OR THE CREED AND PRACTICE OF THE INDO-ARYANS THREE THOUSAND YEARS AGO BY THE REV. K. S. MACDONALD, M.A. MISSIONARY, FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, CALCUITA PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. AT the request of the Calcutta Missionary Conference I wrote, during the cold-weather holidays of 1879-80, a paper on this subject. The following Notes are an expansion of that paper. Members of the Conference and other Missionaries expressed a desire and expectation that the paper be published. Impressed by the importance of the subject, and by the fact that there is no book published upon it, though fully conscious of the shortcomings and imperfections of my attempt, I have yielded to the desire, in the hope that others more qualified may take the matter up. I have neither time nor qualifications for it. At present, much is published bearing directly or indirectly upon it in Dr. Muir's most learned volumes, of which six or seven are before the public, in Max Müller's and Monier Williams' more popular works, as well as in many other books containing, among much other matter bearing on Sanskrit literature or the Hindu religion, short sketches of the times and hymns of the Veda. no one, as far as I am aware, has formally discussed But the religious opinions and practices of the 'Sanhita' (or collection of hymns) of the Rig-Veda from the Christian standpoint. There is a special necessity at the present time for such a discussion in connection with the rise of the Theistic Church, called the Arya Samaj, at the head of which is Pundit Dayananda Sarasvati Svami, who is now engaged in propagating his own peculiar view of the Veda, and who accepts as an infallible revelation all the four Vedas, but interprets them monotheistically. The Rev. D. Hutton of Mirzapore writes to me: 'I have read, with a good deal of interest and profit, your lecture, which has been appearing from week to week in the Indian Christian Herald, and I should be glad to get a complete copy of it. We have in Mirzapore a branch of the Arya Samaj—the new sect, I suppose, I must call them— founded by Dayananda Sarasvati, the Vedic reformer. The secretary often calls on me to talk on religious subjects. It has struck me that parts of your lecture, put into Hindi, would be useful. I feel sure it will be useful in the vernacular. The Svami, as Dayananda Sarasvati is usually called, and his followers believe the Sanhita' of the Vedas to be the work of God and eternal, A few judicious selections from your lecture would put matters in a different light.' The Svami travels about lecturing eight months, and rests, like Gotama, four,—only he takes his rest in the cold weather. He has a fair following in the North-West Provinces, and has printed a number of books.' My own feeling is that a missionary to the Hindus should know Hinduism. But no human being can thoroughly know Hinduism with its 10,000 Sanskrit MSS. Happily the highest authority among them is the Sanhita' of the Rig-Veda. There is no appeal from it. This, though about half the size of the Bible, a missionary can master as regards its subjectmatter. To help him to do so the following pages have been written, in the hope that the Spirit of God may use them for the pulling down of strongholds, and for the building up of His own kingdom in India. K. S. M. CALCUTTA, June 1880. |