470 BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM 



facts than the Veda, provided we possessed similar data of approx- 

 imately as great antiquity. Nevertheless the comparisons that 

 have been drawn between India and Europe have not been quite 

 without success. We may even to-day regard it as certain as well 

 as important that the comparison of the old Indian word deva, 

 "god," with the corresponding words of the Occident, and the rela- 

 tionship of this word with dyaus (=Zeus), "the sky," gives us the 

 right to attribute to the Indo-Europeans the conception of gods 

 as bright beings, living in the high heavens. On the other hand, 

 most of the attempted comparisons of individual gods, demons, and 

 myths are uncertain, even if not actually false. Do similarities of 

 sound in names and faint similarities between forms really point 

 to each other from such a distance? Or do mere chance resemblances 

 deceive us? They furnish results that one may believe, if one wills, 

 but no proof compels one to believe them. They are results that one 

 will dare least of all make the basis for further investigations. How 

 different the comparisons seem to us to-day that are confined to the 

 religions of the ancient Indians and the neighboring closely related 

 Aryans, the Iranian Zoroastrians, as against the rash combinations 

 that would teach us to interpret, in the light of the Veda, the whole 

 series of European forms from the Olympus of Homer to German 

 folk-lore and children's games! The distances in time, space, and 

 race-mixture necessary to be bridged over were just as great in the 

 latter case as they are insignificant in the former. Proper tionately 

 better success must necessarily attend the less pretentious under- 

 taking. 



Indeed, I dare assert that it has become possible, by the happy 

 alliance between Indian and Iranian investigation of religions, to 

 reconstruct many of the principal features of the belief peculiar to 

 the ancestors of both peoples in their prehistoric relationship. The 

 chief role falls naturally here to Indian investigation. For the com- 

 mon basis of their belief is more distinctly evident in Indian tradi- 

 tions. The migration of the Indian Aryans to their new land, the 

 beginnings of new race-formations that were gradually to transform 

 the Aryan belief here most deeply, only just began to be felt even in 

 the Vedic period. The stronger creative forces left their impress at 

 first upon the Zoroastrian religion, the thought and will of a great 

 personality. Yet enough of the old still remains also on this side to 

 assure the Vedic scholar, in cooperation with Iranian scholars, of 

 many a valuable result for his own purposes. Above all, he may rejoice 

 in the fact that he is able to make an important contribution here to 

 the knowledge of a non-Indian religion. He teaches the investigator 

 of the Avesta the background of the old belief, from which the 

 teaching of Zoroaster stands out in bold relief. 



