Читать книгу The dawn of astronomy. A study of the temple-worship and mythology of the ancient Egyptians онлайн

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But the Vedas speak fully, while as yet information on this special point is relatively sparse from the other regions. It is wise, therefore, to begin with India, whence the first complete revelations of this kind came. Max Müller and others during recent years have brought before us an immense amount of most interesting information, of the highest importance for our present subject.

They tell us that 1,500 years B.C. there was a ritual, a set of hymns called the Veda (Veda meaning " knowledge"). These hymns were written in Sanskrit, which a few years ago was almost an unknown language: we know now that it turns out to be the nearest relation to our English tongue. The thoughts and feelings expressed in these early hymns contain the first roots and germs of that intellectual growth which connects our own generation with the ancestors of the Aryan races—"those very people who, as we now learn from the Vedas, at the rising and the setting of the sun, listened with trembling hearts to the sacred songs chanted by their priests. The Veda, in fact, is the oldest book in which we can study the first beginnings of our language and of everything which is embodied in all the languages under the sun." The oldest, most primitive, most simple form of Aryan Nature-worship finds expression in this wonderful hymnal, which doubtless brings before us the rituals of the ancient Aryan populations, represented also by the Medes and Persians.