Very different from the real similarities that can be discovered in nearly all the religions of the world, and which, owing to their deeply human character, in no way necessitate the admission that one religion borrowed from the other, are those minute coincidences between the Jewish and the Pagan religions which have so often been discussed by learned theologians, and which were intended by them as proof positive, either that the Pagans borrowed their religious ideas direct from the Old Testament, or that some fragments of a primeval revelation, granted to the ancestors of the whole race of mankind, had been preserved in the temples of Greece and Italy.
Bochart, in his “Geographia Sacra,” considered the identity of Noah and Saturn so firmly established as hardly to admit of the possibility of a doubt. The three sons of Saturn—Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto—he represented as having been originally the three sons of Noah: Jupiter being Ham; Neptune, Japhet; and Shem, Pluto. Even in the third generation the two families were proved to have been one, for Phut, the son of Ham, or of Jupiter Hammon, could be no other than Apollo Pythius; Canaan no other than [pg 099] Mercury; and Nimrod no other than Bacchus, whose original name was supposed to have been Bar-chus, the son of Cush. G. J. Vossius, in his learned work, “De Origine et Progressu Idolatriæ” (1688), identified Saturn with Adam, Janus with Noah, Pluto with Ham, Neptune with Japhet, Minerva with Naamah, Vulcan with Tubal Cain, Typhon with Og. Huet, the friend of Bochart, and the colleague of Bossuet, went still farther; and in his classical work, the “Demonstratio Evangelica,” he attempted to prove that the whole theology of the heathen nations was borrowed from Moses, whom he identified not only with ancient law-givers, like Zoroaster and Orpheus, but with gods and demi-gods, such as Apollo, Vulcan, Faunus, and Priapus.
All this happened not more than two hundred years ago; and even a hundred years ago, nay, even after the discovery of Sanskrit and the rise of Comparative Philology, the troublesome ghost of Huet was by no means laid at once. On the contrary, as soon as the ancient language and religion of India became known in Europe, they were received by many people in the same spirit. Sanskrit, like all other languages, was to be derived from Hebrew, the ancient religion of the Brahmans from the Old Testament.
There was at that time an enthusiasm among Oriental scholars, particularly at Calcutta, and an interest for Oriental antiquities in the public at large, of which we in these days of apathy for Eastern literature can hardly form an adequate idea. Everybody wished to be first in the field, and to bring to light some of the treasures which were supposed to be hidden in the sacred literature of the Brahmans. Sir William Jones, the founder of the Asiatic Society [pg 100] at Calcutta, published in the first volume of the “Asiatic Researches” his famous essay, “On the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India;” and he took particular care to state that his essay, though published only in 1788, had been written in 1784. In that essay he endeavored to show that there existed an intimate connection, not only between the mythology of India and that of Greece and Italy, but likewise between the legendary stories of the Brahmans and the accounts of certain historical events as recorded in the Old Testament. No doubt, the temptation was great. No one could look down for a moment into the rich mine of religious and mythological lore that was suddenly opened before the eyes of scholars and theologians, without being struck by a host of similarities, not only in the languages, but also in the ancient traditions of the Hindus, the Greeks, and the Romans; and if at that time the Greeks and Romans were still supposed to have borrowed their language and their religion from Jewish quarters, the same conclusion could hardly be avoided with regard to the language and the religion of the Brahmans of India.
