Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 15:60 (Oct 1858)
Article: Sacred Traditions In The East
Author: E. Burgess

BSac 15:60 (Oct 1858) p. 844

Sacred Traditions In The East

E. Burgess

Among all the people of the earth, the religious sentiment appears to be stronger in none, than it is with the adherents of Brahmanism. At least, there is no people with whom religion is more connected with all the affairs of life, than it is with them. From the moment of birth, till death, and after death, the Hindû is subjected to religious ceremony. Probably no language, previous to the invention of printing, possessed so large an amount of literature, as the Sanskrit; and that literature was almost all religious. The most important of the Sacred writings of the Hindûs, are among the most ancient, if they are not the most ancient, writings extant at the present day. Sanskrit scholars make the first of the Vedas to be at least as ancient as the books of Moses, and

BSac 15:60 (Oct 1858) p. 845

admit the strong probability, that they were at least parts of them, written some centuries earlier. And from the time of the Vedas, some 1400 or 1500 years B. C, to the last of the Puranas, some 1000 years after, there originated in India, a vast amount of literature, mythological, scientific, and religious. In some respects the literature of the Sanskrit Language surpasses that of the Greeks. Its Mythology is more exiensive, and not much more absurd. If its science is not as correct, it is more volumnious. Its poetry is equally elaborate. It enumerates some 150 kinds of verse; some of its poems are said to consist of 100,000 stanzas. Its schools of philosophy outnumber those of the Greeks, and for subtlety and refined analysis, some of the works of the Brahmans are not a whit behind the most subtle and refined productions of Plato and Aristotle.

A mere statement of the names and number of works in the principal departments of literature and science is somewhat formidable. There are the four Vedas written some 12Q0 or 1800 years B. C.; the Laws of Manu dating some five or six centuries later; the Epic poems, the Mahábhárata and Rámáyana, written probably five or six centuries before our era;1 then after Christ, there are the eighteen Puránas, or modern mythological religious systems; the eighteen or twenty Sietháhantas or astronomical treatises, with treatises on logic, grammar and philosophy, all constituting a body of literature, probably not surpassed in extent before the revival of learning in Europe, by the literature of any language on earth. And it is not, likewise, surpassed by any other literature in that which is absurd, and which indicates a degraded state of mind among the people to whom it belongs; yet there are some redeeming qualities.

The religion and literature of the Hindus are interesting