CHAP. III.] "CHOOSE YOU WHOM YE WILL SERVE.” 129

pers of the one true God and of many gods at the same time). One of the devas, against whom we are fighting, might overtake you, when in deliberation (what faith you are to embrace), whispering you to choose the worst mind.1 Then the devas flock together to assault the two lives (the life of the body and that of the soul) praised by the prophets.

And to succour this life (to increase it), Armaiti 2 came with wealth, the good and true mind; she, the everlasting one, created the material world; but the soul, as to time, the first cause among created beings, was with Thee.

But when he (the evil spirit) comes with one of these evils (to sow mistrust among the believers), then thou hast the power through the good mind of punishing them who break their promises, O righteous spirit! 3

Thus let us be such as help the life of the future. The wise living spirits are the greatest supporters of it.5 The prudent man wishes only to be there where wisdom is at home.

Wisdom is the shelter from lies, the annihilation of the destroyer (the evil spirit). All perfect things are garnered up in the splendid residence of the Good Mind (Vohu-manô), the Wise (Mazda), and the Righteous (Asha), who are known as the best beings.

Therefore perform ye the commandments which, pronounced by Mazda himself, have been given to mankind; for they are a nuisance

را

1 "Worse mind: a philosophical term," Dr. Haug explains, "employed by Zoroaster to designate his principle of non-existence, non-reality, which is the cause of all evils.”

2 She is the angel of earth and the personification of prayer.

"That is to say," as Dr. Haug thinks, "those who give today the solemn promise to leave the polytheistic religion and to follow that preached by Zoroaster will be punished by God should they break their promise."

4 Here, according to Dr. Haug, we have "the germs of the doctrine of the resurrection."

5 The archangels.

6 Three names of archangels.

K

and perdition to liars, but prosperity to the believer in the truth; they are the fountain of happiness.1

Of this portion of the Yasna, Dr. Haug remarks:

It is a metrical speech, delivered by Spitama Zarathushtra himself, when standing before the sacred fire, to a numeronsly attended meeting of his countrymen. The chief tendency of this speech is to induce his countrymen to forsake the worship of the devas or gods -i.e., polytheism, to bow only before Ahuramazda, and to separate themselves entirely from the idolaters In order to gain the object wished for, he propounds the great difference which exists between the two religions, Monotheism and Polytheism, showing that, whereas the former is the fountain of all prosperity both in this and the other life, the latter is utterly ruinous to mankind. He attempts further to explain the origin of both these religions, so diametrically opposed to each other, and finds it in the existence of two primeval causes, called "existence" and "non-existence." But this merely philosophical doctrine is not to be confounded with his theology, according to which he acknowledged only one God.2

In speaking of the Avesta I have quoted, with assent, the view of the illustrious savant Dr. Haug, the most thorough and scientific champion of the comparative school: the school, that is, which holds that the true key to its interpretation is to be found in comparing it with the Vedas; the school which, as Dr. Darmesteter expresses it, insists upon the undeniable fact, that the Avesta and the Veda are "two echoes of one and the same voice, the reflex of one and the same thought; and that the Vedas, therefore, are both the best lexicon and the best

1 Yus. XXX.

2 Essays, p. 149. I doubt much whether Zoroaster distinguished rigidly between his theology and his philosophy.

CHAP. III.]

HINDUISM.

131

commentary to the Avesta." The source of both is "the religion followed by the common forefathers of the Iranians and Indians, the Indo-Iranian religion," which was informed by two general ideas, that there is a law in nature and that there is a war in nature: "a latent monotheism and an unconscious dualism." Both these ideas, in the further development of Indian thought, slowly disappeared, but Mazdeism lost neither of them. 2

I must not, however, pursue this subject, but must now go on to Hinduism, and say something about what has been done of late years for its elucidation. In 1846 a man of high gifts and noble aims, the late Mr. Maurice, in his Preface to his wellknown Boyle Lectures on the Religions of the World, wrote, "The Essay of Mr. Colebrooke on the Vedas, in the eighth volume of the Asiatic Researches, and Mr. Rosen's Latin translation of the Rig-Veda, are at present the chief helps which the Western student possesses for the knowledge of the earliest Hindu faith"; and in a footnote to the words "at present" he adds, "I understand that a young German, now in London, whose knowledge of Sanskrit is profound, and his industry plus quam Germanica, has it in contemplation to publish and translate all the Vedas." The "

1 Sacred Books, vol. iv. Introd. p. xxvi.

young German

2 Ibid. lvii.

in question is now the Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford, and a savant of European and more than European celebrity. For his name is familiar as a household word, not only wherever Western civilization has penetrated, but in the regions of the dim mysterious East, hitherto most inaccessible to our modes of thought; even where

Far hence, in Asia,

On the smooth convent roofs,

On the gold terraces

Of holy Lassa,

Bright shines the sun.

The task to which Professor Max Müller was preparing to address himself when Mr. Maurice wrote has been successfully carried out, and the first complete edition has been given to the world of the Rig-Veda, together with the Commentary of Sâyana Akârya-the most authoritative of Hindu theologians.

The Rig-Veda, as I need hardly say, is emphatically the Veda, the other books bearing that name being merely different arrangements of its hymns for special purposes, and having only a liturgical interest. It is divided into three portions known as Mantra, hymns of prayer and praise; Brahmana, ritual; and Upanishad, mystic doctrine, in which "all the religious philosophy of the Vedic age is gathered up," not for the multitude, but for those that could receive it. A complete translation of the Hymns of the Rig-Veda is promised us by Professor Max Müller. Here, by way of specimen

CHAP. III.]

THE RIG-VEDA.

133

of the ancient sacred verse of our Aryan ancestors, I quote the following metrical rendering of one of them :1

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.

Of the Upanishads five of the principal are given us in the first volume of the Sacred Books, together with a copious and very learned Intro

1 From Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i. p. 78. It is the 129th Hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-Veda.