persons and their attributes are alike interchangeable. That which among the Greeks we find as a highly developed and complicated system, is elsewhere a mere mass of floating legend, nay, almost of mere mythical phrases, without plan or cohesion. But the unformed mythology of the Veda followed in its own land a course analogous to that of the mythology of Greece. There was the same systematic developement, with this difference, that in India the process was urged on by a powerful sacerdotal order who found their interest in the expansion of the old belief. In the earlier Vedas there is no predominant priesthood, and only the faintest indications of caste; there are no temples, no public worship, and, as it would seem, no images of the gods; and (what is of immeasurably greater importance in reference to the mythological creed of the Homeric poets) there are "no indications of a triad, the creating, preserving, and destroying power. Brahma does not appear as a deity, and Vishnu, although named, has nothing in common with the Vishnu of the Puranas: no allusion occurs to his Avataras. ... These differences are palpable, and so far from the Vedas being the basis of the existing system, they completely overturn it."[1] The comparison is scarcely less fatal to the mythological Trinity of the Greeks.
Methods of determining the extent of primitive revelation.We come at length to the question of fact. What was the measure of divine truth imparted to man on his creation, or immediately after the fall, and under what forms was it conveyed? To allege the rabbinical traditions and speculations of comparatively recent times[2] as evidence for the latent meaning of Greek mythology, is to treat the subject in a way which would simply make any solution of the problem impossible. The force of a current, when its stream has been divided, will not tell us much about the course or depth of kindred streams which have branched off in other directions. Thus the era of the division of races is the latest limit to which we can bring down a common tradition for all mankind; and for that tradition we are, it seems, confined to the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis.[3]
Evidence of the Book of Genesis.From these chapters we must derive our proof that our first of the parents and their immediate descendants possessed the idea of an Infinite Being whose perfect goodness arose, not from external restraints, but from an unchangeable internal determination of character[4]—of a Trinity of Co-equal Persons in the Divine Unity— Unity—- ↑ Professor H. H. Wilson, in the Edinburgh Review for October 1860, No. CCXCVIII. p. 382; and Vishnu Purana, p. ii., where he emphatically denies that the old Vedic religion was idolatrous. His remarks on the general character of the Vedic religion deserve the deepest attention.
- ↑ Gladstone, Homer, &c., ii. 50.
- ↑ Ibid. 4.
- ↑ Ibid. 18.
