental scholarship with interest and attention, the estimate which we have given of Colebrooke’s merits may seem too high; but we doubt whether from the inner circle of Sanskrit scholars, any dissentient voice will be raised against our awarding to him the first place among Sanskritists, both dead and living. The number of Sanskrit scholars has by this time become considerable, and there is hardly a country in Europe which may not be proud of some distinguished names. In India, too, a new and most useful school of Sanskrit students is rising, who are doing excellent work in bringing to light the forgotten treasures of their country’s literature. But here we must, first of all, distinguish between two classes of scholars. There are those who have learnt enough of Sanskrit to be able to read texts that have been published and translated, who can discuss their merits and defects, correct some mistakes, and even produce new and more correct editions. There are others who venture on new ground, who devote themselves to the study of MSS., and who by editions of new texts, by translations of works hitherto untranslated, or by essays on branches of literature not yet explored, really add to the store of our knowledge. If we speak of Colebrooke as _facile princeps_ among Sanskrit scholars, we are thinking of real scholars only, and we thus reduce the number of those who could compete with him to a much smaller compass.
Secondly, we must distinguish between those who came before Colebrooke and those who came after him, and who built on his foundations. That among the latter class there are some scholars who have carried on the work begun by Colebrooke beyond the point where he left it, is no more than natural. It would be disgraceful if it were otherwise, if we had not penetrated further into the intricacies of Pâṇini, if we had not a more complete knowledge of the Indian systems of philosophy, if we had not discovered in the literature of the Vedic period treasures of which Colebrooke had no idea, if we had not improved the standards of criticism which are to guide in the critical restoration of Sanskrit texts. But in all these branches of Sanskrit scholarship those who have done the best work are exactly those who speak most highly of Colebrooke’s labors, They are proud to call themselves his disciples. They would decline to be considered his rivals.
There remains, therefore, in reality, only one who could be considered a rival of Colebrooke, and whose name is certainly more widely known than his, viz., Sir William Jones. It is by no means necessary to be unjust to him in order to be just to Colebrooke. First of all, he came before Colebrooke, and had to scale some of the most forbidding outworks of Sanskrit scholarship. Secondly, Sir William Jones died young, Colebrooke lived to a good old age. Were we speaking only of the two men, and their personal qualities, we should readily admit that in some respects Sir W. Jones stood higher than Colebrooke. He was evidently a man possessed of great originality, of a highly cultivated taste, and of an exceptional power of assimilating the exotic beauty of Eastern poetry. We may go even further, and frankly admit that, possibly, without the impulse given to Oriental scholarship through Sir William Jones’s influence and example, we should never have counted Colebrooke’s name among the professors of Sanskrit. But we are here speaking not of the men, but of the works which they left behind; and here the difference between the two is enormous. The fact is, that Colebrooke was gifted with the critical conscience of a scholar--Sir W. Jones was not. Sir W. Jones could not wish for higher testimony in his favor than that of Colebrooke himself. Immediately after his death, Colebrooke wrote to his father, June, 1794:--
“Since I wrote to you the world has sustained an irreparable loss in the death of Sir W. Jones. As a judge, as a constitutional lawyer, and for his amiable qualities in private life, he must have been lost with heartfelt regret. But his loss as a literary character will be felt in a wider circle. It was his intention shortly to have returned to Europe, where the most valuable works might have been expected from his pen. His premature death leaves the results of his researches unarranged, and must lose to the world much that was only committed to memory, and much of which the notes must be unintelligible to those into whose hands his papers fall. It must be long before he is replaced in the same career of literature, if he is ever so. None of those who are now engaged in Oriental researches are so fully informed in the classical languages of the East; and I fear that, in the progress of their inquiries, none will be found to have such comprehensive views.”
And again:--
“You ask how we are to supply his place? Indeed, but ill. Our present and future presidents may preside with dignity and propriety; but who can supply his place in diligent and ingenious researches? Not even the combined efforts of the whole Society; and the field is large, and few the cultivators.”
Still later in life, when a reaction had set in, and the indiscriminate admiration of Sir W. Jones had given way to an equally indiscriminate depreciation of his merits, Colebrooke, who was then the most competent judge, writes to his father:--
“As for the other point you mention, the use of a translation by Wilkins, without acknowledgment, I can bear testimony that Sir W. Jones’s own labors in Manu sufficed without the aid of a translation. He had carried an interlineary Latin version through all the difficult chapters; he had read the original three times through, and he had carefully studied the commentaries. This I know, because it appears clearly so from the copies of Manu and his commentators which Sir William used, and which I have seen. I must think that he paid a sufficient compliment to Wilkins, when he said, that without his aid he should never have learned Sanskrit. I observe with regret a growing disposition, here and in England, to depreciate Sir W. Jones’s merits. It has not hitherto shown itself beyond private circles and conversation. Should the same disposition be manifested in print, I shall think myself bound to bear public testimony to his attainments in Sanskrit.”
Such candid appreciation of the merits of Sir W. Jones, conveyed in a private letter, and coming from the pen of the only person then competent to judge both of the strong and the weak points in the scholarship of Sir William Jones, ought to caution us against any inconsiderate judgment. Yet we do not hesitate to declare that, as Sanskrit scholars, Sir William Jones and Colebrooke cannot be compared. Sir William had explored a few fields only, Colebrooke had surveyed almost the whole domain of Sanskrit literature. Sir William was able to read fragments of epic poetry, a play, and the laws of Manu. But the really difficult works, the grammatical treatises and commentaries, the philosophical systems, and, before all, the immense literature of the Vedic period, were never seriously approached by him. Sir William Jones reminds us sometimes of the dashing and impatient general who tries to take every fortress by bombardment or by storm, while Colebrooke never trusts to anything but a regular siege. They will both retain places of honor in our literary Walhallas. But ask any librarian, and he will say that at the present day the collected works of Sir W. Jones are hardly ever consulted by Sanskrit scholars, while Colebrooke’s essays are even now passing through a new edition, and we hope Sir Edward Colebrooke will one day give the world a complete edition of his father’s works.
APPENDIX.
COMPARATIVE VIEW OF SANSKRIT AND OTHER LANGUAGES,
By T. H. Colebrooke.
Oxford, September, 1874.
I mentioned in my Address before the Aryan section of the Oriental
Congress that I possessed some MS. notes of Colebrooke’s on Comparative
Philology. They were sent to me some time ago by his son, Sir E.
Colebrooke, who gave me leave to publish them, if I thought them of
sufficient importance. They were written down, as far as we know, about
the years 1801 or 1802, and contain long lists of words expressive of
some of the most important elements of early civilization, in Sanskrit,
Greek, Latin, Teutonic, Celtic, and Slavonic. Like everything that
Colebrooke wrote, these lists are prepared with great care. They exist
in rough notes, in a first, and in a second copy. I give them from the
second copy, in which many words from less important languages are
omitted, and several doubtful comparisons suppressed. I have purposely
altered nothing, for the interest of these lists is chiefly historical,
showing how, long before the days of Bopp and Grimm, Colebrooke had
clearly perceived the relationship of all the principal branches of the
Aryan family, and, what is more important, how he had anticipated the
historical conclusions which a comparison of the principal words of the
great dialects of the Aryan family enables us to draw with regard to the
state of civilization anterior to the first separation of the Aryan
race. No one acquainted with the progress which Comparative Philology
has made during the last seventy years would think of quoting some of
the comparisons here suggested by Colebrooke as authoritative. The
restraints which phonetic laws have since imposed on the comparison of
words were unknown in his days. But with all that, it is most surprising
to see how careful Colebrooke was, even when he had to guess, and how
well he succeeded in collecting those words which form the earliest
common dictionary of our ancestors, and supply the only trustworthy
materials for a history of the very beginnings of the Aryan race.
MAX MULLER.
[Transcriber’s Note:
The transliteration system in this section is different from Müller’s. Note in particular:
c, c’h, ch, j = k, kh, c, j (Müller’s k, kh, {k}, {g})
rĭ = ṛ (Müller’s {ri})
ä ï ö ü dots represent dieresis, not umlaut
The letter ṭ was shown as t́ (t with acute). This has been regularized because Colebrooke’s form may not display reliably. The form ń for ṇ has been retained; ḍ does not occur.]
+Father.+
_Sans._ Pitrĭ (-tá). _Beng._ _Hind._ Pitá. _Pers._ Pider.
_Sans._ Janayitrĭ (-tá). _Gr._ Geneter, Gennetor. _Lat._ Genitor.
_Sans._ Táta. _Beng._ Tát. _Arm._ Tat. _Wal._ _Corn._ Tad. _Ang._ Dad.
_Sans._ Vaptrĭ (-tá). _Beng._ Bápá. _Hind._ Bábá, Báp. _Germ._ Vater. _Belg._ Vader. _Isl._ Bader. _Gr._ _Lat._ Pater.
+Mother.+
_Sans._ Janayitrí, Jananí. _Gr._ Gennêteira. _Lat._ Genitrix.
_Sans._ Mátrĭ (-tá). _Beng._ Mátá. _Lat._ Mater. _Gr._ Meter. _Sclav._ Mati. _Ir._ Mat’hair. _Germ._ Mutter. _Sax._ Moder. _Belg._ _Isl._ Mooder.
N.B. The roots _jan_ and _jani_ (the past tense of which last is _jajnyé_, pronounced _jagyé_ in Bengal, Tirhut, etc.) are evidently analogous to the Latin _gigno_, and Greek _gennao_.
+Son.+
_Sans._ Putra. _Hind._ Putr, Pút. _Támil._ Putren. _Ori._ Púá.
_Sans._ Súnu. _Hind._ Sún, Suän. _Goth._ Sunus. _Sax._ Suna. _Belg._ Soen, Sone. _Sue._ Son. _Dalm._ Szun. _Pol._ _Boh._ Syn. _Scl._ Sin, Syn.
+Grandson.+
_Sans._ Naptrĭ (-tá). _Lat._ Nepos. _Hind._ Nátí. _Mahr._ Nátú.
+Granddaughter.+
_Sans._ Naptrí. _Lat._ Neptis. _Hind._ Natní. _Beng._ Nátní. _Ori._ Nátuni.
+Daughter’s Son.+
_Sans._ Dauhitra. _Beng._ Dauhitro. _Hind._ Dóhtá. _Gr._ Thugatridous.
+Son’s Son.+
_Sans._ Pautra. _Hind._ Pótá. _Beng._ Pautro.
+Daughter.+
_Sans._ Duhitrĭ (-tá). _Beng._ Duhitá. _Hind._ Dóhitá. _Goth._ Dauhter. _Sax._ Dohter. _Pers._ Dokhter. _Belg._ Dochtere. _Germ._ Tochter. _Gr._ Thygater. _Sue._ Dotter. _Isl._ Dooter. _Dan._ Daater.
_Sans._ Tócá. _Russ._ Doke. _Hind._ Dhíya, Dhí. _Or._ Jhíä. _Scl._ Hzhi. _Dalm._ Hchii. _Boh._ Dey, Deera. _Ir._ Dear.
+Brother.+
_Sans._ Bhrátrĭ (-tá). _Hind._ Bhrátá, Bhaï, Bhayá, Bír, Bíran. _Pers._ Birádar. _Corn._ Bredar. _Wal._ Braud. _Ir._ Brathair. _Arm._ Breur. _Mona._ Breyr. _Scl._ Brat. _Russ._ Brate. _Dalm._ Brath. _Boh._ Bradr. _Germ._ Bruder. _Ang.-Sax._ Brother. _Sax._ Brother. _Lat._ Frater. _Gall._ Frère.
+Sister.+
_Sans._ Bhaginí. _Hind._ Bhagní, Bahin, Bhainá. _Beng._ Bhoginí, Boïn. _Mahr._ Bahin. _Or._ Bhauní.
_Sans._ Swasrĭ (-sá). _Ir._ Shiur. _Gall._ Soeur. _Mona._ Sywr. _Sicil._ Suora. _Lat._ Soror. _Germ._ Schwester. _Sax._ Sweoster. _Goth._ Swister. _Holl._ Zuster. _Wal._ C’huaer.
+Father-in-law.+
_Sans._ Śwaśura. _Beng._ Sósur. _Mahr._ Sasará. _Hind._ Susar, Súsrá, Sasúr. _Lat._ Sócer, Socerus. _Gr._ Hecyros.
+Mother-in-law.+
_Sans._ Śwaśrú. _Beng._ Sosru, Sásuri. _Hind._ Sás. _Mahr._ Sású. _Lat._ Socrus. _Gr._ Hecyra.
+Wife’s Brother.+
_Sans._ Syála. _Beng._ Syáloc. _Hind._ Sálá. _Or._ Salá.
+Husband’s Brother.+
_Sans._ Dévrĭ (-vá), Dévara. _Hind._ Déwar. _Guj._ Díyar. _Mahr._ Dír. _Gr._ Daêr. _Lat._ Levir (_olim_ Devir).
+Son-in-law.+
_Sans._ Jámátrĭ (-tá). _Hind._ Jamáí, Jawáí. _Pers._ Dámád.
+Widow.+
_Sans._ Vidhavá. _Lat._ Vidua. _Sax._ Widwa. _Holl._ Weduwe.
+Daughter-in-law.+
_Sans._ Badhú. _Hind._ Bahú. _Beng._ Bäú. _Gall._ Bru.
_Sans._ Snushá. _Cashm._ Nus. _Penj._ Nuh. _Gr._ Nyos. _Lat._ Nurus.
+Sun.+
_Sans._ Heli (-lis). _Gr._ Helios. _Arm._ Heol. _Wal._ Hayl, Heyluen.
_Sans._ Mitra. _Pehl._ Mithra.
_Sans._ Mihara, Mahira. _Pers._ Mihr.
_Sans._ Súra, Súrya. _Hind._ Súrej. _Mahr._ Súrj, Súrya. _Ori._ Suruy.
+Moon.+
_Sans._ Chandra. _Hind._ Chánd, Chandr, Chandramá.
_Sans._ Más (máh). _Pers._ Máh. _Boh._ Mesyc. _Pol._ Miesyac. _Dalm._ Miszecz.
+Star.+
_Sans._ Tárá. _Hind._ Tárá. _Pers._ Sitareh. _Gr._ Aster. _Belg._ Sterre. _Sax._ Steorra. _Germ._ Stern. _Corn._ _Arm._ Steren.
+Month.+
_Sans._ Mása (-sas). _Hind._ Mahiná, Más. _Pers._ Máh. _Scl._ Messcz. _Dalm._ Miszecz. _Wal._ Misguaith. _Gr._ Mene. _Lat._ Mensis. _Gall._ Mois.
+Day.+
_Sans._ Diva. _Mahr._ Diwas. _Lat._ Dies. _Sax._ Dæg.
_Sans._ Dina. _Hind._ Din. _Boh._ Den. _Scl._ Dan. _Dalm._ Daan. _Pol._ Dzien. _Ang._ (Ant.) Den.
+Night.+
_Sans._ Rátri. _Hind._ Rát. _Penj._ Rátter.
_Sans._ Niś, Niśá. _Wal._ _Arm._ Nos.
_Sans._ Nactá. _Lat._ Nox. _Gr._ Nyx. _Goth._ Nahts, Nauts. _Sax._ Niht. _Isl._ Natt. _Boh._ Noc. _Gall._ Nuit.
+By Night.+
_Sans._ (adv.) Nactam. _Lat._ Noctu. _Gr._ Nyctor.
+Sky, Heaven.+
_Sans._ Div, Diva. _Beng._ Dibi. _Liv._ Debbes.
_Sans._ Swar, Swarga. _Hind._ Swarag. _Guz._ Sarag. _Cant._ Cerua.
_Sans._ Nabhas. _Beng._ Nebho. _Russ._ Nebo. _Scl._ Nebu. _Boh._ Nebe. _Pol._ Niebo.
+God.+
_Sans._ Déva (-vas), Dévatá. _Hind._ Déwatá. _Penj._ Déú. _Tamil._ Taivam. _Lat._ Deus. _Gr._ Theos. _Wal._ Diju. _Ir._ Diu.
_Sans._ Bhagaván. _Dalm._ Bogh. _Croat._ Bog.
+Fire.+
_Sans._ Agni. _Casm._ Agin. _Beng._ Águn. _Hind._ Ag. _Scl._ Ogein. _Croat._ Ogayn. _Pol._ Ogien. _Dalm._ Ogany. _Lat._ Ignis.
_Sans._ Vahni. _Boh._ Ohen.
_Sans._ Anala. _Beng._ Onol. _Mona._ Aul.
_Sans._ Śushman (má). _Cant._ Sua.
_Sans._ Tanúnapát. _Wal._ Tân. _Ir._ Teene.
_Sans._ Varhis. _Sax._ Vür. _Belg._ Vier.
+Water.+
_Sans._ Áp. _Pers._ Áb.
_Sans._ Páníya. _Hind._ Pání.
_Sans._ Udaca. _Russ._ Ouode. _Scl._ Voda. _Boh._ Woda.
_Sans._ Níra, Nára. _Beng._ Nír. _Carn._ Níra. _Tel._ Níllu. _Vulg. Gr._ Nero.
_Sans._ Jala. _Hind._ Jal. _Ir._ Gil.
_Sans._ Arńa. _Ir._ An.
_Sans._ Vár, Vári. _Beng._ Bár. _Ir._ Bir. _Cant._ Vra.
+Cloud.+
_Sans._ Abhra. _Penj._ Abhar. _Casm._ Abar. _Pers._ Abr. _Gr._ Ombros. _Lat._ Imber.
+Man.+
_Sans._ Nara. _Pers._ Nar. _Gr._ Aner.
_Sans._ Mánava, Mánusha. _Guz._ Mánas. _Beng._ Mánus. _Dan._ Mand. _Sax._ Man, Men.
+Mind.+
_Sans._ Manas. _Gr._ Menos. _Lat._ Mens.
+Bone.+
_Sans._ Had´d´a. _Hind._ Hadí.
_Sans._ Asthi. _Lat._ Os. _Gr._ Osteon.
+Hand.+
_Sans._ Hasta. _Hind._ Hát’h. _Penj._ Hatt’h. _Beng._ Hát. _Pers._ Dest.
_Sans._ Cara. _Gr._ Cheir. _Vulg. Gr._ Chere.
_Sans._ Páni. _Wal._ Pawen. _Ang._ Paw.
+Knee.+
_Sans._ Jánu. _Penj._ Jáhnu. _Pers._ Zánu. _Hind._ Gutaná. _Gr._ Gonu. _Lat._ Genu. _Gall._ Genou. _Sax._ Cneow.
+Foot.+
_Sans._ Páda, Pad. _Or._ Pád. _Beng._ Pod, Pá. _Hind._ Páú, Payar. _Lat._ Pes (pedis). _Gr._ Pous (podos). _Vulg. Gr._ Podare. _Gall._ Pied. _Goth._ Fotus. _Sax._ Fot, Vot. _Sue._ Foot.
_Sans._ Anghri. _Beng._ Onghri. _Scl._ Noga. _Pol._ Nogi.
+Breast.+
_Sans._ Stana. _Beng._ Stan. (_Ang._ Pap.) _Gr._ Sternon. _Lat._ Sternum. (_Ang._ Chest.)
+Navel.+
_Sans._ Nábhi. _Hind._ Nábh. _Beng._ Náï. _Or._ Nahi. _Pers._ Náf. _Gr._ Omphalos. _Sax._ Nafela, Navela.
+Ear.+
_Sans._ Carńa. _Hind._ Cán. _Arm._ Skuarn. _Corn._ Skevam.
+Nose.+
_Sans._ Nasicá, Násá, Nasya. _Hind._ Nác. _Penj._ Nacca. _Casm._ Nast. _Lat._ Nasus. _Germ._ Nase. _Belg._ Nuese. _Sax._ Noese, Nosa. _Sue._ Nasa. _Boh._ Nos. _Scl._ Nus. _Dalm._ Nooss.
+Tooth.+
_Sans._ Danta. _Hind._ Dánt. _Penj._ Dand. _Pers._ Dendan. _Wal._ Dant. _Lat._ Dens. _Gall._ Dent. _Gr._ Odous (-ontos). _Belg._ Tant, Tand. _Sax._ Toth.
+Mouth.+
_Sans._ Muc’ha. _Hind._ Muc’h, Muh, Munh, Múnh. _Penj. _ Múh. _Guz._ Móh. _Sax._ Muth.
+Elbow.+
_Sans._ Anka, flank; Anga, membrum. _Gr._ Agkōn.
+Voice.+
_Sans._ Vách (vác). _Lat._ Vox. _Gr._ Ossa.
+Name.+
_Sans._ Náman (-ma). _Hind._ Nám, Náon̆. _Pers._ Nám. _Gr._ Onoma. _Lat._ Nomen. _Gall._ Nom. _Sax._ Nama.
+King.+
_Sans._ Ráj (-t´, -d´), Rájan (-já). _Hind._ Rájá. _Lat._ Rex. _Gall._ Roy. _Wal._ Rhuy, Rhiydh. _Ir._ Righ, Rak.
+Kingdom.+
_Sans._ Rájnya (-am). _Lat._ Regnum.
+Town.+
_Sans._ C’héta. _Hind._ C’hérá. _Wal._ Kaer. _Arm._ Koer.
+House.+
_Sans._ Ócas. _Gr._ Oicos.
_Sans._ Grĭha. _Hind._ Ghar. _Casm._ Gar.
+Ship _or_ Boat.+
_Sans._ Nau (naus). _Gr._ Naus. _Lat._ Navis. _Pers._ Nau. _Hind._ Nau, Náú. _Or._ Ná. _Carn._ Náviya.
+A Small Boat.+
_Sans._ Plava. _Mah._ Plav. _Gr._ Ploion.
+Thing, Wealth.+
_Sans._ Rai (rás). _Lat._ Res.
+Mountain.+
_Sans._ Parvata. _Hind._ Parbat, Pahár. _Penj._ Parabat. _Carn._ Parbatavu.
_Sans._ Adri. _Penj._ Adari. _Ir._ Ard.
_Sans._ Naga, Aga. _Ir._ Aigh.
_Sans._ Grávan (-vá), Giri. _Lus._ Grib. _Scl._ Hrib.
+Rock _or_ Stone.+
_Sans._ Prastara. _Hind._ Patt’har. _Guz._ Pat’har. _Beng._ Pat’har. _Gr._ Petra. _Lat._ Petra.
_Sans._ Grávan (-vá). _Penj._ Garáv.
+Tree.+
_Sans._ Dru (drus), Druma (-mas). _Gr._ Drys (Drymos, a wood). _Epir._ Druu. _Russ._ Dreous. _Scl._ Drevu.
_Sans._ Taru. _Goth._ Triu, Trie. _Sax._ Treo, Treow. _Dan._ Tree.
+Pomegranate.+
_Sans._ Róhita. _Gr._ Rhoa, Rhoia.
+Horse.+
_Sans._ Ghóṭaca. _Hind._ Ghórá. _Guz._ Ghóró. _Casm._ Guru. _Wal._ Goruydh, Govar.
_Sans._ Haya (-yas). _Ant. Sans._ Arusha. _Isl._ Hors, Hestur. _Dan._ Hest. _Sue._ Hast. _Sax._ Hors.
_Sans._ Aśva. _Penj._ Aswa. _Pers._ Asp.
+Ass.+
_Sans._ C’hara. _Penj._ C’har. _Pers._ Khar.
_Sans._ Gardabha. _Hind._ Gadhá. _Tirh._ Gadahá.
+Mule.+
_Sans._ Aśwatara. _Pers._ Astar.
+Camel.+
_Sans._ Ushṭra. _Hind._ Unt. _Guz._ Ut. _Penj._ Ustar. _Pers._ Ushtur, Shutur.
+Ox, Cow, Bull.+
_Sans._ Gó (gaus). _Hind._ Gau, Gáí. _Beng._ Goru. _Pers._ Gau. _Sax._ Cu. _Sue._ Koo. _Belg._ Koe. _Germ._ Kue. _Sans._ Ucshan (-shá). _Sax._ Oxa. _Dan._ Oxe. _Isl._ Uxe. _Boh._ Ochse. _Germ._ Ochs. _Wai._ Ychs.
_Sans._ Vrĭsha, Vrĭshan (-shá). _Tirh._ Brikh. _Boh._ Byk. _Pol._ Beik. _Dalm._ Bak. _Lus._ Bik. _Hung._ Bika. _Wal._ Byuch. _Arm._ Biych. _Corn._ Byuh.
+Goat.+
_Sans._ Bucca, Barcara. _Hind._ Bacrá. _Mahr._ Bócar. _Guz._ Bócaró. _Beng._ Bócá. _Arm._ Buch. _Corn._ Byk. _Sax._ Bucca. _Gall._ Bouc. _Sue._ Bock. _Belg._ Bocke. _Ital._ Becco.
+Ewe.+
_Sans._ Avi (-vis). _Gr._ Ois. _Lat._ Ovis. _Sax._ Eowe.
+Wool.+
_Sans._ Urńá. _Hind._ Un. _Scl._ Volna. _Pol._ Welna. _Boh._ Wlna. _Dalm._ Vuna. _Sue._ Ull. _Isl._ Ull. _Belg._ Wul. _Germ._ Wolle. _A.-Sax._ Wulle. _Wal._ Gulan. _Corn._ Gluan. _Arm._ Gloan. _Ir._ Olann.
+Hair of the Body.+
_Sans._ Lava. _Ir._ Lo.
_Sans._ Lóman (-ma), Róman (-ma). _Hind._ Róán. _Beng._ Lóm, Róm. _Casm._ Rúm. _Mah._ Rómé.
+Hair of the Head.+
_Sans._ Césa. _Hind._ Cés. _Casm._ Cís. _Lat._ Crinis.
_Sans._ Bála. _Hind._ Bál.
+Hog.+
_Sans._ Súcara (fem -rí). _Penj._ Súr. _Hind._ Súär, Súwar, Sú, Suén. _Beng._ Shúcar, Shúór. _Mahr._ Dúcar. _Tirh._ Súgar. _Nepal._ Surún. _Dan._ Suin. _Sue._ Swiin. _Lus._ Swina. _Carn._ Swynia, Swine. _Ang._ Swine. _Sax._ Sugn. _Holl._ Soeg, Sauwe. _Germ._ Sauw. _Ang._ Sow. _Belg._ Soch. _Lat._ Sus. _Gr._ Hys, Sys. _Lacon._ Sika. _Pers._ Khuc. _Wal._ Húkh. _Corn._ Hoch, Hoh.
+Boar.+
_Sans._ Varáha. _Hind._ Baráh. _Oris._ Barahá. _Beng._ Boráhó, Borá. _Corn._ Bora, Baedh. _Belg._ Beer. _Sax._ Bar. _Ang._ Boar. _Span._ Berraco. _Gall._ Verrat. _Ital._ Verro.
+Mouse.+
_Sans._ Múshaca, Múshá. _Hind._ Mus, Musá, Musí, Músrí, Músná. _Penj._ Múshá. _Tirh._ Mús. _Lat._ Mus. _Gr._ Mûs. _Sax._ Mus.
+Bear.+
_Sans._ Ricsha. _Hind._ Rích’h. _Penj._ Richh. _Guz._ Rénchh. _Tirh._ Rikh.
_Sans._ Bhalla, Bhallaca, Bhállúca. _Hind._ Bhál, Bhálú.
_Sans._ Ach’ha, Acsha. _Gr._ Arctos. _Wal._ Arth.
+Wolf.+
_Sans._ Vrĭca. _Dalm._ Vuuk. _Scl._ Vulk. _Pol._ Wulk.
+Insect.+
_Sans._ Crĭmi. _Pers._ Cirm. _Beng._ Crimi. _Tamil._ Crimi.
+Serpent.+
_Sans._ Ahi (ahis). _Gr._ Ophis. _Sans._ Sarpa. _Pers._ Serp. _Lat._ Serpens. _Hind._ Sárp.
+Cuckoo.+
_Sans._ Cocila. _Hind._ Coil. _Lat._ Cuculus. _Gr._ Kokkyx.
_Sans._ Pica. _Lat._ Picus.
+Crab.+
_Sans._ Carcata. _Beng._ Cáncŕá, Céncŕá. _Hind._ Céncrá, Cécrá. _Gr._ Carcinos. _Lat._ Cancer. _Wal._ Krank. _Corn._ _Arm._ Kankr. _Gall._ Cancre. _Ir._ Kruban. _Sax._ Crabbe. _Ang._ Crab.
+Cucumber.+
_Sans._ Carcatí. _Beng._ Cáncur. _Hind._ Cácrí. _Lat._ Cucumer, Cucumis. _Gall._ Concombre. _Ang._ Cucumber.
+Sound.+
_Sans._ Swana, Swána. _Lat._ Sonus. _Wal._ Sûn, Sôn, Sain. _Sax._ Sund.
+Sleep.+
_Sans._ Swapna, Śaya, Swápa. _Beng._ Shóön. _Hind._ (Supna) Sona [to sleep]. _Gr._ Hypnos. _Wal._ Heppian [to sleep]. _Sax._ Sleepan. _Ang._ Sleep.
+New.+
_Sans._ Nava (m. Navas, f. Navá, n. Navam), Navína. _Lat._ Novus. _Gr._ Neos, Nearos. _Pers._ Nó. _Hind._ Nayá, Nawén. _Beng._ Niara. _Wal._ _Corn._ Neuydh. _Ir._ Núadh. _Arm._ Nevedh, Noadh. _Gall._ Neuf. _Ang._ New. _Sax._ Neow.
+Young.+
_Sans._ Yuvan (Yuvâ). _Lat._ Juvenis.
+Thin.+
_Sans._ Tanus. _Lat._ Tenuis.
+Great.+
_Sans._ Mahâ. _Gr._ Megas. _Lat._ Magnus.
+Broad.+
_Sans._ Urus. _Gr._ Eurus.
+Old.+
_Sans._ Jírńas. _Gr._ Geron.
+Other.+
_Sans._ Itaras. _Gr._ Heteros.
_Sans._ Anyas. _Lat._ Alius.
+Fool.+
_Sans._ Múd’has, Múrchas. _Gr._ Moros.
+Dry.+
_Sans._ Csháras. _Gr._ Xeros.
+Sin.+
_Sans._ Agha. _Gr._ Hagos (veneratio, scelus).
+One.+
_Sans._ Eca. _Hind._ _Beng._ _etc._ Ec. _Pers._ Yéc.
+Two.+
_Sans._ Dwi (nom. du. Dwau). _Hind._ Do. _Pers._ Do. _Gr._ Dyo. _Lat._ Duo. _Gall._ Deux. _Corn._ Deau. _Arm._ Dou. _Ir._ Do. _Goth._ Twai. _Sax._ Twu. _Ang._ Two.
+Three.+
_Sans._ Tri (nom. pl. Trayas). _Lat._ Tres. _Gr._ Treis. _Gall._ Trois. _Germ._ Drei. _Holl._ Dry. _Sax._ Threo. _Ang._ Three. _Wal._ _Arm._ _Ir._ Tri. _Corn._ Tre.
+Four.+
_Sans._ Chatur (nom. pl. Chatwáras, fem. Chatasras). _Lat._ Quatuor. _Gall._ Quatre. _Gr._ Tessares. _Pers._ Chehár. _Hind._ Chehár.
+And.+
_Sans._ Cha. _Lat._ Que.
+Five.+
_Sans._ Pancha. _Hind._ Pánch. _Pers._ Penj. _Gr._ Pente. _Arm._ _Corn._ Pemp. _Wai._ Pymp.
+Six.+
_Sans._ Shash. _Pers._ Shesh. _Lat._ Sex. _Gr._ Hex. _Gall._ _Ang._ Six. _Wal._ Khuêkh. _Corn._ Huih. _Arm._ Huekh. _Ir._ She, Seishear.
+Seven.+
_Sans._ Sapta. _Lat._ Septem. _Gall._ Sept. _Germ._ Sieben. _Ang._ Seven. _Sax._ Seofon. _Gr._ Hepta. _Pers._ Heft. _Hind._ Sát. _Wal._ Saith. _Arm._ _Corn._ Seith. _Ir._ Sheakhd.
+Eight.+
_Sans._ Asht’a. _Pers._ Hasht. _Hind._ Áth. _Gall._ Huit. _Sax._ Eahta. _Ang._ Eight. _Ir._ Okht. _Lat._ Octo.
+Nine.+
_Sans._ Nava. _Hind._ Nó. _Lat._ Novem. _Wal._ _Corn._ Nau. _Arm._ Nâo. _Ir._ Nyi. _Pers._ Noh. _Gall. _ Neuf. _Sax._ Nigon. _Ang._ Nine.
+Ten.+
_Sans._ Daśa. _Hind._ Das. _Pers._ Dah. _Lat. _ Decem. _Ir._ Deikh. _Arm._ Dêk. _Corn._ Dêg.
PRONOUNS.
+I.+
_Sans._ Aham (acc. Má; poss. and dat. Mé; du. Nau; pl. Nas). _Lat._ _Gr._ Ego, etc. _Pers._ Men. _Hind._ Mai. _Ir._ Me. _Wal._ _Corn._ Mi. _Arm._ Ma.
+Thou.+
_Sans._ Twam (acc. Twá; poss. and dat. Té; du. Vám; pl. Vas). _Lat._ Tu, etc. _Gr._ Su, etc. _Hind._ Tú, Tain. _Beng._ Tumi, Tui. _Ir._ Tu. _Pers._ To. _Arm._ Te. _Corn._ Ta. _Wal._ Ti.
PREPOSITIONS, ETC.
_Sans._ Antar. _Lat._ Inter. _Sans._ Upari. _Gr._ Hyper. _Lat._ Super. _Sans._ Upa. _Gr._ Hypo. _Lat._ Sub. _Sans._ Apa. _Gr._ Apo. _Sans._ Pari. _Gr._ Peri. _Sans._ Pra. _Gr._ _Lat._ Pro. _Sans._ Pará. _Gr._ Pera. _Sans._ Abhi. _Gr._ Amphi. _Sans._ Ati. _Gr._ Anti. _Sans._ Ama. _Gr._ Amá. _Sans._ Anu. _Gr._ Ana.
TERMINATIONS.
_Sans._ (terminations of comparatives and superlatives) Taras, tamas. _Gr._ Teros, tatos. _Lat._ Terus, timus. _Sans._ Ishṭhas. _Gr._ Istos.
_Sans._ (termin. of nouns of agency) Trĭ. _Gr._ Tor, ter. _Lat._ Tor.
_Sans._ (termin. of participle) Tas. _Gr._ Tos. _Lat._ Tus.
_Sans._ (termin. of supine) Tum. _Lat._ Tum.
VERBS.
+To Be+, Root AS.
_Sans._ Asti, Asi, Asmi, Santi, Stha, Smas.
_Gr._ Esti, Eîs (Essi), Eimi (D. Emmi), Eisi (D. Enti), Este, Esmen (D. Eimes).
_Lat._ Est, Es, Sum, Sunt, Estis, Sumus.
+To Go+, Root I.
_Sans._ Éti, Ési. Émi, Yanti, Itha, Imas.
_Lat._ It, Is, Eo, Eunt, Itis, Imus.
_Gr._ Eîsi, Eîs, Eîmi, Eîsi, Ite, Imen (D. Imes).
+To Eat+, Root AD.
_Sans._ Atti, Atsi, Admi, Adanti, Attha, Admas. _Lat._ Edit, Edis, Edo, Edunt, Editis, Edimus. _Gr._ Esthiei. _Sax._ Etan.
+To Give+, Root DA.
_Sans._ Dadáti, Dadási, Dadámi. _Lat._ Dat, Das, Do. _Gr._ Didōsi, Didōs, Didōmi.
Hence, _Sans._ Dánam, _Lat._ Donum.
+To Join+, Root YUJ.
_Sans._ Yunacti, Yunjanti. _Lat._ Jungit, Jungunt. _Sans._ Yunajmi. _Gr._ Zeugnumi.
Hence, _Sans._ Yugam. _Lat._ Yugum. _Gr._ Zugos, Zugon. _Hind._ Juä. _Sax._ Geoc. _Ang._ Yoke. _Dutch._ Joek.
+To Sit+, Root SAD.
_Sans._ Sídati, Sídanti. _Lat._ Sedet, Sedent.
Hence, _Sans._ Sadas. _Lat._ Sedes.
+To Subdue+, Root DAM.
_Sans._ Dámayati. _Gr._ Damaei. _Lat._ Domat.
Hence, Damanam. Damnum.
+To Drink+, Root PA or PĪ
_Sans._ Pibati, Pibanti; Piyaté. _Lat._ Bibit, Bibunt. _Gr._ Pinei, Pinousi.
+To Die+, Root MRĬ.
_Sans._ Mrĭyaté, Mrĭyanté. _Lat._ Moritur, Moriuntur.
Hence, Mrĭtis, Mors, Mrĭtas, Mortuus.
+To Know+, Root JNYA.
_Sans._ Jánátí, Jánanti. _Gr._ Ginosco _or_ Gignosco. _Lat._ Nosco.
Hence, Jnyátas. _Lat._ Nótus. _Gr._ Gnostos.
+To Beget+, Root JAN.
_Sans._ Jáyaté. Pret. Jajnyé (pronounced jagyé). _Gr._ Ginomai _vel_ Gignomai. _Lat._ Gigno.
+To Go+, Root SRĬP.
_Sans._ Sarpati. _Lat._ Serpit. _Gr._ Herpei.
+To See+, Root DRĬS.
_Gr._ Derco. _Sans._ Drĭś. _Hind._ Dék’h, to see.
+To Procreate+, Root SU.
_Sans._ Súyaté (rad. Sú).
Hence, _Sans._ Súta, son. _Hind._ Suän̆. _Gr._ Huios, Huieus.
+To Know+, Root VID.
_Sans._ Vid, to know. _Lat._ Video, to see.
+To Delight+, Root TRĬP.
_Sans._ Trip. _Gr._ Terpo.
+To Strew+, Root STRĬ.
_Sans._ Strĭ. _Lat._ Sterno. _Ang._ To strew. _Gr._ Stornumi, Stronnumi.
ADVERBS, ETC.
_Sans._ A. _Gr._ A _priv._ (before vowels An).
_Sans._ Su. _Gr._ Eû.
_Sans._ Dus. _Gr._ Dys.
_Sans._ Cha. _Gr._ Te. _Lat._ Que.
_Sans._ Na, No. _Lat._ Ne, Non. _Ang._ No.
_Sans._ Chit (in comp.). _Lat._ Quid. _Gr._ Ti.
_Sans._ Nanu. _Lat._ Nonne.
_Sans._ Prabháte. _Gr._ Proï.
_Sans._ Pura, Puratas. _Gr._ Pro, Proteros, etc.
_Sans._ Punar. _Gr._ Palin.
_Sans._ Pura. _Gr._ Palai.
_Sans._ Alam. _Gr._ Halis.
_Sans._ Hyas. _Gr._ Chthes.
_Sans._ Adya. _Hind._ Aj. _Lat._ Hodie.
[Footnote 1: _Miscellaneous Essays._ By Henry Thomas Colebrooke. With a Life of the author by his son. In three volumes. London: 1872.]
[Footnote 2: The word +Gentoo+, which was commonly applied in the last century to the Hindus, is, according to Wilson, derived from the Portuguese word _gentio_, gentile or heathen. The word _caste_, too, comes from the same source.]
[Footnote 3: See the list of words given at the end of this article, p. 400.]
IX.
MY REPLY TO MR. DARWIN.
During the whole of the year that has just passed away, all my spare
time has been required for the completion of my edition of the Rig-Veda
and its Sanskrit commentary. I had to shut my eyes to everything else.
Many a book which I felt tempted to read was put aside, and hardly a
single Review could draw me away from my purpose. Thus it has come to
pass that I did not know, till a few days ago, that some Lectures which
I had delivered at the Royal Institution on “Mr. Darwin’s Philosophy of
Language,” and which had been fully reported in “Fraser’s Magazine” for
May, June, and July, 1873, had elicited a reply emanating from one who
writes if not in, at least with Mr. Darwin’s name, and who himself would
be, no doubt most proud to acknowledge the influence of “family bias.”
I could not have guessed from the title of the paper, “Professor Whitney
on the Origin of Language: by George H. Darwin,” that it was meant as an
answer to the arguments which I had ventured to advance in my Lectures
at the Royal Institution against Mr. Darwin’s views on language. It was
only when telling a friend that I soon hoped to find time to complete
those Lectures, that I was asked whether I had seen Darwin’s reply.
I read it at once in the November number of the “Contemporary Review;”
and, as it will take some time before I can hope to finish my book on
“Language as the true barrier between Man and Beast,” I determined, in
the meantime, to publish a brief rejoinder to the defense of Mr.
Darwin’s philosophy, so ably and chivalrously conducted by his son.
With regard to the proximate cause of Mr. Darwin’s defense of his father’s views on language--viz. an article in the “Quarterly Review,” I may say at once that I knew nothing about it till I saw Mr. G. Darwin’s article; and if there should be any suspicion in Mr. Darwin’s mind that the writer in the “Quarterly Review” is in any sense of the word my _alter ego_ I can completely remove that impression.
It seems that the writer in the “Quarterly” expressed himself in the following terms with regard to Mr. Darwin’s competency on linguistic problems:--
“Few recent intellectual phenomena are more astounding than the ignorance of these elementary yet fundamental distinctions and principles (_i.e._, as to the essence of language) exhibited by conspicuous advocates of the monistic hypothesis. Mr. Darwin, for example, does not exhibit the faintest indication of having grasped them.”
Mr. Darwin, I mean the father, if he has read my lectures, or anything else I have written, might easily have known that that is not the tone in which I write, least of all when speaking of men who have rendered such excellent service to the advancement of science as the author of the book “On the Origin of Species.” To me, the few pages devoted to language by Mr. Darwin were full of interest, as showing the conclusions to which that school of philosophy which he so worthily represents is driven with regard to the nature and origin of language. If put into more becoming language, however, I do not think there would be anything offensive in stating that Mr. Darwin, Sr., knows the results of the Science of Language at second hand only, and that his opinions on the subject, however interesting as coming from him, cannot be accepted or quoted as authoritative. It has often done infinite mischief when men who have acquired a right to speak with authority on one subject, express opinions on other subjects with which they are but slightly acquainted. These opinions, though never intended for that purpose, are sure to be invested by others, particularly by interested persons, with an authority to which in themselves they have no right whatever. It is true it would be difficult to carry on any scientific work, without to some extent recognizing the authority of those who have established their claim to a certain amount of infallibility within their own special spheres of study. But when either the Pope expresses an opinion on astronomy, or the Duke of Wellington on a work of art, they certainly ought not to be offended if asked for their reasons, like any other mortals. No linguistic student, if he had ventured to express an opinion on the fertilization of orchids, differing from that of Mr. Darwin, would feel aggrieved by being told that his opinion, though showing intelligence, did not show that real grasp of the whole bearing of the problem which can be acquired by a life-long devotion only. If the linguistic student, who may be fond of orchids, cared only for a temporary triumph in the eyes of the world, he might easily find, among the numerous antagonists of Mr. Darwin, one who agreed with himself, and appeal to him as showing that he, though a mere layman in the Science of Botany, was supported in his opinions by other distinguished botanists. But no real advance in the discovery of truth can ever be achieved by such mere cleverness. How can the soundness and truth of Mr. Darwin’s philosophy of language be established by an appeal like that with which Mr. Darwin, Jr., opens his defense of his father?