The first impulse to look in the ancient religion of India for reminiscences of revealed truth seems to have come from missionaries rather than from scholars. It arose from a motive, in itself most excellent, of finding some common ground for those who wished to convert and those who were to be converted. Only, instead of looking for that common ground where it really was to be found—namely, in the broad foundations on which all religions are built up: the belief in a divine power, the acknowledgment of sin, the habit of prayer, the desire to offer sacrifice, and the [pg 101] hope of a future life—the students of Pagan religion as well as Christian missionaries were bent on discovering more striking and more startling coincidences, in order to use them in confirmation of their favorite theory that some rays of a primeval revelation, or some reflection of the Jewish religion, had reached the uttermost ends of the world. This was a dangerous proceeding—dangerous because superficial, dangerous because undertaken with a foregone conclusion; and very soon the same arguments that had been used on one side in order to prove that all religious truth had been derived from the Old Testament were turned against Christian scholars and Christian missionaries, in order to show that it was not Brahmanism and Buddhism which had borrowed from the Old and New Testament, but that the Old and the New Testament had borrowed from the more ancient religions of the Brahmans and Buddhists.
This argument was carried out, for instance, in Holwell's “Original Principles of the Ancient Brahmans,” published in London as early as 1779, in which the author maintains that “the Brahmanic religion is the first and purest product of supernatural revelation,” and “that the Hindu scriptures contain to a moral certainty the original doctrines and terms of restoration delivered from God himself, by the mouth of his first created Birmah, to mankind, at his first creation in the form of man.”
Sir William Jones48 tells us that one or two missionaries in India had been absurd enough, in their zeal for the conversion of the Gentiles, to urge “that the Hindus were even now almost Christians, because [pg 102] their Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesa were no other than the Christian Trinity;” a sentence in which, he adds, we can only doubt whether folly, ignorance, or impiety predominates.
Sir William Jones himself was not likely to fall into that error. He speaks against it most emphatically. “Either,” he says, “the first eleven chapters of Genesis—all due allowance being made for a figurative Eastern style—are true, or the whole fabric of our national religion is false; a conclusion which none of us, I trust, would wish to be drawn. But it is not the truth of our national religion as such that I have at heart; it is truth itself; and if any cool, unbiassed reasoner will clearly convince me that Moses drew his narrative through Egyptian conduits from the primeval fountains of Indian literature, I shall esteem him as a friend for having weeded my mind from a capital error, and promise to stand amongst the foremost in assisting to circulate the truth which he has ascertained.”
But though he speaks so strongly against the uncritical proceedings of those who would derive anything that is found in the Old Testament from Indian sources, Sir William Jones himself was really guilty of the same want of critical caution in his own attempts to identify the gods and heroes of Greece and Rome with the gods and heroes of India. He begins his essay,49 “On the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India,” with the following remarks:—
“We cannot justly conclude, by arguments preceding the proof of facts, that one idolatrous people must have borrowed their deities, rites, and tenets from another, since gods of all shapes and dimensions [pg 103] may be framed by the boundless powers of imagination, or by the frauds and follies of men, in countries never connected; but when features of resemblance, too strong to have been accidental, are observable in different systems of polytheism, without fancy or prejudice to color them and improve the likeness, we can scarce help believing that some connection has immemorially subsisted between the several nations who have adopted them. It is my design in this essay to point out such a resemblance between the popular worship of the old Greeks and Italians and that of the Hindus; nor can there be any room to doubt of a great similarity between their strange religions and that of Egypt, China, Persia, Phrygia, Phœnice, and Syria; to which, perhaps, we may safely add some of the southern kingdoms, and even islands of America; while the Gothic system which prevailed in the northern regions of Europe was not merely similar to those of Greece and Italy, but almost the same in another dress, with an embroidery of images apparently Asiatic. From all this, if it be satisfactorily proved, we may infer a general union or affinity between the most distinguished inhabitants of the primitive world at the time when they deviated, as they did too early deviate, from the rational adoration of the only true God.”
Here, then, in an essay written nearly a hundred years ago by Sir W. Jones, one of the most celebrated Oriental scholars in England, it might seem as if we should find the first outlines of that science which is looked upon as but of to-day or yesterday—the outlines of Comparative Mythology. But in such an expectation we are disappointed. What we find is merely a superficial comparison of the mythology of [pg 104] India and that of other nations, both Aryan and Semitic, without any scientific value, because carried out without any of those critical tests which alone keep Comparative Mythology from running riot. This is not intended as casting a slur on Sir W. Jones. At his time the principles which have now been established by the students of the science of language were not yet known, and as with words, so with the names of deities, similarity of sound, the most treacherous of all sirens, was the only guide in such researches.
