The Religions of India c4: Preface
The Religions of India c4
- Language
- English
Preface
c4.1
IT has been said somewhere by Lowell that “ an illustration is worth more than any amount of discourse,” and, if we were asked to specify in which regard we thought that this manual, when compared with the only other book that covers the same ground, was likely to be useful, we should reply that, whereas Barth in his admirable handbook (the outgrowth of an article in the *Encyclopédie des Sciences Religieuses*) aimed at making his reader know all about the religions of India, we have sought to make our reader know those religions. We have tried to show the lines on which developed the various theological and moral conceptions of the Hindus, not only by furnishing, from the point of view of a foreign critic, an annotated narrative of the growth of these conceptions, but also and chiefly by taking the reader step by step through the literature that contains the records of India’s dogmas. The scheme of Barth’s Religions excludes all illustrative matter. His reader must take as authoritative the word of some modern scholar, or he must look up for himself the texts to which occasional reference is made. By omitting all quotations the author was enabled, in the compass of a small volume, to give an account, extraordinarily compact and complete, of every ramification of Hindu belief, and his book deserves all the praise that it has won. It is invaluable as exegesis. But it presents the religions of India as Bernhardy exhibits the literature of Greece, or as the daylight lecturer describes invisible stars. If one desire to orient himself in respect of any point of the Hindu creeds, if he wish a reliable sketch of those creeds, he will obtain from Barth the information he is seeking, and find a survey not only traced in detail, but at the same time discussed in so masterly a way as to make superfluous for long any new *résumé* of the sort, withal despite the fact that in some regards Barth’s views have become obnoxious to later criticism. But it is not to criticise Barth that this book was written. It is to reveal the religions of India by causing them to reveal themselves, and to elucidate them by commenting on them as they appear before the reader, traverse his field of vision, and finally leave his sight. We admit that it behooves whoever writes under the same title with that of the French savant, to show cause why he does so; but we think that to open up the religions of India from within, and in orderly succession to explain them as they display themselves, will not be otiose if there be any students ignorant of Sanskrit who yet desire independently to examine and to make their own the very words of the Hindu sages.
c4.2
In accordance with this plan of teaching Hindu religions we have been more prone to ignore than to collect such results of modern scholarship as tend to blur the picture we would show. For a first view of Greek theology Homer is more useful than Preller, and the same is true elsewhere. Above all, as we have said in the Introduction, in regard to many a recent ‘interpretation’ of Hindu deities, we are content to be conservative. We doubt the historical value of most of these expositions, and, since we are not of those scholars that try to keep abreast of the times by swallowing every new idea, we have not been inclined to broach unsatisfactory theories without a good deal of provocation, which existed for us only in the case of one or two Vedic divinities, where the religious significance of new interpretations compelled attention.
c4.3
In regard to the great length at which we have reviewed the gods of the earlier period, we have not forgotten what difference exists between mythology and religion, but we believe that the reader will see, before he gets to the end of the book, that such amplitude of treatment as we have permitted ourselves was not alien to our proper subject-matter.
c4.4
We scarcely can hope that the professional Indologian will see much that is valuable to him in this work, which is intended only for students, although we think that our view of the relation of Vedic belief to that of the ‘primitive Aryans’ is one that some scholars of the day might substitute with advantage for their own. But our more especial field of investigation has lain along the lines marked by the two chapters on Hinduism, and these such Sanskrit scholars as have not made particular study of the Hindu epic perhaps may find to be readable.
c4.5
Although we have quoted Hindu works more often than we have referred to those of European scholars, yet have we endeavored to make the notes sufficiently copious to put the reader *au courant* with the most important studies of the present time.
c4.6
As to the method of writing Sanskrit words, being unable to adopt the unpleasant characters of the Sacred Books, and knowing no other system that is satisfactory both to English eye and to linguistic sense, we have employed the simplest transcription, ignoring, in fact, all linguals save the sibilant, which alone can be rendered by English letters, and which usage has long made familiar.
c4.7
E. W. H.
c4.8
BRYN MAWR, PENNA., July, 1894.