“Professor Whitney,” he says, “is the first philologist of note who has professedly taken on himself to combat the views of Professor Max Müller; and as the opinions of the latter most properly command a vast deal of respect in England, we think it will be good service to direct the attention of English readers to this powerful attack, and, as we think, successful refutation of the somewhat dogmatic views of our Oxford linguist.”
First of all, nothing would convey a more erroneous impression than to say that Professor Whitney was the first philologist of note who has combated my views. There is as much combat in the linguistic as in the physical camp, though Mr. Darwin may not be aware of it. Beginning with Professor Pott, I could give a long list of most illustrious scholars in Germany, France, Italy, and surely in England also, who have subjected my views on language to a far more searching criticism than Professor Whitney in America. But even if Professor Whitney were the only philologist who differed from me, or agreed with Mr. Darwin, how would that affect the soundness of Mr. Darwin’s theories on language? Suppose I were to quote in return the opinion of M. Renouvier, the distinguished author of “Les Principes de la Nature,” who, in his journal, “La Critique Philosophique,” expresses his conviction that my criticism of Mr. Darwin’s philosophy contains not a simple _polémique_, but has the character of a _rédressement_; would that dishearten Mr. Darwin? I must confess that I had never before read Professor Whitney’s “Lectures on Language,” which were published in America in 1867; and I ought to thank Mr. Darwin for having obliged me to do so now, for I have seldom perused a book with greater interest and pleasure,--I might almost say, amusement. It was like walking through old familiar places, like listening to music which one knows one has heard before somewhere, and, for that very reason, enjoys all the more. Not unfrequently I was met by the _ipsissima verba_ of my own lectures on the Science of Language, though immediately after they seemed to be changed into an inverted fugue. Often I saw how carefully the same books and pamphlets which I had waded through had been studied: and on almost every page there were the same doubts and difficulties, the same hopes and fears, the same hesitations and misgivings through which I myself well remembered having passed when preparing my two series of “Lectures on Language.” Of course, we must not expect in Professor Whitney’s Lectures, anything like a systematic or exhaustive treatment. They touch on points which were most likely to interest large audiences at Washington, and other towns in America. They were meant to be popular, and nothing would be more unfair than to blame an author for not giving what he did not mean to give. The only just complaint we have heard made about these Lectures is that they give sometimes too much of what is irreverently called “padding.” Professor Whitney had read my own Lectures before writing his; and though he is quite right in saying the principal facts on which his reasonings are founded have been for some time past the commonplaces of Comparative Philology, and required no acknowledgment, he makes an honorable exception in my favor, and acknowledges most readily having borrowed here and there an illustration from my Lectures. As to my own views on the Science of Language, I am glad to find that on all really important points, he far more frequently indorses them--nay, corroborates them by new proofs and illustrations--than attempts to refute them; and even in the latter case he generally does so by simply pronouncing his decided preference for one out of two opinions, while I had been satisfied with stating what could be said on either side. He might here and there have tempered the wind to the shorn lamb, but I believe there is far more license allowed in America, in the expression of dissent, than in England; and it is both interesting and instructive in the study of Dialectic Growth, to see how words which would be considered offensive in England, have ceased to be so on the other side of the Atlantic, and are admitted into the most respectable of American Reviews.
With regard to the question, for instance, on which so much has lately been written, whether we ought to ascribe to language a natural growth or historical change, I see not one single argument produced on either side of the question in Professor Whitney’s Second Lecture, beyond those which I had discussed in my Second Lecture. After stating all that could be said in support of extending the name of history to the gradual development of language, I tried to show that, after all, that name would not be quite accurate.
“The process,” I said, “through which language is settled and unsettled combines in one the two opposite elements of necessity and free will. Though the individual seems to be the prime agent in producing new words and new grammatical forms, he is so only after his individuality has been merged in the common action of the family, tribe, or nation to which he belongs. He can do nothing by himself, and the first impulse to a new formation in language, though given by an individual, is mostly, if not always, given without premeditation, nay, unconsciously. The individual, as such, is powerless, and the results, apparently produced by him, depend on laws beyond his control, and on the coöperation of all those who form together with him one class, one body, one organic whole.” (Page 43.)
After going through the whole argument, I summed up in the end by saying:--
“We cannot be careful enough in the use of our words. Strictly speaking, neither _history_ nor _growth_ is applicable to the changes of the shifting surface of the earth. _History_ applies to the actions of free agents, _growth_ to the natural unfolding of organic beings. We speak, however, of the growth of the crust of the earth,[1] and we know what we mean by it; and it is in this sense, but not in the sense of growth as applied to a tree, that we have a right to speak of the growth of language.”
What do we find in Professor Whitney’s Second Lecture? He objects, like myself, to comparing the growth of language and the growth of a tree, and like myself, he admits of an excuse, viz., when the metaphor is employed for the sake of brevity or liveliness of delineation (p. 35). I had said:--
“Ever since Horace, it has been usual to compare the changes of language with the growth of trees. But comparisons are treacherous things; and though we cannot help using metaphorical expressions, we should always be on our guard,” etc.
So far we are in perfect harmony. But immediately after, the wind begins to blow. One sentence is torn out from the context, where I had said:--
“That it is not in the power of man (not men) either to produce or to prevent change in language; that we might think as well of changing the laws which control the circulation of our blood, or of adding an inch to our height, as of altering the laws of speech, or inventing new words, _according to our pleasure_.”
In order to guard against every possible apprehension as to what I meant by _according to our pleasure_, I quoted the well-known anecdotes of the Emperor Tiberius and of the Emperor Sigismund, and referred to the attempts of Protagoras, and other purists, as equally futile. Here the Republican indignation of the American writer is roused; I, at least, can find no other motive. He tells me that what I really wanted to say was this:--
“If so high and mighty a personage as an emperor could not do so small a thing as alter the gender and termination of a single word--much less can any one of inferior consideration hope to accomplish such a change.” . . .
He then exclaims:--
“The utter futility of deriving such a doctrine from such a pair of incidents, or a thousand like them, is almost too obvious to be worth the trouble of pointing out. . . . High political station does not confer the right to make or unmake language,” etc.
Now every reader, even though looking only at these short extracts, will see that the real point of my argument is here entirely missed, though I do not mean to say that it was intentionally missed. The stress was laid by me on the words _according to our pleasure_; and in order to elucidate that point, I first quoted instances taken from those who in other matters have the right of saying _car tel est mon plaisir_, and then from others. I feel a little guilty in not having mentioned the anecdote about _carrosse_; but not being able to verify it, I thought I might leave it to my opponents. However, after having quoted the two Emperors, I quoted a more humble personage, Protagoras, and referred to other attempts at purism in language; but all that is, of course, passed over by my critic, as not answering his purpose.
Sometimes, amidst all the loud assertion of difference of opinion on Professor Whitney’s part, not only the substantial, but strange to say, the verbal agreement between his and my own Second Lecture is startling. I had said: “The first impulse to a new formation in language, though given by an individual, is mostly, if not always, given _without premeditation_, nay, _unconsciously_.” My antagonist varies this very slightly and says: “The work of each individual is done _unpremeditately, or, as it were, unconsciously_” (p. 45). While I had said that we individually can no more change language, _selon notre plaisir_, than we can add an inch to our stature, Professor Whitney again adopts a slight alteration and expresses himself as follows: “They (the facts of language) are almost as little the work of man as is the form of his skull” (p. 52). What is the difference between us? What is the difference between changing our stature and changing our skull? Nor does he use the word growth as applied to language, less frequently than myself; nay, sometimes he uses it so entirely without the necessary limitations, that even I should have shrunk from adopting his phraseology. We read--“In this sense language is a growth” (p. 46); “a language, like an organic body, is no mere aggregate of similar particles--it is a complex of related and mutually helpful parts” (p. 46); “language is fitly comparable with an organized body” (p. 50); “compared with them, language is a real growth” (p. 51); etc., etc., etc.
In fact, after all has been said by Professor Whitney that had been said before, the only difference that remains is this--that he, after making all these concessions, prefers to class the Science of Language as an historical, not as a physical science. Why should he not? Everybody who is familiar with such questions, knows that all depends on a clear and accurate definition of the terms which we employ. The method of the Science of Language and the physical sciences is admitted, even by him, to be the same (p. 52). Everything therefore depends on the wider or narrower definition which we adopt of physical science. Enlarge the definition of the natural sciences, and the science of language will enter in freely; narrow it, and it will enter with difficulty, or not at all. The same with the historical sciences. Enlarge their definition, and the science of language will enter in freely; narrow it, and it will enter with difficulty, or not at all. There is hardly a word that is used in so many different meanings as nature, and that man in many of his apparently freest acts is under the sway of unsuspected laws of nature, cannot sound so very novel to a student of Kant’s writings, to say nothing of later philosophers.[2] My principal object in claiming for the Science of Language the name of a physical science, was to make it quite clear, once for all, that Comparative Philology was totally distinct from ordinary Philology, that it treats language not as a vehicle of literature, but for its own sake; that it wants to explain the origin and development far more than the idiomatic use of words, and that for all these purposes it must adopt a strictly inductive method. Many of these views which, when I delivered my first lectures, met with very determined opposition, are now generally accepted, and I can well understand, that younger readers should be surprised at the elaborate and minute arguments by which I tried to show in what sense the Science of Language may be counted as one of the physical sciences. Let them but read other books of the same period, and they will see with how much zeal these questions were then being discussed, particularly in England. Writing in England, and chiefly for English readers, I tried as much as possible to adapt myself to the intellectual atmosphere of that country, and as to the classification of the inductive sciences, I started from that which was then most widely known, that of Whewell in his “History of the Inductive Sciences.” He classes the Science of Language as one of the palaitiological sciences, but makes a distinction between palaitiological sciences treating of material things--for instance, geology, and others respecting the products which result from man’s imaginative and social endowments--for instance, Comparative Philology. He still excludes the latter from the circle of the physical sciences,[3] properly so called, but he adds:--
“We have seen that biology leads us to psychology, if we choose to follow the path; and thus the passage from the material to the immaterial has already unfolded itself at one point; and we now perceive that there are several large provinces of speculation which concern subjects belonging to man’s immaterial nature, and which are governed by the same laws as sciences altogether physical. It is not our business to dwell on the prospects which our philosophy thus opens to our contemplation: but we may allow ourselves, in this last stage of our pilgrimage among the foundations of the physical sciences, to be cheered and animated by the ray that thus beams upon us, however dimly, from a higher and brighter region.”
Considering the high position which Dr. Whewell held among the conflicting parties of philosophic and religious thought in England, we should hardly have expected that the hope which he expressed of a possible transition from the material to the immaterial, and the place which he tentatively, and I more decidedly, assigned to the Science of Language, could have roused any orthodox animosities. Yet here is the secret spring of Professor Whitney’s efforts to claim for the Science of Language, in spite of his own admissions as a scholar, a place among the moral and historical, as distinct from the physical sciences. The theological bias, long kept back, breaks through at last, and we are treated to the following sermon:--
“There is a school of modern philosophers who are trying to materialize all science, to eliminate the distinction between the physical and the intellectual and moral, to declare for nought the free action of the human will, and to resolve the whole story of the fates of mankind into a series of purely material effects, produced by assignable physical causes, and explainable in the past, or determinable in the future, by an intimate knowledge of those causes, by a recognition of the action of compulsory motives upon the passively obedient nature of man. With such, language will naturally pass, along with the rest, for a physical product, and its study for physical science; and, however we may dissent from their general classification, we cannot quarrel with its application in the particular instance. But by those who still hold to the grand distinction,” etc., etc., etc.
At the end of this arguing _pro_ and _con._, the matter itself remains exactly where it was before. The Science of Language is a physical science, if we extend the meaning of nature so far as to include human nature, in those manifestations at least where the individual does not act freely, but under reciprocal restraint. The Science of Language is an historical, or, as Professor Whitney prefers to call it, a moral science, if we comprehend under history the acts performed by men “unpremeditately, or, as it were, unconsciously,” and therefore beyond the reach of moral considerations.
I may seem to have entered more fully into this question than its real importance requires, but I was anxious, before replying to Mr. Darwin’s objections, to show to him the general style of argument that pervades Professor Whitney’s writings, and the character of the armory from which he has borrowed his weapons against me. I have not been able to get access to Professor Whitney’s last article, and shall therefore confine myself here to those arguments only which Mr. Darwin has adopted as his own, though, even if I had seen the whole of the American article, I should have preferred not to enter into any personal controversy with Professor Whitney. I have expressed my sincere appreciation of the industry and acumen which that scholar displays in his lectures on the Science of Language. There are some portions, particularly those on the Semitic and American languages, where he has left me far behind. There are some illustrations extremely well chosen, and worked out with a touch of poetic genius; there are whole chapters where by keeping more on the surface of his subject, he has succeeded in making it far more attractive and popular than I could have hoped to do. That treatment, however, entails its dangers, unless an author remembers, at every moment, that in addressing a popular audience he is in honor bound to be far more careful than if he writes for his own professional colleagues only. The comparative portion, I mean particularly the Seventh Lecture, is hardly what one would have expected from so experienced a teacher, and it is strange to find (p. 219) the inscription on the Duilian column referred to about B.C. 263, after Ritschl and Mommsen had pointed out its affected archaisms; to see (p. 222) the name Ahura-Mazda rendered by “the mighty spirit;” to meet (p. 258) with “sarvanâman,” the Sanskrit name for pronoun, translated by “name for everything, universal designation;” to hear the Phœnician alphabet still spoken of as the _ultimate_ source of the world’s alphabets, etc. Such mistakes, however, can be corrected, but what can never be corrected is the unfortunate tone which Professor Whitney has adopted throughout. His one object seems to be to show to his countrymen that he is the equal of Bopp, Renan, Schleicher, Steinthal, Bleek, Hang, and others--aye, their superior. In stating their opinions, in criticizing their work, in suggesting motives, he shrinks from nothing, evidently trusting to the old adage, _semper aliquid hœret_. I have often asked myself, why should Professor Whitney have assumed this exceptional position among Comparative Philologists. It is not American to attack others, simply in order to acquire notoriety. America has possessed, and still possesses, some excellent scholars, whom every one of these German and French _savants_ would be proud to acknowledge as his peers. Mr. Marsh’s “Lectures on the English Language” are a recognized standard work in England; Professor’s March’s “Anglo-Saxon Grammar” has been praised by everybody. Why is there no trace of self-assertion or personal abuse in any of their works? It is curious to observe in Professor Whitney’s works, that the less he has thought on certain subjects, the louder he speaks, and where arguments fail him, _epitheta ornantia_, such as _worthless_, _futile_, _absurd_, _ridiculous_, _superficial_, _unsound_, _high-flown_, _pretentious_, _disingenuous_, _false_, are poured out in abundance. I believe there is not one of these choice counters with which, at some time or other, he has not presented me; nay, he has even poured the soothing oil of praise over my bruised head. _Quand on se permet tout, on peut faire quelque chose._ But what has been the result? It has actually become a distinction to belong to the noble army of his martyrs, while, whenever one is praised by him, one feels inclined to say with Phocion, οὐ δὴ πού τι κακὸν λέγων ἐμαυτὸν λέληθα.
What such behavior may lead to, we have lately seen in an encounter between the same American _savant_ and Professor Steinthal, of Berlin.[4] In his earlier writings Professor Whitney spoke of Professor Steinthal as an eminent master in linguistic science, from whose writings he had derived the greatest instruction and enlightenment. Afterwards the friendly relations between the Yale and Berlin professors seem to have changed, and at last Professor Steinthal became so exasperated by the misrepresentations and the overbearing tone of the American linguist, that he, in a moment of irritation, forgot himself so far as to retaliate with the same missiles with which he had been assailed. What the missiles used in such encounters are, may be seen from a few specimens. One could hardly quote them all in an English Review. While dwelling on the system of bold misrepresentation adopted by Professor Whitney, Professor Steinthal calls him--“That vain man who only wants to be named and praised;” “that horrible humbug;” “that scolding flirt;” “that tricky attorney;” “wherever I read him, hollow vacuity yawns in my face; arrogant vanity grins at me.” Surely, mere words can go no further--we must expect to hear of tomahawk and bowie-knife next. Scholars who object to the use of such weapons, whether for offensive or defensive purposes, can do nothing but what I have done for years--remain silent, select what is good in Professor Whitney’s writings, and try to forget the rest.
Surely, students of language, of all people in the world, ought to know what words are made of, and how easy it is to pour out a whole dictionary of abuse without producing the slightest effect. A page of offensive language weighs nothing--it simply shows the gall of bitterness and the weakness of the cause; whereas real learning, real love of truth, real sympathy with our fellow-laborers, manifest themselves in a very different manner. There were philosophers of old who held that words must have been produced by nature, not by art, because curses produced such terrible effects. Professor Whitney holds that language was produced θέσει, not φύσει, and yet he shares the same superstitious faith in words. He bitterly complains that those whom he reviles, do not revile him again. He wonders that no one answers his strictures, and he is gradually becoming convinced that he is unanswerable. Whatever Mr. Darwin, Jr., may think of Professor Whitney as an ally, I feel certain that Mr. Darwin, Sr., would be the last to approve the spirit of his works, and that a few pages of his controversial writings would make him say: _Non tali auxilio._
I now proceed to examine some of the extracts which Mr. Darwin, Jr., adopts from Professor Whitney’s article, and even in them we shall see at once what I may call the spirit of the advocate, though others might call it by another name.
Instead of examining the facts on which my conclusions were founded, or showing, by one or two cases, at least, that I had made a mistake or offended against the strict rules of logic, there appears the following sweeping exordium, which has done service before in many an opening address of the counsel for the defendant:--
“It is never entirely easy to reduce to a skeleton of logical statement a discussion as carried on by Müller, because he is careless of logical sequence and connection, preferring to pour himself out, as it were, over his subject, in a gush of genial assertion and interesting illustration.”
Where is the force of such a sentence? It is a mere pouring out of assertions, though without any interesting illustration, and not exactly genial. All we learn from it is, that Professor Whitney does not find it entirely easy to reduce what I have written to a skeleton of logical sequence, but whether the fault is mine or his, remains surely to be proved. There may be a very strong logical backbone in arguments which make the least display of Aldrich, while in others there is a kind of whited and sepulchral logic which seldom augurs well for what is behind and beneath.
There is a very simple rule of logic, sometimes called the Law of the Excluded Middle, according to which either a given proposition or its contradictory must be true. By selecting passages somewhat freely from different parts of Professor Whitney’s lectures, nothing would be easier than to prove, and not simply to assert that he has violated again and again that fundamental principle. In his earlier Lectures we are told, that “to ascribe the differences of language and linguistic growth directly to physical causes, . . . . is wholly meaningless and futile” (p. 152). When we come to the great variety of the American languages, we are told that “their differentiation has been favored by the influence of the variety of climate and mode of life.” On page 40, we read that a great genius “may now and then coin a new word!” On page 123, we are told “it is not true that a genius can impress a marked effect upon language.” On page 177, M. Renan and myself are told that we have committed a serious error in admitting dialects as antecedent feeders of national or classical languages, and that it is hardly worth while to spend any effort in refuting such an opinion. On page 181, we read, “a certain degree of dialectic variety is inseparable from the being of any language,” etc., etc., etc.
I should not call this a fair way of dealing with any book; I only give these few specimens to show that the task of changing Professor Whitney’s Lecture into a logical skeleton would not always be an easy one.
The pleading is now carried on by Mr. G. Darwin:--
“In taking up the cudgels, Müller is _clearly_ impelled by an overmastering fear lest man should lose ‘his proud position in the creation’ if his animal descent is proved.”
I should in nowise be ashamed of the fear thus ascribed to me, but whether it was an overmastering fear, let those judge who have read such passages in my Lectures, as the following:--
“The question is not whether the belief that animals so distant as a man, a monkey, an elephant, and a humming bird, a snake, a frog, and a fish, could all have sprung from the same parents is monstrous, but simply and solely whether it is true. If it is true, we shall soon learn to digest it. Appeals to the pride or humility of man, to scientific courage, or religious piety, are all equally out of place.”
If this and other passages in my Lectures are inspired by overmastering fear, then surely Talleyrand was right in saying that language was intended to disguise our thoughts. And may I not add, that if such charges can be made with impunity, we shall soon have to say, with a still more notorious diplomatist, “What is truth?” Such reckless charges may look heroic, but what applied to the famous charge of Balaclava, applies to them: _C’est magnifique, sans doute, mais ce n’est pas la guerre._
I am next charged, I do not know whether by the senior or the junior counsel, with maintaining the extraordinary position that if an insensible graduation could be established between ape and man, their minds would be _identical_.
Here all depends on what is meant by _mind_ and by _identical_. Does Mr. Darwin mean by “mind” something substantial--an agent that deals with the impressions received through the senses, as a builder deals with his bricks? Then, according to his father’s view, the one builder may build a mere hovel, the other may erect a cathedral, but through their descent they are substantially the same. Or does he mean by “mind,” the mode and manner in which sensations are received and arranged, what one might call, in fact, the law of sensuous gravitation? Then I say again, according to his father’s view, that law is substantially the same for animal and man. Nor is this a conclusion derived from Mr. Darwin’s premises against his will. It is the opinion strongly advocated by him. He has collected the most interesting observations on the incipient germs, not only of language, but of æsthetics and ethics, among animals. If Mr. Darwin, Jr., holds that the mind of man is not substantially identical with the animal mind, if he admits a break somewhere in the ascending scale from the Protogenes to the first Man, then we should be driven to the old conclusion--viz., that man was formed of the dust of the ground, but that God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. Does Mr. Darwin, Jr., accept this?
Next it is said, that by a similar argument the distinction between black and white, hot and cold, a high and a low note might be eliminated. This sounds no doubt formidable--it almost looks like a logical skeleton. But let us not be frightened by words. Black and white are no doubt as different as possible, so are hot and cold, a high and a low note. But what is the difference between a high and a low note? It is simply the smaller or larger number of vibrations in a given time. We can count these vibrations, and we also know that, from time to time, as the velocity of the vibrations increases, our dull senses can distinguish new tones. We have therefore here to deal with differences that used to be called differences of degree, as opposed to differences in kind. What applies to a low and a high note, applies to a low and high degree of heat, and to the various degrees of light which we call by the names of colors. In all these cases, what philosophers call the substance, remains the same, just as, according to evolutionists, the substance of man and animal is the same. Therefore, if man differs from an animal no more than a high note differs from a low, or, _vice versâ_, if a high note differs no more from a low than man differs from an ape, my argument would seem to stand in spite of the shower of words poured over it.
I myself referred to the difference between a high and a low note for a totally different purpose, viz., in order to call attention to those strange lines and limits in nature which, in spite of insensible graduation, enable us to distinguish broad degrees of sound which we call keys; broad degrees of light, which we call colors; broad degrees of heat, for which our language has a less perfect nomenclature. These lines and limits have never been explained, nor the higher limits which separate sound from light, and light from heat. Why we should derive pleasure from the exact number of vibrations which yield C, and then have painful sensations till we come to the exact number of vibrations which yield C sharp, remains as yet a mystery. But as showing that nature had drawn these sharp lines across the continuous stream of vibrations, whether of sound or light, seemed to me an important problem, particularly for evolutionist philosophers, who see in nature nothing but “insensible graduation.”
The next charge brought against me is, that I overlook the undoubted and undisputed fact that species do actually vary in nature. This seems to me begging the whole question. If terms like _species_ are fetched from the lumber-room of scholastic philosophy, they must be defined with logical exactness, particularly at present, when the very existence of such a thing as a _species_ depends on the meaning which we assign to it. Nature gives us individuals only, and each individual differs from the other. But “species” is a thing of _human workmanship_,[5] and it depends entirely on the disputed definition of the term, whether species vary or not. In one sense, Mr. Darwin’s book, “On the Origin of Species,” may be called an attempt to repeal the term “species,” or, at all events, an attempt at giving a new definition to that word which it never had before. No one appreciates more than I do the service he has rendered in calling forth a new examination of that old and somewhat rusty instrument of thought.[6] Only, do not let us take for granted what has to be proved.
The dust of words grows thicker and thicker as we go on, for I am next told that the same line of proof would show “that the stature of a man or boy was identical, because the boy passes through every gradation on attaining the one stature from the other. No one could maintain such a position who grasped the doctrines of continuity and of the differential calculus.” It seems to me that even without the help of the differential calculus, we can, with the help of logic and grammar, put a stop to this argument. Boy is the subject, stature looks like a subject, but is merely a predicate, and should have been treated as such by Mr. Darwin. If a boy arrives by insensible graduation or growth at the stature of man, the man is substantially the same as the boy. His stature may be different, the color of his hair may be so likewise; but what philosophers used to call the substance, or the individuality, or the personality, or what we may call the man, remains the same. If evolutionists really maintain that the difference between man and beast is the same as between a grown-up man and a boy, the whole of my argument is granted, and granted with a completeness which I had no right to expect. Will Mr. Darwin, Senior, indorse the concessions thus made by Mr. Darwin, Junior?
In order to show how the simplest matters can be complicated by a free use of scholastic terms, I quote the following sentence, which is meant as an answer to my argument:--
“According to what is called the Darwinian theory, organisms are in fact precisely the result of a multiple integration of a complex function of a very great number of variables; many of such variables being bound together by relationships amongst themselves, an example of one such relationship being afforded by the law, which has been called ‘correlation of growth.’”
Next follows a rocket from Mr. Whitney’s armory:--
“As a linguist,” he says, “Professor Müller claims to have found in language an endowment which has no analogies, and no preparations in even the beings nearest to man, and of which, therefore, no process of transmutation could furnish an explanation. Here is the pivot on which his whole argument rests and revolves.”
So far, the statement is correct, only that I expressed myself a little more cautiously. It is well known, that the animals which in other respects come nearest to man, possess very imperfect phonetic organs, and that it would be improper, therefore, to refer more particularly to them. But, however that may be, I expected at all events some proof that I had made a mistake, that my argument jars, or my pivot gives. But nothing of the kind. No facts, no arguments, but simply an assertion that I do not argue the case with moderation and acuteness, on strict scientific grounds, and by scientific methods in setting up language as the specific difference between man and animals. And why? Because many other writers have adduced other differences as _the_ correct ones.
There is a good deal of purely explosive matter in these vague charges of want of moderation and acuteness. But what is the kernel? I represented language as the specific difference between man and animals, without mentioning other differences which others believe to be specific. It would seem to show moderation rather than the absence of it, if I confined myself to language, to the study of which I have devoted the whole of my life; and perhaps a certain acuteness, in not touching on questions which I do not pretend to have studied, as they ought to be. But there were other reasons, too, which made me look upon language as _the_ specific difference. The so-called specific differences mentioned by others fall into two classes--those that are implied by language, as I defined the word, and those which have been proved untenable by Mr. Darwin and others. Let us read on now, to see what these specific differences are:--
“Man alone is capable of progressive improvement.”
Partly denied by Mr. Darwin, partly shown to be the result of
language, through which each successive generation profits by the experience of its predecessors.
“He alone makes use of tools or fire.” The former disproved by Mr. Darwin, the latter true.
“He alone domesticates other animals.” Denied, in the case of the ants.
“He alone possesses property.” Disproved by every dog in-the-manger.
“He alone employs language.” True.
“No other animal is self-conscious.” Either right or wrong, according to the definition of the word, and never capable of direct proof.
“He alone comprehends himself.” True, implied by language.
“He alone has the power of abstraction.” True, implied by language.
“He alone possesses general ideas.” True, implied by language.
“He alone has sense of beauty.” Disproved or rendered doubtful by sexual selection.
“He alone is liable to caprice.” Disproved by every horse, or monkey, or mule.
“He alone has the feeling of gratitude.” Disproved by every dog.
“He alone has the feeling of mystery.” _Cela me passe._
“He alone believes in God.” True.
“He alone is endowed with a conscience.” Denied by Mr. Darwin.
Did it show then such want of moderation or acuteness if I confined myself to language, and what is implied by language, as the specific difference between man and beast? Really, one sometimes yearns for an adversary who can hit straight, instead of these random strokes page after page.
The next attack is so feeble that I should gladly pass it by, did I not know from past experience that the very opposite motive would be assigned to my doing so. I had stated that if there is a _terra incognita_ which excludes all positive knowledge, it is the mind of animals. How, then, I am asked, do you know that no animal possesses the faintest germs of the faculty of abstracting and generalizing, and that animals receive their knowledge through the senses only? I still recollect the time when any philosopher who, even by way of illustration, ventured to appeal to the mind of animals, was simply tabooed, and I thought every student of the history of philosophy would have understood what I meant by saying that the whole subject was transcendent. However, here is my answer: I hold that animals receive their knowledge through the senses, because I can apply a crucial test, and show that if I shut their eyes, they cannot see. And I hold that they are without the faculty of abstracting and generalizing, because I have here nothing before me but mere assertions, I know of no crucial test to prove that these assertions are true. Those who have read my Lectures, and were able to reduce them to a skeleton of logical statement, might have seen that I had adduced another reason, viz., the fact that general conceptions are impossible without language (using language in the widest sense, so as to include hieroglyphic, numerical, and other signs), and that as no one has yet discovered any outward traces of language among animals, we are justified in not ascribing to them, as yet, the possession of abstract ideas. This seems to me to explain fully “why the same person (viz., my poor self) should be involved in such profound ignorance, and yet have so complete a knowledge of the limits of the animal mind.” If I had said that man has five senses, and no more, would that be wrong? Yet having myself only five senses, I could not possibly prove that other men may not have a sixth sense, or at all events a disposition to develop it. But I am quite willing to carry my agnosticism, with regard to the inner life of animals, still further, and to say again what I wrote in my Lectures (p. 46):--
“I say again and again, that according to the strict rules of positive philosophy, we have no right either to assert or to deny anything with reference to the so-called mind of animals.”
But there is another piece of Chinese artillery brought out by Mr. G. Darwin. As if not trusting it himself, he calls on Mr. Whitney to fire it off--“The minds of our fellow men, too,” we are told, “are a _terra incognita_ in exactly the same sense as are those of animals.”
No student of psychology would deny that each individual has immediate knowledge of his own mind only, but even Mr. G. Darwin reminds Mr. Whitney that, after all, with man we have one additional source of evidence--viz., language; nay, he even doubts whether there may not be others, too. If Mr. Darwin, Jr., grants that, I willingly grant him that the horse’s impression of green--nay, my friend’s impression of green--may be totally different from my own, to say nothing of Daltonism, color-blindness, and all the rest.[7]
After this, I need hardly dwell on the old attempts at proving, by a number of anecdotes, that animals possess conceptual knowledge. The anecdotes are always amusing, and are sure to meet with a grateful public, but for our purpose they have long been ruled out of court. If Mr. Darwin, Jr., should ever pass through Oxford, I promise to show him in my own dog, Waldmann, far more startling instances of sagacity than any he has mentioned, though I am afraid he will be confirmed all the more in his anthropomorphic interpretation of canine intelligence.
Now comes a new appeal _ad populum_. I had ventured to say that in our days nothing was more strongly to be recommended to young and old philosophers than a study of the history of philosophy. There is a continuity, not only in Nature, but also in the progress of the human mind; and to ignore that continuity, to begin always like Thales or Democritus, is like having a special creation every day. Evolutionists seem to imagine that there is evolution for everything, except for evolutionism. What would chemists say, if every young student began again with the theory of a phlogiston, or every geologist with Vulcanism, or every astronomer with the Ptolemæic system? However, I did not go back very far; I only claimed a little consideration for the work done by such giants as Locke, Hume, Berkeley, and Kant. I expressed a hope that certain questions might be considered as closed, or, if they were to be re-opened, that at least the controversy should be taken up where it was left at the end of the last debate. Here, however, I failed to make any impression. My appeal is stigmatized as “an attempt to crush my adversaries by a reference to Kant, Hume, Berkeley, and Locke.” And the popular tribune finishes with the following brave words: “Fortunately we live in an age, which (except for temporary relapses) does not pay any great attention to the pious founders, and which tries to judge for itself.”
I never try to crush my adversaries by deputy. Kant, Hume, Berkeley, and Locke may all be antiquated for all I know; but I still hold it would be useful to read them, before we declare too emphatically that we have left them behind.
I cannot deny myself the satisfaction of quoting on this point the wise and weighty words of Huxley:--
“It is much easier to ask such questions than to answer them, especially if one desires to be on good terms with one’s contemporaries: but, if I must give an answer, it is this: The growth of physical science is now so prodigiously rapid, that those who are actively engaged in keeping up with the present, have much ado to find time to look at the past, and even grow into the habit of neglecting it. But, natural as this result may be, it is none the less detrimental. The intellect loses, for there is assuredly no more effectual method of clearing up one’s own mind on any subject than by talking it over, so to speak, with men of real power and grasp who have considered it from a totally different point of view. The parallax of time helps us to the true position of a conception, as the parallax of space helps us to that of a star. And the moral nature loses no less. It is well to turn aside from the fretful stir of the present, and to dwell with gratitude and respect upon the services of those mighty men of old who have gone down to the grave with their weapons of war, but who, while they yet lived, won splendid victories over ignorance.”
Next follow some extraordinary efforts on Mr. Whitney’s part to show that Locke, whose arguments I had simply re-stated, knew very little about human or animal understanding, and then the threadbare argument of the deaf and dumb is brushed up once more. Until something new is said on that old subject, I must be allowed to remain myself deaf and dumb.[8]
Then comes the final and decisive charge. I had said that “if the science of language has proved anything, it has proved that conceptual or discursive thought can be carried on in words only.” Here again I had quoted a strong array of authorities--not, indeed, to kill free inquiry--I am not so bloodthirsty, as my friends imagine--but to direct it to those channels where it had been carried on before. I quoted Locke, I quoted Schelling, Hegel, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Schopenhauer, and Mansel--philosophers diametrically opposed to each other on many points, yet all agreeing in what seems to many so strange a doctrine, that conceptual thought is impossible without language (comprehending by language hieroglyphic, numerical, and similar symbols). I might have quoted many other thinkers and poets. Professor Huxley seems clearly to have seen the difference between trains of thought and trains of feelings. “Brutes,” he says, “though, from the absence of language, they can have no trains of thoughts, but only trains of feelings, yet have a consciousness which, more or less distinctly, foreshadows our own.” And who could express the right view of language more beautifully than Jean Paul?--
“Mich dünkt, der Mensch würde sich, so wie das spracblose Thier, das in der äussern Welt, wie in einem dunkeln, betäubenden Wellen-Meere schwimmt, ebenfalls in dem vollgestirnten Himmel der äussern Anschauung dumpf verlieren, wenn er das verworrene Leuchten nicht durch Sprache in Sternbilder abtheilte, und sich durch diese das Ganze in Theile für das Bewusstein auflösete.”
Having discussed that question very fully in my Lectures, I shall attempt no more at present than to show that the objections raised by Mr. Darwin, Jr., entirely miss the point. Does he really think that those men could have spent all their lives in considering that question, and never have been struck by the palpable objections raised by him? Let us treat such neighbors, at least like ourselves. I shall, however, do my best to show Mr. Darwin that even I had not been ignorant of these objections. I shall follow him through every point, and, for fear of misrepresenting him, quote his own words:--
“(1) Concepts may be formed, and yet not put before the consciousness of the conceiver, so that he ‘realizes’ what he is doing.”
Does that mean that the conceiver conceives concepts without conceiving them? Then, I ask, whom do these concepts belong to, where are they, and under what conditions were they realized? Is to conceive an active or a passive verb? May I once more quote Kant without incurring the suspicion of wishing to strangle free inquiry by authority? “Concepts,” says the old veteran, “are founded on the spontaneity of thought, sensuous intuitions on the receptivity of impressions.”
“(2) Complex thoughts are doubtless impossible without symbols, just as are the higher mathematics?”
Are lower mathematics possible without numerical symbols, and where is the line which separates complex from simple thought? Everything would seem to depend on that line which is so often spoken of by our critics. There ought to be something in that line which would at once remove the blunders committed by Humboldt and others. It would define the limit between inarticulate and articulate thought; it might possibly be the very frontier between the animal and the human mind, and yet that magic line is simply conceived, spoken of freely, but never realized, _i.e._, never traced with logical precision. Till that is done, that line, though it may exist, is to me as if it did not exist.
“(3) We know that dogs doubt and hesitate, and finally determine to act without any external determining circumstance.”
How this argument fits in here, is not quite clear to me; but, whatever its drift may be, a perusal of Professor Huxley’s excellent paper, “The Hypothesis that Animals are Automata,” will supply a full answer.
“(4) Professor Whitney very happily illustrates the independence of thought from language, by calling up our state of mind when casting about, often in the most open manner, for new designations, for new forms of knowledge, or when drawing distinctions, and pointing conclusions, which words are then stretched or narrowed to cover.”
Language with us has become so completely traditional, that we frequently learn words first and their meaning afterwards. The problem of the original relation between concepts and words, however, refers to periods when these words did not yet exist, but had to be framed for the first time. We are speaking of totally different things; he, of the geology, I, if I may say so, of the chemistry of speech. But even if we accepted the test from modern languages, does not the very form of the question supply the answer? If we want _new_ designations, _new_ forms of knowledge, do we not confess that we have old designations, though imperfect ones; old forms of knowledge which no longer answer our purpose? Our old words, then, become gradually stretched or narrowed, exactly as our knowledge becomes stretched or narrowed, or we at last throw away the old word, and borrow another from our own, or even from a foreign language.
“It is a proof,” Mr. Darwin says, “that we realized and conceived the idea of the texture and nature of a musical sound before we had a word for it, that we had to borrow the expressive word “_timbre_” from the French.”
But how did we realize and conceive the idea before we had a word for it? Surely, by old words. We called it quality, texture, nature--we knew it as the result of the presence and absence of various harmonics. In German, we stretched an old word, and called it _Farbe_; in English, _timbre_ was borrowed from the French, just as we may call a pound _vingt-cinq francs_; but the French themselves got their word by the ordinary process--viz., by stretching the old word, _tympanum_.
“(5) If Müller had brought before him some wholly new animal he would find that he could shut his eyes, and call up the image of it readily enough without any accompanying name.”
All this is far, far away from the real field of battle. No doubt, if I look at the sun and shut my eyes, the image remains for a time. By imagination I can also recall other sensuous impressions, and, in an attack of fever, I have had sensuous impressions resuscitated without my will. But how does that touch conceptual knowledge? As soon as I want to know what animal it is which I conjure up or imagine to myself, I must either have, for shortness’ sake, its scientific name, or I must conceive and realize its ears, or its legs, or its tail, or something else, but always something for which there is a name.
I have thus, in spite of the old warning, _Ne Hercules contra duos_, gone through the whole string of charges brought against me by Mr. Darwin and Professor Whitney; and while trying to show them that I was not entirely unprepared for their combined attack, I hope I have not been wanting in that respect which is due even to a somewhat rancorous assailant. I have not returned evil for evil, nor have I noticed objections which I could not refute without seeming to be offensive. Is it not mere skirmishing with blank cartridge, when Professor Whitney assures me that I have never fathomed “the theory of the antecedency of the idea to the word in the minds of those who hold that theory?” Surely, that is the theory which everybody holds who forms his idea of the origin of language from the manner in which we acquire a traditional language ready made, or, later in life, learn foreign languages. It has been my object to show that our problem is not, how languages are learnt, but how language is developed. We might as well form our ideas of the origin of the alphabet from the manner in which we learn to write, and then smile when we are told that, in writing “F” we still draw in the two upper strokes, the two horns of the _cerastes_, and that the connecting line in the “H” is the last remnant of the lines dividing the sieve, both hieroglyphics occurring in the name of Chufu or Cheops.
Philosophy is a study as much as philology, and though common sense is, no doubt, very valuable within its proper limits, I do not hesitate to say, though I hear already the distant grumbling of _Jupiter tonans_, that it is generally the very opposite of philosophy. One of the most eminent and most learned of living German philosophers--Professor Carriere, of Munchen--says in a very friendly review of Professor Whitney’s “Lectures on Language”--
“Philosophical depth and precision in psychological analysis are not his strong points, and in that respect the reader will hardly find anything new in his Lectures.”
He goes on to say that--
“The American scholar did not see that language is meant first for forming, afterwards for communicating thought.” “Wordmaking,” he says with great truth, “is the first philosophy--the first poetry of mankind. We can have sensations, desires, intentions, but we cannot think, in the proper sense of the word, without language. Every word expresses the general. Mr. Whitney has not understood this, and his calling language a human institution is very shallow.”
Against Professor Whitney’s view that language is arbitrary and conventional, and against the opposite view that language is instinctive, Professor Carriere quotes the happy expression of M. Renan, “_La liaison du sens et du mot n’est jamais nécessaire, jamais arbitraire, toujours elle est motivée._” Here the nail is hit on the head. Professor Carriero highly commends Professor Whitney’s lectures, and he does by no means adopt all my own views; but he felt obliged to enter a protest against certain journalistic proceedings which in Germany have attracted general attention.
In conclusion, if I may judge from Professor Whitney’s lectures, unless he has changed very much of late, I doubt whether he would prove a real ally of Mr. Darwin in his views on the origin of language. Towards the end of his article, even Mr. Darwin, Jr., becomes suspicious. Professor Whitney, he says, makes a dangerous assertion when he says that we shall never know anything of the transitional forms through which language has passed, and he advises his friend to read a book lately published by Count G. A. de Goddesand Liancourt and F. Pincott, called “Primitive and Universal Laws of Language,” in which he would find much information and enlightenment on the real origin of roots. There is an unintentional irony in that advice which Professor Whitney will not fail to appreciate. How any one who cares for truth can speak of a dangerous assertion, I do not understand. The Pope may say so, or a barrister; a true friend of truth knows of no danger.
In his “Lectures on Language,” Professor Whitney protests strongly against Darwinian materialism. But, as he confesses himself half a convert to the _Bow-wow_ and _Pooh-pooh_ theories, thus showing how wrong I was in supposing that those theories had no advocates among comparative philologists in the nineteenth century; nay, as now, after he has discovered at last that I am no believer in _Ding-dongism_, he seems inclined to say a kind word for the advocates of that theory--Heyse and Steinthal--who knows whether, after my Lectures on Darwin’s “Philosophy of Language,” he may not be converted by Bleek and Haeckel, the mad Darwinian, as he calls him?