It is not pleasant to have to find fault with a man possessed of such genius, taste, and learning as Sir W. Jones, but no one who is acquainted with the history of these researches will be surprised at my words. It is the fate of all pioneers, not only to be left behind in the assault which they had planned, but to find that many of their approaches were made in a false direction, and had to be abandoned. But as the authority of their names continues to sway the public at large, and is apt to mislead even painstaking students and to entail upon them repeated disappointments, it is necessary that those who know should speak out, even at the risk of being considered harsh or presumptuous.
A few instances will suffice to show how utterly baseless the comparisons are which Sir W. Jones instituted between the gods of India, Greece, and Italy. He compares the Latin Janus with the Sanskrit deity Ganesa. It is well known that Janus is connected with the same root that has yielded the names of Jupiter, Zeus, and Dyaus, while Ganesa is a compound, meaning lord of hosts, lord of the companies of gods.
[pg 105]Saturnus is supposed to have been the same as Noah, and is then identified by Sir W. Jones with the Indian Manu Satyavrata, who escaped from the flood. Ceres is compared with the goddess Sri, Jupiter or Diespiter with Indra or Divaspati; and though etymology is called a weak basis for historical inquiries, the three syllables Jov in Jovis, Zeu in Zeus, and Siv in Siva are placed side by side, as possibly containing the same root, only differently pronounced. Now the s of Siva is a palatal s, and no scholar who has once looked into a book on Comparative Philology need be told that such an s could never correspond to a Greek Zeta or a Latin J.
In Krishna, the lovely shepherd-god, Sir W. Jones recognizes the features of Apollo Nomius, who fed the herds of Admetus, and slew the dragon Python; and he leaves it to etymologists to determine whether Gopâla—i. e., the cow-herd—may not be the same word as Apollo. We are also assured, on the authority of Colonel Vallancey, that Krishna in Irish means the sun, and that the goddess Kâlî, to whom human sacrifices were offered, as enjoined in the Vedas (?) was the same as Hekate. In conclusion, Sir W. Jones remarks, “I strongly incline to believe that Egyptian priests have actually come from the Nile to the Gangâ and Yamunâ, and that they visited the Sarmans of India, as the sages of Greece visited them, rather to acquire than to impart knowledge.”
The interest that had been excited by Sir William Jones's researches did not subside, though he himself did not return to the subject, but devoted his great powers to more useful labors. Scholars, both in India and in Europe, wanted to know more of the ancient religion of India. If Jupiter, Apollo, and Janus [pg 106] had once been found in the ancient pantheon of the Brahmans; if the account of Noah and the deluge could be traced back to the story of Manu Satyavrata, who escaped from the flood, more discoveries might be expected in this newly-opened mine, and people rushed to it with all the eagerness of gold-diggers. The idea that everything in India was of extreme antiquity had at that time taken a firm hold on the minds of all students of Sanskrit; and, as there was no one to check their enthusiasm, everything that came to light in Sanskrit literature was readily accepted as more ancient than Homer, or even than the Old Testament.
It was under these influences that Lieutenant Wilford, a contemporary of Sir William Jones at Calcutta, took up the thread which Sir William Jones had dropped, and determined at all hazards to solve the question which at that time had excited a worldwide interest. Convinced that the Brahmans possessed in their ancient literature the originals, not only of Greek and Roman mythology, but likewise of the Old Testament history, he tried every possible means to overcome their reserve and reticence. He related to them, as well as he could, the principal stories of classical mythology, and the leading events in the history of the Old Testament; he assured them that they would find the same things in their ancient books, if they would but look for them; he held out the hopes of ample rewards for any extracts from their sacred literature containing the histories of Adam and Eve, of Deukalion and Prometheus; and at last he succeeded. The coyness of the Pandits yielded; the incessant demand created a supply; and for several years essay after essay appeared in [pg 107] the “Asiatic Researches,” with extracts from Sanskrit MSS., containing not only the names of Deukalion, Prometheus, and other heroes and deities of Greece, but likewise the names of Adam and Eve, of Abraham and Sarah, and all the rest.
