and the founder of Sabeism. Sabeism was, as its etymology, indicates, baptism."

Baptism which originated in India was introduced among the Jews by the Buddhist missionaries. The Essenes particularly John-gave the baptismal rites a peculiar extension. Hence baptism became the principal ceremony at the time of the initiation of the disciple in the religion of John. The life of Jesus the Christ as described in the Synoptic Gospels--the immaculate conception of a virgin mother, the miraculous birth, the story of the slaughter of infants by Herod, Jesus' temptation by the prince of darkness, and the chief events of his life-all these seem like repetitions of what happened in the lives of Chrisna (1400 B. C.) and Buddha (547 B. C.). Many of the famous parables of Christ Jesus, such as the parable of the prodigal son and of the marriage feast, were known to the Hindus and Buddhists of the pre-Christian era. The Roman Catholics have taken a great many of their ideas from the Buddhists of India. In the religious history of the world, Buddha was the first to organize communities of monks and nuns and to establish monasteries and nunneries. Under cover of the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat, the story of Buddha has found a niche in the row of canonized Catholic saints and has his saint-day in the calender of the Greek and Roman Churches. I and my Father are one; I am the way-such-like sayings of Jesus demonstrate his attainment to Christhood, the state of spiritual perfection, of spiritual realization or attainment of oneness with the Supreme Being; and they are also to be found in the sayings of Christna and Buddha.

Not merely in the realm of philosophy and religion did India excel; she made a positive contribution to other branches of knowledge as well. (Reference has already been made to India's contribution to geometry, algebra, arithmetic, trigonometry and astronomy.) A word about the other sciences. Ayurveda, the "science of life," contains the Hindu materia

medica, and is older than the sixth century B. C. It was taught long before the time of Hippocrates, the "father of medicine" so-called, who flourished about 400 B. C. Even in the early pre-Buddhistic age, Hindu medicine received scientific treatment and there were separate schools and colleges for medical students. During the Buddhistic period, medical science made considerable progress, and exhaustive scientific works were written on medicine. Among these, the works by Charaka and Sushruta were the best. Their writings became so widely known that translations of them were already familiar to the Arabs in the eighth century A. D., at the time of Haroun-al-Raschid; and they still remain the standard works among Hindu physicians. They contain exhaustive chapters on anatomy and physiology; on symptoms, diagnosis, and causes of various diseases, and on their proper treatment. Their words may be archaic, but they give a scientific treatment which was unknown in any other part of the world at that time. Dr. Royle, of King's College, London, in his celebrated essay on Hindu Medicine, goes so far as to say: "We owe our first system of medicine to the Hindus." He further declares, "Though the ancient Greeks and Romans used metallic substances as external applications, it is generally supposed that the Arabs were the first to prescribe them internally. But in the works of Charaka and Sushruta, to which * the earliest of the Arabs had access, we find numerous metallic substances directed to be given internally." History tells us that Alexander the Great kept Hindu physicians in his camp for the treatment of diseases which Greek physicians could not heal; and in the eighth century A. D. the Mohammedan Badshaw, Haroun-al-Raschid, retained in his court two Hindu physicians. Indeed as early as 260 B. C. the Buddhist emperor Asoka established many public hospitals, not only for men, women and children, but also for animals.

*

Chemistry (in Sanskrit, Rasayana) was also familiar to the Hindus from very early times. "Nor is this surprising, as the materials for preparing many chemical products have abounded in India. Rock-salt was found in Western India; borax was obtained from Tibet; saltpetre and sulphate of soda were easily made; alum was made in Cutch; and sal ammonia was familiar to the Hindus; with lime, charcoal and sulphur they were acquainted from time immemorial. The alkalies and acids were early known to the Hindus, and were borrowed from them by the Arabians. The medicinal use of metals was also largely known. We have notices of antimony and of arsenic, of medicine prepared with quicksilver, arsenic and nine other metals. The Hindus were acquainted with the oxides of copper, iron, tin, zinc and lead; with the sulphurets of iron, copper, antimony, mercury and arsenic; with the sulphates of copper, zinc and iron; with the diacetate of copper and the carbonates of lead and iron."* (The great Asoka Pillar-now at Delhi-made of iron, stands today as fresh as it was when erected more than 2000 years back and has baffled the attempts of modern metallographers to explain its resistance to the ravages of time: a standing monument to India's skill and ability.)