All this, no doubt, has its humorous side, and I have tried to answer it good-humoredly. But it seems to me that it also has a very serious import. Why is there all this wrangling as to whether man is the descendant of a lower animal or not? Why cannot people examine the question in a temper more consonant with a real love of truth? Why look for artificial barriers between man and beast, if they are not there? Why try to remove real barriers, if they are there? Surely we shall remain what we are, whatever befall. When we throw the question back into a very distant antiquity, all seems to grow confused and out of focus. Yet time and space make little difference in the solution of these problems. Let us see what exists to-day. We see to-day that the lowest of savages--men whose language is said to be no better than the clucking of hens, or the twittering of birds, and who have been declared in many respects lower even than animals, possess this one specific characteristic, that if you take one of their babies, and bring it up in England, it will learn to speak as well as any English baby, while no amount of education will elicit any attempts at language from the highest animals, whether bipeds or quadrupeds. That disposition cannot have, been formed by definite nervous structures, congenitally framed, for we are told by the best Agriologists that both father and mother clucked like hens. This fact, therefore, unless disproved by experiment, remains, whatever the explanation may be.
Let us suppose, then, that myriads of years ago there was, out of myriads of animal beings, one, and one only, which made that step which in the end led to language, while the whole rest of the creation remained behind;--what would follow? That one being then, like the savage baby now, must have possessed something of his own--a germ very imperfect, it may be, yet found nowhere else, and that germ, that capacity, that disposition--call it what you like--is, and always will remain the specific difference of himself and all his descendants. It makes no difference whether we say it came of itself, or it was due to environment, or it was the gift of a Being in whom we live and move. All these are but different expressions for the Unknown. If that germ of the Logos had to pass through thousands of forms, from the Protogenes to Adam, before it was fit to fulfill its purpose, what is that to us? It was there _potentiâ_ from the beginning; it manifested itself where it was, in the paulo-post-future man; it never manifested itself where it was not, in any of the creatures that were animals from the beginning, and remained so to the end.
Surely, even if all scholastic philosophy must now be swept away, if to be able to reduce all the wisdom of the past to a _tabula rasa_ is henceforth to be the test of a true philosopher, a few landmarks may still be allowed to remain, and we may venture to quote, for instance, _Ex nihilo nihil fit_, without being accused of trying to crush free inquiry by an appeal to authority. Language is something, it pre-supposes something; and that which it pre-supposes, that from which it sprang, whatever its pre-historic, pre-mundane, pre-cosmic state may have been, must have been different from that from which it did not spring. People ask whether that germ of language was “slowly evolved,” or “divinely implanted,” but if they would but lay a firm grip on their words and thoughts, they would see that these two expressions, which have been made the watchwords of two hostile camps, differ from each other dialectically only.
That there is in us an animal--aye, a bestial nature--has never been denied; to deny it would take away the very foundation of Psychology and Ethics. We cannot be reminded too often that all the materials of our knowledge we share with animals; that, like them, we begin with sensuous impressions, and then, like ourselves, and like ourselves only, proceed to the General, the Ideal, the Eternal. We cannot be reminded too often that in many things we are like the beasts of the field, but that, like ourselves, and like ourselves only, we can rise superior to our bestial self, and strive after what is Unselfish, Good, and God-like. The wing by which we soar above the Sensuous, was called by wise men of old the _Logos_; the wing which lifts us above the Sensual, was called by good men of old the _Daimonion_. Let us take continual care, especially within the precincts of the Temple of Science, lest by abusing the gift of speech or doing violence to the voice of conscience, we soil the two wings of our soul, and fall back, through our own fault, to the dreaded level of the Gorilla.
[Footnote 1: “The vast number of grammatical forms has had a stratified origin. As on the surface of the earth older and younger layers of stones are found one above the other, or one by the side of the other, We had similar appearances in language at any time of its existence.” Curtius, _Zur Chronologie_, p. 14.]
[Footnote 2: See _Academy_, 19 June, 1875.]
[Footnote 3: As it has been objected that I had no right to claim Dr. Whewell’s authority in support of my classification, I may here add a passage from a letter (Nov. 4, 1861) addressed to me by Dr. Whewell, in which he fully approves of my treating the Science of Language as one of the physical sciences. “You have more than once done me the honor, in your lectures, of referring to what I have written but it seems to me possible that you may not have remarked how completely I agree with you in classing the Science of Language among the physical sciences, as to its history and structure.”]
[Footnote 4: _Antikritik, Wie einer den Nagel auf den Kopf trifft_: Berl. 1874.]
[Footnote 5: Cf. Sachs’ _Botany_, p. 830.]
[Footnote 6: See _Lectures on the Science of Language_, vol. ii.]
[Footnote 7: Fiske, _Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 17.]
[Footnote 8: See Kilian, _Uber die Racenfrage der Semitischen und Arischen Sprachbände_, 1874.]
X.
IN SELF-DEFENSE.
PRESENT STATE OF SCIENTIFIC STUDIES.
It has been remarked by many observers that in all branches of physical
as well as historical learning there is at the present moment a strongly
pronounced tendency towards special researches. No one can hold his own
among his fellow-workers who cannot point to some discovery, however
small, to some observation, to some decipherings, to some edition of a
text hitherto unpublished, or, at least, to some conjectural readings
which are, in the true sense of the word, his property. A man must now
have served from the ranks before he is admitted to act as a general,
and not even Darwin or Mommsen would have commanded general attention
for their theories on the ancient history of Rome, or on the primitive
development of animal life, unless they had been known for years as
sturdy workers in their respective quarries.
On the whole, I believe that this state of public opinion has produced a salutary effect, but it has also its dangers. An army that means conquest, cannot always depend on its scouts and pioneers, nor must it be broken up altogether into single detachments of tirailleurs. From time to time, it has to make a combined movement in advance, and for that purpose it wants commanders who know the general outlines of the battle-field, and are familiar with the work that can best be done by each branch of the service.
EVOLUTIONISM.
If we look upon scholars, historians, students of physical science, and abstract philosophers, as so many branches of the great army of knowledge which has been fighting its way for centuries for the conquest of truth, it might be said, if we may follow up our comparison a little further, that the light cavalry of physical science had lately made a quick movement in advance, and detached itself too much from the support of the infantry and heavy artillery. The charge was made against the old impregnable fortress, the Origin of Life, and to judge from the victorious hurrahs of the assaulting squadron, we might have thought that a breach had at last been effected, and that the keys to the long hidden secrets of creation and development had been surrendered. As the general commanding this attack, we all recognize Mr. Darwin, supported by a brilliant staff of dashing officers, and if ever general was well chosen for victory, it was the author of the “Origin of Species.”
There was indeed for a time a sanguine hope, shared by many a brave soldier, that the old warfare of the world would, in our time, be crowned with success, that we should know at last what we are, whence we came, and whither we go; that, beginning with the simplest elementary substances, we should be able to follow the process of combination and division, leading by numberless and imperceptible changes from the lowest Bathybios to the highest Hypsibios, and that we should succeed in establishing by incontrovertible facts what old sages had but guessed, viz., that there is nowhere anything hard and specific in nature, but all is flowing and growing, without an efficient cause or a determining purpose, under the sway of circumstances only, or of a self-created environment. Πάντα ῥεῖ.
But that hope is no longer so loudly and confidently expressed as it was some years ago. For a time all seemed clear and simple. We began with Protoplasm, which anybody might see at the bottom of the sea, developing into Moneres, and we ended with the bimanous mammal called _Homo_, whether _sapiens_ or _insipiens_, everything between the two being matter of imperceptible development.
DIFFICULTIES IN EVOLUTIONISM.
The difficulties began where they generally begin, at the beginning and at the end. _Protoplasm_ was a name that produced at first a soothing effect on the inquisitive mind, but when it was asked, whence that power of development, possessed by the Protoplasm which begins as a Moneres and ends as Homo, but entirely absent in other Protoplasm, which resists all mechanical manipulation, and never enters upon organic growth, it was seen that the problem of development had not been solved, but only shifted, and that, instead of simple Protoplasm, very peculiar kinds of Protoplasm were required, which under circumstances might become and remain a Moneres, and under circumstances might become and remain _Homo_ forever. That which determined Protoplasm to enter upon its marvelous career, the first κινοῦν ἀκινητόν, remained as unknown as ever. It was open to call it an internal and unconscious, or an external and conscious power, or both together: physical, metaphysical, and religious mythology were left as free as ever. The best proof of this we find in the fact that Mr. Darwin himself retained his belief in a personal Creator, while Haeckel denies all necessity of admitting a conscious agent; and Von Hartmann[1] sees in what is called the philosophy of evolutionism the strongest confirmation of idealism, “all development being in truth but the realization of the unconscious reason of the creative idea.”
GLOTTOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONISM.
While the difficulty at the beginning consists in this that, after all, nothing can be developed except what was enveloped, the difficulty at the end is this that something is supposed to be developed that was not enveloped. It was here where I thought it became my duty to draw Mr. Darwin’s attention to difficulties which he had not suspected at all, or which, at all events, he had allowed himself to under-value. Mr. Darwin had tried to prove that there was nothing to prevent us from admitting a possible transition from the brute to man, as far as their physical structure was concerned, and it was natural that he should wish to believe that the same applied to their mental capacities. Now, whatever difference of opinion there might be among philosophers as to the classification and naming of these capacities, and as to any rudimentary traces of them to be discovered in animals, there had always been a universal consent that language was a distinguishing characteristic of man. Without inquiring what was implied by language, so much was certain, that language was something tangible, present in every man, absent in every brute. Nothing, therefore, was more natural than that Mr. Darwin should wish to show that this was an error: that language was nothing specific in man, but had its antecedents, however imperfect, in the signs of communication among animals. Influenced, no doubt, by the works of some of his friends and relatives on the origin of language, he thought that it had been proved that our words could be derived _directly_ from imitative and interjectional sounds. If the Science of Language has proved anything, it has proved that this is not the case. We know that, with certain exceptions, about which there can be little controversy, all our words are derived from roots, and that every one of these roots is the expression of a general concept. “Without roots, no language; without concepts, no roots,” these are the two pillars on which our philosophy of language stands, and with which it falls.
MR. WEDGWOOD’S DICTIONARY.
Any word taken from Mr. Wedgwood’s Dictionary will show the difference between those who derive words _directly_ from imitative and interjectional sounds, and those who do not. For instance, s.v. _to plunge_, we read:--
“Fr. _plonger_ Du. _plotsen_, _plonssen_, _plonzen_, to fall into the water--Kil.; _plotsen_, also to fall suddenly on the ground. The origin, like that of _plump_, is a representation of the noise made by the fall. Swiss _bluntschen_, the sound of a thick heavy body falling into the water.” Under _plump_ we read, “that the radical image is the sound made by a compact body falling into the water, or of a mass of wet falling to the ground. _He smit den sten in’t water, plump! seg dat_, ‘He threw the stone into the water; it cried plump!’ _Plumpen_, to make the noise represented by plump, to fall with such a noise, etc., etc., etc.”
All this sounds extremely plausible, and to a man not specially conversant with linguistic studies, far more plausible than the real etymology of the word. To plunge is, no doubt, as Mr. Wedgwood says, the French _plonger_ but the French _plonger_ is _plumbicare_, while in Italian _piombare_ is _cadere a piombo_, to fall straight like the plummet. To plunge, therefore, has nothing to do with the splashing sound of heavy bodies falling into the water, but with the concept of straightness, here symbolized by the plummet.
This case, however, would only show the disregard of historical facts with which the onomatopœic school has been so frequently and so justly charged. But as we cannot trace _plumbum_, or μόλυβος, or Old Slav. _olovo_ with any certainty to a root such as _mal_, to be soft, let us take another word, such as _feather_. Here, again, we find that Mr. Wedgwood connects it with such words as Bav. _fledern_, Du. _vlederen_, to flap, flutter, the loss of the _l_ being explained by such words as to splutter and to sputter. We have first to note the disregard of historical facts, for _feather_ is O.H.G. _fedara_, Sk. pat-tra, Gr. πτερόν for πετερον, all derived from a root _pat_, to fly, from which we have also _penna_, old _pesna_, πέτ-ομαι, _peto_, _impetus_, etc. The root _pat_ expresses violent motion, and it is specialized into upward motion, πέτομαι, I fly; downward motion, Sk. +patati+, he falls; and onward motion, as in Latin _peto_, _impetus_, etc. Feather, therefore, as derived from this root, was conceived as the instrument of flying, and was never intended to imitate the noise of Du. _vlederen_, to flutter, and to flap.
MY LECTURES ON MR. DARWIN’S PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE.
As this want of historical treatment among onomatopœic philologists has frequently been dwelt on by myself and others, these instances may suffice to mark the difference between the school so ably and powerfully represented by Mr. Wedgwood, and the school of Bopp, to which I and most comparative philologists belong. It was in the name of that school that I ventured to address my protest to the school of evolutionists, reminding them of difficulties, which they had either ignored altogether, or, at all events, greatly undervalued, and putting our case before them in such a form that even philosophers, not conversant with the special researches of philologists, might gain a clear insight into the present state of our science, and form their opinion accordingly.
In doing this I thought I was simply performing a duty which, in the present state of divided and subdivided labor, has to be performed, if we wish to prevent a useless waste of life. However different our pursuits may be, we all belong, as I said before, to the same army, we all have the same interests at heart, we are bound together by what the French would call the strongest of all solidarities, the love of truth. If I had thought only of my own fellow-laborers in the field of the Science of Language, I should not have considered that there was any necessity for the three Lectures which I delivered in 1873 at the Royal Institution. In my first course of Lectures on the Science of Language (1861), delivered before Evolutionism had assumed its present dimensions, I had already expressed my conviction that language is the one great barrier between the brute and man.
“Man speaks,” I said, “and no brute has ever uttered a word. Language is something more palpable than a fold of the brain or an angle of the skull. It admits of no caviling, and no process of natural selection will ever distill significant words out of the notes of birds or the cries of beasts.”
No scholar, so far as I know, has ever controverted any of these statements. But when Evolutionism became, as it fully deserved, the absorbing interest of all students of nature, when it was supposed that, if a Moneres could develop into a Man, Bow-wow and Pooh-pooh might well have developed by imperceptible degrees into Greek and Latin, I thought it was time to state the case for the Science of Language and its bearing on some of the problems of Evolutionism more fully, and I gladly accepted the invitation to lecture once more on this subject at the Royal Institution in 1873. My object was no more than a statement of facts, showing that the results of the Science of Language did not at present tally with the results of Evolutionism, that words could no longer be derived directly from imitative and interjectional sounds, that between these sounds and the first beginnings of language, in the technical sense of the word, a barrier had been discovered, represented by what we call Roots, and that, as far as we know, no attempt, not even the faintest, has ever been made by any animal, except man, to approach or to cross that barrier. I went one step further. I showed that Roots were with man the embodiments of general concepts, and that the only way in which man realized general concepts, was by means of those roots, and words derived from roots. I therefore argued as follows: We do not know anything and cannot possibly know anything of the mind of animals: therefore, the proper attitude of the philosopher with regard to the mental capacities of animals is one of complete neutrality. For all we know, the mental capacities of animals may be of a higher order than our own, as their sensuous capacities certainly are in many cases. All this, however, is guesswork; one thing only is certain. If we are right that man realizes his conceptual thought by means of words, derived from roots, and that no animal possesses words derived from roots, it follows, not indeed, that animals have no conceptual thought (in saying this, I went too far), but that their conceptual thought is different in its realized shape from our own.
From public and private discussions which followed the delivery of my lectures at the Royal Institution (an abstract of them was published in “Fraser’s Magazine,” and republished, I believe, in America), it became clear to me that the object which I had in view had been fully attained. General attention had been roused to the fact that at all events the Science of Language had something to say in the matter of Evolutionism, and I know that those whom it most concerned were turning their thoughts in good earnest to the difficulties which I had pointed out. I wanted no more, and I thought it best to let the matter ferment for a time.
MR. GEORGE DARWIN’S ARTICLE IN THE “CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.”
But what was my surprise when I found that a gentleman who had acquired considerable notoriety, not indeed by any special and original researches in Comparative Philology, but by his repeated attempts at vilifying the works of other scholars, Professor Whitney, had sent a paper to Mr. Darwin, intended to throw discredit on the statements which I had recommended to his serious consideration. I did not know of that paper till an abstract of it appeared in the “Contemporary Review,” signed George Darwin, and written with the avowed purpose of discrediting the statements which I had made in my Lecture at the Royal Institution. If Professor Whitney’s appeal had been addressed to scholars only, I should gladly have left them to judge for themselves. But as Mr. Darwin, Jr., was prevailed upon to stand sponsor to Professor Whitney’s last production, and to lend to it, if not the weight, at least the lustre of his name, I could not, without appearing uncourteous, let it pass in silence. I am not one of those who believe that truth is much advanced by public controversy, and I have carefully eschewed it during the whole of my literary career. But if I had left Professor Whitney’s assertions unanswered, I could hardly have complained, if Mr. Darwin, Sr., and the many excellent _savants_ who share his views, had imagined that I had represented the difficulties which the students of language feel with regard to animals developing a language, in a false light; that in fact, instead of wishing to assist, I had tried to impede the onward march of our brave army. I have that faith in οἱ περὶ Darwin, that I believe they want honest advice, from whatever quarter it may come, and I therefore was persuaded to deviate for once from my usual course, and, by answering _seriatim_ every objection raised by Professor Whitney, to show that my advice had been tendered _bonâ fide_, that I had not spoken in the character of a special pleader, but simply and solely as a man of truth.
MY ANSWER TO MR. DARWIN.
My “Answer to Mr. Darwin” appeared in the “Contemporary Review” of November, 1874, and if it had only elicited the letter which I received from Mr. Darwin, Sr., I should have been amply repaid for the trouble I had taken in the matter.
It produced, however, a still more important result, for it elicited from the American assailant a hasty rejoinder, which opened the eyes even of his best friends to the utter weakness of his case. Professor Whitney, himself, had evidently not expected that I should notice his assault. He had challenged me so often before, and I had never answered him. Why, then, should I have replied now? My answer is, because, for the first time, his charges had been countersigned by another.
I had not even read his books before, and he blames me severely for that neglect, bluntly asking me, why I had not read them. That is indeed a question extremely difficult to answer without appearing to be rude. However, I may say this, that to know what books one must read, and what books one may safely leave unread, is an art which, in these days of literary fertility, every student has to learn. We know on the whole what each scholar is doing, we know those who are engaged in special and original work, and we are in duty bound to read whatever they write. This in the present state of Comparative Philology, when independent work is being done in every country of Europe, is as much as any man can do, nay, often more than I feel able to do. But then, on the other hand, we claim the liberty of leaving uncut other books in our science, which, however entertaining they may be in other respects, are not likely to contain any new facts. In doing this, we run a risk, but we cannot help it.
And let me ask Professor Whitney, if by chance he had opened a book and alighted on the following passage, would he have read much more?
“Take as instances _home_ and _homely_, _scarce_ and _scarcely_, _direct_ and _directly_, _lust_ and _lusty_, _naught_ and _naughty_, _clerk_ and _clergy_, a _forge_ and a _forgery_, _candid_ and _candidate_, _hospital_ and _hospitality_, _idiom_ and _idiocy_, _alight_ and _delight_, etc.”
Is there any philologist, comparative or otherwise, who does not know that _light_, the Gothic _liuhath_, is connected with the Latin _lucere_; that to _delight_ is connected with Latin _delector_, Old French _deleiter_, and with Latin _de-lic-ere_; while to _alight_ is of Teutonic origin, and connected with Gothic _leihts_, Latin _levis_, Sanskrit _laghus_?
But then, Professor Whitney continues, when at last he had forced me to read some of his writings, why did I not read them carefully? Why did I read Mr. Darwin’s article in the “Contemporary Review” only, and not his own in an American journal?
Now here I feel somewhat guilty: still I can offer some excuse. I did not read Professor Whitney’s reply in the American original, first, because I could not get it in time; secondly, because I only felt bound to answer the arguments which Mr. Darwin had adopted as his own. Looking at the original article afterwards, I found that I had not been entirely wrong. I see that Mr. Darwin has used a very wise discretion in his selection, and I may now tell Professor Whitney that he ought really to be extremely grateful that nothing except what Mr. Darwin had approved of, was placed before the English readers of the “Contemporary Review,” and therefore answered by me in the same journal.
THE PHENICIAN ALPHABET.
Other charges, however, of neglect and carelessness on my part in reading Professor Whitney’s writings, I can meet by a direct negative. Among the more glaring mistakes of his lectures which I had pointed out, was this, that fifteen years after Rougé’s discovery, Professor Whitney still speaks of “the Phenician alphabet as the ultimate source of the world’s alphabets.” Professor Whitney answers: “If Professor Müller had read my twelfth lecture he would have found the derivative nature of the Phenician alphabet fully discussed.” When I read this, I felt a pang, for it was quite true that I had not read that lecture. I saw a note to it, in which Professor Whitney states that the sketch of the history of writing contained in it was based on Steinthal’s admirable essay on the “Development of Writing,” and being acquainted with that, I thought I could dispense with lecture No. 12. However, as I thought it strange that there should be so glaring a contradiction between two lectures of the same course, that in one the Phenician alphabet should be represented as the ultimate source, in another as a derivative alphabet, I set to work and read lecture No. 12. Will it be believed that there is not one word in it about Rougé’s discovery, published, as I said, fifteen years ago, that the old explanation that _Aleph_ stood for an ox, _Beth_ for a house, _Gimel_ for camel, _Daleth_ for door, is simply repeated, and that similarities are detected between the forms of the letters and the figures of the objects whose names they bear? Therefore of two things one, either Professor Whitney was totally ignorant of what has been published on this subject during the last fifteen years by Rougé, father and son, by Brugsch, Lenormant and others, or he thought he might safely charge me with having misrepresented him, because neither I nor any one else was likely to read lecture No. 12.
After this instance of what Professor Whitney considers permissible, I need hardly say more; but having been cited by him before a tribunal which hardly knows me, to substantiate what I had asserted in my “Answer to Mr. Darwin,” it may be better to go manfully through a most distasteful task, to answer _seriatim_ point after point, and thus to leave on record one of the most extraordinary cases of what I can only call Literary Daltonism.
LIKE AND UNLIKE.
I am accused by Professor Whitney of having read his lectures carelessly, because I had only been struck by what seemed to me repetitions from my own writings, without observing the deeper difference between his lectures and my own. He therefore advises me to read his lectures again. I am afraid I cannot do that, nor do I see any necessity for it, because though I was certainly staggered by a number of coincidences between his lectures and my own, I was perfectly aware that they differed from each other more than I cared to say. I imagined I had conveyed this as clearly as I could, without saying anything offensive, by observing that in many places his arguments seemed to me like an _inverted fugue_ on a _motive_ taken from my lectures. But if I was not sufficiently outspoken on that point, I am quite willing to make amends for it now.
AN INVERTED FUGUE.
I must give one instance at least of what I mean by an _inverted fugue_.
I had laid great stress on the fact that, though we are accustomed to speak of language as a thing by itself, language after all is not something independent and substantial, but, in the first instance, an act, and to be studied as such. Thus I said (p. 51):--
“To speak of language as a thing by itself, as living a life of its own, as growing to maturity, producing offspring, and dying away, is sheer mythology.”
Again (p. 58):--
“Language exists in man, it lives in being spoken, it dies with each word that is pronounced, and is no longer heard.”
When I came to Professor Whitney’s Second Lecture, and read (p. 35):--
“Language has, in fact, no existence save in the minds and mouths of those who use it,”
I felt pleasantly reminded of what I knew I had said somewhere. But what was my surprise, when a few lines further on I read:--
“This truth is sometimes explicitly denied, and the opposite doctrine is set up, that language has a life and growth independent of its speakers, with which men cannot interfere. A recent popular writer (Professor Max Müller) asserts that, ‘although there is a continuous change in language, it is not in the power of man either to produce or to prevent it. We might think as well of changing the laws which control the circulation of our blood, or of adding an inch to our height, as of altering the laws of speech, or inventing new words according to our own pleasure.’”
How is one to fight against such attacks? The very words which Professor Whitney had paraphrased before, only substituting “skull” for “height,” and by which I had tried to prove “that languages are not the artful creations of individuals,” are turned against me to show that, because I denied to any _single_ individual the power of changing language _ad libitum_, I had set up the opposite doctrine, viz. that language has a life and growth independent of its speakers.
Does Professor Whitney believe that any attentive reader can be taken in by such artifices? Suppose I had said that in a well-organized republic no individual can change the laws according to his pleasure, would it follow that I held the opposite doctrine, that laws have a life and growth independent of the lawgiver? The simile is weak, because an individual may, under very peculiar circumstances, change a law according to his pleasure: but weak as it is, I hope it will convince Professor Whitney that Formal Logic is not altogether a useless study to a Professor of Linguistics. I only wonder what Professor Whitney would have said if he had been able to find in my Lectures a definition of language (p. 46), worthy of Friedrich Schlegel, viz.:--
“Language, like an organic body, is no mere aggregate of similar particles; it is a complex of related and mutually helpful parts.”
And again:--
“The rise, development, decline, and extinction of language are like the birth, increase, decay, and death of a living creature.”
In these poetical utterances of Professor Whitney’s we have an outbreak of philological mythology of a very serious nature, and this many years after I had uttered my warning that “to speak of language as a thing by itself, as living a life of its own, as growing to maturity, producing offspring, and dying away, is sheer mythology” (I. p. 51).
REPETITIONS AND VARIATIONS.
It is, no doubt, quite natural that in reading Professor Whitney’s lectures I should have been struck more forcibly than others by coincidences, which have reference not only to general arguments, but even to modes of expression and illustrations. I had pointed out some of these verbal or slightly disguised coincidences in my first article, but I could add many more. As we open the book, it begins by stating that the Science of Language is a modern science, that its growth was analogous to that of other sciences, that from a mere collection of facts it advanced to classification, and from thence to inductive reasoning on language. We are told that ancient nations considered the languages of their neighbors as merely barbarous, that Christianity changed that view, that a study of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew widened the horizon of scholars, and that at present no dialect, however rude, is without importance to the students of the Science of Language. Next comes the importance of the discovery of Sanskrit, and a challenge for a place among the recognized sciences in favor of our new science.
Now I ask any one who may have read my Lectures, whether it was not very natural that I should be struck with a certain similarity between my old course of lectures on the Science of Language, and the lectures delivered soon after on the Science of Language at Washington? But I was not blind to the differences, and I never wished to claim as my own what was original in the American book.
For instance, when the American Professor says that one of the most important problems is to find out “How we learn English,” I said at once, “That’s his ane;” and when after leading us from mother to grandmother, and great-grandmother, he ends with Adam, and says:--
“It is only the first man before whom every beast of the field and every fowl of the air must present itself, to see what he will call it; and whatever he calls any living creature, that is the name thereof, not to himself alone, but to his family and descendants, who are content to style each as their father had done before them.”
I said again, “That’s his ane.”
When afterwards we read about the large and small number of words used by different ranks and classes, and by different writers, when we come to the changes in English, the phonetic changes, to phonetics in general, to changes of meaning, etc., few, I think, will fail to perceive what I naturally perceived most strongly, “the leaves of memory rustling in the dark.” I perceived even such accidental reminiscences as:--
_Old Prussian leaving behind a brief catechism_ (p. 215), and,
_Old Prussian leaving behind an old catechism_ (p. 200);
_Frisian having a literature of its own_ (p. 211), and the
_Frisians having a literature of their own_ (p. 178),
though, of course, no other reader could possibly perceive such unimportant coincidences. These, no doubt, were mere accidents; but when we consider that there is perhaps no science which admits of more varied illustration than the Science of Language, then to find page after page the same instances which one had collected one’s self, certainly left the impression that the soil from which these American lectures sprang, was chiefly alluvial. Of course, as Professor Whitney has acknowledged his indebtedness to me for these illustrations, I have no complaint to make, I only protest against his ingratitude in representing such illustrations as mere by-work. For the purpose of teaching and placing a difficult subject into its proper light, illustrations, I think, are hardly less important than arguments. In order to show, for instance, in what sense Chinese may be called a _parler enfantin_, I had said:--
“If a child says _up_, that _up_ is to his mind, noun, verb, adjective, all in one. It means, I want to get up on my mother’s lap.”
What has Professor Whitney to say on the same subject?
“It is thus that, even at present, children begin to talk; a radical word or two means in their mouths a whole sentence; _up_ signifies ‘Take me up into your lap.’”
Enough of this, if not too much. Perhaps a thousand years hence, if any of our books survive so long, the question whether my lectures were written by myself, or by an American scholar settled in Germany, may exercise the critical acumen of the philologists of the future.
LECTURES PRINTED IN ENGLAND ALSO.
But I see there is one more charge of carelessness brought against me, and as I promised to answer every one, I must at least mention it.
“He has not even observed that my Lectures are printed and published in England, and not only in America.”
Why I ought to have observed this, I do not understand. Would it have served as an advertisement? Should I have said that the author resided in Canada to secure his book against the imminent danger of piracy in England? Or does Professor Whitney suspect here too, one of those sinister influences which he thought had interfered with the sale of his books in England? However, whatever sin of omission I have committed, I am quite willing to apologize, in order to proceed to graver matters.
THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE AS ONE OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES.
I stand charged next not only with having read Professor Whitney’s writings in too cursory a manner, but with actually having misrepresented his views on the question, so often discussed of late, whether the Science of Language should be reckoned one of the historical or one of the physical sciences. Let us look at the facts:--
I had tried to show in my very first Lecture in what sense the Science of Language might properly be called a physical, and in what sense it might be called an historical science. I had given full weight to the arguments on either side, because I felt that, owing to the twofold nature of man, much might be said with perfect truth for one or the other view. When I look back on what I wrote many years ago, after having carefully weighed all that has been written on the subject during the last fifteen years, I am glad to find that I can repeat every word I then wrote, without a single change or qualification.
“The process” I said (p. 49), “through which language is settled and unsettled, combines in one the two opposite elements of necessity and freewill. Though the individual seems to be the prime mover in producing new words and new grammatical forms, he is so only after his individuality has been merged in the common action of the family, tribe, or nation to which he belongs. He can do nothing by himself, and the first impulse to a new formation in language, _though given by an individual_, is mostly, if not always, given without premeditation, nay, unconsciously. The individual, as such, is powerless, and the results apparently produced by him, depend on laws beyond his control, and on the coöperation of all those who form together with him one class, one body, or one organic whole. But though it is easy to show that language cannot be changed or moulded by the taste, the fancy, or genius of man, it is nevertheless through the instrumentality of man alone that language can be changed.”
Now I ask any reader of Mr. Whitney’s Lectures, whether he has found in them anything in addition to what I had said on this subject, anything materially or even in form, differing from it. He speaks indeed of the actual additions made by individuals to language, but he treats them, as I did, as rare exceptions (p. 32), and I cannot help thinking that when he wrote (p. 52):--
“Languages are almost as little the work of man as is the form of his skull, the outlines of his face, the construction of his arm and hand,”
he was simply paraphrasing what I had said, though, as will be seen, far more cautiously than my American colleague, because my remarks referred to the laws of language only, not to language as a whole (p. 47):--
“We might think as well of changing the laws which control the circulation of our blood, or of adding an inch to our height, as of altering the laws of speech, and inventing new words, _according to our own pleasure_.”
I cannot hope to convince Mr. Whitney, for after I had tried to explain to him, why I considered the question whether the Science of Language is to be classed as a physical or an historical science, as chiefly a question of technical definition, he replies:--
“That I should probably consider it as more than a matter of terminology or technical definition whether our science is an historical science, _because men make language_, or a physical science, _because men do not make language_.”
Everybody will see that to attempt a serious argument on such conditions, is simply impossible.
If Professor Whitney can produce one single passage in all my writings where I said that _men do not make language_, I promise to write no more on language at all. I see now that it is Schleicher who, according to Professor Whitney, at least, held these crude views, who called languages natural organisms, which, without being determinable by the will of man, arose, grew, and developed themselves, in accordance with fixed laws, and then again grow old and die out; who ascribed to language that succession of phenomena which is wont to be termed life, and who accordingly classed _Glottik_, the Science of Language, as a natural science. These are the very opinions which, with the exception of the last, are combated in my writings.
I understood perfectly well what Mr. Whitney meant, when he, like nearly all scholars before him, claimed the Science of Language as an historical or a moral science. Man is an amphibious creature, and all the sciences concerning man, will be more or less amphibious sciences. I did not rush into print, because he took the opposite side to the one I had taken. On the contrary, having myself laid great stress on the fact that language was not to be treated as an artful creation of the individual, I was glad that the artistic element in language, such as it is, should have found so eloquent an advocate. But I confess, I was disappointed when I saw that, with the exception of a few purely sentimental protests, there was nothing in Mr. Whitney’s treatment of the subject that differed from my own. I proved this, if not to his satisfaction, at least to that of others, by giving _verbatim_ extracts from his Lectures, and what is the consequence? As he can no longer deny his own words, he uses the only defense which remained, he now accuses me of garbling quotations and thus misrepresenting him. This, of course, may be said of all quotations, short of reprinting a whole chapter. Yet to my mind the charge is so serious, that I feel in duty bound to repel it, not by words, but by facts.
This is the way in which Professor Whitney tries to escape from the net in which he had entangled himself. In his reply to my argument he says:--
“He chooses even more than once a sentence, in order to prove that I maintain an opinion, directly from an argument in support of the opposite opinion; for instance, in quoting my words, ‘that languages are almost as little the work of man as is the form of his skull,’ he overlooks the preceding parts of the same sentence: ‘_as opposed_ to the objects which he, the linguist, follows in his researches, and the results which he wishes to attain.’ The whole is a part of a section which is to prove that the absence of reflection and conscious intent, takes away from the facts of language the subjective character which would otherwise belong to them as products of the voluntary action.”
Very well. We now have what Professor Whitney says that he said. Let us now read what he really said (p. 51):--
“The linguistic student feels that he is not dealing with _the artful creations of individuals_. So far as concerns the purposes for which he examines them, and the results he would derive from them, they are almost as little the work of man as is the form of his skull.”
To render “so far as concerns the purposes” by “Gegenüber den Zwecken, die er bei seinen Untersuchungen verfolgt,” is a strong measure. But even thus, the facts remain as I, not as he, had stated them. There was no garbling on my part, but something worse than garbling on his, and all this for no purpose whatever, except for one which I do not like to suggest. As a linguistic student Professor Whitney feels what I had felt, ‘that we are not dealing with the artful creations of individuals.’ What Professor Whitney may feel besides about language, does not concern us, but it does concern us, and it does still more concern him, that he should not endeavor to impart to scientific language that character which, as he admits, it has not, viz., that of being the very artful creation of an individual.
I am quite willing to admit, and I have done so before on several occasions, that I may have laid too great stress on those characteristics of the Science of Language by which it belongs to the physical sciences. I have explained why I did so at the time. In fact these are not new questions. Because I had said, as Dr. Whewell had said before me,--
“That there are several large provinces of speculation which concern subjects belonging to man’s immaterial nature, and which are governed by the same laws as sciences altogether physical,”
it did not follow, as Professor Whitney seems to think, that I regarded language as something like a cow or a potato. I cannot defend myself against such puerilities.
In reviewing Schleicher’s essay, “On Darwinism tested by the Science of Language,” I had said:--
“It is not very creditable to the students of the Science of Language that there should have been among them so much wrangling as to whether that science is to be treated as one of the natural or as one of the historical sciences. They, if any one, ought to have seen that they were playing with language, or rather that language was playing with them, and that unless a proper definition is first given of what is meant by nature and by natural science, the pleading for and against the admission of the Science of Language to the circle of the natural sciences, may be carried on _ad infinitum_. It is, of course, open to anybody so to define the meaning of nature as to exclude human nature, and so to narrow the sphere of the natural sciences, as to leave no place for the Science of Language. It is also possible so to interpret the meaning of growth that it becomes inapplicable alike to the gradual formation of the earth’s crust, and to the slow accumulation of the _humus_ of language. Let the definition of these terms be plainly laid down, and the controversy, if it will not cease at once, will at all events become more fruitful. It will then turn on the legitimate definition of such terms as nature and mind, necessity and free-will, and it will have to be determined by philosophers rather than by scholars. Unless appearances deceive us, it is not the tendency of modern philosophy to isolate human nature, and to separate it by impassable barriers from nature at large, but rather to discover the bridges which lead from one bank to the other, and to lay bare the hidden foundations which, deep beneath the surface, connect the two opposite shores. It is, in fact, easy to see that the old mediæval discussions on necessity and free-will are turning up again in our own time, though slightly disguised, in the discussions on the proper place which man holds in the realm of nature; nay, that the same antinomies have been at the root of the controversy from the days when Greek philosophers maintained that language existed φύσει or θέσει, to our own days, when scholars range themselves in two hostile camps, claiming for the Science of Language a place either among the physical or the historical branches of knowledge.”
And again:--
“At all events we should never allow ourselves to forget that, if we speak of languages as natural productions, and of the Science of Language as one of the natural sciences, what we chiefly wish to say is, that languages are not produced by the free-will of individuals, and that, if they are works of art, they are works of what may be called a natural or unconscious art--an art in which the individual, though he is the agent, is not a free agent, but checked and governed from the very first breath of speech by the implied cooperation of those to whom his language is addressed, and without whose acceptance language, not being understood, would cease to be language.”
In the first lecture which I delivered at Strassburg, I dwelt on the same problem, and said:--
“There is, no doubt, in language a transition from the material to the spiritual; the raw material of language belongs to nature, but the form of language, that which really makes language, belongs to the spirit. Were it possible to trace human language _directly_ back to natural sounds, to interjections or imitations, the question whether the Science of Language belongs to the sphere of the natural or the historical sciences would at once be solved. But I doubt whether this crude view of the origin of language counts one single supporter in Germany. With one foot language stands, no doubt, in the realm of nature, but with the other in the realm of spirit. Some years ago, when I thought it necessary to bring out as clearly as possible the much neglected natural element in language, I tried to explain in what sense the Science of Language had a right to be called the last and the highest of the natural sciences. But I need hardly say that I did not lose sight, therefore, of the intellectual and historical character of language; and I may here express my conviction that the Science of Language will yet enable us to withstand the extreme theories of the evolutionists, and to draw a hard and fast line between spirit and matter, between man and brute.”
Professor Whitney will see, therefore, that all that can be said, and be justly said, against treating the Science of Language as a purely physical science was not so new to me as he expected; nay, his friends might possibly tell him that the _pro’s_ and _con’s_ of this question had been far more fully and fairly weighed before his own lectures were published than afterwards. A writer on this subject, if he wishes to win new laurels, must do more than furbish up old weapons, and fight against monsters which owe their existence to nothing but his own heated imagination.
IS GLOTTOLOGY A SCIENCE?
His knowledge of the German language ought to have kept Professor Whitney from an insinuation that I had claimed for Glottology a place among the physical sciences, because I feared that otherwise the title of “science” would be altogether denied to my researches. Now whatever artificial restriction may have been forced on the term “science” in English and American, the corresponding term in German, _Wissenschaft_, has, as yet, resisted all such violence, and it was as a German that I ventured to call _Sprachwissenschaft_ by its right name in English, and did not hesitate to speak even of a Science of Mythology, a Science of Religion, and a Science of Thought.
Finally, as to my wishing to smuggle in Glottology, and to secure for it at least some small corner in the circle of the Physical Sciences, I am afraid I cannot lay claim to such modesty. When at the meeting of the British Association at Oxford in 1847, Bunsen claimed the establishment of a separate section for Ethnology, he said:--
“If man is the apex of creation, it seems right on the one side, that a historical inquiry into his origin and development should never be allowed to sever itself from the general body of natural science, and, in particular, from physiology. But on the other hand, if man is the apex of creation, if he is the end to which all organic formations tend from the very beginning; if man is at once the mystery and the key of natural science; if that is the only view of natural science worthy of our age, then ethnologic philology, once established on principles as clear as the physiological are, is _the highest branch_ of that science for the advancement of which this Association is instituted. It is not an appendix to physiology or to anything else; but its object is, on the contrary, capable of becoming the end and goal of the labors and transactions of a scientific association.”
These words of my departed friend express better than anything which I can say, what I meant by claiming for the Science of Language and the Science of Man, a place among the physical sciences. By enlarging the definition of physical science so as to make it comprehend both Anthropology and Glottology, I thought I was claiming a wider scope and a higher dignity for physical science. The idea of calling language a vegetable, in order to smuggle it through the toll-bar of the physical sciences, certainly never entered my mind.
When one remembers how since 1847, man has become the central point of the discussions of the British Association year after year, Bunsen’s words sound almost prophetic, and it might have been guessed, even in America, that the friend and pupil of Bunsen was not likely to abate much in his claims for the recognition of the Science of Man, as the highest of all sciences.
Have I done? Yes, I believe I have answered all that required an answer in Mr. Darwin’s article, in Professor Whitney’s new attack in the “Contemporary Review,” and in his Lectures. But alas! there is still a page bristling with challenges.
Have I read not only his lectures, but all his controversial articles? No. Then I ought.
Have I quoted any passage from his writings to prove that the less he has thought on a subject, the louder he speaks No. Then I ought.
Have I produced any proof that he wonders that no one answers his strictures? No. Then I ought.
He actually appeals to my honor. What can I do? I cannot say that I have since read all his controversial articles, but I have read a considerable number, and I frankly confess that on many points they have raised my opinion of Professor Whitney’s acquirements. It is true, he is not an original worker, but he is a hard reader, and a very smart writer. The gall of bitterness that pervades all his writings, is certainly painful, but that concerns him far more than us.
LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT INSEPARABLE.
First then, I am asked to explain what I meant by saying that Professor Whitney speaks the loudest on subjects on which he has thought the least. I could best explain my meaning, if I were to collect all that Professor Whitney has written on the relation of language to thought. He certainly grows most boisterous in these latitudes, and yet he evidently has never, as yet, read up that subject, nay, he seems convinced that what has been written on it by such dreamers as Locke, Schelling, Hegel, Humboldt, Schopenhauer, Mansel, and others, deserves no consideration whatever. To maintain, what every one of these philosophers maintains, that a conception cannot be entertained without the support of a word, would be, according to the Yale Professor, the sheerest folly (p. 125),--“part of that superficial and unsound philosophy which confounds and identifies speech, thought, and reason” (p. 439).
