Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus c1: Front matter

Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus c1

Language: English

Front matter

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This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world’s books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that’s often difficult to discover.

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Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book’s long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you.

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Usage guidelines

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Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.

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We also ask that you:

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+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes.

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+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google’s system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

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+ Maintain attribution The Google “watermark” you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

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+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can’t offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book’s appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.

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About Google Book Search

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Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world’s books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at http://books.google.com/ the *Gesta Romanorum*, the *Seven Wise Masters*, the *Dolopathos*, and the *Barlaam and Josaphat*. The *Gesta Romanorum* is a collection of moral tales, written in Latin, which was extremely popular in the Middle Ages. It is a curious mixture of classical mythology, oriental fable, and Christian allegory. The *Seven Wise Masters* is a cycle of stories, also of oriental origin, which was translated into almost every European language. The *Dolopathos* is a Latin version of the *Seven Wise Masters*, written by a monk named Johannes de Alta Silva in the early thirteenth century. The *Barlaam and Josaphat* is a Christianized version of the life of Buddha, which was widely read in the Middle Ages.

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These collections of stories were not merely for entertainment; they were used by preachers to illustrate their sermons. The *Gesta Romanorum*, in particular, was a mine of material for the pulpit. The stories were often provided with a moral application, which made them suitable for religious instruction. This practice of using secular stories for religious purposes was common in the Middle Ages, and it helped to preserve many ancient tales that might otherwise have been lost.

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The influence of these collections on later literature is immense. Chaucer, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, and many other writers drew upon them for their plots and characters. The *Gesta Romanorum*, for example, contains the germs of stories that appear in *The Merchant of Venice*, *King Lear*, and *Pericles*. The *Seven Wise Masters* also provided material for many later works, including some of the tales in the *Decameron*.

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The study of these collections is important not only for the light it throws on the literature of the Middle Ages, but also for the insight it gives into the social and religious life of the period. They reflect the beliefs, values, and customs of the people, and they show how the different cultures of the world were brought into contact with each other through the medium of story-telling.