Great was the surprise, still greater the joy, not only in Calcutta, but in London, at Paris, and all the universities of Germany. The Sanskrit MSS. from which Lieutenant Wilford quoted, and on which his theories were based, had been submitted to Sir W. Jones and other scholars; and though many persons were surprised, and for a time even incredulous, yet the fact could not be denied that all was found in these Sanskrit MSS. as stated by Lieutenant Wilford. Sir W. Jones, then President of the Asiatic Society, printed the following declaration at the end of the third volume of the “Asiatic Researches”:—
“Since I am persuaded that the learned essay on Egypt and the Nile has afforded you equal delight with that which I have myself received from it, I cannot refrain from endeavoring to increase your satisfaction by confessing openly that I have at length abandoned the greatest part of the natural distrust, and incredulity which had taken possession of my mind before I had examined the sources from which our excellent associate, Lieutenant Wilford, has drawn so great a variety of new and interesting opinions. Having lately read again and again, both alone and with a Pandit, the numerous original passages in the Purânas, and other Sanskrit books, which the writer of the dissertation adduces in support of his assertions, I am happy in bearing testimony to his perfect good faith and general accuracy, both in his extracts and in the translation of them.”
[pg 108]Sir W. Jones then proceeds himself to give a translation of some of these passages. “The following translation,” he writes, “of an extract from the Padma-purâna is minutely exact”:—
“1. To Satyavarman, the sovereign of the whole earth, were born three sons; the eldest, Sherma; then Charma; and thirdly, Jyapeti.
“2. They were all men of good morals, excellent in virtue and virtuous deeds, skilled in the use of weapons to strike with, or to be thrown, brave men, eager for victory in battle.
“3. But Satyavarman, being continually delighted with devout meditation, and seeing his sons fit for dominion, laid upon them the burden of government,
“4. Whilst he remained honoring and satisfying the gods, and priests, and kine. One day, by the act of destiny, the king, having drunk mead,
“5. Became senseless, and lay asleep naked; then was he seen by Charma, and by him were his two brothers called.
“6. To whom he said: What now has befallen? In what state is this our sire? By those two was he hidden with clothes, and called to his senses again and again.
“7. Having recovered his intellect, and perfectly knowing what had passed, he cursed Charma, saying, Thou shalt be the servant of servants:
“8. And since thou wast a laugher in their presence, from laughter shalt thou acquire a name. Then he gave to Sherma the wide domain on the south of the snowy mountains.
“9. And to Jyapeti he gave all on the north of the snowy mountains; but he, by the power of religious contemplation, obtained supreme bliss.”
[pg 109]After this testimony from Sir W. Jones—wrung from him, as it would seem, against his own wish and will—Lieutenant Wilford's essays became more numerous and more startling every year.
At last, however, the coincidences became too great. The MSS. were again carefully examined; and then it was found that a clever forgery had been committed, that leaves had been inserted in ancient MSS., and that on these leaves the Pandits, urged by Lieutenant Wilford to disclose their ancient mysteries and traditions, had rendered in correct Sanskrit verse all that they had heard about Adam and Abraham from their inquisitive master. Lieutenant (then Colonel) Wilford did not hesitate for one moment to confess publicly that he had been imposed upon; but in the meantime the mischief had been done, his essays had been read all over Europe, they retained their place in the volumes of the “Asiatic Researches,” and to the present day some of his statements and theories continue to be quoted authoritatively by writers on ancient religion.