I can quite enter into these feelings, for I can still remember the mental effort that is required in order to surrender our usual view of language, as a mere sign or instrument of thought, and to recognize in it the realization of all conceptual thought. A mere dictionary would, no doubt, seem the best answer to those who hold that thought and language are inseparable, and to throw a stout Webster at our head might be considered by many as good a refutation of such sheer folly, as a slap in the face was supposed to be of Berkeley’s idealism. However, Professor Whitney is an assiduous reader, and I do not at all despair that the time will come when he will see what these thinkers really mean by conceptual thought and by language, and I am quite prepared to hear him say that “he had known all that long ago, that any child knew it, that it was mere _bathos_, and that it was only due to a want of clear and definitive expression, or to a want of knowledge of English, excusable in a foreigner, if there had been so much darkening of counsel by words without thought.” I shall then be told that:--
“I consulted excellent authorities, and I worked these up with a commendable degree of industry, but that I am wanting in the inner light . . . and have never gained a comprehension of the movements that go on in my own mind, without which real insight into the relation of language to thought is impossible” (p. 268).
PROFESSOR PRANTL ON THE REFORM OF LOGIC.
In order to accelerate that event, may I advise Professor Whitney to read some articles lately published by Professor Prantl? Professor Prantl is _facile princeps_ among German logicians, he is the author of the “History of Logic,” and therefore perhaps even the American Professor will not consider him, as he does others who differ from him, as quite ignorant of the first rules of logic! At the meeting of the Royal Academy at Munich, March 6, 1875, Professor Prantl claimed permission, after having finished his “History of Logic,” to lay some thoughts for the “Reform of Logic,” before the members of that Academy, the very fundamental principle of that reform being
_The essential unity of thought and language._
“Realized thought, or what others might call the realization of the faculty of thought, exists therefore in language only, and _vice versâ_, every element of language contains thought. Every kind of priority of real thought before its expression in language, is to be denied, as well as any separate existence of thought” (p. 181).
“In one sense I should not deny that there is something in animals which in a very high degree of elevation is called language in man. In recognition of the distance produced by this high degree of elevation, one can agree with Max Müller, that language is the true frontier between brute and man.” (p. 168).
Or, if the Yale Professor wants a more popular treatment of the subject, he might read Dr. Loewe’s essay on “The Simultaneity of the Genesis of Speech and Thought,” also published this year. Dr. Loewe, too, avails himself gladly of the new results obtained by the Science of Language, and shows clearly that the origin of thought is the origin of language.
Every one who has to write on philosophical subjects in English, German, and French, or who has to superintend translations of what he has written into other languages, must know how difficult it is to guard always against being misunderstood, but a reader familiar with his subject at once makes allowance for this; he does not raise clouds of dust for nothing. Observe the difference between some criticisms passed on what I had said, by Dr. Loewe, and by others. I had said in my Lectures (ii. 82):--
“It is possible, without language, to see, to perceive, to stare at, to dream about things; but, without words, not even such simple _ideas_ as white or black can be for a moment realized.”
My German translator had rendered _ideas_ by _Vorstellungen_ while I used the word in the sense of concept, _Begriff_. Dr. Loewe in commenting on this passage says:--
“If M. M. maintains that _Vorstellungen_, such as white and black, cannot be realized for a moment without words, he is right, but only if by _Vorstellung_ he means _Begriff_. And this is clearly his meaning, because shortly before he had insisted on the fact that it was conceptual thought which is impossible without words. Were we to take his words literally, then it would be wrong, for sensuous images (Sinnesbilder), such as white and black, do not require words for their realization. One glance at the psychical life of animals would suffice to prove that sensuous representation (Vorstellen) can be carried out without language, for it is equally certain that animals have sensuous images as that they have no words.”
This is the language of a well-schooled philosopher, who cares for truth and not for controversy, _à tout prix_. Let us contrast it for a moment with the language of Professor Whitney (p. 249):--
“This may be taking a very high view of language; it certainly is taking a very low view of reason. If only that part of man’s superior endowments which finds its manifestation in language is to receive the name of reason, what shall we style the rest? We had thought that the love and intelligence, the soul, that looks out of a child’s eyes upon us to reward our care long before it begins to prattle, were also marks of reason,” etc.
This is a pretty domestic idyl, but the marvelous confusion between conceptual thought and the inarticulate signs of the affections, will, I fear, remind logicians of infantine prattle with no mark of reason about it, rather than of scientific argument.
It is quite clear, therefore, from this single specimen, that it would be impossible to argue with Professor Whitney on this subject. He returns to it again and again, his language grows stronger and stronger every time, yet all the time he speaks like a man whom nothing shall convince that the earth does move. He does not even know that he might have quoted very great authorities on his side of the question, only that they, knowing the bearings of the whole problem, speak of their antagonists with the respect due say by Nyâya to a Sânkhya philosopher, not with the contempt which a Brahman feels for a Mleccha.
GRAMMATICAL BLUNDERS.
But let us take a subject where, at all events, it is possible to argue with the Professor--I mean Sanskrit Grammar--and we shall see again that he is most apodictic when he is least informed. He has criticised the first volume of my translation of the Rig-Veda. He dislikes it very much, and gives me very excellent advice as to what I ought to have done and what I ought not. He thinks I ought to have thought of the large public who want to know something of the Veda, and not of mere scholars. He thinks that the hymns addressed to the Dawn would have pleased the young ladies better than the hymns to the Stormgods, and he broadly hints that all the _pièces justificatives_ which I give in my commentary are _de trop_. A translation, such as Langlois’, would, no doubt, have pleased him best. I do not object to his views, and I hope that he or his friends may some day give us a translation of the Rig-Veda, carried out in that spirit. I shall devote the remaining years of my life to carrying on what I ventured to call and still call the first _traduction raisonnée_ of the Veda, on those principles which, after mature reflection, I adopted in the first volume, and which I still consider the only principles in accordance with the requirements of sound scholarship. The very reason why I chose the hymns to the Maruts was because I thought it was high time to put an end to the mere trifling with Vedic translation. They are, no doubt, the most difficult, the most rugged, and, it may be, the least attractive hymns, but they are on that very account an excellent introduction to a scholarlike study of the Veda. Mere guessing and skipping will not avail us here. There is no royal road to the discovery of the meaning of difficult words in the Veda. We must trace words of doubtful meaning through every passage where they occur, and we must give an account of their meaning by translating every passage that can be translated, marking the rest as, for the present, untranslatable. Boehtlingk and Roth’s excellent Dictionary is the first step in that direction, and a most important step. But in it the passages have only undergone their first sifting and classifying; they are not translated, nor are they given with perfect completeness. Now if one single passage is left out of consideration in establishing the meaning of a word, the whole work has to be done again. It is only by adopting my own tedious, it may be, but exhaustive method that a scholar may feel that whatever work he has done, it is done once for all.
On such questions, however, it is easy to write a great deal in general terms; though it is difficult to say anything on which all competent scholars are not by this time fully agreed. It is not for me to gainsay my American critic that my renderings into English, being those of a foreigner, are tame and spiritless, but I doubt, whether in a new edition I shall change my translation, “the lights in heaven shine forth,” for what the American Professor suggests: “a sheen shines out in the sky,” or “gleams glimmer in the sky.”
All this, however, anybody might have written after dinner. But once at least Professor Whitney, Professor of Sanskrit in Yale, attempts to come to close quarters, and ventures on a remark on Sanskrit grammar. It is the only passage in all his writings, as far as I remember, where, instead of indulging in mere sheet lightning, he comes down upon me with a crashing thunderbolt, and points out a real grammatical blunder. He says it is--
“An extremely violent and improbable grammatical process to render +pari tasthushas+, as if the reading were +paritasthivâṃsas+. The participial form +tasthushas+ has no right to be anything but an accusative plural, or a genitive or ablative singular; let us have the authority for making a nominative plural of it, and treating +pari+ as its prefix, and better authority than the mere dictum of a Hindu grammarian.”
Those who are acquainted with Vedic studies know that Professor Benfey has been for years preparing a grammar of the Vedic dialect, and, as there is plenty of work for all workers, I purposely left the grammatical questions to him, confining myself in my commentary to the most necessary grammatical remarks, and giving my chief attention to the meaning of words and the poetical conceptions of the ancient poets. If the use of the accusatival form +tasthushas+, with the sense of a nominative, had been confined to the Veda, or had never been remarked on before, I ought, no doubt, to have called attention to it. But similar anomalous forms occur in Epic literature also, and more than that, attention had but lately been called to them by a very eminent Dutch scholar, Dr. Kern, who, in his translation of the Bṛhat-Saṃhitâ, remarks that the ungrammatical nom. plur. +vidushas+ is by no means rare in the Mahâbhârata and kindred works. If Professor Whitney had only read as far as the eleventh hymn in the first book of the Rig-Veda, he would have met there in +abibhyushas+ an undoubted nom. plur. in +ushas+:--
tvấm devấḥ ábibhyushaḥ tujyámânâsaḥ âvishuḥ,
The gods, stirred up, came to thee, not fearing.
Now, I ask, was I so far wrong when I said that Professor Whitney speaks loudest when he knows least, and that in charging me, for once at least, with a tangible blunder, he only betrayed his ignorance of Sanskrit grammar? In former times a scholar, after such a misfortune, would have taken a vow of silence or gone into a monastery. What will Professor Whitney do? He will take a vow of speech, and rush into a North American Review.
HARD AND SOFT.
There are other subjects to which Professor Whitney has of late paid much more attention than to Sanskrit Grammar, and we shall find that on them he argues in a much gentler tone.
It is well known that Professor Whitney held curious views about the relation of vowels to consonants, and I therefore was not surprised to hear from him that “my view of the essential difference between vowels and consonants will not bear examination.” He mixes up what I call the substance (breath and voice) with the form (squeezes and checks), and forgets that _in rerum naturâ_ there exist no consonants except as modifying the column of voice and breath, or as what Hindu grammarians call +vyanjana+, _i.e._, determinants; and no vowels except as modified by consonants. In order to support the second part of this statement, viz., that it is impossible to pronounce an initial vowel without a slight, and to many hardly perceptible, initial noise, the _coup de la glotte_, I had appealed to musicians who know how difficult it is, in playing on the flute or on the violin, to weaken or to avoid certain noises (_Ansatz_) arising from the first impulses imparted to the air, before it can produce really musical sensations. Professor Whitney, in quoting this paragraph, leaves out the sentence where I say that I want to explain the difficulty of pronouncing initial vowels without some _spiritus lenis_, and charges me with comparing all consonants with the unmusical noises of musical instruments. This was in 1866, whereas in 1854 I had said: “If we regard the human voice as a continuous stream of air, emitted as breath from the lungs and changed by the vibration of the _chordæ vocales_ into vocal sound, as it leaves the larynx, this stream itself, as modified by certain positions of the mouth, would represent the vowels. In the consonants, on the contrary, we should have to recognize a number of stops opposing for a moment the free passage of this vocal air.” I ask any scholar or lawyer, what is one to do against such misrepresentations? How is one to qualify them, when to call them unintentional would be nearly as offensive as to call them intentional?
The greatest offense, however, which I have committed in his eyes is that I revived the old names of _hard_ and _soft_, instead of _surd_ and _sonant_. Now I thought that one could only revive what is dead, but I believe there is not a single scholar alive who does not use always or occasionally the terms _hard_ and _soft_. Even Professor Whitney can only call these technical terms obsolescent; but he thinks my influence is so omnipotent that, if I had struck a stroke against these obsolescent terms, they would have been well nigh or quite finished. I cannot accept that compliment. I have tried my strokes against much more objectionable things than _hard_ and _soft_, and they have not yet vanished. I know of no living philologist who does not use the old terms _hard_ and _soft_, though everybody knows that they are imperfect. I see that Professor Pott[2] in one passage where he uses _sonant_ thinks it necessary to explain it by _soft_. Why, then, am I singled out as the great criminal? I do not object to the use of _surd_ or _sonant_. I have used these terms from the very beginning of my literary career, and as Professor Whitney evidently doubts my word, I may refer him to my _Proposals_, submitted to the Alphabetic Conferences in 1854. he will find that as early as that date, I already used _sonant_, though, like Pott, I explained this new term by the more familiar _soft_. If he will appeal to Professor Lepsius, he will hear how, even at that time, I had translated for him the chapters of the Prâtiśâkhyas, which explain the true structure of a physiological alphabet, and ascribe the distinction between k and g to the absence and presence of voice. I purposely avoided these new terms, because I doubted, and I still doubt, whether we should gain much by their adoption. I do not exactly share the misgivings that a _surd mute_ might be mistaken for a _deaf and dumb_ letter, but I think the name is awkward. _Voiced_ and _voiceless_ would seem much better renderings of the excellent Sanskrit terms +ghoshavat+ and +aghosha+, in order to indicate that it is the presence and absence of the voice which causes their difference. Frequent changes in technical terms are much to be deprecated,[3] particularly if the new terms are themselves imperfect.
Every scholar knows by this time what is meant by _hard_ and _soft_, viz., _voiceless_ and _voiced_. The names _hard_ and _soft_, though not perfect, have, like most imperfect names, some kind of excuse, as I tried to show by Czermak’s experiments.[4] But while a good deal may be said for _soft_ and _hard_, what excuse can be pleaded for such a term as _media_, meaning originally a letter between the _Psila_ and the _Dasea_? Yet, would it be believed that this very term is used by Professor Whitney on the page following immediately after his puritanical sermon against my backslidings!
This gentle sermon, however, which Professor Whitney preaches at me, as if I were the Pope of Comparative Philologists, is nothing compared with what follows later. When he saw that the difference between _voiced_ and _voiceless_ letters was not so novel to me as he had imagined, that it was known to me even before I published the Prâtisâkhya,--nay, when I had told him that, to quote the words of Professor Brücke, the founder of scientific phonetics,--
“The medias had been classed as _sonant_ in all the systems elaborated by the students of language who have studied comparative phonology,”
he does not hesitate to write as follows:--
“Professor Müller, like some other students of philology (who except Professor Whitney himself?) finds himself unable longer to resist the force of the arguments against _hard_ and _soft_, and is convinced that _surd_ and _sonant_ are the proper terms to use; but, instead of frankly abandoning the one, and accepting the other in their place, he would fain make his hearers believe that he has always held and taught as he now wishes he had done. It is either a case of disingenuousness or of remarkable self-deception: there appears to be no third alternative.”
I call this a gentle reproof, as coming from Professor Whitney; but I must say at the same time that I seldom saw greater daring displayed, regardless of all consequences. The American captain sitting on the safety-valve to keep his vessel from blowing up, is nothing in comparison with our American Professor. I have shown that in 1854 the terms _surd_ and _sonant_ were no novelty to me. But as Professor Whitney had not yet joined our ranks at that time, he might very properly plead ignorance of a paper which I myself have declared antiquated by what I had written afterwards on the same subject. But will it be believed that in the very same lecture which he is criticising, there occurs the following passage (ii. p. 156):--
“What is it that changes k into g, t into d, p into b? B is called a media, a soft letter, a sonant, in opposition to P, which is called a tenuis, a hard letter, or a surd. But what is meant by these terms? A tenuis, we saw, was so called by the Greeks, in opposition to the aspirates, the Greek grammarians wishing to express that the aspirates had a rough or shaggy sound, whereas the tenues were bald, slight, or thin. This does not help us much. _Soft_ and _hard_ are terms which, no doubt, express an outward difference of b and p, but they do not explain the cause of that difference. _Surd_ and _sonant_ are apt to mislead; for if, according to the old system both p and b continue to be classed as mute, it is difficult to see how, taking words in their proper sense, a mute letter could be sonant. . . . . Both p and b are momentary negations of breath and voice; or, as the Hindu grammarians say, both are formed by complete contact. But b differs from p in so far as, in order to pronounce it, breath must have been changed by the glottis into voice, which voice, whether loud or whispered, partly precedes, partly follows the check.”
And again:--
“But although the hardness and softness are secondary qualities of _tenues mediæ_, of surd and sonant letters, the true physiological difference between p and b, t and d, k and g, is that in the former the glottis is wide open, in the latter narrowed, so as to produce either whispered or loud voice.”
In my introduction to the “Outline Dictionary for Missionaries,” published in 1867, I wrote:--
“Unfortunately, everybody is so familiar with his alphabet, that it takes some time to convince people that they know next to nothing about the true nature of their letters. Take even a scholar, and ask him what is T, and he may possibly say, a dental tenuis; ask him what is D, and he may reply, a dental media. But ask him what he really means by a tenuis or media, or what he considers the true difference between T and D, and he may probably say that T is hard and D is soft; or that T is sharp and D is flat; or, on the contrary, as some writers have actually maintained, that the sound of D requires a stronger impulse of the tongue than the sound of T: but we shall never get an answer that goes to the root of the matter, and lays hold of the mainspring and prime cause of all these secondary distinctions between T and D. If we consult Professor Helmholtz on the same subject, he tells us that ’the series of so-called mediæ, b, d, g, differs from that of the tenues, p, t, k, by this, that for the former the glottis is, at the time of consonantal opening, sufficiently narrowed to enable it to sound, or at least to produce the noise of the _vox clandestina_, or whisper, while it is wide open with tenues, and therefore unable to sound. Mediæ are therefore accompanied by the tone of the voice, and this may even, where they begin a syllable, set in a moment before, and where they end a syllable, continue a moment after the opening of the mouth, because some air may be driven into the closed cavity of the mouth, and support the sound of the vocal chords of the larynx. Because of the narrowed glottis, the rush of the air is more moderate, the noise of the air less sharp than with the tenuis, so that a great mass of air may rush at once from the chest.”
“This to many may seem strange and hardly intelligible. But if they find that, several centuries before our era, the Indian grammarians gave exactly the same definition of the difference between p, t, k, and b, d, g, such a coincidence may possibly startle them, and lead them to inquire for themselves into the working of that wonderful instrument by which we produce the various sounds of our alphabet.”
If Professor Whitney asserts--
“That I _repeatedly_ will not allow that the sonant letters _are_ intonated, but only that they _may be_ intonated,”
I have no answer but a direct negative. For me to say so, would be to run counter to all my own teaching, and if there is anywhere a passage that would admit of such a construction, Professor Whitney knows perfectly well that this could be due to nothing but an accidental want of precision in expressing myself. I know of no such passage.[5]
In order to leave no doubt as to the real distinction between k, t, p and g, d, b, I quoted, for the satisfaction of Sanskrit scholars, the technical terms by which native grammarians define so admirably the process of their formation, the +vâhyaprayatna+, viz., +vivâraśvâsâghoshâḥ+, and +saṃvâranâdaghoshâḥ+. Would it be believed that Professor Whitney accuses me of having invented these long Sanskrit terms, and to have appended them superfluously and pedantically, as he says, to each list of synonyms? “They are found in no Sanskrit grammarian,” he says. Here again I have no answer but a direct negative. They are found in the native commentary on Pâṇini’s Grammar, in Boehtlingk’s edition, p. 4, and fully explained in the Mahâbhâshya.
If one has again and again to answer the assertions of a critic by direct negatives, is it to be wondered at that one rather shrinks from such encounters? I have for the last twenty years discussed these phonetic problems with the most competent authorities. Not trusting to my own knowledge of physiology and acoustics, I submitted everything that I had written on the alphabet, before it was published, to the approval of such men as Helmholtz, Alexander Ellis, Professor Rolleston, and I hold their _vu et approuvé_. I had no desire, therefore, to discuss these questions anew with Professor Whitney, or to try to remove the erroneous views which, till lately, he entertained on the structure of a physiological alphabet. I believe Professor Whitney has still much to learn on this subject, and as I never ask anybody to read what I myself have written, still less to read it a second time, might I suggest to him to read at all events the writings of Brücke, Helmholtz, Czermak, to say nothing of Wheatstone, Ellis, and Bell, before he again descends into this arena? If he had ever made an attempt to master that one short quotation from Brücke, which I gave on p. 159, or even that shorter one from Czermak, which I gave on p. 143:--
“Die Reibungslaute zerfallen genau so wie die Verschlusslaute in _weiche_ oder _tönende_, bei denen das Stimmritzengeräusch oder der laute Stimmton mitlautet, und in _harte_ oder _tonlose_, bei denen der Kehlkopf absolut still ist,”
the theory which I followed in the classification both of the Checks and the Breathings would not have sounded so unintelligible to him as he says it did; he would have received some rays of that inner light on phonetics which he misses in my Lectures, and would have seen that besides the disingenuousness or the self-deception which he imputes to me, in order to escape from the perplexity in which he found himself, there was after all a third alternative, though he denies it, viz., his being unwilling to confess his own ὀψιμαθία.
FIR, OAK, BEECH.
I now proceed to the next charge. I am told that I am in honor bound to produce a passage where Professor Whitney expressed his dissatisfaction at not being answered, or, as I had ventured to express it, considering the general style of his criticism, when he is angry that those whom he abuses, do not abuse him in turn. He is evidently conscious that there is some slight foundation for what I had said, for he says that if Steinthal thought he was angry, because “he (Mr. William Dwight Whitney) and his school” had not been refuted, instead of philosophers of the last century, he was mistaken. Yet what can be the meaning of this sentence, that “Professor Steinthal ought to have confronted _the living and aggressive_ views of others,” _i.e._, of Mr. William Dwight Whitney and his school? (p. 365.)
However, I shall not appeal to that; I shall take a case which, in this tedious process of incrimination and recrimination, may perhaps revive for a moment the flagging interest of my readers.
I had in the second volume of my Lectures called attention to a curious parallelism in the changes of meaning in certain names of trees and in the changes of vegetation recorded in the strata of the earth. My facts were these. _Foraha_ in Old High German, _Föhre_ in modern German, _furh_ in Anglo-Saxon, _fir_ in English, signify the _pinus silvestris_. In the Lombard Laws the same word _fereha_ means oak, and so does its corresponding word in Latin, _quercus_.
Secondly, φηγός in Greek means oak, the corresponding word in Latin, _fagus_, and in Gothic, _bôka_, means beech.
That is to say, in certain Aryan languages we find words meaning fir, assuming the meaning of oak; and words meaning oak, assuming the name of beech.
Now in the North of Europe geologists find that a vegetation of fir exists at the lowest depth of peat deposits; that this was succeeded by a vegetation of oak, and this by a vegetation of beech. Even in the lowest stratum a stone implement was found under a fir, showing the presence of human beings.
Putting these two sets of facts together, I said: Is it possible to explain the change of meaning in one word which meant fir and came to mean oak, and in another which meant oak and came to mean beech, by the change of vegetation which actually took place in early ages? I said it was an hypothesis, and an hypothesis only. I pointed out myself all that seemed doubtful in it, but I thought that the changes of meaning and the parallel changes of vegetation required an explanation, and until a better one could be given, I ventured to suggest that such changes of meaning were as the shadows cast on language by real, though prehistoric, events.
I asked for an impartial examination of the facts I had collected, and of the theory I had based on them. What do I receive from Professor Whitney? I must quote his _ipsissima verba_, to show the spirit that pervades his arguments:--
“It will not be difficult,” he says, “to gratify our author by refuting his hypothesis. Not the very slightest shade of plausibility, that we can discover, belongs to it. Besides the serious minor objections to which it is liable, it involves at least three impossible suppositions, either one of which ought to be enough to insure its rejection.
“In the first place it assumes that the indications afforded by the peat-bogs of Denmark are conclusive as regards the condition of Europe--of all that part of it, at least, which is occupied by the Germanic and Italic races; that, throughout this whole region, firs, oaks, and beeches have supplanted and succeeded each other, notwithstanding that we find all of them, or two of them, still growing peaceably together in many countries.”
Here Professor Whitney is, as usual, ploughing with my heifer. I said:--
“I must leave it to the geologist and botanist to determine whether the changes of vegetation as described above, took place in the same rotation over the whole of Europe, or in the North only,”
I had consulted several of my own geological friends, and they all told me that there was, as yet, no evidence in Central Europe and Italy of a succession of vegetation different from that in the North, and that, in the present state of geological science, they could say no more. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I said, Let us wait and see; Professor Whitney says, Don’t wait.
His second objection is his own, but hardly worthy of him.
“The hypothesis,” he says, “assumes that the Germanic and Italic races, while they knew and named the fir-tree only, yet kept by them all the time, laid up in a napkin, the original term for oak, ready to be turned into an appellation for beech, when the oaks went out of fashion.”
This is not so. The Aryan nations formed many new words, when the necessity for them arose. There, was no difficulty in framing ever so many names for the oak, and there can be little doubt that the name φηγός was derived from φάγω, the oak tree being called φηγός, because it supplied food or mast for the cattle. If there remained some consciousness of this meaning among the Greeks, and the Italians, and Germans, then the transference of the name from the oak to the beech would become still more easily intelligible, because both the beech-nuts and the acorns supplied the ordinary mast for cattle.
Professor Whitney probably had misgivings that these two objections were not likely to carry much weight, so he adds a third.
“The hypothesis,” he says, “implies a method of transfer of names from one object to another which is totally inadmissible; this, namely--that, as the forest of firs gave way to that of oaks, the meaning of fir in the word _quercus_ gave way to that of oak: and in like manner in the other case. Now if the Latins had gone to sleep some fine night under the shade of their majestic oaks, and had waked in the morning to find themselves _patulæ sub tegmine fagi_, they might naturally enough have been led, in their bewilderment, to give the old name to the new tree. But who does not see that, in the slow and gradual process by which, under the influence of a change of climatic conditions, one species of tree should come to prevail over another, the supplanter would not inherit the title of the supplanted, but would acquire one of its own, the two subsisting together during the period of the struggle, and that of the supplanted going out of use and memory as the species it designated disappeared?”
This objection was of course so obvious that I had thought it my duty to give a number of instances where old words have been transferred, not _per saltum_, but slowly and gradually, to new objects, such as _musket_ originally a dappled sparrow-hawk, afterwards a gun. Other instances might have been added, such as θάπτω, the Sanskrit _dah_, the latter meaning to burn, the former to bury. But the best illustrations are unintentionally offered by Professor Whitney himself. On p. 303 he alludes to the fact that the names _robin_ and _blackbird_ have been applied in America, for the sake of convenience, and under the government of old associations, to birds essentially unlike, or only superficially like, those to which they belong in the mother country. Of course, every Englishman who settled in America knew that the bird he called _robin_ was not the old Robin Redbreast he knew in England. Yet the two names co-existed for a time in literature, nay, they may still be said to co-exist in their twofold application, though, from a strictly American point of view, the supplanting American bird has inherited the title of the supplanted Cock-Robin of England.
Now, I ask, was there anything in these three cheap objections that required an answer? Two of them I had myself fully considered, the third was so flimsy that I thought no one would have dwelt on it. Anyhow, I felt convinced that every reader was competent to judge between Professor Whitney and myself, and it certainly never entered my mind that I was in honor bound, either to strike out my chapter on the Words for _Fir_, _Oak_, and _Beech_, or to fight.
Was I then so far wrong when I said that Professor Whitney cannot understand how anybody could leave what he is pleased to call his arguments, unheeded? Does he not express his surprise that in every new edition I adhere to my views on _Fir_, _Oak_, and _Beech_, though he himself had told me that I was wrong, and when he calls my expressed desire for real criticism a mere “rhetorical flourish,” is this, according to the opinion of American gentlemen, or is it not, abuse?
EPITHETA ORNANTIA.
Professor Whitney’s ideas of what is real criticism, and what is mere banter, personal abuse, or rudeness are indeed strange. He does not seem to be aware that his name has become a by-word, at least in Europe, and he defends himself against the charge of abusiveness with so much ardor that one sometimes feels doubtful whether it is all the mere rhetoric of a bad conscience, or a case of the most extraordinary self-deception. He declares in so many words that he was never personal (_Ich bestreite durchaus, dass was ich schrieb, im geringsten persönlich war_), and he immediately goes on to say that “Steinthal burst a two from anger and rancor, and his answer was a mere outpouring of abuse against his personality.”
Now I am the last person or personality in the world to approve of the tone of Steinthal’s answer, and if Professor Whitney asks why I had quoted it several times in public, it was because I thought it ought to be a warning to others. I think that all who are interested in maintaining certain civilized usages even in the midst of war, ought to protest against such a return to primitive savagery, and I am glad to find that my friend, Mr. Matthew Arnold, one of the highest authorities on the rules of literary warfare, entertains the same opinion, and has quoted what I had quoted from Professor Steinthal’s pamphlet, together with other specimens of theological rancor, as extreme cases of bad taste.
I frankly admit, however, that, when I said that Steinthal had defended himself with the same weapons with which his American antagonist attacked him, I said too much. Professor Whitney does not proceed to such extremities as Professor Steinthal. But giving him full credit so far, I still cannot help thinking that it was a fight with poisoned arrows on one side, with clubs on the other. As Professor Whitney calls for proofs, here they are:--
Page 332. Why does he call Professor Steinthal, _Hajjim Steinthal_? Is that personal or not?
Page 335. “Professor Steinthal startles and rebuffs a commonsense inquirer with a reply from a wholly different and unexpected point of view; as when you ask a physician, ‘Well, Doctor, how does your patient promise this morning?’ and he answers, with a wise look and an oracular shake of the head, ‘It is not given to humanity to look into futurity.’ The effect is not destitute of the element of _bathos_.” Is that personal?
Page 337. Steinthal’s mode of arguing is “more easy and convenient than fair and ingenuous.” Is that personal?
Page 338. “A mere verbal quibble.”
Page 346. “The eminent psychologist may show himself a mere blunderer.”
Page 356. “To our unpsychological apprehension, there is something monstrous in the very suggestion that a word is an act of the mind.”
Page 357. “Prodigious . . . . Chaotic nebulosity . . . . We should not have supposed any man, at this age of the world, capable of penning the sentences we have quoted.”
Page 359. “We are heartily tired of these comparisons that go limping along on one foot, or even on hardly the decent stump of a foot.”
Page 363. “Can there be more utter mockery than this? We ask for bread, and a stone is thrown us.”
Page 365. “He does not take the slightest notice of the _living_ and _aggressive_ views of others.”
Page 366. “All this, again, is in our opinion very verbiage, mere turbid talk.”
Page. 367. “The statement is either a truism or falsity.”
Page 372. “We must pronounce Professor Steinthal’s attempt . . . . a complete failure, a mere continuation of the same delusive reasonings by which he originally arrived at it.”
Page 374. “We have found in his book nothing but mistaken facts and erroneous deductions.”
If that is the language in which Professor Whitney speaks of one whom he calls--
“An eminent master in linguistic science, from whom he has derived great instruction and enlightenment,” and “whose books he has constantly had upon his table,”
what can other poor mortals like myself expect? It is true he has avoided actionable expressions, while Professor Steinthal has not, at least, according to German and English law. But suppose that hereafter, when certain small animals have crossed what he calls “the impervious distance,” and acquired the power of language, they were to say, “We have only stung you, and you have killed us,” would they obtain much commiseration?
I had collected a number of _epitheta ornantia_ which I had gathered at random from Mr. Whitney’s writings, such as _worthless_, _futile_, _absurd_, _ridiculous_, _superficial_, _unsound_, _high-flown_, _pretentious_, _disingenuous_, _false_, and I claimed the honor of every one of them having been presented to me as well as to other scholars by our American assailant. Here, for the first time, Professor Whitney seems staggered at his own vocabulary. However, he is never at a loss how to escape. “As the epithets are translated into German,” he says, “he is quite unable to find the passages to which I may refer.” This is feeble. However, without taxing his memory further, he says that he feels certain it must be a mistake, because he never could have used such language. He never in his life said anything personal, but criticised opinions only. This is “the language of simple-minded consciousness of rectitude.”
What can I do? Professor Whitney ought to know his own writings better than I do, and nothing remains to me, in order to repel the gravest of all accusations, but to publish in the smallest type the following Spicilegium. I must add that in order to do this work once for all, I have complied with Professor Whitney’s request, and read nearly all the articles with which he has honored every one of my writings, and in doing so I believe I have at last found the key to much that seemed to me before almost inexplicable.
Formerly I had simply acquiesced in the statement made by one of his best friends, Professor Weber,[6] who, some ten years ago, when reproving Professor Whitney for the acrimony of his language, said:--
“I believe I am not wrong when I trace it to two causes: first, Professor Whitney found himself forced to acknowledge as erroneous and to withdraw several of his former views and assertions, which he had defended with great assurance, and this disturbed his equanimity; secondly, and still more, there were the miserable political circumstances of North America, which could not but exercise an irritating and galling effect on so warm a patriot as Whitney, an effect which was transferred unconsciously to his literary criticisms and polemics, whenever he felt inclined to it.”
These two scholars were then discussing the question, whether the Nakshatras or the Lunar Zodiac of the Hindus, should be considered as the natural discovery of the Brahmans, or as derived by them, one knows not how, from China, from Chaldæa, or from some other unknown country. They both made great efforts, Professor Weber chiefly in Sanskrit, Professor Whitney in astronomy, in order to substantiate their respective opinions. Professor Weber showed that Professor Whitney was not very strong in Sanskrit, Professor Whitney retaliated by showing that Professor Weber, as a philologue, had attempted to prove that the precession of the equinox was from West to East, and not from East to West. All this, at the time, was amusing to bystanders, but by this time both combatants have probably found out, that the hypothesis of a foreign origin of the Nakshatras, whether Chinese or Babylonian, was uncalled for, or, at all events, is as uncertain to-day as it was ten years ago. I myself, not being an astronomer, had been content to place the evidence from Sanskrit sources before a friend of mine, an excellent astronomer at Oxford, and after discussing the question again and again with him, had arrived at the conviction that there was no excuse for so violent a theory as postulating a foreign origin of the simple triseinadic division of the Nakshatra Zodiac. I quite admit that my practical knowledge of astronomy is very small,[7] but I do believe that my astronomical ignorance was an advantage rather than a disadvantage to me in rightly understanding the first glimmerings of astronomical ideas among the Hindus. Be that as it may, I believe that at the present moment few scholars of repute doubt the native origin of the Nakshatras, and hardly one admits an early influence of Babylonian or Chinese science on India. I stated my case in the preface to the fourth volume of my edition of the Rig-Veda, and if anybody wishes to see what can be done by misrepresentation, let him read what is written there, and what Professor Whitney made of it in his articles in the “Journal of the American Oriental Society.” His misunderstandings are so desperate, that he himself at times feels uneasy, and admits that a more charitable interpretation of what I wanted to say would be possible. When I saw this style of arguing, the utter absence of any regard for what was, or what might charitably be supposed to have been, my meaning, I made up my mind once for all, that that American gentleman should never have an answer from me, and in spite of strong temptation I kept my resolve till now. A man who could say of Lassen that his statements were “wholly and reprehensibly incorrect,” because he said that Colebrooke had shown that the Arabs received their lunar mansions from the Hindus, was not likely to show mercy to any other German professor.
I find, however, by reading one of his Essays, that there is a more special reason why, in his repeated onslaughts on me, both before and after the Rebellion, “he thinks he may dispense with the ordinary courtesies of literary warfare.” I may tell it in his own words:--
“Some one (I may add the name, now, it was the late Professor Goldstücker) falls fiercely upon the work of a company of collaborators; they unite in its defense; thereupon the aggressor reviles them as a mutual admiration society; and Müller repeats the accusation, giving it his own indorsement, and volunteering in addition that of another scholar.”
I might possibly represent the case in a different light, but I am willing to accept the _acte d’accusation_ as it comes from the hand of my accuser; nay more, I am quite ready to plead guilty to it. Only let me explain how I came to commit this great offense. What is here referred to must have happened more than ten years ago. Professor Goldstücker had criticised the Sanskrit Dictionary published by Professors Boehtlingk and Roth, and “the company of collaborators” had united in its defense, only, as Professor Whitney is authorized to assure us, “without any apparent or known concert.” Professor Goldstücker was an old friend of mine, to whom in the beginning of my literary career at Berlin and in Paris, I was indebted for much personal kindness. He helped me when no one else did, and many a day, and many a night too, we had worked together at the same table, he encouraging me to persevere when I was on the point of giving up the study of Sanskrit altogether. When Professor Goldstücker came to England, he undertook a new edition of Wilson’s “Sanskrit Dictionary,” and he very soon became entangled in a controversy with “the company of collaborators” of another Sanskrit dictionary, published at the expense of the Russian Academy. I do not defend him, far from it. He had a weakness very common among scholars;--he could not bear to see a work praised beyond its real merits, and he thought it was his duty to set everything right that seemed to him wrong. He was very angry with me, because I would not join in his condemnation of the St. Petersburg dictionary. I could not do that, because, without being blind to its defects, I considered it a most valuable performance, highly creditable to all its collaborators; nay, I felt bound to say so publicly in England, because it was in England that this excellent work had been unduly condemned. This embittered my relations with Professor Goldstücker, and when the attacks by the company of collaborators on him grew thicker and thicker, while I was treated by them with the greatest civility, he persuaded himself that I had taken part against him, that I had in fact become a sleeping partner in what was then called the “International Praise Insurance Society.” To show him once for all that this was not the case, and that I was perfectly independent of any company of collaborators, I wrote what I wrote at the time. Nor did I do so without having had placed before me several reviews, which certainly seemed to give to the old saying _laudari a viro laudato_ a novel meaning. Having done what I thought I was bound to do for an old friend, I was perfectly prepared to take the consequences of what might seem a rash act, and when I was twitted with having done so anonymously, I, of course, thought it my duty to reprint the article, at the first opportunity, with my name. Now let it be borne in mind that one of the chief culprits, nay, as appeared afterwards, the most eager mischief-maker, was Professor Whitney himself, and let us now hear what he has to say. As if he himself were entirely unconcerned in the matter, instead of having been the chief culprit, he speaks of “cool effrontery;” “magisterial assumption, towards a parcel of naughty boys caught in their naughtiness;” “most discreditable;” “the epithet outrageous is hardly too strong.” Here his breath fails him, and, fortunately for me, the climax ends. And this, we are asked to believe, is not loud and boisterous but gentle and calm: it is in fact “the language of simple-minded consciousness of rectitude!”
These gentle onslaughts were written and published by Professor Whitney ten years ago. I happen to know that a kind of _colportage_ was established to send his articles to gentlemen whom they would not otherwise have reached. I was told again and again, that I ought to put an end to these maneuvers, and yet, during all these years, I thought I could perfectly well afford to take no notice of them. But when after such proceedings Professor Whitney turns round, and challenges me before a public which is not acquainted with these matters, to produce any of the _epitheta ornantia_ I had mentioned as having been applied by him to me, to Renan, to Schleicher, to Oppert, to Bleek, nay, even to Bopp and Burnouf and Lassen, when with all “the simple-minded consciousness of rectitude” he declares, that he was never personal, then I ask, Could I remain silent any longer?
How hard Professor Whitney is driven in order to fix any real blame on me, may be seen from what follows. The article in which the obnoxious passage which, I was told, deprived me of any claim to the amenities of literary intercourse occurs, had been reprinted in the “Indische Studien,” before I reprinted it in the first volume of “Chips.” In reprinting it myself, I had rewritten parts of it, and had also made a few additions. In the “Indische Studien,” on the contrary, it had been reprinted in its original form, and had besides been disfigured by several inaccuracies or misprints. Referring to these, I had said that it had been, as usual, very incorrectly reprinted. Let us hear what an American pleader can make out of this:--
“In this he was too little mindful of the requirements of fair dealing; for he leaves any one who may take the trouble to turn to the ‘Indische Studien,’ and compare the version there given with that found among the ‘Chips,’ to infer that all the discordances he shall discover are attributable to Weber’s incorrectness, whereas they are in fact mainly alterations which Müller has made in his own reprint; and the real inaccuracies are perfectly trivial in character and few in number--such printer’s blunders as are rarely avoided by Germans who print English, or by English who print German. We should doubtless be doing Müller injustice if we maintained that he deliberately meant Weber to bear the odium of all the discrepancies which a comparer might find; but he is equally responsible for the result, if it is owing only to carelessness on his part.”
What will the intelligent gentlemen of the jury say to this? Because I complained of such blunders as altars being “construed,” instead of “constructed,” “enlightoned” instead of “enlightened,” “gratulate” instead of “congratulate,” and similar inaccuracies, occurring in an unauthorized reprint of my article, therefore I really wanted to throw the odium of what I had myself written in the original article, and what was, as far as the language was concerned, perfectly correct, on Professor Weber. Can forensic ingenuity go further? If America possesses many such powerful pleaders, we wonder how life can be secure.
Having thus ascertained whence _illæ lacrumæ_, I must now produce a small bottle at least of the tears themselves which Professor Whitney has shed over me, and over men far better than myself, all of which, he says, were never meant to be personal, and most of which have evidently been quite dried up in his memory.
I begin with Bopp. “Although his mode of working is wonderfully genial, his vision of great acuteness, and his instinct a generally trustworthy guide, he is liable to wander far from the safe track, and has done not a little labor over which a broad and heavy mantle of charity needs to be drawn” (I. 208).
M. Renan and myself have “committed the very serious error of inverting the mutual relation of dialectic variety and uniformity of speech, thus turning topsy-turvy the whole history of linguistic development. . . . . It may seem hardly worth while to spend any effort in refuting an opinion of which the falsity will have been made apparent by the exposition already given” (p. 177).
In another place (p. 284) M. Renan is told that his objection to the doctrine of a primitive Indo-European monosyllabism is noticed, not for any cogency which it possesses, but only on account of the respectability of M. Renan.
Lassen and Burnouf, who thought that the geographical reminiscences in the first chapter of the Vendidad had a historical foundation, are told that their “claim is baseless, and even preposterous” (p. 201). Yet what Professor Whitney’s knowledge of Zend must be, we may judge from what he says of Burnouf’s literary productions. “It is well known,” he says, “that the great French scholar produced _two or three bulky volumes_ upon the Avesta.” I know of _one_ bulky volume only, “Commentaire sur la Yaçna,” tome i., Paris, 1833, but that may be due to my lamentable ignorance.
“Professor Oppert simply exposes himself in the somewhat ridiculous attitude of one who knocks down, with gestures of awe and fright, a tremendous man of straw of his own erecting (I. 218). His erroneous assumptions will be received with most derisive incredulity (I. 221); the incoherence and aimlessness of his reasonings (I. 223); an ill-considered tirade, a tissue of misrepresentations of linguistic science (I. 237). He cannot impose upon us by his authority, nor attract us by his eloquence: his present essay is as heavy in style, as loose and vague in expression, unsound in argument, arrogant in tone” (I. 238). The motive imputed to Professor Oppert in writing his Essay is that “he is a Jew, and wanted to stand up for the Shemites.”
