Читать книгу The Origin of Thought and Speech онлайн

48 страница из 72

India does not possess remains of ancient temples nor of ancient palaces. Edifices of this kind were probably unknown before the invasion of Alexander. The Hindoos have always felt themselves strangers in the land, and the constant efforts of the kings of Egypt and of Babylon to perpetuate their names during thousands of years, by means of bricks and blocks of stone, did not occur to them until suggested by foreigners. But on the other hand, from the most remote times, they have possessed sacred writings, and they still preserve them in their ancient form. The number of separate works in Sanscrit of which the manuscripts are still in existence is now estimated at more than ten thousand. What would Plato and Aristotle have said, had they been told that there existed in that India which Alexander had just discovered—if not conquered—an ancient literature, far richer than anything they possessed at that time in Greece, and dating back so far that the old Sanscrit which clothed the religious and philosophical thought of these early inhabitants was a dead language. This literature has not ceased to increase, and contains the canonical books of the three principal religions of the ancient world; the Zend-Avesta, the sacred books of the Magians, written in Zend, the ancient Persian; the Tripitaka, the sacred books of the Buddhists, which contain moral treatises, dogmatic philosophy, and metaphysics; and the sacred writings of the Brahmans called the Vedas.