NATURE 



77 



THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1879 



THE SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST 

 The Sacred Books of the East. Translated by various 

 Oriental Scholars, and Edited by F. Max Miiller. 

 Vol. I. The Upanishads, Translated by F. Max Miiller. 

 Vol. II. The Sacred Laws 0/ the Aryas, Translated by 

 Georg Biihler. Vol. III. The Sacred Books of China, 

 Translated by James Legge. (Oxford : The Clarendon 

 Press, 1879.) 



THE scries of volumes, of which the first three have 

 just been issued simultaneously, under the able 

 editorship of Prof. Max Miiller, are a very significant 

 sign of our age. Their object is none other than to give 

 to the public the sacred books of the historical religions 

 of the world, translated into English by the best living 

 scholars, without praise or disparagement, and with no 

 reference to theological controversies or the needs of 

 missionary zeal. The translations aim at being exact 

 and faithful representations of the originals, so far as this 

 is possible, and they are published in the interests of 

 science, not of religious dogma. It is intended that the 

 scientific student of religion should possess in them trust- 

 worthy materials on which to found his generalisations 

 and build his conclusions. The fact that such a work 

 should appeal to a large public is not so remarkable as 

 the further fact that it has been published at the expense 

 of a university once supposed to be the stronghold of a 

 narrow orthodoxy. 



It is difficult to realise that the days are not long past 

 when the very conception of a scientific treatment of 

 religion would have been regarded either with horror or 

 with indifference. The religious world would have none 

 of it ; the fashionable world associated science with bones 

 and machinery. The task of translating or of reading the 

 sacred books of other peoples was left to a few zealots 

 bent on destroying the Christianity of modern Europe, or 

 a small band of scholars whose labours were almost 

 unknown beyond the privacy of the study. In many 

 cases, indeed, translation in the true sense of the word 

 was impossible ; scientific philology had not yet explained 

 the meaning of half-forgotten Eastern tongues, literary 

 and historical criticism was still seeking its canons, and 

 the wildest notions passed muster as to the antiquity of 

 Oriental books. The mutilated and misunderstood frag- 

 ments of Hindu or Chinese texts paraded before the 

 reading public were travestied on behalf, now of a tradi- 

 tional orthodoxy, now of an irrational denial of the 

 popular faith. The filthy and absurd rites of later 

 Hinduism were made to subserve the cause of the 

 apologist, while his antagonist retorted with moral 

 excerpts to which a fabulous age was assigned or painted 

 an ideal portrait of Confucius and his doctrines. 



Thanks to the application of the scientific method to 

 the study of language, of history, and of society, we can 

 now examine the historical religions of mankind calmly 

 and dispassionately, can estimate their relative influence 

 and importance, can trace their origin and subsequent 

 development. We have learned the great doctrine of 

 historical evolution. The mind of man does not move by 

 fits and starts any more than external nature ; it is con- 

 Vol. xxi. — No. 526 



ditioned by the circumstances surrounding it, and slowly 

 grows to a ripe maturity. The various forms in which 

 the religious emotions of man have clothed themselves, 

 the various dogmas into which they have been crystal- 

 lised, result from causes which can be discovered by 

 careful research. The words in which they have been 

 expressed lie like fossils in the strata of society revealing 

 to the comparative philologist the ideas that prevailed at 

 the time they were first coined or at the successive periods 

 when their meaning was modified. Doctrine must neces- 

 sarily develop because the mind of man develops, con- 

 tinually gaining new ideas and new points of view and 

 recasting those of a past generation. 



The history of doctrine may be read in the sacred 

 books of a religion and the mode in which they have 

 been interpreted. We see the words of the text gradually 

 becoming fixed and sacred, and then taking upon them 

 strange senses coloured by the beliefs and ideas of a later 

 day. The simple utterances of an Aryan poet came to be 

 regarded as the awful commands of the Almighty, and 

 to constitute an infallible and irresponsible text-book of 

 life and morals, of law and learning. 



The relation of a religion, however, to its Bible may be 

 twofold. It may have had an individual founder like the 

 Buddha or Zoroaster, or Mohammed, and then the 

 authority of the founder overrides that of the sacred book 

 which derives its force and sanctity from him; or it may 

 be the slow growth of time and circumstances, moulded, 

 as in the case of Brahmanism, by a powerful priesthood, 

 whose influence and dogmatic system rest entirely on the 

 divine authority with which they have been able to invest 

 their sacred scriptures. In the latter case a far stricter 

 and more uncompromising theory of inspiration is neces- 

 sary than in the former. To impugn a single jot or tittle 

 of the canon is to overthrow the very foundations of the 

 faith. 



It will be a long while before the science of religion 

 can do more than collect its facts and lay down a few- 

 broad and more or less provisional generalisations. Only 

 when we know the way in which each of the historical 

 religions of the world has been born and grown up, shall 

 we be able to compare them with one another and with 

 the unorganised religions of barbarous tribes. It has yet 

 to be seen whether the different races of mankind have 

 started with the same stock of religious ideas and followed 

 similar courses of development, or whether, as has some- 

 times been asserted, each race has its own religion as 

 peculiar and appropriate to itself as the colour of its skin 

 or the character of its hair. If we may argue from the 

 analogy of language the assertion is likely to turn out a 

 false one. 



The question of the origin of unrevealed religion cannot, 

 of course, be answered by the study of sacred books. The 

 early struggles of religion to clothe itself in articulate 

 utterance lie too far behind the age of organised faith 

 when a canon first becomes possible. An uncivilised 

 people cannot have a Bible. It may be brought to them 

 by others, but if so, civilisation is brought with it. To 

 determine whether fetishism, or animism or any other 

 "ism" was the primitive form of religion, we must look 

 to other evidences than those presented by sacred books. 

 Sacred books are the records of historical religions only. 

 But it is with these records that the student of religion 