If Professor Oppert is put down as a Shemite, Dr. Bleek is sneered at as a German. “His work is written with much apparent profundity, one of a class, not quite unknown in Germany, in which a minimum of valuable truth is wrapped up in a maximum of sonating phraseology” (I. 292). Poor Germany catches it again on page 315. “Even, or especially in Germany,” we are told, “many an able and acute scholar seems minded to indemnify himself for dry and tedious grubbings among the roots and forms of Comparative Philology by the most airy ventures in the way of constructing Spanish castles of linguistic science.”
In his last work Professor Whitney takes credit for having at last rescued the Science of Language from the incongruities and absurdities of European scholars.
Now on page 119 Professor Whitney very properly reproves another scholar, Professor Goldstücker, for having laughed at the _German_ school of Vedic interpretation. “He emphasizes it,” he says, “dwells upon it, reiterates it three or four times in a paragraph, as if there lay in the words themselves some potent argument. Any uninformed person would say, we are confident, that he was making an unworthy appeal to English prejudice against foreign men and foreign ways.” Professor Whitney finishes up with charging Professor Goldstücker, who was himself a German--I beg my reader’s pardon, but I am only quoting from a North American Review--with “fouling his own nest.” Professor Whitney, I believe, studied in a German university. Did he never hear of a ’cute little bird, who does to the nest in which he was reared, what he says Professor Goldstücker did to his own?
Χαῖρέ μοι, ὠ Γώλδστυκρε, καὶ εἰν Ἀΐδαο δόμοισιν· Πάντα γὰρ ἤδη τοι τελέω, τὰ πάροιθεν ὑπέστην.
Haeckel is called a headlong Darwinian (I. 293), Schleicher is infected with Darwinism (I. 294), “he represents a false and hurtful tendency (I. 298), he is blind to the plainest truths, and employs a mode of reasoning in which there is neither logic nor common sense (I. 323). His essays are unsound, illogical, untrue; but there are still incautious sciolists by whom every error that has a great name attached to it is liable to be received as pure truth, and who are ever specially attracted by good hearty paradoxes” (I. 330).
I add a few more references to the _epitheta ornantia_ which I was charged with having invented. “Utter futility” (p. 36); “meaningless and futile” (p. 152); “headlong materialist” (p. 153); “better humble and true (Whitney) than high-flown, pretentious, and false” (not-Whitney, p. 434); “simply and solely nonsense” (I. 255); “darkening of counsel by words without knowledge” (I. 255); “rhetorical talk” (I. 723); “flourish of trumpets, lamentable (not to say) ridiculous failure” (I. 277).
What a contrast between the rattling discharges of these _mitrailleuses_ at the beginning of the war, and the whining and whimpering assurance now made by the American professor, that he never in his life said anything personal or offensive!
WHY I OUGHT NOT TO HAVE ANSWERED.
Having taken the trouble of collecting these spent balls from the various battlefields of the American general, I hope that even Professor Whitney will no longer charge me with having spoken without book. As long as he cited me before the tribunal of scholars only, I should have considered it an insult to them to suppose that they could not, if they liked, form their own judgment. For fifteen years have I kept my fire, till, like a Chinese juggler, Professor Whitney must have imagined he had nearly finished my outline on the wall with the knives so skillfully aimed to miss me. But when he dragged me before a tribunal where my name was hardly known, when he thought that by catching the _aura popularis_ of Darwinism, he could discredit me in the eyes of the leaders of that powerful army, when he actually got possession of the pen of the son, fondly trusting it would carry with it the weight of the father, then I thought I owed it to myself, and to the cause of truth and its progress, to meet his reckless charges by clear rebutting evidence. I did this in my “Answer to Mr. Darwin,” and as I did it, I did it thoroughly, leaving no single charge unanswered, however trifling. At the same time, while showing the unreasonableness of his denunciations, I could not help pointing out some serious errors into which Professor Whitney had fallen. Some thrusts can only be parried by _a-tempo_ thrusts.
Professor Whitney, like an experienced advocate, passes over in silence the most serious faults which I had pointed out in his “Lectures,” and after he has attempted--with what success, let others judge--to clear himself from a few, he turns round, and thinks it best once for all to deny my competency to judge him. And why?
“I do not consider Professor Müller capable of judging me justly,” he says. And why? “Because I have felt moved, on account of his extraordinary popularity and the exceptional importance attached to his utterances, to criticise him more frequently than anybody else.”
Is not this the height of forensic ingenuity? Because A has criticised B, therefore B cannot criticise A justly. In that case A has indeed nothing to do but to criticise B C D to Z, and then no one in the world can criticise him justly. I have watched many controversies, I have observed many stratagems and bold movements to cover a retreat, but nothing to equal this. Professor Pott was very hard on Professor Curtius, but he did not screen himself by denying to his adversary the competency to criticise him in turn. What would Newman have said, if Kingsley had tried to shut him up with such a remark, a remark really worthy of one literary combatant only, the famous Pastor Goeze, the critic of Lessing?
What would even Professor Whitney think, if I were to say that, because I have criticised his “Lectures,” he could not justly criticise my “Sanskrit Grammar?” He might not think it good taste to publish an advertisement to dissuade students in America from using my grammar; he might think it unworthy of himself and dishonorable to institute comparisons, the object of which would be too transparent in the eyes even of his best friends in Germany. Mr. Whitney has lived too long in Germany not to know the saying, _Man merkt die Absicht und man wird verstimmt_. But should I ever say that he was incompetent to criticise my “Sanskrit Grammar” justly? Certainly not. All that I might possibly venture to say is, that before Professor Whitney undertakes to criticise my own or any other Sanskrit grammar, he should look at § 84 of my grammar, and practice that very simple rule, that if Visarga is preceded by _a_, and followed by _a_, the Visarga is dropt, _a_ changed to _o_, and the initial vowel elided. If with this rule clearly impressed on his memory, he will look at his edition of the Atharva-Veda Prâtiśâkhya, I. 33, then perhaps, instead of charging Hindu grammarians in his usual style with “opinions obviously and grossly incorrect and hardly worth quoting,” he might discover that +eke spṛshṭam+ could only have been meant in the MSS. for +eke ’spṛshṭam+, and that the proper translation was not that vowels are formed _by contact_, but that they are formed _without contact_. Instead of saying that none of the other Prâtiśâkhyas favors this opinion, he would find the same statement in the Rig-Veda Prâtiśâkhya, Sûtra 719, page cclxi of my edition, and he might perhaps say to himself, that before criticising Sanskrit grammars, it would be useful to learn at least the phonetic rules. I had pointed out this slip before, in the second edition of my “Sanskrit Grammar;” but, as to judge from an article of his on the accent, Professor Whitney has not seen that second edition (1870), which contains the Appendix on the accent in Sanskrit, I beg leave to call his attention to it again.
WHY I OUGHT TO BE GRATEFUL.
I am glad to say that we now come to a more amusing part of this controversy. After I had been told that because I was attacked first, therefore I was not able to criticise Professor Whitney’s writings justly, I am next told that I ought to be very grateful for having been attacked, nay, I am told that, in my heart of hearts, I am really very grateful indeed. I must quote this passage in full:--
“During the last eight years I have repeatedly taken the opportunity accurately to examine and frankly to criticise the views of others and the arguments by which they were supported. I have done this more particularly against eminent and famous men whom the public has accustomed itself to regard as guides in matters referring to the Science of Language. What unknown and uncared for people say, is of no consequence whatever; but if Schleicher and Steinthal, Renan and Müller, teach what to me seems an error, and try to support it by proofs, then surely I am not only justified, but called upon to refute them, if I can. Among these students the last-named seems to be of different opinion. In his article, ‘My Reply to Mr. Darwin,’ published in the March number of the ‘Deutsche Rundschau,’ he thinks it necessary to read me a severe lecture on my presumption, although he also flatters me by the hint that my custom of criticising the most eminent men only is appreciated, and those whom I criticise feel honored by it.”
I confess when I read this, I wished I had really paid such a pretty compliment to my kind critic, but looking through my article from beginning to end, I find no hint anywhere that could bear so favorable an interpretation, unless it is where I speak of “the noble army of his martyrs,” and of the untranslated remark of Phocion, which he may have taken for a compliment. In saying that it was acknowledged to be an honor to be attacked by him, Professor Whitney was, no doubt, thinking of the words of Ovid, _Summa petunt dextra fulmina missa Jovis_, and I am not going in future to deny him the title of the Jovial and Olympian critic, nor should I suggest to him to read the line in Ovid immediately preceding the one quoted. Against one thing only I must protest. Though the last named, I am surely not, as he boldly asserts, the only one of the four _sommités_ struck by his Olympian thunderbolts, who have humbly declined too frequent a repetition of his celestial favors. Schleicher, no doubt, was safe, for alas, he is dead! But Steinthal surely has uttered rather Promethean protests against the Olympian,--
Οἶδ’ ὅτι τραχὺς καὶ παρ’ ἑαυτῷ τὸ δίκαιον ἔχων Ζεύς· ἀλλ’ ἔμπας μαλακογνώμων ἔσται ποθ’, ὅταν ταύτῃ ῥαισθῇ·
and as to M. Renan, does his silence mean more than--
Ἐμοὶ δ’ ἔλασσον Ζηνὸς ἢ μηδὲν μέλει
I confess, then, frankly that, in my heart of hearts, I am not grateful for these cruel kindnesses, and if he says that the other Serene Highnesses have been less ungrateful than I am, I fear this is again one of his over-confident assertions. My publishers in America may be grateful to him, for I am told that, owing to Professor Whitney’s articles, much more interest in my works has been excited in America than I could ever have expected. But I cannot help thinking that by the line of action he has followed, he has done infinite harm to the science which we both have at heart. In order to account somehow or other for his promiscuous onslaughts, he now tells Mr. Darwin and his friends that in the Science of Language all is chaos. That is not so, unless Mr. Whitney is here using chaos in a purely subjective sense. There are differences of opinion, as there are in every living and progressive science, but even those who differ most widely, perfectly understand and respect each other, because they know that, from the days of Plato and Aristotle, men who start from different points, arrive at different conclusions, particularly when the highest problems in every science are under consideration. I do not agree with Professor Steinthal, but I understand him; I do not agree with Dr. Bleek, but I respect him; I differ most of all from Schleicher, but I think that an hour or two of private conversation, if it were possible still, would have brought us much nearer together. At all events, in reading any of their books, I feel interested, I breathe a new atmosphere, I get new ideas, I feel animated and invigorated. I have now read nearly all that Professor Whitney has written on the Science of Language, and I have not found one single new fact, one single result of independent research, nay, not even one single new etymology, that I could have added to my Collectanea. If I am wrong, let it be proved. That language is an institution, that language is an instrument, that we learn our language from our mothers, as they learned it from their mothers and so on till we come to Adam and Eve, that language is meant for communication, all this surely had been argued out before, and with arguments, when necessary, as strong as any adduced by Professor Whitney.
Professor Whitney may not be aware of this, or have forgotten it; but a fertile writer like him ought at all events to have a good memory. In his reply, p. 262, he tells us, for instance, as one of his latest discoveries, that in studying language, we ought to begin with modern languages, and that when we come to more ancient periods, we should always infer similar causes from similar effects, and never admit new forces or new processes, except when those which we know prove totally inefficient. In my own Lectures I had laid it down as one of the fundamental principles of the Science of Language that “what is real in modern formations must be admitted as possible in ancient formations, and that what has been found true on a small scale may be true on a larger scale.” I had devoted considerable space to the elucidation of this principle, and what did Professor Whitney write at that time (1865)?
“The conclusion sounds almost like a bathos; we should have called these, not fundamental principles, but obvious considerations, which hardly required any illustration” (p. 243).
Here is another instance of failure of memory. He assures us:--
“That he would never venture to charge anybody with being influenced in his literary labors by personal vanity and a desire of notoriety, except perhaps after giving a long string of proofs--nay, not even then” (p. 274).
Yet it was he who said of (I. 131) the late Professor Goldstücker that--
“Mere denunciation of one’s fellows and worship of Hindu predecessors do not make one a Vedic scholar,”
and that, after he had himself admitted that “no one would be found to question his (Professor Goldstücker’s) immense learning, his minute accuracy, and the sincerity and intensity of his convictions.”
By misunderstanding and sometimes, unless I am greatly mistaken, willfully closing his eyes to the real views of other scholars, Professor Whitney has created for himself a rich material for the display of his forensic talents. Like the poor Hindu grammarian, we are first made to say the opposite of what we said, and are then brow-beaten as holding opinions “obviously and grossly incorrect and hardly worth quoting.” All this is clever, but is it right? Is it even wise?
Much of what I have here written sounds very harsh, I know; but what is one to do? I have that respect for language and for my friends, and, may I add, for myself, to avoid harsh and abusive words, as much as possible. I do not believe in the German saying, _Auf einen groben Klotz gehört ein grober Keil_. I have tried hard, throughout the whole of my literary career, and even in this “Defense,” not to use the weapons that have been used against me during so many years of almost uninterrupted attacks. Much is allowed, however, in self-defense that would be blamable in an unprovoked attack, and if I have used here and there the cool steel, I trust that clean wounds, inflicted by a sharp sword, will heal sooner than gashes made with rude stones and unpolished flints.
Professor Whitney might still, I feel convinced, do some very useful work, as the apostle of the Science of Language in America, if only, instead of dealing in general theories, he would apply himself to a critical study of scientific facts, and if he would not consider it his peculiar calling to attack the personal character of other scholars. If he must needs criticise, would it be quite impossible for him, even in his character of Censor, to believe that other scholars are as honest as himself, as independent, as outspoken, as devoted at all hazards to the cause of truth? Does he really believe in his haste that all men who differ from him, or who tell him that he has misapprehended their teaching, are humbugs, pharisees, or liars? Professor Steinthal was a great friend of his, does he imagine that his violent resentment was entirely unprovoked? I have had hundreds of reviews of my books, some written by men who knew more, some by men who knew less than myself. Both classes of reviews proved very useful, but, beyond correcting matters of fact, I never felt called upon to answer, or to enter into personal recriminations with any one of my reviewers. We should not forget that, after all, reviews are written by men, and that there are often very tangible reasons why the same book is fiercely praised and fiercely abused. No doubt, every writer who believes in the truth of his opinions, wishes to see them accepted as widely as possible; but reviews have never been the most powerful engines for the propaganda of truth, and no one who has once known what it is to feel one’s self face to face with Truth, would for one moment compare the applause of the many with the silent approval of the still small voice of conscience within. Why do we write? Chiefly, I believe, because we think we have discovered facts unknown to others, or arrived at opinions opposed to those hitherto held. Knowing the effort one has made one’s self in shaking off old opinions or accepting new facts, no student would expect that everybody else would at once follow his lead. Indeed, we wish to differ from certain authorities, we wish to be criticised by them; their opposition is far more important, far more useful, far more welcome to us, than their approval could ever be. It would be an impossible task were we to attempt to convert personally every writer who still differs from us. Besides, there is no wheat without bran, and nothing is more instructive than to watch how the millstones of public opinion slowly and noiselessly separate the one from the other. I have brought my harvest, such as it was, to the mill: I do not cry out when I see it ground. From my peers I have received the highest rewards which a scholar can receive, rewards far, far above my deserts; the public at large has treated me no worse than others; and, if I have made some enemies, all I can say is, I do not envy the man who in his passage through life has made none.
Even now, though I am sorry for what Professor Whitney has done, I am not angry with him. He has great opportunities in America, but also great temptations. There is no part of the civilized world where a scholar might do more useful work than in America, by the bold and patient exploration of languages but little known, and rapidly disappearing. Professor Whitney may still do for the philology of his country what Dr. Bleek has done for the languages of Africa at the sacrifice of a lifelong expatriation, alas! I have just time to add, at the sacrifice of his life.
But I admit that America has also its temptations. There are but few scholars there who could or would check Professor Whitney, even in his wildest moods of asseveration, and by his command of a number of American papers, he can easily secure to himself a temporary triumph. Yet, I believe, he would find a work, such as Bancroft’s “On the Native Races of the Pacific States of North America,” a far more useful contribution to our science, and a far more permanent monument of his life, than reviews and criticisms, however brilliant and popular.
It was because I thought Professor Whitney capable of rendering useful service to the Science of Language in America that I forbore so long, that I never for years noticed his intentional rudeness and arrogance, that I received him, when he called on me at Oxford, with perfect civility, that I assisted him when he wanted my help in procuring copies of MSS. at Oxford. I could well afford to forget what had happened, and I tried for many years to give him credit for honorable, though mistaken, motives in making himself the mouthpiece of what he calls the company of collaborators.
In fact, if he had arraigned me again and again before a tribunal of competent judges, I should gladly have left my peers to decide between me and my American traducer. But when he cleverly changed the venue and brought his case before a tribunal where forensic skill was far more likely to carry the day than complicated evidence that could be appreciated by a special jury only, then, at last, I had to break through my reserve. It was not exactly cowardice that had kept me so long from encountering the most skillful of American swordsmen, but when the duel was forced upon me, I determined it should be fought out once for all.
I might have said much more; in fact, I had written much more than what I here publish in self-defense, but I wished to confine my reply as much as possible to bare facts. Professor Whitney has still to learn, it seems, that in a duel, whether military or literary, it is the bullets which hit, not the smoke, or the report, however loud. I do not flatter myself that with regard to theories on the nature of language or the relation between language and thought there ever will be perfect unanimity among scholars, but as to my bullets or my facts, I believe the case is different. I claim no infallibility, however, and would not accept the papal tiara among comparative philologists, even though it was offered me in such tempting terms by the hands of Professor Whitney. In order, therefore, to satisfy Mr. Darwin, Professor Haeckel, and others whose good opinion I highly value, because I know that they care for truth far more than for victory, I now appeal to Professor Whitney to choose from among his best friends three who are _Professores ordinarii_ in any university of England, France, Germany, or Italy, and by their verdict I promise to abide. Let them decide the following points as to simple matters of fact, the principal bones of contention between Professor Whitney and myself:--
1. Whether the Latin of the inscription on the Duilian Column represents the Latin as spoken in 263 B.C. (p. 430);
2. Whether Ahura-Mazda can be rendered by “the mighty spirit” (p. 430);
3. Whether +sarvanâman+ in Sanskrit means “name for everything” (p. 430);
4. Whether Professor Whitney knew that the Phenician alphabet had by Rougé and others been traced back to an Egyptian source (pp. 430, 450, 468);
5. Whether Professor Whitney thought that the words _light_, _alight_, and _delight_ could be traced to the same source (p. 467);
6. Whether in the passages pointed out on p. 434, Professor Whitney contradicts himself or not;
7. Whether he has been able to produce any passage from my writings to substantiate the charge that in my Lectures I was impelled by an overmastering fear lest man should lose his proud position in the creation (p. 435);
8. Whether there are _verbatim_ coincidences between my Lectures and those of Professor Whitney (pp. 425, 470-474);
9. Whether I ever denied that language was made through the instrumentality of man (p. 470);
10. Whether I had or had not fully explained under what restrictions the Science of Language might be treated as one of the physical sciences, and whether Professor Whitney has added any new restrictions (pp. 422 seq., 475 seq.);
11. Whether Professor Whitney apprehended in what sense some of the greatest philosophers declared conceptual thought impossible without language (p. 484);
12. Whether the grammatical blunder, with regard to the Sanskrit +pari tasthushas+ as a nominative plur., was mine or his (p. 490);
13. Whether I had not clearly defined the difference between hard and soft consonants long before Professor Whitney, and whether he has not misrepresented what I had written on the subject (p. 490);
14. Whether in saying that the soft consonants can be intonated, I could have meant that they may or may not be intonated (p. 497);
15. Whether I invented the terms +vivârasvâśâghoshâḥ+ and +saṃvâranâdaghoshâḥ+, and whether they are to be found in no Sanskrit grammarian (p. 498);
16. Whether I was right in saying that Professor Whitney had complained about myself and others not noticing his attacks, and whether his remarks on my chapter on Fir, Oak, and Beech required being noticed (p. 500);
17. Whether I had invented the _Epitheta ornantia_ applied by Professor Whitney to myself and other scholars, or whether they occur in his own writings (p. 504);
18. Whether E. Burnouf has written two or three bulky volumes on the Avesta, or only one (p. 515);
19. Whether Professor Whitney made a grammatical blunder in translating a passage of the Atharva-Veda Prâtiśâkhya, and on the strength of it charged the Hindu grammarian with holding opinions “obviously and grossly incorrect, and hardly worth quoting” (p. 519);
20. Whether Professor Whitney has occasionally been forgetful (p. 523).
Surely there are among Professor Whitney’s personal friends scholars who could say Yes or No to any of these twenty questions, and whose verdict would be accepted, and not by scholars only, as beyond suspicion. Anyhow, I can do no more for the sake of peace, and to put an end to the supposed state of chaos in the Science of Language, and I am willing to appear in person or by deputy before any such tribunal of competent judges.
I hope I have thus at last given Professor Whitney that satisfaction which he has claimed from me for so many years; and let me assure him that I part with him without any personal feeling of bitterness or hostility. I have grudged him no praise in former days, and whatever useful work we may receive from him in future, whether on the languages of India or of America, his books shall always receive at my hands the same justice as if they had been written by my best friend. I have never belonged to any company of collaborators, and never shall; but whosoever serves in the noble army for the conquest of truth, be he private or general, will always find in me a faithful friend, and, if need be, a fearless defender. I gladly conclude with the words of old Fairfax (Bulk and Selvedge, 1674): “I believe no man wishes with more earnestness than I do, that all men of learning and knowledge were men of kindness and sweetness, and that such as can outdo others would outlove them too; especially while self bewhispers us, that it stands us all in need to be forgiven as well as to forgive.”
THE MUMBLES, NEAR SWANSEA, WALES,
_September, 1875._
[Footnote 1: See a very remarkable article by Von Hartmann on Haeckel, in the _Deutsche Rundschau_. July, 1875.]
[Footnote 2: _Etymologische Forschungen_, 1871, p. 78, tönende, _d.h._ weiche.]
[Footnote 3: See p. 348.]
[Footnote 4: _Lectures_, vol. ii. p. 157.]
[Footnote 5: Having still that kind of faith left, that a man could not willfully say a thing which he knows to be untrue, I looked again at every passage where I have dwelt on the difference between soft and hard consonants, and I think I may have found the passage which Professor Whitney grasped at, when he thought that I knew nothing of the difference between voiced and voiceless letters, until he had enlightened me on the subject. Speaking of letters, not as things by themselves, but as acts, I sometimes speak of the process that produces the hard consonant first, and then go on to say that it can be voiced, and be made soft. Thus when speaking of s and z, I say, the former is completely surd, the latter capable of intonation, and the same expression occurs again. Could Professor Whitney have thought that I meant to say that z was only capable of intonation, but was not necessarily intonated? I believe he did, for it is with regard to s and z that, as I see, he says, “it is a marvel to find men like Max Müller, in his last lectures about language, who still cling to the old view that a z, for instance, differs from s primarily by inferior force of utterance.” Now, I admit that my expression, “capable of intonation” might be misunderstood, and might have misled a mere tiro in these matters, who alighted on this passage, without reading anything before or after. But that a professor in an American university could have taken my words in that sense is to me, I confess, a puzzle, call it intellectual or moral, as you like.]
[Footnote 6: _Indische Studien_, x. 459.]
[Footnote 7: When I saw how M. Biot, the great astronomer, treated Professor Weber _du haut en bas_, because, in criticising Biot’s opinion he had shown some ignorance of astronomy, I said, from a kind of fellow-feeling: “Weber’s Essays are very creditable to the author, and hardly deserved the withering contempt with which they were treated by Biot. I differ from nearly all the conclusions at which Professor Weber arrives, but I admire his great diligence in collecting the necessary evidence.” Upon this the American gentleman reads me the following lesson: First of all, I am told that my statement involves a gross error of fact; I ought to have said, Weber’s Essay, not Essays, because one of them, and the most important, was not published till after Biot’s death. I accept the reproof, but I believe all whom it concerned knew what Essay I meant. But secondly, I am told that the epithet _withering_ is only used by Americans when they intend to imply that, in their opinion, the subject of the contempt is withered, or ought to be withered by it. This may be so in American, but I totally deny that it is so in English. “Withering contempt,” in English, means, as far as I know, a kind of silly and arrogant contempt, such, for instance, as Professor Whitney displays towards me and others, intended to annihilate us in the eyes of the public, but utterly harmless in its consequences. But let me ask the American critic what he meant when, speaking of Biot’s treatment of Weber, he said, “Biot thought that Weber’s opinions had been _whiffed_ away by him as if unworthy of serious consideration.” Does _whiff away_ in America mean more or less than _withering_? What Professor Whitney should have objected to was the adverb _hardly_. I wish I had said _vix, et ne vix quidem_.]
INDEX.
[Transcriber’s Note:
The Index is given as printed, covering volumes III and IV. Volume III is available from Project Gutenberg as e-text 26572.
Note that, because of the author’s transliteration system, many Sanskrit words in c and j will be alphabetized as k and g. All footnotes given as 164 or 165 should be read as 163, 164.
Spelling and capitalization of roots from the Colebrooke appendix has been regularized. The original forms, if different, are shown in double brackets.]
Abbot of Cluny and Louis IX., iii. 179. Abdallah ibn Almokaffa, author of “Kalilah and Dimnah,” iv. 151, 184. Abdorrhaman, iv. 155. Abelard, iii. 51. Aberdeen, Lord, iii. 378. Ablative in _as_, as infinitive, iv. 50. ---- in _d_, iv. 225. ---- in toḥ, as infinitive, iv. 55. Abo, in Finland, iii. 310. Abury, remains at, iii. 285. Accusative in _am_, as infinitive, iv. 50. ---- in _tum_, as infinitive, iv. 55. ---- with the infinitive, iv. 38. Achilles, mediæval stories of, iii. 9. “Acta Eruditorum,” iii. 194. Adam of Bremen, iii. 119. Ad-venire = l’avenir, iv. 37. Adverb, the infinitive as an, iv. 31. ---- ἐπίῤῥημα, iv. 30. Adverbs, previous to Aryan separation, iv. 135. ---- Aryan, iv. 415. Ægyptus, iii. 249. Æneas, mediæval stories of, iii. 9. Æneas Sylvius, iii. 30. ---- as Pope Pius II., iii. 63. “Æneid,” by Heinrich von Veldecke, iii. 10. “Æsopus alter,” iv. 161. Affixing languages, iv. 85. African languages, Koelle’s sixty-seven, iii. 427. ἀγγέλλω = ἀναγαρίω, iv. 91. Agglutinative languages, iv. 79, see Combining languages. Author’s normal form is “combinatory”. Agni, god of fire, iv. 47. Agricola, iii. 67. Agricola = Schnitter, iii. 29. Agricola, not agrum-cola, iv. 133. Agriculture of Bengal, iv. 369. Agriologists, iv. 453. Ahanâ, same as Daphne, iv. 148. Ahura-Mazda, name of, iv. 430. Ak, the root, iv. 28. Aksh-an, or ak-an, iv. 26. Ak-sh-i, eye, iv. 25. Alam, with infinitive, iv. 48. Alcuin, iii. 6. Alemannish, iii. 122. “Alexander,” by Lamprecht, iii. 9. ---- mediæval stories of, iii. 9. Alexander’s conquest, brings Greek stories to India, iv. 149. Alexandria ad Caucasum, Buddhist priests sent to, iv. 244. Algebra with Arithmetic and Mensuration, from the Sanskrit of Brahmagupta and Bhâskara, iv. 391. Ali, the son of Alshah Farési, iv. 153. Alight, to, its etymology, iv. 467. All Souls’ College, iii. 490. Alpha privativum, iv. 213. Alphabet, origin of the Phenician, iv. 450, 468. American, polysynthetic dialects, iv. 70. Amestris, wife of Xerxes, iii. 417. An, a suffix, iv. 33, 34. Ancient Germany, by Bethmann-Hollweg, iii. 412. And, Aryan words for, iv. 412. Andanemja, Gothic, to be accepted, iv. 94. Andrew Borde, on Cornwall, iii. 243. Andrian, Baron, iii. 396. Ane, dative in, iv. 34. Angarii or Angivarii, iii. 117. Angenehm, agreeable, to be accepted, iv. 94. Angle or angre, for ange, iii. 166. Anglevarii, iii. 117. Anglia or Angria, iii. 118. Anglii or Angrii, iii. 118. Anglo-Saxon, iii. 122. ---- chair of, iv. 12, 13. ---- MSS. collected, iv. 12. ---- grammar, by March, iv. 447. Angrarii, tribe of, iii. 117. Angria or Anglia, iii. 118. Angrii or Anglii, iii. 118. Angrivarii, iii. 117. Angulus, the etymon of Anglia, iii. 118. Animals are automata, the hypothesis that, iv. 448. ---- their mind, terra incognita, iv. 442. ---- nearest to man, have very imperfect phonetic organs, iv. 440. ---- have sensuous images, but no words, iv. 487. Anno, poem on, iii. 9. Annoyance, iii. 182. An-ti, those and he, iv. 113. Antiquary, the, iv. 335. “Anvári-Suhaili,” by Husain ben Ali, iv. 159. Ἀπαρέμφατον (ῥῆμα), iv. 30, 31. Arabian Algebra, likeness to Indian, iv. 391. Arabic, difficulty of, iv. 368. ---- lectureship of, iv. 11. ---- lectureship of, not aided by Henry VIII., iv. 12. ---- lectureship of, supported by Archbishop Laud, iv. 12. ---- MSS. collected by Laud, iv. 12. ---- translation of fables, iv. 154. Archæological survey of India, iv. 346. Aria, iii. 441. Arian, not Iranian, iii. 429. Aristotle, iv. 327. ---- his knowledge of language, iv. 64. Arndt, iii. 402. Arnim, iii. 103. Arnold, iii. 39. ---- Dr., iii. 362, 397. ---- Matthew, iv. 505. Arnyia dialects, iv. 349. Arthur, stories of, iii. 9. Aryan family, iv. 16, 70, 71. Aryan language, seven periods of, iv. 118. ---- first period, iv. 119. ---- second period, iv. 124. ---- third period, iv. 124. ---- fourth period, iv. 129. ---- fifth period, iv. 131. ---- sixth period, iv. 135. ---- seventh period, iv. 135. ---- three strata only, iv. 136, 137. ---- inflectional, iv. 80. ---- no word for law in, iv. 220. Aryan nations, Benfey’s protest against their Eastern origin, iv. 212. ---- religions, three historical, iv. 240. ---- skulls, iv. 211. ---- suffixes, iv. 33. ---- words for father, mother, brother, etc, iv. 401. _seq._ ---- words found in Zend, and not in Sanskrit, iv. 235. Aryan and Semitic languages, common origin of, iv. 96. Aryans, Southern division of, iv. 212. As, root, to be, Aryan words for, iv. 414. Ascoli, on gutturals, iv. 61, 104. Ashburnham, Lord, his MSS. of the Credo, iii. 165. Ashley, Lord, and Bunsen, iii. 367. -ασι for -αντι, iv. 112. Asiatic literature, catalogue raisonné of, iv. 385. ---- Researches, iv. 370. ---- Society of Calcutta, iv. 14. ---- Society of Calcutta, Colebrooke, President of, iv. 385. Asita’s prophecy about Buddha, iv. 171. Aspirates, the, iv. 495. Ass, Aryan words for, iv. 408. Asti, with infinitive, iv. 48. Astor, Bunsen’s pupil and friend, iii. 348, 485. Astori dialects of Shinâ, iv. 349. Astrological terms borrowed by Hindus from Greeks, iv. 367. Astronomical Society, Colebrooke, President of, iv. 391. Astronomy, antiquity of Hindu, iv. 387. Aśvais = equis, iv. 84. Aśvebhis = equobus, iv. 84. Athenian law of inheritance, prize essay by Bunsen, iii. 348. Attal Sarazin in Cornwall, iii. 307. Atterbom, Swedish poet, letters to Wilhelm Müller, iii. 105. Attic future, iv. 94 _note_. Attila, iii. 412. Aufrecht, Dr., iii. 417, 425, 443. Augâ, O.H.G., iv. 26. αὐγή, Auge, iv. 25. Augment, in Greek and Sanskrit, iv. 114. Augustenburg, Prince of, iii. 85, 88. Autbert, Bishop of Avranches, iii. 328. Avadhûta, sect of the, iv. 257. Avenir, the future, ad-venire, iv. 38. Avesta, two or three bulky volumes on the, iv. 515. Avranches, Bishop of, on Barlaam and Josaphat, iv. 178. ---- Bishop of, Autbert, iii. 328. Ayase, to go, iv. 36. Axmouth, iii. 289.
Bachmann, on the Negro skull, iii. 252.
Bacon, Lord, iii. 217.
---- on history of literature, iii. 3.
---- observations on the disposition of men for philosophy
and science, iv. 97.
---- on Spinoza, iii. 218.
---- his Metaphysique, iii. 223.
---- his Physique, iii. 223.
---- his inductive method, iii. 225.
---- compared with Shakespeare, iii. 225.
---- author of Shakespeare’s plays, iii. 226.
---- Macaulay on, iii. 227.
Bactria, Buddhist priests sent to, iv. 244.
Baldo, his translation of “Kalila and Dimnah,” iv. 161.
Bampton, iii. 293.
Bancroft, “On the Native Races of America,” iv. 526.
Banks, Sir Joseph, iii. 256.
Bannister, Dr., iii. 242.
---- on Jews in Cornwall, iii. 313.
Bântu family of language, iv. 70.
Barahut, Buddhist remains at, iv. 346.
Barbarossa, Frederick, iii. 51, 52.
Barclay, Alexander, his translation of “Narrenschiff,” iii. 72.
Barlaam and Joasaph, iv. 168.
Barlaam and Josaphat, iv. 177.
---- changed into Christian saints, iv. 177.
---- Laboulaye, Liebrecht, Beal, on, iv. 176, 177.
---- Leo Allatius on, iv. 178.
---- Billius and Bellarminus on, iv. 178.
---- the Bishop of Avranches on, iv. 178.
Barrington, Daines, iii. 256.
Baruch, his share in Isaiah, iii. 481, 484.
Barzuyeh, author of Pehlevi translation of fables, iv. 152, 184.
βασιλεῦ, vocative, iv. 233.
Basilius and Gregorius Nazianzenus, quoted by author of “Barlaam
and Josaphat,” iv. 169.
Bask language, iii. 429.
Bask, derivative adjectives in, iv. 94.
Basle, University of, iii. 63.
Bathybios, iv. 457.
Bavarian dialect, iii. 122.
Bayard, iv. 90.
Beal, on the story of Barlaam and Josaphat, iv. 176.
Beamdun = Bampton, iii. 293.
Bear, Aryan words for, iv. 410.
βέεσθαι = vayodhai, iv. 56.
Beget, to, root, Jan, Aryan words for, iv. 415.
Beheim, Michael, iii. 18.
Beieinander, Das, in the development of language, iv. 33.
Bekker, on the Digamma in Homer, iii. 420; iv. 225.
Bellows, Mr., on acts of vandalism in Cornwall, iii. 279.
Benares, iii. 406.
Benedictine Monks, rule of, iii. 5.
Benfey, Professor, iii. 446.
---- his discovery of the old Syriac translation of the fables,
iv. 181.
---- his history of the Science of Language, iv. 325.
---- his protest against the eastern origin of the Aryan nation,
iv. 212.
Bengal, agriculture of, iv. 370.
---- Colebrooke, on the husbandry of, iv. 373.
Bengali, plural in, iv. 74.
Bentley, on the antiquity of Hindu astronomy, iv. 387.
Berkeley, iii. 218.
Bernard, derivation of the word, iv. 90.
Bernays, iii. 415.
Bernhard, bearminded, iv. 90.
Berthold, Duke of Zähringen, iii. 13.
Berthold, iii. 20.
Besmah, Rajah of, Giriprasâdasinha, iv. 335.
Bethmann Hollweg, iii. 412, 443.
Bhaginî, sister, in Sanskrit, iv. 110 _note_.
Bhagvat Geeta, _i.e._ Bhagavad-Gîtâ, iv. 368.
Bhaiami, maker or cutter out, iv. 342, 343.
Bhaṇḍarkar, Prof., iv. 335.
Bhao Daji, Dr., iv. 334.
Bhâskara, Brahmagupta, Âryabhaṭṭa, iv. 392.
βία, not connected with jyâni, iv. 62.
Bible, first complete translation in German, 1373, iii. 21.
---- new translation by Bunsen, iii. 448.
---- partly translated, iii. 20.
Bibliotheca volante, 1677, iii. 194.
Bibliothèque Orientale, iii. 415.
---- Universelle et Historique, iii. 194.
Bickell, Professor, iv. 184.
Bidpai, mentioned by Ali, iv. 153; see _Pilpay_.
---- or Sendebar, iv. 158.
Billius, on Barlaam and Josaphat, iv. 178.
Birma, Buddhist priests sent to, iv. 244.
Black, in the Schleswig-Hollstein ialect, iii. 130.
Blackbird, iv. 503.
Bleek, Dr., iii. 399; iv. 343, 522.
---- Whitney on, iv. 515.
Blid and blithe, iii. 130.
Blood, as determining nationality, iii. 247.
Boar, Aryan words for, iv. 410.
Bodhisattva, corrupted to Youdasf and Youasaf, iv. 176.
Bodmer, iii. 39.
Bodener d. 1776, his letter on Cornish, iii. 246.
Boeckh, on Comparative Grammar, iv. 209.
Boehme, Jacob, iii. 39, 218.
Boehtlingk _versus_ Schott, iii. 429.
Boehtlingk and Roth, Sanskrit Dictionary published by, iv. 511.
Boetticher, Dr., iii. 416, 422, 433. (fragment of Livy).
Bohinî, Bengali, for sister, iv. 110 _note_.
Boie, and the Hainbund, iii. 127.
Boileau, iii. 197.
Bologna, University of, iv. 11.
Bombay, Parsis of, iv. 305.
Bonaventure des Periers, his “Contes et Nouvelles,” iv. 164.
Bone, Aryan words for, iv. 405.
Bonn, iii. 406.
Book of Heroes, the Heldenbuch, iii. 69.
---- edited by Caspar von der Roen, iii. 69.
---- of Love, iii. 70.
---- of Sindbad, iv. 106.
Book-religions, iv. 301.
Books of Moses, poetical translation of, iii. 9.
Bopp, his Comparative Grammar, iv. 17, 319.
---- Whitney on, iv. 515.
Borde, Andrew, on Cornwall, iii. 243.
Borghese, on Latin inscriptions, iii. 419.
Botterell, Mr., on the Men-an-tol, iii. 279.
Bottervogel, botterhahn, botterhex, butterfly, iii. 130.
βοῦ, vocative, iv. 233.
Boucher de Perthes, iii. 283.
Bow-wow, Pooh-pooh theories, iv. 469.
Brace, Manual of Races, iii. 252.
Brahma, as the Supreme Spirit, iv. 315.
Brahma-Dharma, the, iv. 269.
Brahma-Samaj, iv. 258, 259, 335.
Brahma-Samaj, schism in, iv. 260, 269.
---- of India, iv. 269 _note_.
Brahman, the, and the rice, iv. 142.
Brahmanism, its vitality, iv. 296, 308.
Brahmans, their sacred cord, iv. 260.
---- do not proselytize, iv. 242.
---- sent to Benares to copy Vedas, iv. 357.
Brandis, iii. 350, 352, 399, 438, 442.
Breast, Aryan words for, iv. 406.
Bremen Dictionary, Low German, iii. 123 _note_.
Brentano, iii. 103.
Brewster, iii. 420.
Bribu, leader of the Rathakaras, iv. 307.
Bride of Messina, Schiller’s play, iii. 92, 97, 427.
British Association at Oxford, 1847, iii. 372.
Broad, Aryan words for, iv. 411.
Broad degrees of heat, light, and sound, iv. 437.
Brockhaus, Professor, iv. 351.
Brossard, iv. 90.
Brother, Aryan words for, iv. 402.
Brown-Willy, iii. 292.
Brvat, Zend, brow, iv. 236.
Bruit, iii. 171.
Bud Periodeutes, his translation of fables, iv. 181, 183.
Buddha, iii. 486.
---- life of, iv. 171.
---- his four drives, iv. 172.
---- identity with Josaphat, iv. 174, 180.
---- his driver, iv. 175.
---- his disciples, iv. 267.
---- his interview with Mâra, iv. 268.
Buddhism, its history, iv. 242 _seq._
Buddhism, countries professing it, iv. 252.
Buddhist fables, iv. 141.
---- ---- carried by Mongolians to Russia, iv. 149.
---- Missionaries, sent to Cashmere, etc., iv. 243.
Bühler, Dr., iv. 345.
Bürger, iii. 127.
Büsen, in Dithmarsch, iii. 138.
Buffon, his view of plants, iv. 222.
Building of altars, iv. 330.
Bundobel, for Bidpay, iv. 161.
Bunsen, iv. 318.
---- Sir R. Peel on, iii. 347.
---- his prize essay on Athenian law of inheritance, iii. 348.
---- his fellow students, iii. 348.
---- his journey to Denmark, iii. 352.
---- his copy of MSS. of Völuspa, iii. 352.
---- his friendship with Niebuhr, iii. 129, 353.
---- his marriage, iii. 357.
---- his life at Rome, iii. 358.
---- his Hymn- and Prayer-book, iii. 361, 413.
---- his friends at Rome, iii. 362.
---- his visit to England, iii. 362.
---- made D.C.L. at Oxford, iii. 363.
---- Prussian Envoy in England, iii. 370.
---- leaves England, iii. 382.
---- his “Hippolytus,” iii. 382, 416.
---- his “Signs of the Times,” iii. 382.
---- his “God in History,” iii. 382, 473.
---- his death, iii. 384.
---- his Chinese studies, iii. 402.
---- his recall, iii. 409.
---- and Chateaubriand, iii. 411.
---- at Heidelberg, iii. 439, 440.
---- “Egypt’s Place in History,” iii. 469.
---- Bible-work, iii. 452.
---- letters to Max Müller, iii. 393.
---- his views on German professors, iv. 204.
---- his “Christianity and Mankind,” iii. 382; iv. 320.
---- Burhware, iii. 117.
Burgess, Mr., iv. 335.
Burnell, Dr., iv. 345.
Burning of widows, iv. 303.
Burnouf, Eugène, iv. 318, 515.
Burns, poems of, iii. 126.
Bursa, or Royal Exchange, iii. 234.
Bushmen, their traditional literature, iv. 344.
---- their language, iv. 344.
But, buten, iii. 131.
Butler’s Analogy, iv. 287.
By night, Aryan words for, iv. 404.
Cabale und Liebe, iii. 84.
Cabul, Buddhist priests sent to, iv. 243.
Cadaver, iv. 24.
Cadmus, son of Libya, iii. 249.
Cæsar, iii. 240.
