326 THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION. 



ancients who ruled their conduct and belief on the high standard 

 of Plato's precepts and theology. 



The very old religion of Brahma in southern Asia has been 

 studied and its sacred books translated by such eminent oriental 

 scholars as Capt. Francis Wilford, Sir Wm. Jones and Dr. Fran- 

 cis Buchanan ; and their accounts and discoveries have been 

 published in the volumes of the English magazine entitled 

 " Asiatic Researches." In my search for antecedents of Christ- 

 ianity in the ancient system of the Brahmans, I shall make no 

 claims or quotations that cannot be verified in the writings of 

 the authorities I have named. 



The oldest sacred books of India, the Yedas, claim an antiquity 

 of at least 3,000 years prior to the Christian era; and as they 

 contain records of astronomical observations dating as far 

 back as that, which the distinguished astronomer Bailly and 

 mathematician Playfair say could only have been taken by actual 

 observation at the time, it is considered that the claims of Indian 

 sacred literature to that great age are well founded. In those 

 oldest books that ever were written is told the story of the dis- 

 obedience and fall of the first human pair under the names of 

 Adima and Heva. In their despair at being shut out from the 

 island paradise in which they were created, they fall down and 

 pray to Brahma for pardon. "And as they thus spoke there 

 came a voice from the clouds, saying : I pardon you, but you may 

 no more return to the abode of delight which I had created for 

 your happiness. Through your disobedience to my commands 

 the spirit of evil has obtained possession of the earth. Your 

 children, reduced to labor and to suffer through your fault, will 

 become corrupt and forget me. But I will send Vishnu, who 

 shall incarnate himself in the womb of a woman, and shall bring 

 to all the hope and the means of recompense in another life, in 

 praying to me to soften their ills." This Redeemer thus prom- 

 ised was the god Chrishna whom Brahmans and Buddhists worship 

 as the divine messenger or mediator from the Deity to mankind. 

 Of this god the learned and pious Sir Wm. Jones writes : * 



* Works of Sir Wm. Jones. London, 1799. Vol. I, p. 265, et seq. 



