112 General Observations on [Feb. 



reasonings of infant races, are of no account here, however interesting to 

 the natural and moral philosopher, became traceable both to natural and 

 moral causes. All the ingenuity of antiquarians has not yet unravelled 

 the tangled skein of religions. Possessing many features in common, 

 still how various do their sources appear to be — or if traced back to what 

 seems some common point, how suddenly are they found to diverge 

 again ; — what blending of their dogmas, what perversions, what improve- 

 ments, what grand conceptions, what debasing and demoniac ideas and 

 creeds, — what asceticism — what grossness — what epicurianism do we 

 not find almost blended together. For the primitive religion we must go 

 back to the first days of man. The question, observes our author, put 

 by the brahmans to their opponents, why Sakya Muni did not appear in 

 any former period, was cut short by the doctrine that the universe 

 always is under the government of a Buddha. 



But it is probable that they also replied, that three known Buddhas 

 had preceded this one, and they might, and perhaps did argue, that [like 

 the Jewish prophets] each successive Buddha succeeded to the mantle 

 of his predecessor ; and that these Buddhas were separate identities, and 

 not avatars of a single person, although each Buddha became in fact 

 according to the doctrines, an incarnation of himself under a new condi- 

 tion of existence. 



The Buddhist religion doubtless appertains to " an advanced stage of 

 society," and so did brahmanism. But this does not materially affect 

 the comparative antiquity of either of the opposed parties, unless one of 

 them can be proved to have emanated from the other. But if this reli- 

 gion be distinct from brahmanism, it may have been either gradually 

 evolved during the advance of society, or borrowed at once from a 

 more highly civilized western one. 



In the first instance it would be vain to endeavour to trace it back to 

 its original elements. The other may or might yet be traced, could we 

 discover any records of the first intercourse betwixt the people of the east 

 and west. As India was quite well known to western nations [at least 

 byname] about the period of Buddha Sakya, and B. C. 623 to 543, we 

 may admit the probability of a much earlier intercourse betwixt the two. 



Hinduism, as it now exists, is a new religion, and so comparatively is 

 or was brahmanism, if it was a shoot from a western one, whether Persic, 

 Chaldaic or Scythic. 