Such accidents, and, one might almost say, such misfortunes, will happen, and it would be extremely unfair were we to use unnecessarily harsh language with regard to those to whom they have happened. It is perfectly true that at present, after the progress that has been made in an accurate and critical study of Sanskrit, it would be unpardonable if any Sanskrit scholar accepted such passages as those translated by Sir W. Jones as genuine. Yet it is by no means certain that a further study of Sanskrit will not lead to similar disenchantments, and deprive many a book in Sanskrit literature which now is considered as very ancient of its claims to any high antiquity. Certain [pg 110] portions of the Veda even, which, as far as our knowledge goes at present, we are perfectly justified in referring to the tenth or twelfth century before our era, may some day or other dwindle down from their high estate, and those who have believed in their extreme antiquity will then be held up to blame or ridicule, like Sir W. Jones or Colonel Wilford. This cannot be avoided, for science is progressive, and does not acknowledge, even in the most distinguished scholars, any claims to infallibility. One lesson only may we learn from the disappointment that befell Colonel Wilford, and that is to be on our guard against anything which in ordinary language would be called “too good to be true.”
Comparative Philology has taught us again and again that when we find a word exactly the same in Greek and Sanskrit, we may be certain that it cannot be the same word; and the same applies to Comparative Mythology. The same god or the same hero cannot have exactly the same name in Sanskrit and Greek, for the simple reason that Sanskrit and Greek have deviated from each other, have both followed their own way, have both suffered their own phonetic corruptions; and hence, if they do possess the same word, they can only possess it either in its Greek or its Sanskrit disguise. And if that caution applies to Sanskrit and Greek, members of the same family of language, how much more strongly must it apply to Sanskrit and Hebrew! If the first man were called in Sanskrit Âdima, and in Hebrew Adam, and if the two were really the same word, then Hebrew and Sanskrit could not be members of two different families of speech, or we should be driven to admit that Adam was borrowed by the Jews from [pg 111] the Hindus for it is in Sanskrit only that âdima means the first, whereas in Hebrew it has no such meaning.
The same remark applies to a curious coincidence pointed out many years ago by Mr. Ellis in his “Polynesian Researches” (London, 1829, vol. ii. p. 38). We there read:—
“A very generally received Tahitian tradition is that the first human pair were made by Taaroa, the principal deity formerly acknowledged by the nation. On more than one occasion I have listened to the details of the people respecting his work of creation. They say that, after Taaroa had formed the world, he created man out of araea, red earth, which was also the food of man until bread first was made. In connection with this some relate that Taaroa one day called for the man by name. When he came, he caused him to fall asleep, and, while he slept, he took out one of his ivi, or bones, and with it made a woman, whom he gave to the man as his wife, and they became the progenitors of mankind. This,” Mr. Ellis continues, “always appeared to me a mere recital of the Mosaic account of creation, which they had heard from some European, and I never placed any reliance on it, although they have repeatedly told me it was a tradition among them before any foreigners arrived. Some have also stated that the woman's name was Ivi, which would be by them pronounced as if written Eve. Ivi is an aboriginal word, and not only signifies a bone, but also a widow, and a victim slain in war. Notwithstanding the assertion of the natives, I am disposed to think that Ivi, or Eve, is the only aboriginal part of the story, as far as it respects the mother of the human race. Should [pg 112] more careful and minute inquiry confirm the truth of this declaration, and prove that their account was in existence among them prior to their intercourse with Europeans, it will be the most remarkable and valuable oral tradition of the origin of the human race yet known.”
In this case, I believe the probability is that the story of the creation of the first woman from the bone of a man50 existed among the Tahitians before their intercourse with Christians, but I need hardly add that the similarity between the Polynesian name for bone, ivi, even when it was used as the name of the first woman, and the English corruption of the Hebrew הוה, Chāvah, Eve, could be the result of accident only. Whatever Chāvah meant in Hebrew, whether life or living or anything else, it never meant bone, while the Tahitian ivi, the Maori wheva,51 meant bone, and bone only.
