If the historical data were to assume from the outset in the annals of mankind the significance which they were afterward to acquire, the discovery of these sacred books would probably have turned all Europe upside down; for it was, without a doubt, the most important event which had occurred since the advent of Christianity. But a moral or spiritual event very rarely propagates itself quickly through the masses. It is opposed by too many forces which would gain by its suppression. This particular event remained confined to a small circle of scholars and philologists, and affected the meta-physician and the moral philosopher even less than might have been expected. It is still awaiting the hour of its full expansion.

6

The first question to present itself is that of the date of these texts. It is very difficult to answer this question exactly; for while it is comparatively easy to determine the period when these books were written it is impossible to estimate the time during which they existed only in the memory of man. According to Max Müller there is hardly a Sanskrit manuscript in existence that dates farther back than 1000 A. D., and everything seems to show that writing was unknown in India until the beginning of the Buddhist era (the fifth cen

tury B. C.); that is until the close of the period of the ancient Vedic literature.

The "Rig-Veda," which contains 1028 hymns of an average length of ten lines, or a total of 153,826 words, was therefore preserved by the effort of the memory alone. Even to-day the Brahmans all know the "Rig-Veda" by heart, as did their ancestors three thousand years ago. We must attribute the spontaneous development of Vedic thought, as we find it in the "RigVeda," to a period earlier than the tenth century B. C. Three centuries before the Christian era once more, according to Max Müller -Sanskrit had already ceased to be spoken by the people. This is proved by an inscription whose language is to Sanskrit what Italian is to Latin.

But according to other Orientalists the age of the "Chandas" probably goes back to a period two or three thousand years before Christ. This takes us back five thousand years: a very modest and prudent claim. "One thing is certain," says Max Müller, "namely, that there is nothing more ancient, nothing more primitive, than the hymns of the 'Rig-Veda,' whether in India or the whole Aryan world. Being Aryan in language and thought, the ‘Rig-Veda' is the most ancient of our sacred books." 1 Since the works of the great Orientalist were

1 Max Müller, "Origin and Development of Religion."

written other scholars have set back the date of the earliest manuscripts, and above all of the earliest traditions, to a remarkable extent; but even so these dates fall short by a stupendous amount of the Brahman calculations, which refer the origin of their earliest books to thousands of centuries before our era. "It is actually more than five thousand years," says Swami Dayanound Saraswati, "since the 'Vedas' have ceased to be a subject of investigation"; and according to the computations of the Orientalist Halled, the "Shastras," in the chronology of the Brahmans, must be no less than seven million years old.

Without taking sides in these disputes the only point which it is important to establish is the fact that these books, or rather the traditions which they have recorded and rendered permanent, are evidently anterior-with the possible exceptions of Egypt, China, and Chaldea to anything known of human history.

7

This literature comprises, in the first place, the four "Vedas": the "Rig-Veda," the "SamaVeda," the "Yadjour-Veda," and the "AtharvaVeda," completed by the commentaries, or "Brahmanas," and the philosophical treatises known as "Aranyakas" and "Upanishads," to which we must add the "Shastras," of which

the best known is the "Manava-DharmaShastra," or "Laws of Manu"-which, according to William Jones, Chézy, and LoiseleurDeslongchamps, date back to the thirteenth century before Christ-and the first "Puranas." Of these texts the "Rig-Veda" is incontestably the most ancient. The rest are spread over a period of many hundreds, perhaps even of many thousands, of years; but all, excepting the latest "Puranas," belong to the pre-Christian era, a fact which we must always keep in view; not because of any feeling of hostility toward the great religion of the West, but in order to give the latter its proper place in the history and evolution of human thought.

The "Rig-Veda" is still polytheist rather than pantheist, and it is only here and there that the peaks of the doctrine emerge from it, as, for example, in the stanzas which we shall presently quote. Its divinities represent only those amplifical physical forces which the "Sama-Veda," and above all the "Brahmanas" subsequently reduce to metaphysical conceptions, and to unity.

The "Sama-Veda" asserts the unknowable and the "Yadjur-Veda" pantheism. As for the "Atharva," according to some the oldest, and according to others the most recent, it consists above all of ritual.

These ideas were developed by the commen

taries of the "Brahmanas," which were produced more especially between the twelfth and seventh centuries before Christ; but they may probably be referred to traditions of much greater antiquity, which our modern theosophists claim to have rediscovered, though without supporting their assertions by sufficient proof.

Consequently, when we speak of the religion of India we must consider it in its entirety, from the primitive Vedism by way of Brahmanism and Krishnaism, to Buddhism, calling a halt, should the student so prefer, some two or three centuries before our Christian era, in order to avoid all suspicion of Judo-Christian infiltration.

All this literature-to which may be added, among many others, the semi-profane texts of the "Ramayana" and the "Mahabarata," in the midst of which blossoms the "Bhagavata-Gita," or "Song of the Blessed," that magnificent flower of Hindu mysticism-is still very imperfectly known, and we possess of it only so much as the Brahmans have chosen to give us.

This literature confronts us with a host of problems of extreme complexity, of which very few have as yet been solved. It may be added that the translation of the Sanskrit texts, and especially of the more ancient, are still very unreliable. According to Roth, the true pio