ORIENTAL SCHOLARSHIP DURING THE PRESENT CENTURY. 689 



The Veda has revealed to us the earliest phases in the history of 

 natural leligioii, and has placed in our hands the only safe key to the 

 secrets of Aryau mythology. jSTa^, I do not hesitate to say that there 

 are rays of light in the Upauishads and in the ancient philosophy of 

 the Vedanta which will throw new light, even to-day, on some of the 

 problems nearest to our own hearts. And not only has each one of the 

 ancient Oriental Kingdoms been reanimated and made to speak to us, 

 like the gray, crumbling statue of Memnon, when touched by the rays 

 of dawn, but we have also gained a new insight into the mutual rela- 

 tions of the principal nations of anticiuity. Formerly, when we had to 

 read the liistory of the world, every one of the great Kingdoms of the 

 East seemed to stand by itself, isolated from all the rest, having its 

 own past, unconnected with tlie past history of other countries. 



China, for instance, was a world by itself. It had always been inhab- 

 ited by a peculiar people, different in thought, ni language, and in 

 writing even from its nearest neighbors. 



Egypt, in the gray morning of antiquity, seemed to standalone, like 

 a pyramid in a desert, self contained, proud, and without any interest 

 in the outside world, entirely original m its language, its alphabet, its 

 literature, its art, and its religion. 



India, again, has always been a world by itself, either entirely 

 unknown to the Northern nations, or surrounded in their eyes by a 

 golden mist of fable and injstery. 



Tiie same applies more or less to the great Mesopotamia!! Kingdoms, 

 to Babylon and Nineveh. They, too, have their own language, their 

 own alphabet, their own religion, their own art. They seem to owe 

 nothing to anybody else. 



It is somewhat different with Media and Persia, but this is chietly 

 due to our knowing hardly anything of these countries before they 

 appear in contiict Avith their neighbors, either as conquerois or as con- 

 quered, on the ancient battle-fields of history. 



In facr, if we look at the old maps of the ancient world, we see them 

 colored with different and strongly contrasting colors, which admit of 

 no shading, of no transition from one to the other. P^very country 

 seemed a world by itself, and, so far as we can Judge from the earliest 

 traditions which have reached us, each nation claimed even its own 

 independent creation, whether from their own gods, or from their own 

 native soil. China knows nothing of what is going on in Babylon and 

 Egypt; Egypt hardly knows the name of India; India looks upon all 

 that is beyond the Himalayan snows as fabulous, while the Jews, more 

 than all the rest, felt themselves a peculiar people, the chosen peojile 

 of God. 



Until lately, if it was asked whether there was any communication 



at all between the leading historical nations of the East, the answer 



was that no communication, no interchange of thought, no mutual 



influei!(;e was possible, because language placed a barrier between 



SM 93 44 



