But It Must Be Remembered That
In Russia, As Elsewhere In Europe, People Estimate The Value Of
This Philological Light By The Points Of Exclamation Lavished Upon
Him By His Admiring Followers, And That No One Reads The Veda
Bhashaya Of Swami Dayanand.
It may even be that I shall not be
far from the truth in saying that the very existence of this work
is ignored, which may perhaps be a fortunate fact for the reputation
of Professor Max Muller.
I shall be as brief as possible. When
Professor Max Muller states, in his Sahitya-Grantha, that the Aryan
tribe in India acquired the notion of God step by step and very
slowly, he evidently wishes to prove that the Vedas are far from
being as old as is supposed by some of his colleagues. Having
presented, in due course, some more or less valuable evidence to
prove the truth of this new theory, he ends with a fact which, in
his opinion, is indisputable. He points to the word hiranya-garbha
in the mantrams, which he translates by the word "gold," and adds
that, as the part of the Vedas called chanda appeared 3,100 years ago,
the part called mantrams could not have been written earlier than
2,900 years ago. Let me remind the reader that the Vedas are divided
into two parts: chandas - slokas, verses, etc.; and mantrams -
prayers and rhythmical hymns, which are, at the same time, incantations
used in white magic. Professor Max Muller divides the mantram ("Agnihi
Poorwebhihi," etc.) philologically and chronologically, and, finding
in it the word hiranya-garbha, he denounces it as an anachronism.
The ancients, he says, had no knowledge of gold, and, therefore,
if gold is mentioned in this mantram it means that the mantram was
composed at a comparatively modern epoch, and so on.
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