These principles and these cautions were hardly thought of in the days of Sir William Jones and Colonel Wilford, but they ought to be thought of at present. Thus, before Bopp had laid down his code of phonetic laws, and before Burnouf had written his works on Buddhism, one cannot be very much surprised that Buddha should have been identified with Minos and Lamech; nay, that even the Babylonian deity Belus, and the Teutonic deity Wodan or Odin, should have been supposed to be connected with the founder of Buddhism in India. As Burnouf said in his “Introduction a l'Histoire du Buddhisme,” p. 70: “On avait même fait du Buddha une planète; et je [pg 113] ne sais pas si quelques savants ne se plaisent pas encore aujourd'hui à retrouver ce sage paisible sous les traits du belliqueux Odin.” But we did not expect that we should have to read again, in a book published in 1869, such statements as these:52—
“There is certainly a much greater similarity between the Buddhism of the Topes and the Scandinavian mythology than between it and the Buddhism of the books; but still the gulf between the two is immense; and if any traces of the doctrines of the gentle ascetic (Buddha) ever existed in the bosom of Odin or his followers, while dwelling near the roots of the Caucasus, all that can be said is, that they suffered fearful shipwreck among the rocks of the savage superstitions of the North, and sank, never again to appear on the surface of Scandinavian mythology. If the two religions come anywhere in contact, [pg 114] it is at their base, for underlying both there existed a strange substratum of Tree and Serpent Worship; on this the two structures seem to have been raised, though they afterwards diverged into forms so strangely dissimilar” (p. 34).
Or again (p. 32):—
“We shall probably not err far if we regard these traces of serpent worship as indicating the presence in the Northeast of Scotland of the head of that column of migration, or of propagandism, which, under the myth of Wodenism, we endeavored in a previous chapter to trace from the Caucasus to Scandinavia.”
“The arbors under which two of the couples are seated are curious instances of that sort of summer-house which may be found adorning tea-gardens in the neighborhood of London to the present day. It is scenes like these that make us hesitate before asserting that there could not possibly be any connection between Buddhism and Wodenism” (p. 140).
“One of the most tempting nominal similarities connected with this subject is suggested by the name of Mâyâ. The mother of Buddha was called Mâyâ. The mother of Mercury was also Maia, the daughter of Atlas. The Romans always called Wodin, Mercury, and dies Mercurii and Wodensday alike designated the fourth day of the week.... These and other similarities have been frequently pointed out and insisted upon, and they are too numerous and too distinct not to have some foundation in reality” (p. 186, note).
Statements like these cannot be allowed to pass unnoticed or uncontradicted, particularly if supported by the authority of a great name; and after having [pg 115] spoken so freely of the unscientific character of the mythological comparisons instituted by scholars like Sir William Jones and Lieutenant Wilford, who can no longer defend themselves, it would be mere cowardice to shrink from performing the same unpleasant duty in the case of a living writer, who has shown that he knows how to wield the weapons both of defence and attack.
It is perfectly true that the mother of Buddha was called Mâyâ, but it is equally true that the Sanskrit Mâyâ cannot be the Greek Maiā. It is quite true, also, that the fourth day of the week is called dies Mercurii in Latin, and Wednesday in English; nay, that in Sanskrit the same day is called Budha-dina or Budha-vâra. But the origin of all these names falls within perfectly historical times, and can throw no light whatever on the early growth of mythology and religion.
First of all, we have to distinguish between Budha and Buddha. The two names, though so like each other, and therefore constantly mistaken one for the other, have nothing in common but their root. Buddha with two d's, is the participle of budh, and means awakened, enlightened.53 It is the name given to those who have reached the highest stage of human wisdom, and it is known most generally as the title of Gotama, Sâkya-muni, the founder of Buddhism, whose traditional era dates from 543 B. C. Budha, on the contrary, with one d, means simply knowing, and it became in later times, when the Hindus received from the Greeks a knowledge [pg 116] of the planets, the name of the planet Mercury.