Cæsarius, Joh., iii. 64.
Calcutta, city of Kali, iv. 251.
---- its goddess, iv. 309.
---- Colebrooke goes to, iv. 365.
---- Colebrooke at, iv. 381.
Caldwell, Dr., iv. 74 _note_.
---- on Infinitive, iv. 60.
Call, to, not from calare, iv. 104.
Callaway, Remarks on the Zulu language, iv. 122.
Cambridge, iii. 236.
Camel, Aryan words for, iv. 408.
Camelford, iii. 292.
Campbell, Sir George, on the Hindu religion, iv. 297.
Camphausen, iii. 443.
Canterbury, iii. 117, 237.
Cantware, people of Kent, iii. 117.
Cant-ware-burh, iii. 117.
Capperonier’s edition of Joinville, iii. 161.
_Cap-so_, iv. 94 _note_.
_Caput_ = _Haubida_, iv. 26.
Cara clowse in cowse, iii. 321.
_Care_, not from cura, iv. 104.
Carew, on Cornish, iii. 244.
Carlyle, iii. 54, 363, 397.
Carlyle’s Life of Schiller, iii. 76.
Carnac in Brittany, iii. 268.
Carriere, Professor, iv. 451.
_Carrosse_, iv. 425.
Case-terminations, traced back, iv. 131.
Cashmere, Buddhist priests sent to, iv. 243.
Caskets, story of the, in Merchant of Venice, iv. 170 _note_.
Caspar von der Roen, iii. 69.
Caste, iv. 374 _note_.
---- Colebrooke on, iv. 376, 377.
_Castigare_, iv. 217.
Catalogue raisonné of Asiatic literature, iv. 385.
Catalogues of MSS. still existing in India, iv. 345.
Catechism of the Adi Brahma-Samâj, iv. 275.
Catrou, iii. 196.
Causality, the idea of, iii. 220.
Celibacy and Fellowships, iv. 9.
Celtes, Meissel, iii. 29.
Celtic influence in Cornwall, iii. 242.
---- languages, iv. 3.
---- most closely united with Latin (Newman, Schleicher), iv. 215.
---- so-called monuments in the Dekhan, iii. 269.
Celts and Germans, first distinguished by Cæsar, iii. 240.
---- Druids among the, iii. 241.
Cenail, iii. 301.
_Cerno_, to distinguish, iv. 217.
Ceylon, Buddhist priests sent to, iv. 244.
Chaldaic lectureship, iv. 11.
Chaldea, Nakshatras derived from, iv. 508.
Chalmers, “Origin of Chinese,” iv. 105.
Chambers’ collection, the, iii. 397.
Champollion, iii. 362.
---- discoveries of, iv. 2.
Chandaka, or Sanna, Buddha’s driver, iv. 175.
Channing, iv. 313.
Chaos, in the Science of Language, iv. 522.
Charlemagne, iii. 5; iv. 155.
---- stories of, iii. 9.
Charles V. and Joinville’s history, iii. 158.
---- Rabelais’ satire on, iv. 161.
Chasot, iii. 200.
---- his youth, iii. 201.
---- his campaigns, iii. 206, 207.
---- goes to France, iii. 209.
---- his life at Lübeck, iii. 210.
---- his last meeting with Frederic the Great, iii. 211.
Chateaubriand, iii. 362.
---- and Bunsen, iii. 411.
Chemistry of language, iv. 449.
Chepsted, iii. 234.
Chief Rabbi in London, iv. 304.
Childers, Mr., Essay on the Plural in Singhalese, iv. 74 _note_.
China, Nakshatras supposed to be derived from, iv. 508.
Chinese studies, Bunsen’s, iii. 402.
---- Professorships of, iv. 3.
---- Grammar, iv. 76.
---- full and empty words, iv. 77.
---- dead and live words, iv. 77 _note_.
---- belongs to the isolating languages, iv. 79.
---- dialects of, iv. 102.
---- words in Mongolian, iv. 105.
χι-ών = hi-ma, hiems, iv. 235.
Chiwidden, iii. 299.
Christian IX. and the Eider boundary, iii. 120.
Christianity, countries professing, iv. 252.
Christians of St. Thomas in India, iv. 184.
Chronicle of the Roman Emperors, iii. 9.
Chroniclers, old, iii. 159.
Chronology of the Indo-Germanic languages, by Prof. Curtius, iv. 118.
Chrysorrhoas (St. John of Damascus), iv. 168.
Cimbric Chersonese, the, iii. 116.
Circumflex in the vocative of Ζεύς, iv. 210.
---- in Sanskrit, iv. 233.
Cistvaen or Kistvaen, iii. 266, 267.
Clarendon, Lord, iii. 433.
Classical reproduction of Sakuntala, by Sir W. Jones, iv. 323.
Classification of skulls, iii. 248.
---- of languages, iv. 70.
---- applied to religions, iv. 241.
Claudius, iii. 128.
Clement V. and his proposals for founding Lectureships, iv. 11.
Clemm, Die neusten Forschungen auf dem Gebiet der Griechischen
Composita, iv. 133 _note_.
Cleversulzbach, village of, iii. 75.
Cloud, Aryan words for, iv. 405.
Clovis, his conversion, iv. 287.
_Cluere_, to hear, iv. 218.
Çnish, Zend, to snow, iv. 236.
Coat cards, iii. 289.
Cobden, death of his son, iii. 458.
_Codardo_, coward, iv. 90.
Code of Gentoo Laws, iv. 374.
Cœurdoux, le Père, iv. 14.
Coincidences, iv. 472.
Colebrooke, on the Vedas, iv. 350.
---- Life of, iv. 359.
---- started for India, iv. 364.
---- arrived at Madras, iv. 364.
---- goes to Calcutta, iv. 365.
---- becomes Collector of Tribute in Tirhut, iv. 365.
---- on Indian Weights and Measures, iv. 367.
---- goes to Purneah, iv. 369.
---- goes to Nattore, iv. 370.
---- on the duties of Hindu Widows, iv. 372.
---- on the Husbandry and Commerce of Bengal, iv. 373.
---- goes to Mirzapur, iv. 374.
---- translates Digest of Hindu and Mohammedan Laws, iv. 375.
---- on Caste, iv. 376, 378.
---- at Nagpur, iv. 380.
---- his supplementary Digest of Laws, iv. 380.
---- Essays on Sanskrit and Prakrit poetry, iv. 380.
---- Essays on the Vedas, iv. 380.
---- Essays on Indian Theogonies, iv. 380.
---- Essays on Indian Plants, iv. 380.
---- returns to Mirzapur, iv. 381.
---- goes to Calcutta, iv. 381.
---- member of the Court of Appeal, iv. 381.
---- Professor of Sanskrit, iv. 381.
---- attention to Comparative Philology, iv. 381.
---- his Sanskrit Grammar, iv. 381.
---- President of the Court of Appeal, iv. 385.
---- President of the Asiatic Society, iv. 385.
---- promoted to a Seat in Council, iv. 390.
---- leaves India, iv. 390.
---- the Legislator of India, iv. 390.
---- President of the Astronomical Society, iv. 391.
---- his translation of the Algebra of Brahmagupta and Bhâskara,
iv. 391.
---- presents his Sanskrit MSS. to the East India Company, iv. 392.
---- founds the Royal Asiatic Society, iv. 392.
---- his treatises on Hindu philosophy, iv. 394.
---- his death, iv. 395.
---- testimony to Sir W. Jones, iv. 397.
---- Comparative View of Sanskrit and other Languages, iv. 400.
Colenso, Bishop, iii. 248.
Cologne Choir, the, iii. 421.
Colonial Office, reports on native races, iv. 339.
Colonies and colonial governments, Oriental studies have
a claim on, iv. 339.
Color-blindness, iv. 444.
Combination traced to juxta-position, iv. 111.
Combinatory stage, iv. 116.
Come-to-good, iii. 292.
Commandments of Kabir, iv. 257.
Common origin of the Aryan and Semitic languages, iv. 96.
Comparative Jurisprudence, Bunsen and, iii. 348.
Comparative Mythology, first glimmerings of, in 1793, iv. 371.
Comparative Philology, chair of, iv. 13.
---- Isolating period, iv. 18.
---- Syncretistic period, iv. 17.
---- Sanskrit the only sound foundation of, iv. 19.
---- Colebrooke’s attention to, iv. 381.
Comparative spirit, the truly scientific spirit, iv. 327.
Comparative Theology, first attempt at, iv. 170.
Comparative view of Sanskrit and other languages by Colebrooke,
iv. 400.
Comparetti, on the book of Sindbad, iv. 166.
Competition-wallah, iv. 90.
Comte, iii. 475.
Comte de Bretagne and Louis IX., iii. 180.
Concepts, founded on the spontaneity of thought, iv. 447.
“Conde Lucanor,” by Don Juan Manuel, iv. 164.
Congress of Oriental sts, the International, iv. 317.
Constance, Council of, iii. 65.
Constantine Lascaris, iii. 63.
Constantine’s vision, iv. 288.
Constitution granted in Prussia, 1847, iii. 377.
Controversial missions, small success of, iv. 316.
Controversy on the authority of the traditional interpretation
of the Vedas, iv. 386.
Convention, language made by, iv. 73.
Conway’s “Sacred Anthology,” iv. 329.
Copper, iii. 256.
Coptic roots, iii. 403.
_Coquina_, _Keghin_, iii. 261.
Cornelius, iii. 368.
Cornish antiquities, iii. 238.
---- language, iii. 239.
---- language, loses ground, iii. 244.
---- used for sermons till 1678, iii. 245.
---- as spoken in 1707, iii. 245.
---- as written, 1776, iii. 246.
---- its vitality, iii. 247.
---- a Celtic language, iii. 239.
---- Antiquities:
---- ---- Mên Scrifa, iii. 271.
---- ---- Boscawen circle, iii. 272.
---- ---- Castle an Dinas, iii. 274.
---- ---- huts at Chysauster, iii. 275.
---- ---- Mincamber, the, iii. 277.
---- ---- injuries to, iii. 277, etc.
---- ---- Castallack Round, iii. 281.
---- proverbs, iii. 254.
---- Latin and English words in, iii. 256.
---- Dictionary, iii. 256.
---- Poems, “Mount Calvary,” iii. 257.
---- Plays, iii. 258.
---- MSS. in the Bodleian, iii. 258.
---- Guirrimears, iii. 259.
---- books extant in, iii. 260.
---- Latin words in, iii. 260.
---- ---- through French, iii. 261.
---- Saxon words in, iii. 262.
---- huts, iii. 275.
Cornwall, its air of antiquity, iii. 238.
---- Jews in, iii. 287.
---- Jews’ houses in, iii. 287.
---- Saracens in, iii. 306.
Corssen, his studies in Latin, iv. 18.
Cosmas, an Italian monk, iv. 167.
Cotswold Hills, the, iii. 305.
Cottier, his translation of fables into French from Tuscan,
iv. 159 _note_.
Cotton, Bishop of Calcutta, iv. 258, 263.
_Couard_, iv. 90.
Council, Colebrooke promoted to a seat in, iv. 390.
---- of Pâṭaliputra, 246 B.C., iv. 243.
Court of Appeal, Colebrooke member of, iv. 381.
---- Colebrooke President of the, iv. 385.
Cousin, Victor, iv. 394.
_Coward_, iv. 90.
Crab, Aryan words for, iv. 410.
_Credo_, Lord Ashburnham’s MS. of the, iii. 165.
Creed of the Brahma Samâj, iv. 260.
_Criard_, a crier, iv. 90.
Cribrum, iv. 217.
Crimean War, the, iii. 381.
_Crimen_, iv. 218.
“Critique Philosophique,” edited by Renouvier, iv. 420.
Cromlechs, Roman coins in, iii. 264.
---- the, iii. 264.
Cromlêh, or Cromlech, iii. 264.
Crowther, Bishop, iii. 254.
Crudus, crudelis, iv. 235.
Crusaders, Persian and Arabic stories brought back by the, iv. 148.
“Crusades, History of,” by Guillaume, Archbishop of Tyre, iii. 159.
---- interchange of eastern and western ideas during the, iv. 166.
_Crusta_, iv. 235.
Çtaman, Zend = στόμα, iv. 237.
Cuckoo, Aryan words for, iv. 410.
Cucumber, Aryan words for, iv. 410.
Culina, iii. 261.
Cunningham, General, iv. 346.
Cupid and Sanskrit _Dipuc_, iv. 21.
Cureton, Dr., and the Epistles of Ignatius, iii. 372.
Curses, terrible effects produced by, iv. 432.
Curthose, Robert, iii. 289.
Curtius, E., iii. 457.
---- Professor G., iv. 118.
---- his Greek studies, iv. 18.
---- on Lautverschiebung, iv. 101 _note_.
---- on the Chronology of the Indo-Germanic Languages, iv. 111, 118.
---- Pott on, iv. 518.
---- Syndicus, iii. 201.
Curtus, Robertus, iii. 289.
Cvant, Zend, quantus, iv. 236.
Cymric, iii. 239.
Cyrus, religion of, iv. 249.
Czartoryski, Prince, letter to, iv. 323.
D, of the ablative, iv. 225.
-da, Zend, = οἶκόν-δε, iv. 236.
Dabshelim, King, iv. 153.
Dach, Simon, iii. 37.
δᾶερ, vocative, iv. 232.
_Daigs_, dough, iv. 22.
Daimonion, iv. 455.
Daiti, Zend, δόσις, dôs, iv. 236.
_Dala_, meaning of, iv. 74 _note_.
---- Bengali, same as Dravidian taḷa or daḷa, iv. 74 _note_.
Dalberg, iii. 86, 87.
Dalton, Colonel, “Ethnology of Bengal,” iv. 346.
Daltonism, iv. 444.
_Dấ-mane_, to give, iv. 33.
Dâmi, Zend, creation, θέμις, iv. 236.
_Damnare_, iv. 104.
Danes in Cornwall, iii. 274.
---- negotiations with, iii. 400.
Danis-mên, iii. 273.
Danube, the, iii. 435.
Daphne, same as Ahanâ, iv. 148.
Dardistan, Dr. Leitner’s labors in, iv. 348.
Dardus, the, their customs, iv. 349.
Darius, religion of, iv. 249.
Darwin, Mr., my reply to, iv. 417.
---- his belief in a personal Creator, iv. 459.
Darwinism tested by the Science of Language, essay,
by Schleicher, iv. 480.
Dâsápati, gấspati, dámpati, iv. 232.
_Dâtấ vásûnâm_, iv. 234.
Dative in _e_, as infinitive, iv. 50.
---- in ai, as infinitive, iv. 50.
---- in _se_, as infinitive, iv. 51.
---- in _tvâya_, as infinitive, iv. 55.
---- in _âya_, as infinitive, iv. 51.
---- in _âyai_, as infinitive, iv. 52.
---- in _aye_, as infinitive, iv. 52.
---- in _taye_, as infinitive, iv. 53.
---- in _tyai_, as infinitive, iv. 53.
---- in _dhai_ and _dhyai_, as infinitive, iv. 55.
---- in _ase_, Latin ere, as infinitive, iv. 53.
---- in _mane_, Greek μεναι, as infinitive, iv. 53.
---- in _vane_, as infinitive, iv. 54.
---- in _ane_, as infinitive, iv. 54.
---- in _tave_ and _tavai_, iv. 55.
Daughter, Aryan words for, iv. 420.
Daughter-in-law, Aryan words for, iv. 403.
Daughter’s son, Aryan words for, iv. 402.
Daunou, on the MS. of Joinville, iii. 162.
Dâ-váne, to give, iv. 34.
David Sahid of Ispahan, his Livre des Lumières, iv. 159.
Davy, Sir Humphrey, iii. 248.
Dawns-mên or dancing stones, iii. 272.
Day, Aryan words for, iv. 404.
δε, in οἶκόνδε, iv. 236.
Dead and dying religions, iv. 249.
Dead and live words (ssè-tsé and sing-tsé) in Chinese, iv. 77 _note_.
Deaf and dumb, iv. 446.
Dean of St. Paul’s Lectures, iv. 352.
Debendranath Tagore, iv. 312.
---- had the Vedas copied, iv. 357.
Declensions in Old French, iii. 167, 170.
_Deha_, body, iv. 23.
_Dehî_, wall, iv. 22.
_Deich_, iv. 22.
_Deig-an_, to knead, iv. 22.
Dekhan, so-called Celtic or Druidical or Scythian monument in,
iii. 269.
Del governo dei regni, iv. 157.
Delight, to, root TṚP, Aryan words for, iv. 415.
[[Index t{r}ip, Colebrooke TRĬP]]
Δήμητερ, vocative, iv. 232.
Demokritos, iv. 65.
Demonstrative roots, iv. 121.
Denmark, Bunsen’s journey to, iii. 352.
Der ez Záferân, Jacobite Cloister of, iv. 186.
De Rieux, first editor of Joinville, iii. 160.
Derivative roots, second period of Aryan Language, iv. 124.
δέσποτα, vocative, iv. 232.
Des Cartes, iii. 221.
Dessau, W. Müller’s life there, iii. 107.
Determinatives, iv. 123.
Deus, Greek Θεός, iv. 210.
Deutsch, E., iv. 191.
Devadatta or Theudas, iv. 176.
Devrient, iii. 427.
Dharma, law, iv. 220.
_Dhava_, man, iv. 229.
_Dhi_, to twinkle or to shine, iv. 229.
Dhûrv-aṇe, in order to hurt, iv. 34.
Diadochi, reigns of the, iv. 149.
διάκτορος and διάκτωρ, iv. 131.
Dialectic growth, iv. 422.
Dialects, Low and High German, iii. 121.
---- English, iv. 68.
---- Chinese, iv. 102.
---- of the Mundas or the Koles, iv. 347.
---- of languages and religions must be studied, iv. 301.
Dialogus Creaturarum, the, iv. 163, 164 _note_.
_Dick-ard_, a thick fellow, iv. 89.
Dictionary, Ost-Friesian, iii. 123 _note_.
---- Bremen, iii. 123 _note_.
Dic-se, iv. 51.
Die, to, root MṚ, Aryan word for, iv. 415.
Index Mrĭ, Colebrooke MRĬ
Dieppe, Dipa, iii. 233.
Dietmar von Eist, iii. 57.
_Dig_, plural suffix, iv. 74 _note_.
Digamma in Homer, Bekker on the, iv. 225.
Digest of Hindu and Mohammedan laws, iv. 373, 374.
Dih, the root, iv. 23.
_Dilli-válá_, man of Delhi, iv. 90.
Dinas, or castle, iii. 274.
Dingdongism, iv. 452.
Diodorus Siculus, on St. Michael’s Mont, iii. 318.
δῖος = divya, iv. 227.
Dipa, for Dieppe, iii. 233.
Dipuc, and Cupid, iv. 21.
“Directorium Humanæ Vitæ,” iv. 158.
Disciples of Buddha, iv. 267.
“Discourses on Religion,” Schleiermacher’s, iii. 398.
Discrimen, iv. 218.
Dithmarschen, iii. 119.
---- republic of, iii. 129.
Divina Satira, iii. 68.
Divine origin claimed for the Vedas, iv. 259.
_Div-yá-s_, divinus, iv. 94 _note_.
_Divyás_, iv. 227, 229.
Döllinger, Dr., iv. 313.
“Dogmatics,” Schleiermacher’s, iii. 398.
δοιϝός or δειϝός = deva, iv. 228.
Dolichocephalic grammar, iv. 212.
Dolly Pentreath, died 1778, iii. 245.
Dol-mên or tolmên, iii. 271.
Dominicans, iii. 20.
---- and Realists, iii. 64.
Dom in kingdom, iv. 75.
Don Carlos, Schiller’s, iii. 95.
Doni, his Italian translation of fables, iv. 158.
_Doom_, not from damnare, iv. 104.
Dôs, dôtis, δόσις, iv. 236.
δώ-σω, iv. 94.
Double procession, question of the, iv. 313.
_Dough_, iv. 22.
δοῦναι, iv. 34.
Dover, iii. 237.
Drake, Sir Francis, iii. 235.
Dramas or mystery plays, in Cornish, iii. 258.
Dravidian family, iv. 70.
---- languages, iv. 347.
Drink, to, root PA or PI, Aryan words for, iv. 414. Index pa, pi
_Dronk-ard_, drunkard, iv. 89.
Druidical, so-called monuments in the Dekhan, iii. 269.
Druids, the, iii. 240.
---- mentioned by Cæsar, iii. 240.
---- among the Celts, iii. 241.
---- mentioned by Pliny, iii. 241.
Dry, Aryan words for, iv. 411.
Du Cange, edition of Joinville, iii. 161.
Due de Maine, iii. 195.
Düsig, dizzy, iii. 131.
Duhitâ, duhitáram, iv. 232.
Duilian column, the, iv. 430.
Duke of Wurtemberg and Schiller’s father, iii. 80, 81.
Dun, iii. 293.
Dun-bar-ton, iii. 306.
Dutch language, iii. 122.
Duties of a faithful Hindu widow, iv. 372.
Dvarka Náth Tagore, iv. 357.
---- his visit to Eugène Burnouf, iv. 357.
Dyaus, Ζεύς, Jupiter, Zio, Tyr, iv. 210.
Dyu-gat, going to the sky, iv. 133.
Dyu-ksha, dwelling in the sky, iv. 133.
ἐά = vasavî or vasavyâ, iv. 234. _Eáge_, A.S., iv. 26. ἐάων = vasûnâm, iv. 234. Ear, Aryan words for, iv. 406. Eastern Church, feast days of SS. Barlaam and Josaphat, iv. 177. Easter plays, iii. 18. East India Company, Directors of the, iv. 350. Eastphalia, iii. 117. Eastwick, iii. 402. Eat, to, root Ad, Aryan words for, iv. 414. Index Ad Eberhard, the great Duke of Wurtemberg, orders the German translation of fables, iv. 158. _Eburhart_, boar-minded, iv. 89. Eckhart, iii. 18, 487. Edda, the, iii. 56. Edkins, on Chinese dialects, iv. 105. Egalité, Duke of Orleans, iii. 156. Eginhard, iii. 159. _Egin-hart_, fierce-minded, iv. 89. ἐγώ, iv. 98. Egyptian forms, compared with Semitic and Iranian forms, iii. 411. “Egypt’s Place in History,” finished, iii. 473. Eight, Aryan words for, iv. 412. -ειν, infinitive, iv. 34. εἴνατερ, vocative, iv. 232. Elaine, legends about, iii. 328. Elbow, Aryan words for, iv. 407. Eleanor of Poitou, iii. 60. Elgin, Lord, iv. 345. Elizabeth, English spoken in Cornwall in her reign, iii. 243. Elkosh near Mossul, iv. 184. Emperors Tiberius and Sigismund, anecdotes of the, iv. 424. ἔμφασις, iv. 31. Empirical knowledge of grammar, iv. 29. Empson, iii. 406. Empty word in Chinese (hiu-tsé), iv. 77. -εναι, infinitive, iv. 33. Engern, iii. 117. _Engil-hart_, angel-minded, iv. 89. Englaland, iii. 118. English, dialect of Low German, iii. 121. ---- dialects, iv. 68. ---- language, number of words in, iv. 68. ---- and Latin words in Cornish, iii. 256. ---- philosophy, iii. 220. ---- universities, iv. 337. Engra, state of, iii. 118. ἔοργα, ῥέζω = Zend varez, iv. 237. Epic poetry, its importance, iii. 412. “Epistolæ Obscurorum Vivorum,” the, iii. 67. Epitheta ornantia, iv. 421. Equinox, precession of the, iv. 508. Erdmann, iii. 399. Erezataêna, Zend = argentinus, iv. 235. Esther, Queen, iii. 417, 418. Estre, to stand, to be, iii. 167. Ethelbert, his conversion, iv. 287. Ethnological Survey of India, iv. 346. Eton, iii. 236. Etruscan grammar, iv. 340. Etruscan-Tyrol, or Inca-Peruvian skull, iii. 252. ἐΰς, = vasus, iv. 234. Evolution, iv. 444. Evolutionism, iv. 444, 457. Ewald, iii. 444; iv. 104. Ewe, Aryan words for, iv. 409. Excluded middle, law of the, iv. 434. “Exemplario contra los engaños,” iv. 158 _note_. _Ex-im-i-us_, to be taken out, iv. 94. Ex nihilo nihil fit, iv. 454. Ex Oriente Lux, iv. 325. Extracts, illustrating history of German literature, iii. 44.
F, its hieroglyphic prototype, iv. 450. Fables, migration of, iv. 139. ---- La Fontaine’s, iv. 139. ---- Æsop’s, iv. 139. ---- of Phædrus and Horace, iv. 140. ---- in Sanskrit, iv. 140. ---- animal, iv. 140. ---- Buddhist, iv. 141. ---- the Pañcatantra, iv. 141. ---- the Hitopadeśa, iv. 141. ---- common Aryan, iv. 145. ---- Arabic translation, iv. 155. ---- Greek translation, iv. 156. ---- Italian and Latin translation, iv. 157. ---- Hebrew translation, iv. 158. ---- German translation, iv. 158. ---- Italian, by Firenzuola and Doni, iv. 159. ---- Syriac translation of, found by Professor Benfey, iv. 181. _Fac-se_, iv. 51. _Facso_, iv. 94 _note_. Fade, preserving its _d_, iii. 167. Fallmerayer, on the Greek race, iii. 250. Families of languages, iv. 70. Father, Aryan words for, iv. 401. Father-in-law, Aryan words for, iv. 402. Fatuus, changed to fade, iii. 167. Feature, iv. 461. Fellowships, how to restore them to their original purpose, iv. 6. ---- made into a career for life, iv. 9. ---- prize, iv. 8. ---- and celibacy, iv. 9. Fellows of Colleges, work for, iv. 5. Felton’s “Lectures on Greece,” iii. 250. Feminine bases in _â_, iv. 45. _Feram_, instead of ferem, iv. 93. _Ferem_, in the sense of a future, iv. 92. Fergusson, Mr., iv. 346. Ferre = fer-se, iv. 51. Festivals, regulated bv the sun, iii. 284. Festus and Agrippa and St. Paul, iv. 277. Fichte, iii. 42. Fick, on gutturals, iv. 61. _Fides_, trust, iv. 39. _Fîdo_, I trust, iv. 39. _Fîdus_, trusty, iv. 39. “Fiesco,” Schiller’s, iii. 84. _Figulus_, potter, iv. 22. _Figura_, shape, iv. 22. Final dental of _tad_, iv. 43. _Fingere_, iv. 22. Fir, Oak, Beech, iv. 500. _Firdaus_, iv. 23. Firenzuola, his Italian edition of fables, iv. 158. Fire, Aryan words for, iv. 404. Fire worshippers as disciples of Buddha, iv. 267. Fischer, Kuno, iii. 217. ---- on Bacon, iii. 455. Five, Aryan words for, iv. 412. Flämsch, sulky, iii. 131. _Fléchier_, fletcher, iv. 87. Fleming, Paul, iii. 37. _Fletcher_, fléchier, iv. 87. Flimwolt, iii. 234. _Fœdus_, a truce, iv. 39. Fool, Aryan words for, iv. 411. Foot, Aryan words for, iv. 406. Formal things once material, iv. 95. Formation of themes, iv. 128. Four, Aryan words for, iv. 412. Four drives of Buddha, the, iv. 172. Fourth period of the Aryan language, iv. 129. Fox and the Bear, stories of, iii. 7. ---- old name for, iv. 88. Fraêsta, Zend πλεῖστος, iv. 236. Franciscans, iii. 20. Franciscans and Nominalists, iii. 65. Franke, iii. 38. Frankfort, its message to Stratford-on-Avon, iii. 214. Frankish dialect, iii. 122. Fränksch, strange, iii. 131. Fratelmo, iv. 117. Fratri-cīda, not fratrem-cīda, iv. 133. Frauenlob, Heinrich, iii. 16. Frederick the Great, iii. 81, 201. ---- at Rheinsberg, iii. 202. ---- studies Wolff, iii. 203. ---- his opinion of Wolff, iii. 204. Frederick I. of Prussia, iii. 32. Frederick II., 1215-50, iii. 14. Frederick William, the Great Elector, iii. 32. ---- III., iii. 359. ---- IV., iii. 359. ---- ---- and Niebuhr, iii. 129. Free towns of Germany, iii. 16. “Freidank’s Bescheidenheit,” iii. 15. French, ancient system of declension in, iii. 169. Friedrich I. Barbarossa, iii. 51, 52. Frisian dialect, the, iii. 122. Fritsche Closener’s “Chronicle,” iii. 17. Froissart, iii. 173. Frons, Zend brvat, iv. 236. Fronde’s “Nemesis of Faith,” iii. 374, 397. Fry, Mrs., and Bunsen, iii. 363, 370. Fulda, monastery of, iii. 6. Full words in Chinese (shi-tsé), iv. 77, 119. _Fulvus_ (harit), red, iv. 100. Future, terminations of, iv. 93. ---- so-called Attic, iv. 94 _note_.
G in Sanskrit, labialized and unlabialized, iv. 62. Gaelic, iii. 239. Gagern, Henry von, iii. 396, 400. _Gaṇa_, plural suffix, iv. 74 _note_. Gaṇeśa, god of success, iv. 251, 309. ---- and Janus, iv. 21. Ganymedes and Kaṇvamedhâtithi, or Kaṇvamesha, iv. 21. Garaṇh, γέρας, iv. 236. “Gargantua,” Rabelais’, iv. 161. Garganus, Mount, iii. 332, 341. Jâspatiḥ, iv. 46 _note_. Jâspatyam, iv. 46 _note_. _Jâti_, plural suffix, iv. 74 _note_. _Gaud-i-um_, iv. 95. Gautama Sakyamuni, or Buddha, story of, iv. 179. Gautier d’Autrèche, death of, iii. 152. Gȩ, Old Norse, cold, snow, iv. 236. Geibel, iii. 402. Geiler von Kaiserberg, iii. 67. Gelzer’s Lectures, iii. 414. General expressions, in languages not highly developed, iv. 122. γενικώτατος (ῥῆμα), iv. 30. Genitive in _as_, as infinitive, iv. 50. ---- toḥ, as infinitive, iv. 55. _Gentoo_, iv. 374 _note_. ---- laws, code of, iv. 374. Geoffroy de Beaulieu, iii. 160. Geology of speech, iv. 449. Geometric Science, first impulse given to, iv. 330. _Gêrard_, a miser, iv. 89, 90. γέρας = garaṇh, iv. 236. Gerhard, Paul, iii. 32. German history, first period of, iii. 41. ---- second period of, iii. 41. German Institute for Science and Art, iii. 214. German most closely united with Celtic (Ebel, Lottner), iv. 214. ---- literature, iii. 1. ---- literature, Hillebrand’s history of, iii. 414. ---- literature, Villmar’s history of, iii. 414. ---- people and their princes, iii. 412. ---- professor’s life, Niebuhr and Bunsen’s views of, iv. 204. ---- Theology, the author of the, iii. 21. ---- translation of fables, iv. 158. ---- traveller in England, iii. 232. Germans and Celts, first distinguished by Cæsar, iii. 240. _Ger-men_, growing, iv. 100. Gerson, iii. 65. Gerundive participle in Sanskrit, iv. 95. Gesetz, meaning of, iv. 220. Gessner, iii. 40. “Gesta Romanorum,” the, iii. 70. Ghási Dás, the prophet, iv. 314. Jhilghiti dialect of Shinâ, iv. 349. _Ghṛta-pratîka_, iv. 229. Gibbon, on the Roman Religion of the second Century, iv. 310. _Gignere_, locative from gigno, iv. 36. Gilles Mallet, his inventory of the royal library, iii. 158. _Gilvus_, _flavus_, yellow, iv. 100. Giornale de’ Letterati, iii. 194. Giriprasâda-sinha, Rajah of Besmah, iv. 335. Jishe, jeshe, infinitive, iv. 51. _Jîváse_, in order to live, iv. 36. Give, to, root DA, Aryan words for, iv. 414. Index Da Gjö, Norw., nix autumni recens, iv. 236. Glacies, gelacies, iv. 235. Gladstone, iii. 364, 368, 416. Gleim, iii. 40. Glottology and Evolutionism, iv. 459. _Gnaivod_, iv. 45. Gnâ-s, the Vedic, iv. 45. _Gnâspatiḥ_, iv. 46 _note_. γνώμων, iv. 32. Go, to, root I, Aryan words for, iv. 414. Go, to, root SRIP, Aryan words for, iv. 415. Index SRIP, Colebrooke SRĬP Goa, Buddhist priests sent to, iv. 244. Goat, Aryan words for, iv. 409. God, Aryan words for, iv. 404. _God-hâd_, iv. 88. Godhead, iv. 75. “God in History,” Bunsen’s, iii. 382. _Go-duh_, cow-milking, iv. 81. Goethe, iii. 36-40, 82. ---- idea of a World-literature, iii. 2. ---- his influence, iii. 84. ---- his friendship with Schiller, iii. 92. ---- his “Hermann and Dorothea,” iii. 93. ---- as Schiller’s rival, iii. 96. Goethe’s house, iii. 214. Goeze, Pastor, the critic of Lessing, iv. 518. Goldstücker, Professor, iv. 344, 511. ---- Whitney on, iv. 516, 524. Gonds, language of the, iv. 347. Gospels, harmony of the, iii. 6. _Gothart_, God-minded, iv. 89. Gothic language, iii. 122. Gottfried von Strassburg, iii. 10, 13. Gottsched, iii. 39. Go-válá, cowherd, iv. 90. Graduation, insensible, iv. 438. Grammar dolichocephalic, iv. 212. ---- empirical knowledge of, iv. 29. ---- rational knowledge of, iv. 29. ---- Indian and Greek systems of, iv. 381. “Grammatica Celtica” of Zeuss, iv. 17. Grammatical blunders, iv. 488. Grand-daughter, Aryan words for, iv. 402. Granpré, Alix de, wife of Joinville, iii. 153. Grandson, Aryan words for, iv. 402. Grantbridge, Cambridge, iii. 236. Great, Aryan words for, iv. 411. Great Exhibition, the, iii. 410. Greaves, Professor of Arabic, iv. 12. Greece, Felton’s lectures on, iii. 250. ---- history of, iii. 249. Greek Algebra, iv. 391. ---- The Augment in, iv. 114. ---- form of the “Pot au Lait,” iv. 156. ---- most closely united with Sanskrit (Grassman, Sonne, Kern,) iv. 215. ---- Oxford chair of, iv. 11. ---- scholarship, revival of, iv. 361. ---- songs, iii. 402. ---- stories carried to India by Alexander’s conquests, iv. 149. ---- studies of Curtius in, iv. 17. Greek or Macedonian workmen in India, iv. 349. Greeks, admixture of blood in the, iii. 251. ---- Professor Fallmerayer on, iii. 250. ---- Manouses on, iii. 251. _Green_ (Sk. hari), iv. 100. Greenway, Rev. C., iv. 342. Greenwich, time of Elizabeth, iii. 235. Gregory of Tours, iii. 159. Gregory von Heimburg, iii. 65. Grey, Sir George, iv. 343. “Griechen Lieder,” W. Müller’s, iii. 108. Griffith, Mr., iv. 335. Grimm, the brothers, iii. 113. ---- Jacob, German Grammar, iii. 122. ---- Jacob, iii. 74. ---- his Teutonic studies, iv. 17. Grimm’s Law, iv. 101 _note_. Gṛṇîsháṇi, iv. 52. Gryphius, Andreas, iii. 38. Guary miracles, iii. 259. “Gudrun,” iii. 12. Guildhall, iii. 234. Guillaume, Archbishop of Tyre, his “History of the Crusades,” iii. 159. Guillaume de Chartres, iii. 160. Guillaume de Nangis, iii. 159. Guirrimears, or Great plays, iii. 259. γύναι, vocative, iv. 232. Günther, iii. 40. Gustavus Adolphus, iii. 30. Gutturals, labialized and unlabialized, iv. 61. Gválá, cowherd, iv. 90.
H, Hieroglyphic prototype of, iv. 450. _Hâd_, A.S. state, iv. 88. Haeckel, iv. 459. ---- Whitney on, iv. 516. Hagedorn, iii. 40. Hagen, von der, iii. 113. ἅγιος, holy, iv. 94. “Hainbund,” the, iii. 127. Hair of the body, Aryan words for, iv. 409. ---- of the head, Aryan words for, iv. 409. Halbsuter, poems of, iii. 17. Haller, iii. 40. Hampton Court, iii. 236. Hand, Aryan words for, iv. 405. Hansa league, iii. 16, 31. Hans Sachs, iii. 31. _Hard_, _hardy_, iv. 88. Hard and soft, iv. 490. Hardouin, iii. 196. ---- discredits Joinville’s history, iii. 189. _Hari_, green, iv. 100. _Harit_, fulvus, red, iv. 100. Harold Blatand, iii. 266. Harold Harfagr, iii. 266. _Hart_, strong, iv. 88. Hartmann, von, iv. 459. Hartmann, von Aue, iii. 10, 13. Harun al Raschid, iv. 155. _Haubida_, caput, iv. 26. Haug, iii. 491. Haupt, iii. 417. Hausschein, iii. 29. Havet, M., his translation of the Rede Lecture, iv. 63 _note_. Hayle-river, iii. 305. Head in Godhead, iv. 75. Heat, broad degrees of, iv. 437. Heben, heaven, iii. 131. ἕβδομος and ἑπτά, iv. 230. Hebrew lectureship proposed, iv. 11. ---- Oxford chair of, iv. 11. ---- Pardés, iv. 22. ἥδιον and ἡδίων, iv. 231. Hegel, iv. 446. Heidelberg, Bunsen settles at, iii. 440. Heine, Heinrich, iii. 402. Heinrich von Veldecke’s Æneid, iii. 10. ---- his description of festival at Mayence, iii. 12. Helfer, Frau von, on the Karens, iii. 435. Heliand, poem of, iii. 5, 122. Helmholtz, Professor, iv. 514. Helstone, iii. 292. Henley, iii. 236. Henry II. and Eleanor of Poitou, iii. 12. ---- king of England, iii. 51. Henry III., iii. 152. ---- his oppression of the Jews, iii. 307. Henry VIII., iii. 73. ---- and the Oxford chairs of Greek and Hebrew, iv. 11. ---- did nothing for Arabic, iv. 12. Henry the Lion, of Saxony, iii. 12. Hentzner, his travels, iii. 232. Herakleitos, iv. 65. Ἥρακλες, vocative, iv. 232. Herba nicotiana, iii. 234. Herbelot’s “Bibliothèque Orientale,” iii. 415. Herder, iii. 40. ---- his influence, iii. 84. “Hermann and Dorothea,” influence of Schiller on Goethe’s, iii. 93. Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia, iii. 13. Hermann, Gottfried, iv. 32, 209. Hessius, Eoban, iii. 29. Heynlin a Lapide, Johannes, iii. 66. High German, iii. 121. ---- dialects, iii. 122. Hillebrand’s “History of German Literature,” iii. 414. Himil, A.S. vault, sky, iv. 236. Hindu astronomers, four ways of reckoning time among, iv. 367. ---- astronomy, antiquity of, iv. 387. ---- Bentley on, iv. 387. ---- and Mohammedan Law, digest of, iv. 373. ---- philosophy, Colebrooke’s treatises on, iv. 394. ---- schools of law, iv. 374. ---- skulls, iii. 252. ---- widow, Colebrooke on the duties of, iv. 372. Hindus, Lunar Zodiac of the, iv. 508. Hindustani or Moors, iv. 365. “Hippolytus,” Bunsen’s, iii. 382, 416. ---- Taylor’s article on, iii. 418. “Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants,” iii. 194. Historical monuments should be under protection, iii. 270. ---- religions, iv. 239. ---- ---- number of, iv. 239. “History of the Science of Language,” Benfey’s, iv. 325. ---- of philosophy, study of the, iv. 444. Hitopadeśa, the, iv. 141. ---- fable of the Brâhman and the rice, iv. 143. Hliumunt, and śromata, iv. 218. _Hlúd_, A.S. loud, iv. 219. Hoar rock in the wood, the, iii. 317. Hobbes’ view of man, iv. 222. Hodgson, iii. 443. Hoftmannswaldau, iii. 38. Hog, Aryan words for, iv. 409. _Hogarth_, meaning of, iv. 89. Hohenfriedberg, battle of, iii. 213. Hohenstaufen dynasty, iii. 8. Holcetæ, the, iii. 119. Holed stones, iii. 270. Holtseten or Holsten, iii. 119. Hölty, Count, iii. 127. “Holy Graal,” Wolfram’s, iii. 54. Holzmann, iii. 446. Homer, digamma in, iv. 225. “Homerische Vorschule,” by Wilhelm Müller, iii. 113. Homoousia, the, iv. 313. _Horâ_, iv. 367. Horace’s fables, iv. 140. Horse, Aryan words for, iv. 408. Hottentot language, iv. 344. _Hour_, horâ, iv. 367. House, Aryan words for, iv. 407. Hrabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mayence, iii. 6. Hrîm, rime, iv. 235. Hrosvitha, Latin plays of, iii. 7. _Hruom_, Old High German, iv. 218. Hückup, sigh, iii. 131. Huet, friend of La Fontaine, iv. 151. _Hugihart_, wise-minded, iv. 89. Hugo, iii. 64. Hugo von Montfort, iii. 17. Huir, or hoer, Cornish, iii. 263. Human beings without language, iv. 341. Human sacrifices in India, iv. 370. Humaniores, iv. 362. Humboldt, Alexander von, iii. 354. ---- letter to Bunsen, iii. 446. Humboldt, Wilhelm von, iv. 446. Hume, iii. 218. Hundius, iii. 64. Hunnblaff, iii. 131. Hunt, Professor of Arabic, iv. 12. Husain ben Ali, his “Anvári Suhaili,” iv. 159. Husbandry and commerce of Bengal, Colebrooke on the, iv. 373. Husband’s brother, Aryan words for, iv. 403. Huschke on skulls, iii. 252. ὑσμῖν and ὑσμίνη, iv. 121. Huss, iii. 65. Hutten, his works, iii. 62. Huxley on skulls, iii. 253. Huxley, iv. 445, 446, 448. Hyde, Professor of Arabic, iv. 12. Hyder Ali and the missionary Schwarz, iv. 285. ---- death of, iv. 365. Hymn- and Prayer-book by Bunsen, iii. 361, 413. Hymns, Latin ancient, iii. 5. Hypsibios, iv. 457.
Ice, names for, iv. 235, 236.
Içi, Zend, ice, iv. 235, 236.
Ictis, island of, iii. 318.
Idealism and Realism, iii. 220.
Idola, iii. 222.
Idolatry and the Brahmos, iv. 270.
