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fess that Europe owes an intellectual debt to India, hence many a futile attempt to explain away positive historical facts.[1] It may not be superfluous to add here that Albérúní, before he took to the study of Sanskrit, enter-
- ↑ In the mind of the average European this belief has taken too firm a hold to be easily eradicated. As Dr. Johnson observes: "Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients. Greece appears to me to be the fountain of knowledge."
Thanks, however, to the recent researches of orientalists, this notion is fast disappearing. The late Prof. Max Müller, who always held the balance evenly in deciding between the rival claims of the East and the West, in his last work, thus gives expression to the European sentiment: "In some respects, and particularly in respect to the greatest things ………, India has as much to teach us as Greece and Rome, nay, I should say more. We must not forget, of course, that we are the direct intellectual heirs of the Greeks, and that our philosophical currency is taken from the capital left to us by them. Our palates are accustomed to the food which they have supplied to us from our very childhood, and hence whatever comes to us now from the thought-mines of India is generally put aside as merely curious or strange, whether in language, mythology, religion, or philosophy.—"Auld Lang Syne": second series, p. 161. Elsewhere he says:
"Another excellent result which may, and I hope will, follow from our increased acquaintance with the actual thoughts and literature, as well as with the personalities of Oriental peoples, is a loosening of that prejudice which undoubtedly obtains, even
