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They do indeed show the antiquity of astronomical records in all the countries named,
but there the matter ends, and the evidences of tradition are nil.
51
THE EVIDENCE OF AUTHORITY
Since writing the foregoing defense of Hindu astrology I have had opportunity
for a somewhat close study of the work on Sanskrit literature by Arthur A.
MacDonell, M.A. Ph.D., and a most absorbing study it has been. I am grateful that
my attention was called to the work.
After paying tribute to the labors of his predecessors, including Sir William
Jones, Professor Weber, Sir M. Monier-Williams, Professor Max Muller, Professor L.
von Schroeder, and others, the author proceeds in the most orderly and graphic
manner to set forth the various periods of Indian literary development. A prefatory
paragraph of much relevance to the subject of debate deserves quotation: In writing
this History of Sanskrit Literature, I have dwelt more on the life and thought of
ancient India, which this literature embodies, than would perhaps have appeared
necessary in the case of a European literature. This I have done partly because
Sanskrit literature, as representing an independent civilization entirely different from
that of the West, requires more explanation than most others; and partly because,
owing to the remarkable continuity of Indian culture, the religious and social
institutions of modern India are constantly illustrated by those of the past.
I have set some few words in italics which do not so appear in Professor
MacDonell s book in order to bring them under closer observation by the general
reader, for they show, in connection with the tenor of the whole work, that the insular
character of the Hindu is responsible for the preservation of the Vedic language in
almost its pristine purity at the present day. Indeed, this has been my contention from
the beginning of the discussion of Hindu astrology in these pages, and I propose to
follow Professor MacDonell to his conclusions.
Among all the ancient literatures, he says, that of India is, more over,
undoubtedly in intrinsic value and aesthetic merit second only to that of Greece. Its
earliest period, being much older than any product of Greek literature, presents a
more primitive form of belief, and therefore gives a clearer picture of the
development of religious ideas than any other literary monument of the world.
Although it had touched excellence in most of its branches, Sanskrit
literature has mainly achieved greatness in religion and philosophy.
The importance of ancient Indian literature as a whole largely consists in its
originality. Naturally isolated by its gigantic mountain barrier in the North, the
Indian Peninsula has ever since the Aryan invasion formed a world apart, over which
a unique form of African civilization rapidly spread, and has ever since prevailed.
When the Greeks, towards the end of the fourth century B.C., invaded the Northwest,
the Indians had fully worked out a national culture of their own, unaffected by foreign
influences. Persians, Greeks, Scythians, and Mohammedans, the development of the
life and literature of the Indo-Aryan race remained practically unchecked and
unmodified from without down to the era of British occupation.
52
No other branch of the Indo-European stock has experience an isolated
evolution like this. No other country except China can trace back its language and
literature, its religious beliefs and rites, it domestic and social customs, through an
uninterrupted development of more than three thousand years.
Professor MacDonell gives some striking illustrations of this conservative
characteristic of the Aryans. He points out that Sanskrit is still the language of the
cultured, spoken as it was centuries before our era. It is still used for literary
purposes, and manuscripts are copied, maugre the advantages of printing. The Vedas
are learned by heart to day just as before the invasion of Alexander, and could even
now be restored from the lips of religious teachers if every manuscript or printed
copy of them were destroyed. The religion is the same, and the social customs
remain unaltered. In various branches of scientific literature, in phonetics, grammar,
mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and law, the Indians also achieved notable results.
In some of these subjects their attainments are, indeed, far in advance of what was
accomplished by the Greeks.
Our attention is riveted by the statement that: History is the one weak spot in
Indian literature. It is, in fact, non-existent, Professor MacDonell attributes this
feature of Indian literature partly to the fact that as early India made no history it had
no occasion to write any, and partly to the doctrine of quietism advocated by the
Brahmans, whereby the externals of life became of small interest.
The controversy on the antiquity of the Vedas is of vital interest, but Professor
Jacobs grounds his statement that the Vedas are traceable to at least 4000 B.C. on
astronomical calculations connected with the change in the beginning of the seasons.
But MacDonell thinks that the whole estimate to be invalidated by the assumption of
a doubtful meaning in a Vedic work which forms the starting-point of the theory.
Nevertheless, there is something to be said for this line of argument, as we shall see.
Meanwhile, says our author, we must rest content with the certainly that Vedic
literature, in any case, is of considerably higher antiquity than that Greece.
Dr Buhler is cited as authority for the statement that the script of India was of
Semitic or Phoenician origin, and dates back to the ninth century B.C. But when it is
known that the native learning has always been, and is still, largely traditional and
oral, this fact scarcely affects the ground under survey; for, as MacDonell truly says:
The sacred Scriptures, as well as the sciences, can only be acquired from the lips of
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