Ignatius, Epistles of, iii. 372.
Illustrations, importance of, iv. 474.
Immaculate Conception, the, iii. 66.
Incapsulating languages, iv. 85.
In-cre-p-are, iv. 219.
India, Colebrooke starts for, iv. 364.
---- Colebrooke the legislator of, iv. 390.
---- Mathematicians, dates of, iv. 392.
---- Primitive languages in, iii. 422.
---- snake-charmers, iv. 370.
---- human sacrifices, iv. 370.
Indian Algebra, like Arabian, not like Greek, iv. 391.
---- Government, their readiness to help students, iv. 344.
---- and Greek systems of grammar, iv. 382.
---- Mirror, the, iv. 355.
---- Museum in London, iv. 349.
---- Plants, Colebrooke’s Essay on, iv. 380.
---- Theogonies, Colebrooke’s Essay on, iv. 380.
Indo-Chinese family, iv. 70.
Indo-European migrations from the Upper Indus, towards Bactria,
iii. 405.
_In-ed-i-a_, iv. 95.
Infallibility of traditional interpretation of Veda, iv. 386.
Infinitive, the, iv. 30.
---- as an adverb, iv. 31.
---- in Greek, iv. 36.
---- as substantive, iv. 37.
---- in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, iv. 47.
---- Dative in _e_, iv. 50.
---- Dative in _ai_, iv. 50.
---- Dative in _ane_, iv. 54.
---- Dative in _tave_ and _tavai_, iv. 55.
---- Dative in _âya_, iv. 51.
---- Dative in _s-e_, iv. 51.
---- Dative in _âyai_, iv. 52.
---- Dative in _aye_, iv. 52.
---- Dative in _taye_, iv. 53.
---- Dative in _tyai_, iv. 53.
---- Dative in _ase_, iv. 53.
---- Dative in _mane_, iv. 54.
---- Dative in _vane_, iv. 54.
---- Accusative in _am_, iv. 50.
---- Genitive in _as_, iv. 50.
---- Ablative in _as_, iv. 50.
---- Locative in _i_, iv. 50.
---- Locative in _sani_, iv. 54.
---- in _um_, _om_ (_u_, _o_) in Oscan and Umbrian, iv. 50.
---- in English, iv. 58.
---- in Anglo-Saxon, iv. 58.
---- in Bengali, iv. 59.
---- in Dravidian Languages, iv. 60.
Infinitives, iv. 31.
Infixing or incapsulating languages, iv. 85.
Inflectional languages, iv. 79.
Inflectional stage, iv. 116.
Inflection, the results of combination, iv. 111.
_Innoca_ from _innocua_, iv. 131.
_Innox_ from _innoca_, iv. 131.
Insect, Aryan words for, iv. 410.
Insensible graduation, iv. 437.
Institutes of Calvin, iv. 287.
Instrumental in tvâ, as infinitive, iv. 55.
_Intelligent_, inter-ligent, inter-twining, iv. 327.
International Congress of Orientalists, iv. 317.
Inverted Fugue, an, iv. 470.
Ionians, as Asiatics, iii. 457.
Ipse, iv. 236.
Iranian, iii. 429, 441.
Isaiah, the last 27 chapters, iii. 484.
Isis, iii. 289.
Islâm, the, iv. 245.
Isolating languages, iv. 79.
Isolating spirit in the science of language, iv. 18.
Is-tud, Latin, iv. 43.
“Italian Guest,” by Thomasin von Zerclar, iii. 15.
Italian sonnet, iii. 58.
Italian translation of the “Stephanites and Ichnelates,” iv. 157.
“Itinerarium,” the, of William of Worcester, iii. 324.
Jackman, his use of Cornish, iii. 244. Jagannâtha, iv. 374. Janus and Gaṇeśa, iv. 21. Jeanne of Navarre and Joinville, iii. 154. Jean Paul, iv. 446. Jellinghaus, Mr., iv. 348. Jeremiah, author of last part of Isaiah, iii. 484. Jerusalem Bishopric, the, iii. 129, 367. Jesuits, as scientific investigators, iii. 196. ---- found the “Journal de Trévoux,” iii. 194. Jews in Cornwall, iii. 287. ---- houses of, iii. 287, 298. ---- oppressed by Henry III., iii. 309. ---- tin raised by, iii. 311. ---- do not proselytize, iv. 241. ---- the most proselytizing of people, iv. 304. Joannes Damascenus, iv. 167. Joasaph or Josaphat or Bodhisattva, iv. 180. Jocelin, his work on St. Patrick, iii. 300. Joel, translator of fables from Arabic into Hebrew, iv. 158. Johannes of Capua, author of Latin translation of fables, iv. 158. Join, to, root YUG, Aryan words for, iv. 414. Colebrooke YUJ Joinville, iii. 151. ---- his wife, iii. 153. ---- his burial place, iii. 155. ---- his estate possessed and sold by Egalité, iii. 156. ---- writes his book for Jeanne of Navarre, iii. 157. ---- first edition of, iii. 158. ---- Menard’s edition of, iii. 160. ---- Ducange’s edition, iii. 161. ---- Charters of, iii. 165. ---- Capperonnier’s edition of, iii. 161. ---- Daunou on, iii. 164. ---- Paulin Paris on, iii. 161. ---- MS. found at Brussels, iii. 161. ---- MS. found at Lucca, iii. 163. ---- MS. found at Rheims, iii. 163. ---- letter to Louis X., iii. 164. ---- his language, iii. 165 and _note_. ---- Sir J. Stephen on, iii. 173. ---- his truth to his king, iii. 178. ---- relates few miracles, iii. 184. ---- Hardouin on, iii. 189. Jones, Sir William, his translations from Sanskrit, iv. 322, 361. ---- on the resemblance between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, iv. 324. ---- the only rival of Colebrooke, iv. 396. ---- Colebrooke’s testimony to, iv. 397. ---- his merits not appreciated, iv. 398. Josaphat, his early life the same as Buddha’s, iv. 174. Joseph II., iii. 35, 81. “Journal des Savants,” iii. 192. ---- and Voltaire, iii. 193. ---- translated into Latin, iii. 194. “Journal de Trévoux,” iii. 194. ---- Index by Sommervogel, iii. 195. Journalism, power of, iii. 199. Jovius, Paulus, iii. 234. Julien, Stanislas, iv. 107 _note_. Jumièges, William of, iii. 159. Jupiter, Ζεύς, Dyaus, Zio, and Tyr, iv. 210. Justin, his interview with the philosopher, iv. 287. Juts, iii. 118. Juxtaposition produces combination, iv. 111. Juxtapositional stage, iv. 116. Juxtapositional, combinatory, and inflectional strata in the formation of the Aryan language, iv. 138.
Ca, Sanskrit particle, iv. 26. Kabir, founder of the sect of the Avadhûta, iv. 257. ---- commandments of, iv. 257. ---- his reforms, iv. 257. ---- poetry of, iv. 311. Kad-vân, iv. 44. Kafir or Bâ-ntu family, iv. 70. Kaḷ, iv. 82. Kala or Gala in Tamil, iv. 74 note. Kalâsha-Mânder dialects, iv. 349. καλεῖν, not calare, or to call, iv. 104. _Kalevara_, body, iv. 24. Kali, the goddess, iv. 251. ---- goddess of Calcutta, iv. 309. Kalidasa’s play of Sakuntala, iv. 323. Kalila and Dimnah, Mongolian translation of, iv. 149 _note_. ---- when written, iv. 151. ---- Persian translation of by Nasr Allah, iv. 159. ---- Spanish translation of, iv. 161. ---- in Latin verse, iv. 161. Kalilag and Damnag, Renan on, iv. 181. Kamara, Zend, girdle, καμάρα, iv. 236. Kameredhe, Zend, skull; cf. κμέλεθρον, iv. 236. Kamilarois, religious ideas of the, iv. 341. Kant, iv. 447. ---- his influence on Schiller, iii. 94. ---- his writings, iv. 426. Kaṇva-medhatithi or Kaṇva-mesha and Ganymedes, iv. 21. Karens, the, iii. 435. Kareta, Zend, knife, culter, iv. 236. Karl August, Duke of Weimar, iii. 85, 88. Kârtikêya, god of war, iv. 251, 309. κατάλογος, iv. 219. κατηγόρημα or σύμβαμα, iv. 31. Katolsch, angry, iii. 131. Kehrp or kṛp, iv. 235. Keigwyn, his translations from Cornish, iii. 258. Kellermann, iii. 419. Keshub Chunder Sen, iv. 260, 312. ---- his Lecture on Christ, iv. 272. Khalif Almansur, iv. 151. ---- his court, iv. 167. Khasia language and the Munda dialects, iv. 348. Khayuna dialects, iv. 349. Khosru Nushirvan, iv. 183. ---- his physician, iv. 152. Khrûma, Zend = Sk. krûra, crudus, iv. 235. Khrûta, Zend, adj. of zim, winter, iv. 235. Kielhorn, Dr., iv. 332, 345. King, Aryan words for, iv. 407. Kingdom, iv. 75. ---- Aryan words for, iv. 407. Kingsley, iii. 489. ---- and the Saturday Review, iii. 480. Kistvaen, or cistvaen, iii. 267, 269. Kitt’s Cotty House, iii. 267. Klaus Groth, on Friesian, iii. 123 _note_. ---- his poems, iii. 126, 132. ---- political poems, iii. 133. ---- Vertellen, iii. 146. κλάζω = κράζω (clu), iv. 219. κλέος = hruom, iv. 219. Klinger, iii. 82. Klopstock, iii. 40-42, 82, 84. Knee, Aryan words for, iv. 406. Know, to, root JÑA, Aryan words for, iv. 415. Index and Colebrooke JNYA ---- root VID, Aryan words for, iv. 415. Knowledge for its own sake, danger of, iv. 320. Koelle’s sixty-seven African languages, iii. 427. Körner, iii. 85, 86, 402. ---- Theodore, iii. 86. Koles, the, iv. 347. ---- language of, Dravidian, iv. 347. Königsberg School, the, iii. 37. Konrad’s Roland, iii. 9. Konrad von Würzburg, iii. 15. Kontablacos, iii. 67. Koran, spirit of the, iv. 245. Kosmos of language, iii. 450. -κρατης = hard, iv. 88. _Kratu_, intellectual strength, iv. 88. Kratylos, Plato’s, iv. 65. κράζω = κλάζω (clu ?), iv. 219. κρῖμα = crimen, Græco-Italic, according to Mommsen, iv. 218, 219. κρύος, κρυμός, κρύσταλλος, iv. 235. κυμαίους, ὄνος παρά, iv. 150. _Kûmârâ-ya te_, he behaves like a girl, iv. 91.
Laboulaye, iii. 446.
---- on Barlaam and Josaphat, iv. 177.
Lachmann, iii. 350, 408.
Ladyship, iv. 75.
La Fontaine’s fables, iv. 139.
---- published 1668, iv. 140.
---- 2d and 3d editions, 1678, 1694, iv. 140.
---- fable of Perrette borrowed from the Pañcatantra, iv. 142.
---- and David Sahid of Ispahan’s translation of Pilpay’s fables,
iv. 159.
_Lagu_, law, iv. 220.
Lalita Vistara, the, iv. 171.
Lamprecht’s “Alexander,” iii. 9.
Language of the Swabian court, iii. 8.
---- of Luther, iii. 24.
---- of Joinville, iii. 166.
---- the Kosmos of, iii. 450.
---- stratification of, iv. 63.
---- origin of, iv. 67.
---- universal, iv. 67.
---- English, 100,000 words in, iv. 68.
---- classification of, iv. 72.
---- made by convention, iv. 73.
---- three conditions of, iv. 78.
---- RR for 1st stage, iv. 79.
---- R + ρ +r+ for 2d stage, iv. 79.
---- ρ +r+ for 3d stage, iv. 79.
---- not highly developed, rich in words, poor in general
expressions, iv. 122.
---- Science of, is it a natural or historical science, iv. 222.
---- human beings without, iv. 341.
---- Veddahs said to have none, iv. 342.
---- of the Koles and Gonds, iv. 347.
---- natural growth or historical change in, iv. 422.
---- the specific difference of man, iv. 441.
---- none without roots, iv. 460.
---- and thought inseparable, iv. 484.
Languages in India, the primitive, iii. 422.
---- families of, iv. 70.
---- isolating, combinatory, and inflectional, iv. 79.
---- suffixing, prefixing, affixing, and infixing, iv. 85.
Lardner’s “Credibilia,” iv. 287.
La Rivey, his translations of fables, iv. 159 _note_.
Lassen, iii. 404; iv. 510.
---- and Burnouf, Whitney on, iv. 515.
Latin, use of, iii. 29.
---- and English words in Cornish, iii. 256.
---- words in Cornish, iii. 261.
---- inscriptions, iii. 419.
---- chair of, iv. 13.
---- Corssens studies in, iv. 17.
---- text of the Milkmaid, iv. 164 _note_.
---- Church, first day of SS. Barlaam and Josaphat, iv. 177.
---- a language made up of Italic, Greek, and Pelasgic, iv. 206.
---- derived from Greek, iv. 206.
---- most closely united with Greek (Mommsen, Curtius), iv. 215.
Laud, Archbishop, his support of Arabic, iv. 12.
---- his collection of Arabic MSS., iv. 12.
_Laudari a viro laudato_, iv. 512.
Lautverschiebung, iv. 101 _note_, 102.
Law, no settled word for, in the Aryan languages, iv. 220.
---- of the Excluded Middle, iv. 434.
Laws of Manu., iv. 323.
---- of Nature, unsuspected, iv. 426.
Laymen, work of, iv. 293.
---- assistance of, iv. 293.
Leader, the, iii. 401.
_Leccardo_, a gourmand, iv. 90.
Lecture on Christ by Keshub Chunder Sen, iv. 272.
“Lectures on the English Language,” Marsh’s, iv. 431.
Lectureships for Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldaic proposed in 1311,
iv. 11.
Leibnitz, iii. 39.
---- his views on language, iv. 65.
---- shows that Greek and Latin are not derived from Hebrew, iv. 207.
_Leiche_, body, iv. 23.
_Leik_, body, iv. 23.
Leitner, Dr., his labors in Dardistan, iv. 348.
λελοιπ-έναι, iv. 34.
Lengthening of the vowel in the subjunctive, iv. 114.
Leo Allatius and the story of Barlaam and Josaphat, iv. 178.
Leo the Isaurian, iv. 161.
Leofric, Bishop of Exeter, iii. 324.
Leopardi, iii. 362.
Leopold, Duke of Austria, iii. 12.
Leprosy, iii. 237.
Lepsius, iii. 362, 439; iv. 2.
---- on Egyptian chronology, iii. 396.
Lessing, iii. 40, 82.
---- his “Minna von Barnhelm,” iii. 42.
---- his “Emilia Galotti,” iii. 42.
---- his “Nathan,” iii. 42.
---- his influence, iii. 84.
---- and forgotten books, iii. 232.
---- Pastor Goeze the critic of, iv. 518.
Λητοῖ, vocative, iv. 233.
_Leumund_, iv. 218.
Lewis, Sir G. C., iii. 239.
Lex and law, iv. 219, 220.
Lhuyd, Mr. Ed., d. 1709, and his Cornish Grammar, iii. 245.
_Lich_, lichgate, iv. 23.
_Liebhart_, mignon, iv. 89 _note_.
Liebrecht, Dr. Felix, iv. 165 _note_.
Liebrecht, on Barlaam and Josaphat, iv. 177.
Ligare, to bind, iv. 220.
Light, broad degrees of, iv. 437.
---- lucere, iv. 467.
Lines and limits in nature, iv. 437.
_Linguardo_, a talker, iv. 90.
Linguistic survey of India, iv. 346.
Lionesse, the countrie of, iii. 322.
Lion’s skin, the, in Plato’s “Kratylos,” iv. 150 _note_.
λιπαρός, iv. 229.
Liscow, iii. 40.
Literary survey of India, the, iv. 346.
Lives of saints, the, interest of, iii. 300.
“Livre des Lumières” by David Sahid of Ispahan, iv. 160.
Local adverbs, as terminations of cases, iv. 96.
Locative in i, as infinitive, iv. 50.
---- in sani, as infinitive, iv. 55.
Locatives, old, iv. 208.
Locher, iii. 68.
Locke, iv. 446.
---- philosophy of, iii. 218.
Lockhart, iii. 402.
Loewe, Dr., iv. 487.
Loftus, iii. 433.
Logan stones, iii. 278.
Logau, Friedrich von, iii. 38.
Logic, Prantl on reform of, iv. 486.
Logical statement, skeleton of, iv. 434.
λόγος, not lex, iv. 219.
Logos, the, iv. 455.
Lohenstein, iii. 38.
London in the 16th century, iii. 234.
Loss of MS. of the Veda, iii. 401.
Lother and Maler, iii. 70.
Louis le Hutin, his library, iii. 157.
Louis III., lay on his victory over the Normans, iii. 6.
Louis IX., iii. 177, and the Bishop of Paris, iii. 182.
Louis XIV., iii. 32.
---- court of, iii. 33.
_Lourdement_, heavily, iv. 112.
Love songs, Old German, iii. 51.
Low German, iii. 121.
---- dialects, iii. 122.
_Lu_ in Telugu, iv. 82.
Lübeck, home of Chasot, iii. 210.
Lucien Buonaparte, iii. 423.
Ludwig, King, iii. 5.
Lunar Zodiac of the Hindus, iv. 508.
λῦσαι, infinitive, iv. 51, 57.
Luther, iii. 24, 26, 67.
---- his language, iii. 24.
---- his Table Talk, iii. 62.
Lycians, the true Pelasgians, iii. 396.
Ma, _tva_, _ta_, iv. 113.
Mâ and μή prohibitivum, iv. 213.
Macaulay, iii. 363, 407.
---- Lord, on Christian differences, iv. 290.
---- ---- on Bacon, iii. 227.
Madenhood, iii. 236.
Madh, Zend, to cure, mederi, iv. 236.
Madras, Colebrooke’s arrival at, iv. 364.
Mahâbhâshya, new edition of, iv. 335.
---- photo-lithograph of, iv. 344.
Mahon, iii. 407.
Mahrattas, the, Buddhist priests sent to, iv. 244.
μαι, for mâma, iv. 125.
“Maid of Orleans,” Schiller’s, iii. 92, 97.
Mamânsaka philosophers, iv. 386.
Malayo-Polynesian family, iv. 70.
Mallet, Gilles, iii. 158.
Mammoth, age of the, iii. 319.
_Man_, a suffix, iv. 33.
Man, Zend, manere, iv. 236.
---- Aryan words for, iv. 405.
---- an amphibious creature, iv. 477.
---- pursued by a unicorn, parable of, iv. 170.
_Mane_, Sanskrit termination, iv. 32.
Manere, iv. 236.
_Man-hâd_, iv. 88.
Manouses, Professor, his lectures on the Greeks, iii. 251.
Mansel, iv. 446.
Manuel, Don Juan, his “Conde Lucanor,” iv. 164.
Mar, mard, mardh, marg, mark, marp, śmar, iv. 122.
Mâra, his interview with Buddha, iv. 268.
Mârâh, Zion, iii. 293.
Marazion, iii. 287, 293.
March, Dr., on Infinitive, iv. 58.
---- his Anglo-Saxon Grammar, iv. 421.
Marchadion, iii. 297.
Marchadyon, iii. 294.
Mardîn, library of, iv. 186.
Margravine of Baireuth, the, iii. 203.
Maria Theresa, iii. 124.
“Mark Bozzari,” Müller’s “Griechen Lieder,” iii. 108.
Market Jew, iii. 293, 297.
Marriages in India between those of different rank, iv. 377.
Marsh’s “Lectures on the English Language,” iv. 431.
Martin, Theodore, his translation of the “Griechen Lieder,”
iii. 108, 111.
“Martyrologium Romanum,” the, iv. 169 _note_.
“Mary Stuart,” Schiller’s, iii. 92, 96.
Masi, from ma-tvi, iv. 125.
Master Eckhardt, iii. 419.
Mastersingers, iii. 16.
Mâtấ, mâtáram, iv. 232.
Mathilde, daughter of Henry II., iii. 12.
---- of Saxony, iii. 60.
Matthias of Beheim translates the Bible, iii. 21.
Maximilian the Emperor, iii. 17.
Max Müller, letters from Bunsen to, iii. 393.
Mayas, delight, iv. 55.
Meco, iv. 117.
Mederi, Zend, madh, iv. 236.
Meissel, Celtes, iii. 29.
Meistersänger, the, iii. 31.
---- their poetry, iii. 69.
Melanchthon, iii. 29.
---- his letters, iii. 62.
μέλαθρον, iv. 236.
μέλδετε = mṛḷata, iv. 234.
Meldorf, home of K. Niebuhr, iii. 127.
Melidunum, Moulton, iii. 293.
Melusina, iii. 70.
“Mémoire sur la Langue de Joinville,” par De Wailly, iii. 165 _note_.
“Mémoires de Trévoux,” iii. 192.
μέμονα and μέμαμεν, iv. 40.
μεναι, infinitive in, iv. 33.
Mên-an-tol, or holed stones, iii. 271, 283.
---- their origin, iii. 284.
Menard, his edition of Joinville, iii. 160.
Mên-rock, iii. 306.
Mên Scrifa, the, iii. 271.
Mendelssohn, iii. 362.
“Merchant of Venice,” story of the caskets, iv. 170 _note_.
“Merigarto,” hybrid style of, iii. 8.
Merivale, Herman, and Jews in Cornwall, iii. 310.
Metaphysique, Bacon’s, iii. 223.
μέτηρ, μητέρα = matấ, mâtáram, iv. 232.
Method of Induction, Bacon’s, iii. 225.
Meyer, Martin, iii. 63.
_Mi_, _si_, _ti_, iv. 113.
Michelstow, iii. 336.
Middle High German, iii. 9.
Migration of Fables, iv. 139.
Miklosich, his Slavonic studies, iv. 17.
Milkmaid, the fable of the, first appearance in English, iv. 164.
---- instead of the Brahman, iv. 165.
Mill, John Stuart, iv. 318.
Mill, Dr., iv. 336.
Min Jehann, iii. 137.
Mincamber or Mânamber, iii. 277.
Mind, Aryan words for, iv. 405.
---- what is meant by, iv. 436.
---- of animals, a terra incognita, iv. 442.
Minne, meaning, of, iii. 56.
Minnesänger, the, iii. 9.
“Minnesangs Frühling,” iii. 53, 61.
Minute differences, many words for, in languages not highly
developed, iv. 122.
Miracles, related by Joinville, iii. 185.
Mirzapur, Colebrooke at, iv. 374.
---- Colebrooke returns to, iv. 381.
Missionaries, Irish and English, iii. 4.
Missionary and Non-missionary religions, iv. 241.
Missionary religions, iv. 241, 303.
---- religion what constitutes a, iv. 306.
---- societies, iv. 290.
---- societies, claim on, for Oriental studies, iv. 337.
Missions, iv. 238.
---- Stanley’s Sermon on, iv. 276.
---- should be more helped by the universities, iv. 338.
Misteries, the, iii. 69.
μισθός, Goth. mizdô, iv. 236.
Mîzdha, Zend, μισθός, iv. 236.
μόχθηρε, vocative, iv. 232.
Modern languages, their importance, iv. 523.
Modus infinitus, iv. 31.
Mohammedanism, countries professing, iv. 252.
Mollwitz, battle of, iii. 206.
Mommsen, Theodore, iii. 129.
“Monatliche Unterredungen,” iii. 194.
Mongol words from Chinese, iv. 105.
Mongolian and Chinese, iv. 106.
---- conquerors carry Buddhist fables to Russia, iv. 149.
---- translation of Kalila and Dimnah, iv. 149 _note_.
Monosyllabic form of roots, iv. 121.
_Monstra_, iv. 72.
Montaigne on the French language, iii. 164.
Month, Aryan words for, iv. 404.
Mont St. Michel in Normandy, iii. 326.
Moon, Aryan words for, iv. 403.
Moors, or Hindustani, iv. 365.
More, Sir Thomas, iv. 293.
Moreman, teaches English in Cornwall, iii. 244.
Morgenstunde hat Gold im Munde, iv. 144.
Morier, iii. 408.
Morris, Dr., on Infinitive, iv. 58.
Moscherosch, iii. 38.
Moslim, iv. 245.
Mother, Aryan words for, iv. 401.
Mother-in-law, Aryan words for, iv. 403.
Moulton, Melidunum, iii. 293.
Mountain, Aryan words for, iv. 424.
Mount Calvary, Cornish poem, iii. 257.
Mount Garganus in Apulia, iii. 326, 332.
Mouse, Aryan words for, iv. 410.
Mouth, Aryan words for, iv. 406.
Mule, Aryan words for, iv. 408.
Müller, Dr. Friedrich, iv. 74 _note_.
Müller, O., iii. 400, 431.
Müller, Ottfried, and Comparative Philology, iv. 209.
Müller, Wilhelm, iii. 100.
---- his enjoyment of nature, iii. 103.
---- his life at Dessau, iii. 107.
---- his “Griechen Lieder,” iii. 107.
---- pupil of Wolf, iii. 113.
---- his “Homerische Vorschule,” iii. 113.
Munda dialects and the Khasian language, iv. 348.
---- and the Talaing of Pegu, iv. 348.
Mundas or Koles, dialects of, iv. 347.
Mure, iii. 419.
_Musket_, iv. 503.
Mysore, Buddhist priests sent to, iv. 244.
Mystery plays in Cornish, iii. 258, 259.
Mystics, iii. 18.
Mythology, iv. 210, 328.
Naaman, iv. 278. Nacheinander, iv. 33. Naçu, Zend, corpse, νέκυς, iv. 236. Nagpur, Colebrooke at, iv. 380. _Nak_, night, iv. 91. Nakshatras, the, iv. 508. ---- derived from China or Chaldea, iv. 508. Name, Aryan words for, iv. 407. Nânak, founder of the Sikh religion, iv. 257. ---- wisdom of, iv. 311. ---- reforms of, iv. 257. _Naples_, inflectional, iv. 82. Naples, Neapolis, iv. 117. Napo, Zend, A.S. nefa, iv. 236. Napoleon, iii. 492. ---- at the Red Sea, iv. 291. “Narrenschiff,” “Ship of Fools,” iii. 68, 71. ---- Zarneke’s edition of, iii. 71. ---- Alexander Barclay’s translation of, iii. 72. _Nas-a-ti_, he perishes, iv. 91. _Nâsa-ya-ti_, he sends to destruction, iv. 91. Nas-i-da, iv. 117. _Nas-yá-te_, he is destroyed, iv. 91. _Nas-ya-ti_, he perishes, iv. 91, 92. Nasr Allah, his Persian translation of “Kahla and Dimnah,” iv. 159. National character, iii. 254. ---- protection for historical monuments, iii. 276. Nattore, Colebrooke at, iv. 370. Natural growth, or historical change in language, iv. 422. Nature, lines and limits in, iv. 437. Nausea, iii. 171. Navel, Aryan words for, iv. 406. Neanderthal skull, the, iii. 253. Neapolis, iv. 82. Néa-pólis, New Town, Neápolis, iv. 117. _Nêcare_, iv. 91. Nefa, A.S. nephew, iv. 236. Negro skull, iii. 252. νέκ-υς, νεκ-ρός, iv. 91. νέκυς, Goth. naus, iv. 236. Nemesis, iv. 220. ---- of Faith, Froude’s, iii. 374, 397. Nepal, Buddhist priests sent to, iv. 244. _Nesháṇi_, to lead, iv. 34. Neukomm, iii. 411, 473. New, Aryan words for, iv. 411. Newman, J. H., and the Jerusalem bishopric, iii. 128. ---- and Bunsen, iii. 363, 364. ---- his “Apologia,” iii. 367. New Oxford, iii. 403. _Newton_, combinatory, iv. 82. _New-town_, combinatory, iv. 82. “Nibelunge,” the, iii. 7, 12, 54-56. Nicholas of Basle, iii. 419. Niclas von Weyl, iii. 17. Niebuhr, Karsten, the traveller, iii. 126. ---- his home at Meldorf, iii. 127. Niebuhr, Barthold, the historian, iii. 128, 130, 353, 404. ---- his political character, Bunsen on, iii. 416. ---- his views of the German professor’s life, iv. 203. ---- on truthfulness, iv. 225. Night, Aryan words for, iv. 404. Nigidius Figulus, iv. 231. Nine, Aryan words for, iv. 413. Maidens, the Nine, iii. 273. νίφ-α, acc., iv. 236. Nirvâṇa, iii. 486. Nirvâṇa (dying), iv. 268. Nithard, iii. 159. Nitzschius, his translation of the “Journal des Savants,” iii. 194. Nix, Goth, snaiv-s, iv. 236. Noise, iii. 171. Nominalists and Realists, iii. 64, 66. νόμος from νέμειν, iv. 220. Non-missionary religions, iv. 241. Nonsuch, palace of, iii. 236. Norden, his description of Cornwall, iii. 244. Nordleudt, the, iii. 119. Norman blood, iii. 249. ---- words in Cornish, iii. 260. North Turanian Class, iv. 105. Northalbingi, the, iii. 119. Nose, Aryan words for, iv. 406. Notker Teutonicus, iii. 6. Nouns (ὀνόματα), iv. 30. _Nox_, from nak, iv. 91. Numa, iv. 220. Nuti, author of “Del Governo de’ regni,” iv. 157. νύξ = nox, iv. 91.
Obligatio, binding, iv. 220. Ockham, the Franciscan, iii. 66. _Oc-ulus_, iv. 25. _Oculus_, iv. 28. ὄγδοος and ὀκτώ, iv. 230. Oecolampadius, iii. 29. οἶδα and ἴσμεν, iv. 40. οἴκειο-ς, in the house, iv. 94. οἶος, one, iv. 236. Old, Aryan words for, iv. 411. ---- ablatives, termination of, iv. 44. ---- age extraordinary, iii. 246 _note_. ---- Büsum, iii. 138. ---- German Love Songs, iii. 51. Olmütz, iii. 381. ὄμμα, iv. 25. One, Aryan words for, iv. 412. ὄνομα and nomen, in Persian nâm, iv. 324. ὀφθαλμός, iv. 25. Opitz, iii. 33, 34, 36. ὄπ-ωπ-α, iv. 25. Oppert, Whitney on, iv. 515. Orare de Bayard, iii. 205. Orichalcum, iii. 290. Oriental studies, their claims on support, iv. 336 _seq._ Origen, iv. 293. Origin of language, iv. 67. “Origin of Chinese,” Chalmers’, iv. 105. “Origine des Romans, Traité de l’,” Huet, iv. 151. Orléans, Duke of, Egalité, iii. 156. Oscan grammar, iv. 340. Osney, iii. 289. ὄσσε, iv. 28. ὄσσε for ὄκιε, iv. 25. Ostfalia, the tribe of, iii. 117. Oswald von Wolkenstein, iii. 17. Otfried, iii. 6. Other, Aryan words for, iv. 411. Otho I., and Denmark, iii. 119. Overweg, iii. 419. Ox, cow, bull, Aryan words for, iv. 408. Oxenford, iii. 236. Oxford chair of Greek, iv. 11. ---- ---- Hebrew, iv. 11. ---- ---- Arabic, iv. 12. ---- ---- Anglo-Saxon, iv. 12. ---- ---- Sanskrit, iv. 13. Oxford chair of Latin, iv. 13. ---- ---- Comparative Philology, iv. 13. ---- Realists at, iii. 65. ---- King of Prussia’s remark on, iii. 238. ---- name of, iii. 289. ---- Ryt-ychen, Welsh name for, iii. 290. ---- Bunsen at, iii. 365. ---- Lectures at, iii. 407. ---- University of, claim of Oriental studies on, iv. 337. ---- what it might do for Missions, iv. 338. Oyez, iii. 262.
Pada-cases, iv. 133.
Pairidaêza in Zend, iv. 22.
Paithya, Zend, sua-pte, iv. 236.
Palaitiological sciences, iv. 427.
Palleske’s “Life of Schiller,” iii. 76.
Palmerston, iii. 475, 492.
Pandit, the, iv. 335.
Pandoo Coolies, in Malabar, iii. 269.
Pâṇini, iv. 20, 332.
Pañcatantra, the, or Pentateuch, or Pentamerone, iv. 141.
---- Perrette borrowed from, iv. 142.
Pantænus, iv. 293.
Pantschatantra, the, iv. 183.
Parable of the man pursued by the unicorn, iv. 170.
Para-Brahma, the, iv. 256.
Paradise and Sanskrit paradesa, iv. 22.
παρακολουθήματα, iv. 31.
Paraschematic growth of early themes, iv. 129.
“Parcival,” Wolfram’s, iii. 54.
Pardès in Hebrew, iv. 22.
παρέμφασις, iv. 31.
Parental and controversial work of missionaries, iv. 253.
Paribhvê from paribhûs, iv. 233.
Paris, university of, iv. 11.
Paris, Paulin, on Joinville, iii. 161.
Parker, Abp., his collection of Anglo-Saxon MSS., iv. 12.
Parlerai, je, iv. 75.
_Parsháṇi_, infinitive, to cross, iv. 34.
Parsis do not proselytize, iv. 242.
---- in Bombay, iv. 305.
---- their wish to increase their sect, iv. 305.
Pat, the root, iv. 461.
πατήρ and μήτηρ in Persian, iv. 323.
πατήρ, πατέρα = pitấ, pitáram, iv. 232.
Paternal missionary, the, iv. 316.
Pâtram, from pâ, iv. 228.
Patteson, Bishop, iv. 254.
---- on missions, iv. 262.
---- as an Oxford man, iv. 338.
---- on the “Theologia Germanica,” iii. 480.
Paul Gerhard, iii. 31.
Pauli, iii. 395, 403.
Pausilipo, Virgil’s tomb at, iv. 284.
Payer, in the sense of pacifying, iii. 171.
Peat deposits, iv. 501.
Peel, Sir Robert, iii. 368, 377.
---- his feeling for Bunsen, iii. 347.
Pehlevi translation of fables, iv. 152.
πείθω, fœdus, iv. 39.
Pelasgians, are Lycians, iii. 396.
Πηλεῦ, vocative, iv. 233.
Penel-tun, iii. 301.
Pengelly, Mr., on the Insulation of St. Michael’s Mount, iii. 316.
Penguaul, iii. 301.
Penhow, iii. 300.
Penny come quick, iii. 292.
Peretu, Zend, bridge, _portus_, iv. 236.
_Perfidus_, faithless, iv. 39.
Period of Adverbs, in the Aryan language, iv. 135.
Period of the formation of cases, in the Aryan language, iv. 135.
_Per-nic-i-es_, iv. 95.
Perrette and the Pot au Lait, iv. 139.
---- story of, in Italian by Giulio Nuti, iv. 190.
---- in Latin, by Petrus Possinus, from Greek, iv. 191.
---- in Latin, by Johannes of Capua, from Hebrew, iv. 192.
---- in German, in “Buch der alten Weisheit,” translated from the
“Directorium,” iv. 193.
---- in Spanish from Arabic (1289), iv. 194.
---- in Latin verse by Balbo from Arabic, iv. 195.
---- in Latin verse by Regnerius, iv. 195.
---- in Latin sermons, iv. 196.
---- in Spanish “El Conde Lucanor,” iv. 197.
---- in French, by Bonaventure des Periers, iv. 197.
Persian and Arab stories brought back by the Crusaders, iv. 148.
Pertsch, iii. 440.
Pertz, iii. 397, 401.
_Pessum dare_, iv. 132.
Petrus de Alliaco, iii. 65.
Phædrus’ fables, iv. 140.
φαρέτρα, a quiver, iv. 129.
φαῦλος, not faul, iv. 104.
Phenician alphabet, the ultimate source of the world’s alphabets,
iv. 430, 468.
φέρετρον, a bier, iv. 129.
φιάλη = πιϝάλη, iv. 228.
φιαρός = pîvara, iv. 228.
---- adjective of cream, iv. 228.
Philip Augustus, King of France, iii. 51.
Philip le Bel, iii. 175.
Philippe de Comines, iii. 173.
Phlogiston, iv. 444.
Phocion, iv. 431.
Phœnix, father of Europa, iii. 249.
Phonetic organs very imperfect in animals nearest to man, iv. 440.
φορός, tribute, iv. 129.
Photolithograph of the Mahâbhâshya, iv. 344.
Phrygians, Greek words formed from the, iv. 66.
φύλακος and φύλαξ, iv. 131.
Physique, Bacon’s, iii. 223.
Pierre le Baud, refers to Joinville, iii. 157.
Pilpay, the Indian sage, iv. 140, 159.
Pitá, pitáram, iv. 232.
Pîvaras, fat, iv. 228.
Pîvarî, young girl, iv. 228.
πλακοῦ, vocative, iv. 233.
Platen, iii. 402.
Platner’s “Description of Rome,” Bunsen’s part, in, iii. 362.
Plato, his views on language, iv. 64.
---- his “Kratylos,” iv. 65.
Platt Deutsch, iii. 123.
πλεῖστος, iv. 236.
Pliny on Druids, iii. 241.
Plumbum, iv. 461.
Plunge, to, iv. 461.
Plural in Bengali, iv. 74.
---- of the pronoun I, iv. 126.
Pococke, Professor of Arabic, iv. 12.
Poem on Anno, iii. 9.
_Pœna_, punishment, iv. 217.
ποι-μήν, iv. 32.
ποινή, pœna, Græco-Italic, according to Mommsen, iv. 216.
Polsch, wild, iii. 131.
Polysynthetic dialects of America, iv. 70, 85.
Pomegranate, Aryan words for, iv. 408.
πόνηρε, vocative, iv. 232.
_Pontifex_, iv. 134.
Pontus and Sidonia, iii. 70.
Pope Pius II. (Æneas Sylvius), iii. 63.
Portsmouth, iii. 305.
Portus = Zend peretu, iv. 236.
Πόσειδον, vocative, iv. 232.
Possinus, author of Latin translation of “Stephanites and
Ichnelates,” iv. 157.
Pott’s article on Max Müller, iv. 80 _note_.
Pott on Curtius, iv. 518.
Pourchasser, iii. 172.
Power of combination, iv. 117.
Prague, University of, iii. 65.
Prantl on the Reform of Logic, iv. 485.
Precession of the Equinox, iv. 508.
Predicative roots, iv. 121.
Prefixing languages, iv. 85.
Prepositions, Aryan words for, iv. 413.
Present, aorist, and reduplicated perfect, as forming a skeleton
conjugation, iv. 128.
Prichard, Dr., iii. 363.
Primary verbal period of the Aryan language, iv. 125.
Primitive languages in India, iii. 422.
Prince Eugene, iii. 32, 33.
Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, iii. 410.
Prince and Princess of Prussia in England, 1851, iii. 410.
Princes and the German people, iii. 412.
Princes, disciples of Buddha, iv. 267.
Princeps juventutis, the, iii. 413.
“Principes de la Nature,” by Renouvier, iv. 420.
“Principles of Comparative Philology,” Sayce’s, iv. 122.
Printing, invention of, iii. 21, 23.
Prize fellowships, iv. 8.
Procreate, to, root SU, Aryan words for, iv. 415. Index su
Professorial knight-errantry, iii. 28.
Pronoun I, plural of, iv. 126.
Pronouns, Aryan words for, iv. 413.
Proselyte, meaning of, iv. 303.
Proselytes among the Jews, iv. 241.
Proselytizing, etymological sense of, iv. 306.
Protagoras, iv. 424.
Protoplasm, iv. 458.
Proverbs, Schleswig-Holstein, iii. 131.
Prussia, King of, his remark on Oxford, iii. 238.
---- Constitution granted, 1847, iii. 377.
Psalms and Vedic hymns contrasted, iv. 352.
Psylli, of Egypt, the, iv. 370.
Ptolemaic system, iv. 444.
Ptolemy, mention of the Saxons by, iii. 117.
Public schools in Rome, iii. 21.
Pufendorf, iii. 38.
Purchase, to, iii. 172.
Purgare, for purigare, iv. 217.
Purneah, Colebrooke at, iv. 369.
Pūrus and pŭtus, iv. 217.
Pusey, Philip, iii. 421.
---- his illness, iii. 442.
Puteoli, St. Paul at, iv. 284.
“Qalilag and Damnag,” iv. 183. ---- finding the MS. of, iv. 186. Quantus = yâvat, iv. 236. “Quarterly Review,” iii. 401. ---- ---- article in the, iv. 418. _Que_, Latin, iv. 26. Queen Elizabeth, iii. 234. ---- at Greenwich, iii. 235. Queen Victoria, opening Parliament, iii. 371. “Quickborn,” by Klaus Groth, iii. 132. Quinô, βάνα, Zend, geni, iv. 62. Quoife Dieu, la, iii. 190.
_R_ρ or ρr or ρrρ, third stage of language, iv. 79.
ρ + _R_, second stage of language, iv. 79.
ρ + _R_ + ρ, second stage of language, iv. 79.
_R_ + ρ, second stage of language, iv. 79.
_R. R._ first stage of language, iv. 79.
Rabelais, his “Gargantua,” iv. 161.
Rabener, iii. 40.
“Races of the World, the,” Brace’s Manual, iii. 252.
Races without any religious ideas, iv. 341.
Râçta, Zend, rectus, iv. 236.
Radowitz, iii. 401, 407.
Raffles, Lady, iii. 432.
Rajatam, iv. 235.
_Râja-ya-te_, he behaves like a king, iv. 91.
Raimond de Beziers, his transl. of “Kalila and Dimnah” into Latin
verse, iv. 161.
Rajanîkânta’s “Life of Jajadeva,” iv. 335.
Rajendra Lal Mitra, iv. 334, 345.
Rajmahal Koles, iv. 347.
Rajnarain Bose, on the Brahma-Sanâj, iv. 269.
Râmânanda, 14th century, the reformer, iv. 256.
---- sect of, iv. 311.
Râmânuja, 12th century, the reformer, iv. 256.
---- sect of, iv. 311.
Ram Dass Sen, iv. 335.
Ram Mohun Roy and the Brahma-Samâj, iv. 258, 311, 312, 356.
---- unable to read his own sacred books, iv. 356.
Ranchi, Missionaries at, iv. 347.
Rap, Zend, = repere, iv. 237.
Rastell’s translation of the “Dialogus Creaturarum,” iv. 162.
Rathakaras, the, iv. 307.
Rational knowledge of Grammar, iv. 29.
Raumer, studies of, iv. 104.
Raw, = hrâo, iv. 235.
Rawlinson, Sir H., iv. 2.
Rawlinson, founder of the Oxford Chair of Anglo-Saxon, iv. 13.
Realists and Nominalists, iii. 64, 65.
