The Veda as Studied by European Scholars.
Thread of our Argument.
IN a course of lectures we must try never to lose our way.
Where are we?
We are studying Physical Religionthe roads that led from Nature to Nature's godsto
The Veda as Studied by European Scholars.
Thread of our Argument.
IN a course of lectures we must try never to lose our way.
Where are we?
We are studying Physical Religionthe roads that led from Nature to Nature's godsto Nature's God. I stated that this phase of religious growth can best be studied in the Veda. And the next question was, What is the Vedaand, How did we come to know it?
Now, if you had asked the most learned Professor, not more than a hundred years ago. What is the Veda?he would most likely have had to say, what no Professor likes to say, I don't know. Not quite so years ago, when Professor Wilson offered a translation of the Veda to one of our greatest publishers, he was met by the question, And pray, Sir, what is the Veda?
I therefore feel in duty bound to explain, first of all, how the world came to know the Veda, and who are the first people outside of India that bear witness to its existence.
The Greeks did not mention the Veda, though no doubt it existed long before Alexander, nor the Persians, nor the Jews. The first people outside India who knew the Veda were the Chinese. Then followed Al-Birûnî, at the court of Mahmud of Ghazna (about 1000 A.D.), and lastly the Emperor Akbar and his literary friends, in the second half of the sixteenth century. All these bear witness to the existence of the Veda. But they are witnesses who lived in the East. We have now to see how the Veda became known in the West, how a knowledge of that ancient literature reached the scholars of Europe.
European Missionaries in India.
At the court of Akbar, and again at the court of Aurungzebe (16581707), there were several European missionaries who took part in the religious and philosophical discussions of the time, and who ought to have been acquainted with the Vedas, if only by name. But it would seem as if the Brâhmans, though anxious to have their literature known and appreciated by their conquerors, were more anxious still to keep their sacred literature, the Vedas, out of sight of any strangers. Their law-books are full of threatenings against any one who should divulge the Veda, and it seems certainly a fact that the Emperor Akbar, omnipotent as he was, not succeed in persuading any Brâhman to translate the real Veda for him1
It was only when Christian missionaries began themselves to learn the classical language of the Brâhmans, the so-called Sanskrit, that they became aware of the existence of the old sacred books, called the Veda.
Francis Xavier, who went as a missionary to India in the first half of the sixteenth century, was honest enough to confess that he could not learn the language. I do not understand that people, he writes, nor do they understand me. Yet this is the same Xavier who is always mentioned as one of the first successful missionaries in India, nay to whom, under the name of St. Francis Xavier, his admirers ascribed the gift of tongues.
In the second half of that century, however, a successful attempt was made by some Roman Catholic missionaries at Goa to learn Sanskrit with the help of a converted Brâhman, and early in the seventeenth century the famous missionary, Roberto de' Nobili, had made himself thoroughly acquainted, not only with the Sanskrit language, but with Sanskrit literature also. That he knew the Veda, and that he had learnt to appreciate its enormous authority among the higher classes in India, is best shown by the fact that he announced himself as come to preach a new Veda. Whether he actually composed such a work we do not know, but it seems quite certain that the notorious Ezour-veda was not his work. This Ezour-veda was a poor compilation of Hindu and Christian doctrines mixed up together in the most childish way, and was probably the work of a half-educated native convert at Pondicherry. A French translation of this work was sent to Voltaire, who presented it to the Royal Library at Paris in 1761. It was published by Sainte-Croix in 1778, under the title of L'Ezour Védam, ou ancien commentaire du Védam, contenant l'exposition des opinions religieuses et philosophiques des Indous, traduit du Samscretam par un Brame. How a man of Voltaire's taste could have been taken in by such a work is difficult to understand to any one who takes the trouble to read the two volumes. Yet Voltaire spoke of it as the most precious gift for which the West has ever been indebted to the East, and he plac