We Are Daily Reminded That, Like Unreasonable
Children, We Have Undertaken A Task Before Which Archaeologists
And Historians, Aided By
All the influence and wealth of the
Government, have shrunk dismayed; that we have taken upon ourselves
a work which
Has proved to be beyond the capacities of the Royal
Asiatic Society.
Let it be so.
Let everyone try to remember, as we ourselves remember, that not
very long ago a poor Hungarian, who not only had no means of any
kind but was almost a beggar, traveled on foot to Tibet through
unknown and dangerous countries, led only by the love of learning
and the eager wish to pour light on the historical origin of his
nation. The result was that inexhaustible mines of literary
treasures were discovered. Philology, which till then had wandered
in the Egyptian darkness of etymological labyrinths, and was about
to ask the sanction of the scientific world to one of the wildest
of theories, suddenly stumbled on the clue of Ariadne. Philology
discovered, at last, that the Sanskrit language is, if not the
forefather, at least - to use the language of Max Muller - "the elder
brother" of all classical languages. Thanks to the extraordinary
zeal of Alexander Csoma de Koros, Tibet yielded a language the
literature of which was totally unknown. He partly translated it
and partly analyzed and explained it. His translations have shown
the scientific world that (1) the originals of the Zend-Avesta,
the sacred scriptures of the sun-worshippers, of Tripitaka, that
of the Buddhists, and of Aytareya-Brahmanam, that of the Brahmans,
were written in one and the same Sanskrit language; (2) that all
these three languages - Zend, Nepalese, and the modern Brahman
Sanskrit - are more or less dialects of the first; (3) that old
Sanskrit is the origin of all the less ancient Indo-European
languages, as well as of the modern European tongues and dialects;
(4) that the three chief religions of heathendom - Zoroastrianism,
Buddhism and Brahmanism - are mere heresies of the monotheistic
teachings of the Vedas, which does not prevent them from being
real ancient religions and not modern falsifications.
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