Realists at Oxford, iii. 65.
Recall of Bunsen, iii. 409.
Rectus Zend, râçta, iv. 236.
_Red_ (Sk. harit, fulvus), iv. 100.
Reformation, iii. 41.
Rēgĭ-fugium, not regis-fugium, iv. 134.
_Regin_, cunning, iv. 88.
_Regin-hart_, fox, iv. 88.
Regniers’ Life of Schiller, iii. 76.
Reichsverweser, the, iii. 396.
_Reinaert_, fox, Low German, iv. 89.
“Reinhard the Fox,” iii. 9.
Reinmar, iii. 59.
Religions, historical, Semitic and Aryan, iv. 239.
---- as shown in their Scriptures, iv. 299.
---- Missionary, iv. 303.
---- inferences as to, drawn from their Scriptures qualified by
actual observation, iv. 299.
---- all Oriental, iv. 328.
Religious doubts in Louis IX.’s time, iii. 182.
Religious ideas, races without, iv. 341.
Renan, iii. 456; iv. 451.
---- on “Kalilag and Damnag,” iv. 181.
---- Whitney on, iv. 515.
“Renner,” by Hugo von Trimberg, iii. 16.
Renouvier, author of “Les Principes de la Nature,” iv. 420.
Repere, = Zend rap, iv. 237.
Reports sent to the Colonial Office on native races, iv. 340.
Resemblance between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, Sir W. Jones on the,
iv. 323.
Reuchlin, iii. 67.
Revolt of the Netherlands, Schiller’s History of, iii. 89.
Rheinsberg, Frederick the Great at, iii. 202.
Ribhus, the Vedic gods, iv. 307.
_Richard_, iv. 90.
Richard, Cœur de Lion, iii. 154.
Richard, King of Romans, iii. 307.
Right, Goth. raiht, iv. 236.
Right of private judgment, iv. 386.
Rigord, iii. 159.
Rig-Veda, the Commentary of Sayâṇâcârya, iv. 350.
_Rik-ard_, a rich fellow, iv. 89.
“Robbers,” Schiller’s, iii. 82.
_Robin_, iv. 503.
Robinson, Sir Hercules, iv. 341.
Rock or Stone, Aryan words for, iv. 408.
Rödiger, iii. 411.
“Roland,” by Konrad, iii. 9.
Roman influence in Cornwall, iii. 238.
Roman religion in the second century, Gibbon on the, iv. 310.
Romantic School, iii. 60.
Rome, Bunsen’s life at, iii. 356.
---- Platner’s Description of, iii. 362.
Root Period, of the undivided Aryan language, iv. 119.
Root vis, to settle down, iv. 112.
Roots, iv. 463.
Roots, Semitic, investigations on, iii. 427.
---- triliteral, iii. 422.
---- _Ak_, iv. 28.
---- Uh, iv. 28.
---- predicative and demonstrative, iv. 121.
---- as postulates, or as actual words, iv. 120.
---- not mere abstractions, iv. 119.
---- monosyllabic forms of, iv. 121.
---- none without concepts, iv. 477.
Rosen, iv. 336, 356.
Ross, or vale, iii. 292.
Rothe, R., iii. 399.
Rougé, iv. 468.
Roxburgh’s “Flora Indica,” iv. 384.
Royal Exchange or Bursa, iii. 234.
Royal power, in Germany, France, England, iii. 34.
Royal Asiatic Society, iv. 392.
Rudolf von Ems, iii. 15.
Rudolph von Hapsburg, iii. 17.
“Ruodlieb,” poem on, iii. 7.
Russell, Lord John, iii. 378.
Russians, the, efforts at Berlin, iii. 436.
Ryswick, treaty of, iii. 32.
Ryt-ychen, iii. 290.
S, as original termination of feminine bases in â, iv. 45.
“Sacred Anthology,” Conway’s, iv. 329.
Sacred Books of Mankind, translation of, iv. 321.
Sacred cord of the Brahmans, iv. 260.
Sai from tva-tvi, iv. 125.
σαι, termination of infinitive, iv. 51.
σαι, termination of 2d pers. sing. imper. 1 aor. middle, iv. 51.
σακέσ-παλος, iv. 133.
“Sakuntala,” Kâlidâsa’s play of, iv. 323.
Salâm, peace, 245 _note_.
Salamanca, University of, iv. 11.
Sampradâna, dative, iv. 49.
---- its meaning, iv. 49.
---- its use, iv. 49.
Saṃvâranâdaghosâḥ, iv. 498.
Sani, sanáye, sanim, iv. 52.
Sanna, or Chandaka, Buddha’s driver, iv. 175.
Sanskrit, chair of, iv. 13.
---- studied by Sassetti, iv. 14.
---- studied by Cœurdoux, le Père, iv. 14.
---- studied by Frederic Schlegel, iv. 15.
---- only sound foundation of Comparative Philology, iv. 19.
---- gerundive participle in, iv. 95.
---- the augment in, iv. 114.
---- fables in, iv. 140.
---- and Zend, close union of, iv. 212, 215.
---- most closely united with Zend (Burnouf), iv. 215.
---- Dictionary by Târânâtha, iv. 335.
---- scholars, old school of, iv. 334.
---- discovery of, iv. 363.
---- Colebrooke professor of, iv. 381.
---- and Prakrit poetry, Colebrooke’s essay on, iv. 381.
---- Grammar by Colebrooke, iv. 381.
---- MSS. of Colebrooke, presented to the East India Company, iv. 392.
---- Dictionary published by Professors Boehtlingk and Roth, iv. 511.
---- Grammar, Max Müller’s, iv. 519.
Saracens, iii. 300.
---- in Cornwall, iii. 308.
Sarti, on Latin Inscriptions, iii. 419.
_Sarvanâman_, pronoun, iv. 430.
Sassetti, Filippo, iv. 14.
Satnâmis, sect of the, iv. 314.
“Saturday Review,” iii. 480.
Saw, Sage, and Säge, iv. 220.
Saxon, dialect, iii. 122.
---- influence in Cornwall, iii. 238.
---- words in Cornish, iii. 260.
Saxons, mentioned by Ptolemy, iii. 116.
Savaṇa’s Commentary, iv. 386.
Sayce, “Principles of Comparative Philology,” iv. 122.
σβες, not jas, iv. 62.
Scawen on use of Cornish, iii. 245.
Schaaffhausen on skulls, iii. 253.
Scharnhorst, iii. 416.
Schelling, iii. 432; iv. 446.
Schenkendorf, iii. 402.
Scherer, Dr., “History of the German Language,” iv. 101 _note_.
Schiller, iii. 40-43, 75.
---- Carlyle’s Life of, iii. 76.
---- Palleske’s Life of, iii. 76.
---- Regnier’s Life of, iii. 76.
---- his childhood, iii. 78.
---- his boyhood, iii. 80.
---- his studies, iii. 81.
---- his “Robbers,” iii. 82.
---- his “Fiesco,” iii. 84.
---- his “Cabale and Liebe,” iii. 84.
---- his wife, iii. 85.
---- his “History of the Revolt of the Netherlands,” iii. 89.
---- his “History of the Thirty Years’ War,” iii. 90.
---- his friendship with Goethe, iii. 92.
---- his “Wallenstein,” iii. 92.
---- his “Song of the Bell,” iii. 92.
---- his “Mary Stuart,” iii. 92.
---- his “Maid of Orleans,” iii. 92, 97.
---- his “Bride of Messina,” iii. 92, 97.
---- his “William Tell,” iii. 92, 97.
---- his study of Kant, iii. 94.
---- his “Don Carlos,” iii. 95.
Schimmelmann, iii. 88.
Schism in the Brahma-Samâj, iv. 200, 209.
Schlegel, iv. 393.
---- Frederic, his interest in Indian subjects, iii. 300.
---- his knowledge of Sanskrit, iv. 15.
Schleicher, iv. 521.
---- his Slavonic studies, iv. 17.
---- his Essay, “Darwinism tested by the Science of Language,”
iv. 480.
---- Whitney on, iv. 516.
Schleiermacher’s “Discourses on Religion,” iii. 398.
---- “Dogmatics,” iii. 398.
Schleswig, iii. 436.
Schleswig-Holstein, its language and poetry, iii. 116.
---- question, the, iii. 380, 401.
Schlettstadt, schools at, iii. 64.
Schlözer, von, his sketch of Chasot, iii. 200.
Schlüter, Dr. C. B., iv. 330 _note_.
Schnitter, Agricola, iii. 29.
Scholars, two classes of, iv. 395.
Schools, in Germany, first, iii. 22.
Schopenhauer, iv. 446.
Schott, Peter, iii. 64.
Schubart, iii. 84.
Schubert, Franz, iii. 102.
Schupp, iii. 38.
Schütz, iii. 433.
Schwabe, Madame, iii. 458.
Schwarz the missionary, and Hyder Ali, iv. 285.
Schwarzerd, Melancthon, iii. 29.
“Schyppe of Fooles,” iii. 62.
Science, the term, iv. 482.
---- of Language, a natural or historical science, iv. 222.
---- ---- Benfey’s History of the, iv. 325.
---- ---- a physical science, iv. 429, 475.
---- ---- an historical science, iv. 429.
---- ---- all is chaos in, iv. 522.
---- of Man, iv. 322.
Scott, Sir Walter, iii. 362.
Scrir-u-mês, we cry, iv. 219.
Scythian monuments in the Dekhan, iii. 269.
Sebastian Brant, iii. 64, 67.
---- his “Ship of Fools,” iii. 24, 29.
---- at Strassburg, iii. 67.
---- his “Narrenschiff,” iii. 68.
Second period of Aryan language, derivative roots, iv. 124.
Secretary of State for India in Council, iv. 350.
See, to, root DṚŚ, Aryan words for, iv. 415.
Index Dris, Colebrooke DRĬS
Self-defense in, iv. 456.
Semitic and Iranian forms, compared with Egyptian forms, iii. 411.
---- roots, investigations on, iii. 427.
---- family, iv. 70, 71.
---- religions, true historical, iv. 239.
Semnones, iii. 224.
Sendebar, or Bidpay, iv. 158.
Sereur for sœur, iii. 166.
Sergius, a Christian, at Khalif Al-mansur’s court, iv. 167.
Serpent, Aryan words for, iv. 410.
Services of scholars in India, iv. 355.
Seven, Aryan words, for, iv. 412.
“Seven Wise Masters,” the, iii. 18; iv. 166.
Seven stages of the undivided Aryan language, iv. 118.
Seventh period of the Aryan language, iv. 135.
Shakespeare, iii. 214.
---- compared with Bacon, iii. 225.
Shamefast, iii. 289.
_Shamefast_, shamefaced, iv. 90.
Shepherds of the Pegnitz, iii. 38.
Shinâ dialects, iv. 349.
Ship or Boat, Aryan words for, iv. 407.
“Ship of Fools,” the, iii. 24, 29, 67, 70, 72.
_Ship_, in ladyship, iv. 75.
_Shradh_, ancestral sacrifices, iv. 270.
“Signs of the Times,” Bunsen’s, iii. 382, 459.
Sikh religion, iv. 257.
Sikhs, iv. 370.
Silbury Hill, iii. 285.
Silesian School, First, iii. 33.
Silesian School, Second, iii. 38.
---- ---- defeated, iii. 39.
Simple roots, first period of Aryan language, iv. 124.
“Simplicissimus, the,” iii. 38.
Sin, Aryan words for, iv. 412.
Sincèrement, sincerely, iv. 111.
Singhalese, corruption of Sanskrit, iv. 342.
Sister, Aryan words for, iv. 402.
Sit, to, root SAD, Aryan words for, iv. 414.
Śiva, worship of, iv. 309.
Six, Aryan words for, iv. 412.
Sixth period of the Aryan language, iv. 135.
Skeleton of logical statement, iv. 434.
Skulls, iii. 252.
---- Negro, iii. 252.
---- Bachmann on, iii. 252.
---- Huschke on, iii. 252.
---- Huxley on, iii. 253.
---- Hindu, iii. 253.
Sky, Heaven, Aryan words for, iv. 404.
Slavonic, studied by Miklosich and Schleicher, iv. 7.
---- is most closely united with German (Grimm, Schleicher), iv. 215.
Sleep, Aryan words for, iv. 411.
Small boat, Aryan words for, iv. 407.
Snake charmers of India, iv. 370.
Société de Linguistique, iv. 67.
Socin, Dr. Albert, iv. 185.
Sokrates and Æsop’s fables, iv. 139.
Sommervogel, his Index to the “Journal de Trévoux,” iii. 195.
Son, Aryan words for, iv. 401.
“Song of the Bell,” the, Schiller’s, iii. 92.
Son-in-law, Aryan words for, iv. 403.
Son’s son, Aryan words for, iv. 402.
Soror, huir, hoer, iii. 263.
σῶτερ, vocative, iv. 232.
Sound, Aryan words for, iv. 411.
Sound, broad degrees of, iv. 437.
South Turanian class, iv. 105.
Southern division of the Aryans, iv. 212.
Spanish translation of fables, called “Calila é Dymna,” iv. 161.
Species, a thing of human workmanship, iv. 438.
---- Darwin’s book an attempt to repeal the term, iv. 439.
Specific differences, two classes of, iv. 441.
Speech, geology and chemistry of, iv. 449.
Spencer’s “First Principles,” iv. 341.
Spencerian savages, iv. 341.
Spener, iii. 38.
Spinoza, his opinion of Bacon, iii. 218.
Sprachwissenschaft, iv. 482.
Sprenger, iii. 486.
Śrâv-ayâmas, we make hear, iv. 219.
Śromata, from root śru, iv. 219.
St. Antony, iv. 293.
Sts. Barlaam and Josaphat, iv. 177.
---- their feast-days in the Eastern and Latin Churches, iv. 177.
St. Boniface, † 755, iii. 4.
St. Denis, monks of, as chroniclers, iii. 155.
St. Francis of Assisi, iv. 293.
St. John of Damascus, iv. 167.
St. Josaphat is Buddha, iv. 180.
St. Gall, monks of, iii. 19.
St. Gall, † 638, iii. 4, 6.
St. Kilian, † 681, iii. 4.
St. Kiran, iii. 301.
St. Louis, iii. 151.
St. Michael, apparitions of, iii. 325.
St. Michael’s Mount, iii. 316.
---- ---- Mr. Pengelly on, iii. 316.
---- ---- Diodorus Siculus on, iii. 318.
---- ---- William of Worcester on, iii. 323-325.
---- ---- called Tumba, iii. 326.
St. Patrick, his life by Jocelin, iii. 300.
St. Paul, Festus, and Agrippa, iv. 277.
---- at Virgil’s tomb, iv. 284.
St. Perran, iii. 299.
St. Piran, iii. 301-304.
St. Thomas, Christians of, iv. 184.
Stanley’s Sermon of Missions, iv. 276.
Star, Aryan words for, iv. 403.
Stein, Baron von, iii. 362.
Steinschneider, iii. 413.
Steinthal, iv. 431, 521, 522.
---- his answer to Whitney, iv. 505.
Stephen, Sir James, iii. 173.
“Stephanites and Ichnelates,” iv. 156.
---- ---- Italian translation of, iv. 157.
---- ---- Latin translation of, iv. 157.
Sterling, its meaning, iii. 117.
Stevenson, iv. 336.
_Sthâ_, to reveal by gestures, iv. 49.
Stockmar, Baron, iii. 378, 401.
Stokes, Whitley, iv. 345.
---- ---- his edition of “Mount Calvary,” iii. 257 _note_.
---- ---- his edition of “The Creation,” iii. 258 _note_.
Stolberg, the Counts, iii. 127.
στόμα = Zend çtaman, iv. 237.
Stonehenge, iii. 265.
Storm gods, invocations of the, iv. 352.
Stomarn, iii. 119.
Strangford, Lord, iv. 2.
Strassburg, Lecture at, iv. 199.
Stratford-on-Avon, iii. 214.
Stratification of Language, iv. 63.
Strew, to, root STṚ, Aryan words for, iv. 415.
Index Strĭ, Colebrooke STRĬ
Stricker, Der, iii. 15.
_Stud-i-um_, iv. 95.
στύγιος, hateful, iv. 94.
Stüremburg’s so-called Old-Friesian Dictionary, iii. 123 _note_.
Sturmarii, the, iii. 119.
Stushé and stushe, iv. 51, 57.
Suapte, iv. 236.
Subdue, to, root DAM, Aryan words for, iv. 414.
Subjunctive, lengthening of vowel in, iv. 114.
Suchenwirt, poems of, iii. 17.
Suffixes, Aryan, iv. 33.
Suffixing languages, iv. 85.
Suger, Abbot, iii. 159.
σύμβαμα and κατηγόρημα, iv. 31.
“Summa Theologiæ” of Aquinas, iv. 287.
Sun, the, as regulating festivals, iii. 284.
---- Aryan words for, iv. 403.
“Supplementary Digest,” Colebrooke’s, iv. 380, 384, 388.
Surd and sonant, iv. 498.
Surgeons and physicians in the French army, iii. 152.
Svasṛ, sister, iv. 110 _note_.
Sweetard, iv. 89 _note_.
Sweet-ard, sweet-heart, iv. 89.
Sweetheart, from sweet-ard, iv. 89.
Sweetheart, iii. 289.
_Sweeting_, iv. 89 _note_.
Symeon, son of Seth, his Greek translation of fables, iv. 156.
Syncretistic period in Comparative Philology, iv. 17.
Synod of Trier, 1231, iii. 20.
Syriac translation of the fables, discovered by Benfey, iv. 181.
System of declension in ancient French, iii. 167.
T, changed into Latin _d_, iv. 44. Table turning, iii. 420. Tacitus, iv. 333. _Tad_, final dental of, iv. 43. _Tad-îya_, iv. 44. Tad-vân, iv. 44. Tagore, Debendranâth, iv. 259. Takht-i-bahai hills, the, iv. 349. Taḷa or Daḷa, a host, iv. 74 _note_. Talaing of Pegu, and the Munda dialects, iv. 348. ταλάω, τλῆναι, = talio, Græco-Italic, according to Mommsen, iv. 216. Talio, Græco-Italic, iv. 216. Talkig, talkative, iii. 131. Talleyrand, iv. 435. Tar, tra, tram, tras, trak, trap, iv. 123. Tara and τερο, iv. 213. Târanâthâ’s Sanskrit Dictionary, iv. 335. Tasthushas, iv. 490. _Tat_, Sanskrit, iv. 43. Tathâgata, iv. 268. Tauler, iii. 18, 419. Taylorian Professorship, iii. 436. Taylor’s article on Hippolytus, iii. 418. Technical terms, introduction of new, iv. 348. Tedmarsgoi, the, iii. 119. Telemachus, the hermit, iv. 293. Ten, Aryan words for, iv. 413. τένω, τενεσίω, iv. 94. Tenuis, the, iv. 495. Terminations of the future, iv. 93. ---- of cases, were local adverbs, iv. 96. ---- of the medium, iv. 126. Terminations, Aryan, iv. 412. τέτληκα and τέτλαμεν, iv. 40. Teutonic languages, Jacob Grimm’s study of, iv. 17. Thas, from tva-tvi, iv. 125. _Thata_, Gothic, iv. 43. θέμις, law, iv. 236. Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, iii. 412. Theodoric, the Visigoth, iii. 412. “Theologia Germanica,” iii. 419. ---- Pattison on, iii. 480. Theological bias, iv. 428. Theology, comparative, first attempt at, iv. 170. Θεός, same as Deus, iv. 210, 227. ---- from θέω (Plato and Schleicher), iv. 229. ---- from dhava (Hoffmann), iv. 229. ---- from dhi (Bühler), iv. 229. ---- from θες (Herodotus, Goebel, and Curtius), iv. 229. ---- from divya (Ascoli), iv. 229. θέσει, not φύσει, iv. 433. θεστος, _i.e._ πολύθεστος, iv. 229. Theudas and Devadatta, iv. 176. Thibaut, Dr., iv. 330. Thin, Aryan words for, iv. 411. Thing, wealth, Aryan words for, iv. 407. Third period of the Aryan language, iv. 124. Thirlwall, iii. 362. Thirty Years’ War, the, iii. 30. ---- period since the, iii. 41. ---- Schiller’s history of, iii. 90. Tholuck, iii. 399. Thomas à Becket, iii. 51. Thomas Aquinas, iii. 18. Thomasin von Zerclar, iii. 15. Thomasius, iii. 39. Thomson, Dr., and the “Theologia Germanica,” iii. 420, 439. Thorismund, son of Theodoric, iii. 412. Thorwaldsen, iii. 362. Thrâfaṇh = τρέφες, iv. 236. Three, Aryan words for, iv. 412. Three men’s songs, iii. 258. θυγάτηρ, in Persian dockter, iv. 323. θυγάτηρ, θυγατέρα = duhitấ, duhitáram, iv. 232. θυγάτηρ = duhitâ, iv. 228. θύρα = dvâr, iv. 228. Thuringian dialect, iii. 122. Thursday, Market, iii. 295. Tibetan and Chinese, iv. 105. ---- tones in, iv. 106. Tieck, iii. 53. Timbre, iv. 449. Time reckoned by the Hindu astronomers in four ways, iv. 367. Tin, iii. 256. ---- raised by Jews, iii. 311. Tippoo, defeat of, iv. 365. Tirhut, Colebrooke made collector of revenue at, iv. 365. τίθεναι, iv. 34. Tobaca, iii. 234. _To-come_, Low German adjective, iv. 38. _Tokum Jahr, de_, a to-come year, iv. 38. Tol-mên or dôl-men, iii. 271. Tones in Tibetan, iv. 106. Tooth, Aryan words for, iv. 406. Torg, market, iii. 310. Torrentinus, iii. 64. Tournemine, iii. 196. Tower of London, iii. 234. Towle Sarasin, iii. 307. Town, Aryan words for, iv. 407. Traditional interpretation of the Veda, iv. 386. Traité de l’Origine des Romans, Huet, iv. 151. Transalbiani, the, iii. 119. Transliteration, system of, iii. 403. ---- alphabet, iii. 427. Treaty of London, iii. 116. Tree, Aryan words for, iv. 408. -τρέφες = thrâfaṇh, iv. 236. Trevelyan, iii. 489. Trévoux, town of, iii. 195. Tri, tru, trup, trib, iv. 123. Triliteral roots, iii. 422. Trimberg, Hugo von, iii. 16. Trithemius, iii. 67, 68. Trithen, Mr., iii. 396. Trojan horse, the story of, iv. 149. Troubadours or Trouvères, iii. 9. Trouvères or Troubadours, iii. 9. Trou-ville, iii. 305. Trübner, iii. 482. Truhana, Dona, in the Conde Lucanor, iv. 165. Truthfulness, Niebuhr on, iv. 225. _Tsi_ (Bohemian), for daughter, iv. 110. Tu, tave, tavai, toh, tum, iv. 55. _Tum_, infinitive, its meaning, iv. 47. Tumba Helenæ, iii. 328. ---- for St. Michael’s Mount, iii. 326. ---- for tomb, iii. 337. Tumbridge, iii. 234. Turanian, iii. 443. ---- languages, combinatory, iv. 79. Turci, a Baltic tribe, iii. 310. Turku, for Abo, iii. 310. Turpin, Archbishop, iii. 159. Turrumûlan, the one-legged, iv. 341. Twenty-fourth generation of Jewish proselytes, iv. 242. Twinger’s “Chronicle,” iii. 17. Two, Aryan words for, iv. 412. Tyr, Dyaus, Ζεύς, Jupiter, Zio, iv. 210.
_Udaśvit-van_, iv. 44. _Uh_, iv. 27. _Ûh_, Sanskrit root, iv. 28. Ulfilas, Bishop of the Goths, iii. 4. ---- and Athanasius, iv. 261. ---- his teaching, iv. 287. Umbrian grammar, iv. 340. Universal language, iv. 67. Universities of Germany, foundation of, iii. 21, 27. Universities founded, iii. 21-28. ---- English, iv. 337. Unsuspected laws of nature, iv. 426. Up, iv. 474. _Upanayana_, spiritual apprenticing, iv. 270. Upanishads, the, iv. 315, 356. Ural-Altaic family, iv. 70. Uraon Koles, iv. 347. Usedom, iii. 401. Uxbridge, iii. 289. Uz, iii. 40.
Vaêti, Zend, willow, iv. 237.
Vâhyaprayatna, the, iv. 498.
_Vala_ for _vana_, iv. 74 _note_.
_Válá_, Hindustani, iv. 90.
Vale, ross, iii. 292.
_Van_, a suffix, iv. 33.
_Vana_ or _vala_, iv. 74 _note_.
Vandalism in Cornwall, iii. 283 _note_.
Varez, Zend, ῥέζω, iv. 237.
_Varga_, iv. 74 _note_.
Vasivî or vasavyâ, iv. 234.
Vasu, general name of the bright gods, iv. 234.
Vaurkjan, Gothic, to work, iv. 237.
Vayaḥ, life, vigor, iv. 55.
Vayodhai, infinitive, iv. 56.
_Véda_, iv. 40.
Veda, loss of MS. of the, iii. 401.
---- traditional interpretation of the, iv. 386.
Vedas, copied in 1845 for Debendra Náth Tagore, iv. 357.
---- Colebrooke’s essay on the, iv. 380.
Vedic hymns and the Psalms contrasted, iv. 352.
Veddah language, like Singhalese, mere corruption of Sanskrit,
iv. 342.
Veddahs have no language, iv. 342.
Veddhâ, vyâdha, hunter, iv. 342.
Velle = velse, iv. 51.
Venn, iii. 439.
Venum ire, iv. 132.
Verbal agreement between Whitney and Max Müller, iv. 425.
Verbs (ῥήματα), iv. 30.
Vergilius, Polydorus, iii. 234.
Verleumdung, calumny, iv. 218.
“Vertellen,” Klaus Groth’s, iii. 146.
Vestigia nulla retrorsum, iv. 147.
Viande la, for victuals, iii. 170.
Vibhv-áne, in order to conquer, iv. 34.
Victuals, la viande, for, iii. 170.
_Vidmás_, iv. 40.
Vidushas, iv. 491.
_Vidyut-vân_, iv. 44.
Vienne, Council of, 1311, iv. 11.
Vikings, iii. 289.
Vilmar’s “History of German literature,” iii. 414.
Vineta, Wilhelm Müller, iii. 139.
Vírgili, Valeri, iv. 231.
Virgil’s tomb at Pausilipo, iv. 284.
---- St. Paul at, iv. 284.
Vis, root, to settle down, iv. 112.
Viśa-s, οἴκοσ-, vîcu-s, iv. 112.
Vishṇu, worship of, iv. 309.
Viśvâmitra, iv. 303.
Vitality of Brahmanism, iv. 296.
Vitis, = Zend vaêti, iv. 237.
Vivâraśvâsâghoshâḥ, iv. 498.
Vladimir of Russia, iv. 288.
Vocative of Ζεύς has the circumflex, iv. 210.
---- of Dyaús and Ζεύς, iv. 230.
Vogel, Dr., iii. 418, 419.
Voice, Aryan words for, iv. 407.
Voltaire and the “Journal des Savants,” iii. 193.
---- on journals, iii. 198.
---- called to Berlin, iii. 205.
Völuspa, the, iii. 352.
Voss, iii. 127.
Vowels, why long or short, iv. 39.
Voysey, Rev. C., iv. 304.
Vulcanism, iv. 444.
Waddington, Miss, Bunsen’s marriage to, iii. 357.
Wailly, de, translation of Joinville, iii. 152.
---- last edition of 1868, iii. 165 _note_.
Waldmann, my dog, iv. 444.
“Wallenstein,” Schiller’s, iii. 89, 92.
Wallis, Professor of Arabic, iv. 12.
Walther of Aquitaine, poem of, iii. 7.
Walther von der Vogelweide, iii. 13-15.
Ware, A. S., iii. 117.
Warren Hastings, iv. 374.
Water, Aryan words for, iv. 405.
Weckherlin, iii. 37.
Wedgwood’s Dictionary, iv. 460.
Weimar, Karl August, Duke of, iii. 85, 88.
Weinhold’s Grammars of High and Low German, iii. 122.
_Weiss, ich_, I know, iv. 40.
Wessel, iii. 67.
Westfalai, tribe of, iii. 117.
Westminster, iii. 234.
---- Lecture, iv. 238.
Westphalia, iii. 117.
Whewell’s “History of the Inductive Sciences,” iv. 427, 479.
---- Letter to Max Müller, iv. 427 _note_.
_Whiff away_, iv. 509 _note_.
Whiskey, iii. 289.
Whitehall, iii. 234.
Whitney, William Dwight:
---- his attacks on various scholars, iv. 422, 429, 430-435, 464,
483, 490, 502, 504-508, 513, 515-520.
---- his misrepresentations, iv. 424, 433-435, 445, 467, 469, 470,
476-479, 481, 487, 492, 494, 497, 509, 510, 514, 521, 522,
523, 524.
---- his mistakes, iv. 430, 431, 467, 491, 498, 518, 519.
Widow, Aryan words for, iv. 403.
Widow-burning, iv. 303.
Wieland, iii. 40, 82.
Wiese’s book on Schools, iii. 420.
Wife’s brother, Aryan words for, iv. 403.
Wilhelm, “De Infinitivo,” iv. 59.
“Wilhelm Tell,” Schiller’s, iii. 92, 97.
Wilkins, iv. 368, 398.
---- Bishop, his philosophical language, iv. 65.
William of Worcester, iii. 324.
---- his “Itinerarium,” iii. 324.
Williams, Rowland, iii. 480, 484.
Williram’s language, iii. 8.
Wilson, Professor, iv. 336, 393.
Wimpheling, iii. 64, 67.
Windsor, iii. 236.
Winkworth, Miss, iii. 416.
_Wir wissen_, we know, iv. 40.
Wissenschaft, iv. 482.
_Withering contempt_, iv. 509 _note_.
Wolf, iii. 113.
---- Aryan words for, iv. 410.
Wolfram von Eschenbach, iii. 10, 13.
---- his “Parcival” and “Holy Graal,” iii. 54-56.
Wolff’s “Metaphysics,” studied by Frederick the Great, iii. 203.
---- opinion of Frederick on, iii. 204.
Wolzogen, Frau von, iii. 85.
Woodstock, iii. 236.
Wool, Aryan words for, iv. 409.
Words, Latin or English, in Cornish, iii. 256.
World-literature, iii. 2.
---- idea of a, iii. 43.
Writing merely accidental, iv. 71.
Xenophon, iv. 23. Xerxes, religion of, iv. 249.
Yama, iii. 483. Yâoṇh, Zend, girdle, iv. 236. Yâre, Zend, Goth. jer, iv. 236. Yasa son of Sujatá, iv. 267, 268. Year, Zend, yâre, iv. 236. _Yellow_ (gilvus, flavus), iv. 100. Youdasf, Youasaf, and Bodhisattva, iv. 176. Young, Aryan words for, iv. 411. _Yu_, _yudh_, _yug_, _yaut_, iv. 123. _Yudh_, to fight, iv. 120.
Zardan, friend of Barlaam, iv. 175. Zarncke, his edition of the “Narrenschiff,” iii. 71. Zeitwort, iv. 31. Zend and Sanskrit, close union of, iv. 213. ---- not in Sanskrit, Aryan words in, iv. 235. ---- Pairidaêza, iv. 22. Zeune, iii. 113. Ζεύς = Dyaus, iv. 227. Ζεύς, Jupiter, Dyaus, Zio, Tyr, iv. 210. ---- vocative of, has the circumflex, iv. 210. Zeuss, his “Grammatica Celtica,” iv. 17. Zio, Dyaus, Ζεύς, Jupiter, Tyr, iv. 210. Zion, Mârâh Zion, iii. 293. ζώννυμι, Zend, yâonh, iv. 236. Zoroaster, when he lived, iii. 462. ---- religion of, iv. 249. Zoroastrians, their wish to augment their sect, iv. 305. _Zukunft_, the future, iv. 37. Zulu language, 20,000 words in, iv. 122. Zwingli’s Sermons, iii. 62. Zyâo, Zend, frost, iv. 235.
* * * * *
* * * *
* * * * *
Transliteration:
In the book as printed, transliterations of Zend (Avestan), Sanskrit and other Indian languages used italics to convey phonetic information. This has been changed to the standard transliteration:
{t}, {d}, {n}, {l} ṭ, ḍ, ṇ, ḷ [retroflex consonants]
[ḷ is used only in some Dravidian words; vocalic ḷ does not occur]
{m}, {h} ṃ, ḥ [anusvara, visarga]
{s} ś [palatal sibilant]
{ri} ṛ [vocalic r]
{k}, {g} c, j
Müller uses c and j in some quoted material and personal names, but italic k, g (or de-italicized k, g within italic words) in his own text.
The retroflex sibilant ṣ is transliterated sh; this was unchanged.
Some typographical errors have been noted, but the Sanskrit-- especially longer passages-- should be read with extrame caution.
The Colebrooke appendix at the end of Chapter VII uses a different transliteration system. This has been left as printed, except for one character that would not display reliably; details are at the beginning of that section.
Note on Names:
“Mr. Darwin” is generally Charles’s son George; Charles Darwin is “the father” or “Mr. Darwin, senior”. Dwarka Nath Tagore was Rabindranath (both transliterations are variable) Tagore’s grandfather. The evil Professor Whitney is William Dwight Whitney, author of the standard Sanskrit grammar (1879 and later).
Errors and Inconsistencies (noted by transcriber):
In the Errata, {braces} represent single italic letters, or non-italized letters where the overall text is italic. As noted at the beginning, italics were used in place of diacritics in Sanskrit transliteration:
{t}, {d}, {n}, {l} = ṭ, ḍ, ṇ, ḷ [retroflex, including Dravidian ḷ];
{s}, {ri} = ś; ṛ; [the sibilant ṣ is written as sh]
{h}, {m} = ḥ, ṃ [visarga and anusvara]
Unless otherwise noted, circumflex was used for long vowels; this has not been changed.
Chapter I
in every branch of human knowledge [knowlege]
the Sanskrit enclitic particle _ca_, Latin _que_
[_printed “{ga}” for “{g}a”_]
φοβοῦμαι διελέγχειν σε [φόβοῦμαι]
in îśvaro vilikhaḥ [vilik{h}a{h}]
we have not met with other cases of +dṛśi-s+. [d{ri}si-s]
Of datives in +váne+ I only know +dāvâne+
[_printed as shown, with macron_]
From +dhâ+ we can frame two substantival frame
[_text unchanged: error for “forms”?_]
ancient and modern languages. Some scholars have objected
[_“languages. in Some” with extra word at line-beginning_]
of most Tamil infinitives is in any manner [in, any manner]
Footnote 4: ... quibus religio erat graece scire [_unchanged_]
Footnote 20: ... οὔτε πόρσωπα ἐπιδέχεται [πόρσωπα]
Footnote 30: ... Yadvâ gacchati yajñeshu
[_printed “yagñeshu” for “ya{g}ñeshu”_]
... vâgrûpatvâd gnâvyapadeśaḥ.” [_close quote missing_]
... In V. 43, 13, we must either read +gn̆āḥ+ or +ōshădhī̆ḥ.+
[_The beginning of V.43.13c is also given as “ghnā vasāna oṣadhīr”_]
[_Printed text (breve over n, combined breve and macron over i)
may be intended to read “gnăâḥ” or “gănâḥ“ and “oṣadhĭîḥ”_]
Chapter II
Sanskrit _k_ may in Sinhalese be represented by _v_
[_{k} italicized, but actual k (not c) appears to be intended_]
in Sanskrit +yu-mi-na-j+, instead of +yu-na-j-mi+
[_printed +yu-mi-na-g+ for ++yu-mi-na-{g}+_]
_Kin_ means gold, _tsiang_, maker; hence _kin-tsiang_, a goldsmith.
[kin-stiang]
iyam, is, it, ima, ita, iyus.
[iyam, is, it ima, ita, iyus]
We have for instance, Sk. +veśa-s+, [_final comma missing_]
it has been said, that “the simple idea [’the]
the actual forms of the Aryan roots [Ayran]
consonants as modificatory letters. [letters?]
compounds like _calefacio_ [cafleacio]
Footnote 5: Stanislas Julien [Stanilas]
Footnote 27: ... les mandchous écrivent _tche_. [_tche_,]
Chapter III
[Table] composé par le sage Pilpay, Indien” [_close quote missing_]
[Table] Les Contes et Fables Indiennes de Bibpaï [_text unchanged_]
but resolves to give up all his earthly riches
[_“give up / up” at line break_]
‘are creatures ... with pleasure?’ [_double for single quotes_]
both in the Eastern and in the Western churches [chuches]
the recognized story of Gautama Śâkyamuni [S{â}kyamuni]
GÖTTINGEN, _July 6, 1871_. [GOTTINGEN]
it is very difficult to get sight of anything
[_invisible hyphen at line break “any-/thing”_]
[Note F]
é miel e otras cosas ... E él deciendo esto
[_text unchanged: probably errors for “é otras” and “É él”_]
[Note G]
(bone vir, tibi dicam) [tihi dicam]
page 32, pars I. fab. xxv. [fab. xxv.) _with mismatched parenthesis_]
Footnote 11: ... he sees a female donkey [he see]
Footnote 37: ... ” [_close quote missing_]
Footnote 39: ... See Leo Allatius, Prolegomena, p. L. [p L.]
Footnote 41: ... τοῦ Δαμασκοῆ ὀφθαλμὸς [ὀφθ αλμὸς]
Footnote 47: ... the true doctrine. [_close quote missing_]
Chapter IV
the circumflexed vocative in Sanskrit, +Dyaûs+
[_printed with a Greek-style circumflex that looks like a tilde_]
Footnote 9: ... Göttingen, 1872, p. 35. [Götingen]
corresponding to a Sk. +vasavî+ or +vasavyâ+. [+vasavyâ+,]
phonetically the nearest approach to +mṛlata+ [+m{ri}{l}ata+]
Zend +çtaman+, mouth; Gr. στόμα. [Gr στόμα]
Footnote 5: ... ταλάω [ταγάω]
Chapter V
ask the heathen; ‘Are you Moslim?‘ [_double for single close quote_] an integral portion of the Brahmanic law. [law,] back to idolworship [_printed as shown_] discard “dogmatic extremes,” [_single for double open quote_] are referred for sanction.” [_single for double close quote_] Footnote 2: ... pp. 122-143. [_final . missing_] Footnote 9: “_Islâm_ is the verbal noun [_open quote missing_] Footnote 21 ... they coöperate heartily together. [together,]
Chapter VI (“VII”)
to clear, and intensify the intellectual atmosphere [itensify]
Chapter VII (“VIII”)
what castes of Hindus are altogether forbid cultivating [_text unchanged: “altogether forbid” or “are altogether forbidden (to cultivate)”_] obscure allegory and puerile fable.” [_close quote missing_] we find Colebrooke on January 3, 1797 [Jannary] caste was not artificial or conventional [artifical] had gained an ascendency over the people [_spelling unchanged_] their own appointed occupations. [_final . missing_] Sanskrit, Bengali, Hindustani, and Persian. [Persian,] the traditional interpretation of the Veda [intrepretation] [Colebrooke Appendix] _Hind._ Mai. _Ir._ Me. _Wal._ _Corn._ Mi. [_Ir_] _Sans._ Carcata. _Beng._ Cáncŕá, Céncŕá. _Hind._ Céncrá, Cécrá. [_Bengali forms printed as shown._]
Chapter VIII (“IX”)
to find time to look [io look] in Theile für das Bewusstein auflösete.” [_close quote missing_]
Chapter IX (“X”)
πέτομαι, I fly [πέτομα]
But what was my surprise when I found [surpise]
the relation of language to thought is impossible [imposible]
as he does others who differ from him [as be]
the contempt which a Brahman feels for a Mleccha. [Mle{kkh}a]
the following passage (ii. p. 156):-- [_closing parenthesis missing_]
secondary qualities of _tenues mediæ_
[_“quali-/ities” at line break_]
as if unworthy of serious consideration.” [_close quote missing_]
consciousness of rectitude.” [_. invisible_]
volunteering in addition that of another scholar.”
[_close quote missing_]
M. Renan and myself [M Renan]
seems minded to indemnify himself [himslef]
Index
Missing or incorrect punctuation in the Index has been silently supplied.
Bidpai, mentioned by Ali, iv. 153; see _Pilpay_. [Bilpay]
Black, in the Schleswig-Holstein dialect, iii. 130 [Hollstein]
Cornish ... Saxon words in, iii. 262. [_“i” in “in” invisible_]
Curtius ... Pott on, iv. 518. [536]
Daughter-in-law, Aryan words for, iv. 403. [Ayran]
_Deig-an_, to knead, iv. 22. [{D}eig-an]
Die, to, root MṚ, Aryan word for, iv. 415. [Aryans]
_Facso_, iv. 94 _note_. [Fasco _but alphabetized as “Facso”_]
Frederick ... IV., iii. 359. [iii. _missing_]
Future, terminations of, iv. 93. [iv. _missing_]
---- so-called Attic, iv. 94 _note_. [iv. _missing_]
_Gaṇa_, plural suffix, iv. 74 _note_. [iv. _missing_]
Gaṇeśa, god of success, iv. 251, 309.
[_“Ga{n}esa” for “Ga{n}e{s}a”_]
_Jâti_, plural suffix, iv. 74 _note_. [iv. 73]
_Jîváse_, in order to live, iv. 36. [_“Gîváse” for “{G}îváse”_]
Husband’s brother, Aryan words for, iv. 403. [words, for]
Kaṇva-medhatithi or Kaṇva-mesha and Ganymedes, iv. 21.
[_first “i” in “medhatithi” invisible_]
Locatives, old, iv. 208. [iv. _missing_]
Nakshatras ... derived from China or Chaldea, iv. 508.
[iv. _missing_]
Πηλεῦ, vocative, iv. 233. [_η invisible_]
Ranchi, Missionaries at, iv. 347. [iv. _missing_]
“Sakuntala,” Kâlidâsa’s play of, iv. 323.
[_text unchanged: error for “Śakuntalâ”_]
Sanskrit ... Grammar by Colebrooke, iv. 381. [Colebroooke]
See, to, root Dṛś, Aryan words for, iv. 415.
[_“Dris” for “D{ri}{s}”_]
Self-defense in, iv. 456. [iv. _missing_]
Svasṛ, sister, iv. 110 _note_. [_“Sva{rsi}” for “Svas{ri}”_]
θυγάτηρ, θυγατέρα = duhitấ, duhitáram, iv. 232.
[_υ in θυγάτηρ invisible_]
---- tones in, iv. 106. [iv. _missing_]
Vibhv-áne, in order to conquer, iv. 34. [Vibhv-{á}ne]
See also
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