During the Buddhist age, and before the Mohammedan invasion, Hindu culture in every branch of science and philosophy made tremendous progress. Arya Bhatta, the noted Hindu astronomer, who lived about 476 A. D. and who is called the Newton of India, wrote many works on algebra and astronomy. It was he who first discovered the sphericity of our planet and the rotation of the earth on its own axis. What immortalized Copernicus was taught by Arya Bhatta a thousand years before the Polish astronomer was born. Arya Bhatta also discovered the true cause of solar and lunar eclipses, and it was he who, for the first time, grasped the idea of gravitation toward the

*Quoted from "Civilization in Ancient India," by Romesh C. Dutt.

centre (called in Sanscrit Madhyakarshan, i. e., attraction toward the centre), and correctly calculated the distance of the earth's circumference. His successor, Varahamihira, another noted astronomer (500-587 A. D.), left valuable works, especially his Brihat Sanhita, which covered almost every department of natural history and was encyclopedic in its nature. Brahma Gupta, who lived about 628, described in his astronomical system the relative positions of the planets, the calculation of lunar and solar eclipses, and wrote a treatise on spherics. Ruins of Hindu observatories are still to be seen in Benares and other cities.

In the sixth century A. D., this golden age of science and letters reached its climax in the reign of the great Hindu emperor Vikramaditya, who was the great patron of learning and education. To the learned and the unlearned, to poets and story-tellers, to dramatists and novelists, to astronomers, lexicographers and historians, to the old and the young, the name of Vikramaditya is as familiar as the name of any great patron of science, drama, poetry and education of modern Europe. He had nine gems in his court, and the finest among them was Kālidasa, the great Hindu dramatist, called the Shakespeare of India. His bestknown drama, "Sakuntala," has been translated into more than one European language, and has been considered by such great scholars as Schegel, Humboldt and Goethe as one of the dramatic master-pieces of the world. Goethe speaks of it thus:

"Wouldst thou the life's young blossoms and the fruits of its decline,

"And all by which the soul is pleased, enraptured, feasted, fed

"Wouldst thou the earth and heaven itself in one sweet name combine?

"I name thee, O Sakuntalā, and all at once is said."

Besides Sakuntala, the other well-known masterpieces of Kalidasa are Vikramorvashiyam and Megh

Duta-the "Cloud Messenger." "Like Wordsworth," says a critic, "he (Kalidasa) looked upon Nature with the eye of a lover, and his knowledge of the physical laws is superior to that of any other Hindu poet.' Among Kalidasa's contemporaries and successors were Bhāravi, Dandin, Banabhatta, Subandhu, Bhartrihari, Bhavabhuti, and many other poets.

It was at this time that the fables of Panchatantra and Hitopadesha,* which gave foundation to Aesop's fables and to the fables of Piplay, came into existence. Both these books containing stories of animals, with their wonderful morals, have influenced the young minds of Europe and America for many centuries. The Panchatantra "was translated into Persian in the reign of Nausharwan (531-572 A. D.) * * * The Persian translation was rendered into Arabic, and the Arabic translation was rendered into Greek by Symeon Seth about 1080. A Spanish translation of the Arabic was published about 1251. The first German translations were published in the fifteenth century."**+

* * *

One of the most difficult problems in Sanskrit literature is the fixing of dates. As already observed, it is only after Buddha that historical dates may be mentioned with some precision. The pre-Buddhistic period stretches, according to some scholars, to countless millenniums back which in the words of Louis Jacolliot, is "staggering to the Western mind." According to others, the oldest Rig-Vedic texts date back 6,000 years B. C., and according to others again, 4,000 years before Christ. But that the Hindus had in that remote antiquity not only the rudiments of civilization but a highly organized structure of society, is not denied by anyone. It were futile even for voluminous writers

"The Book of Good Counsels," translated by Sir Edwin Arnold. **"Civilization in Ancient India," Vol. II.

The paragraphs beginning with "The dawn of Aryan cívilization, etc., page 43, up to this one have been bodily taken from the two chapters (1) The Influence of India on Western Civilization and (2) Education in India of "India and Her People," by Swami Abhedananda, with slight modifications, rearrangements, etc.-H. T. M.