It is well known that the names of the seven days of the week are derived from the names of the planets,54 and it is equally well known that in Europe the system of weeks and week-days is comparatively of very modern origin. It was not a Greek, nor a Roman, nor a Hindu, but a Jewish or Babylonian invention. The Sabbath (Sabbata) was known and kept at Rome in the first century B. C. with many superstitious practices. It is mentioned by Horace, Ovid, Tibullus (dies Saturni), Persius, Juvenal. Ovid calls it a day “rebus minus apta gerendis.” Augustus (Suet. “Aug.” c. 76) evidently imagined that the Jews fasted on their Sabbath, for he said, “Not even a Jew keeps the fast of the Sabbath so strictly as I have kept this day.” In fact, Josephus (“Contra Apion.” ii. 39) was able to say that there was no town, Greek or not Greek, where the custom observing the seventh day had not spread.55 It is [pg 117] curious that we find the seventh day, the Sabbath, even under its new Pagan name, as dies Saturni or Kronike, mentioned by Roman and Greek writers, before the names of the other days of the week made their appearance. Tibullus speaks of the day of Saturn, dies Saturni; Julius Frontinus (under Nerva, 96-98) says that Vespasian attacked the Jews on the day of Saturn, dies Saturni; and Justin Martyr (died 165) states that Christ was crucified the day before the day of Kronos, and appeared to his disciples the day after the day of Kronos. He does not use the names of Friday and Sunday. Sunday, as dies Solis, is mentioned by Justin Martyr (“Apolog.” [pg 118] i. 67), and by Tertullian (died 220), the usual name of that day amongst Christians being the Lord's-day, Κυριακή, dominica or dominicus. Clemens of Alexandria (died 220) seems to have been the first who used the names of Wednesday and Friday, Ἑρμοῦ καὶ Ἀφροδίτης ἡμέρα.
It is generally stated, on the authority of Cassius Dio, that the system of counting by weeks and weekdays was first introduced in Egypt, and that at his time, early in the third century, the Romans had adopted it, though but recently. Be this as it may, it would seem that, if Tibullus could use the name of dies Saturni for Saturday, the whole system of weekdays must have been settled and known at Rome in his time. Cassius Dio tells us that the names were assigned to each day διὰ τεσσάρων, by fours; or by giving the first hour of the week to Saturn, then giving one hour to each planet in succession, till the twenty-fifth hour became again the first of the next day. Both systems lead to the same result, as will be seen from the following table:—
| Planets. | Latin. | French. | Sanskrit. |
| 1 Saturn 1 | Dies Saturni | Samedi (dies sabbati) | Saui-vāra |
| 2 Jupiter 6 | Dies Solis | Dimanche (dominicus) | Ravi-vāra |
| 3 Mars 4 | Dies Lunæ | Lundi | Soma-vāra |
| 4 Sun 2 | Dies Martis | Mardi | Bhauma-vāra |
| 5 Venus 7 | Dies Mercurii | Mercredi | Brihaspati-vāra |
| 7 Moon 3 | Dies Veneris | Vendredi | Sukra-vāra |
| Planets. | Old Norse. | Anglo-Saxon. | English. |
| 1 Saturn 1 | laugardagr (washing day) | sätres däg | Saturday |
| 2 Jupiter 6 | sunnadagr | sunnan däg | Sunday |
| 3 Mars 4 | mânadagr | monan däg | Monday |
| 4 Sun 2 | tysdagr | tives däg | Tuesday |
| 5 Venus 7 | odhinsdagr | vôdenes däg | Wednesday |
| 6 Mercury 5 | thôrsdagr | thunores däg | Thursday |
| 7 Moon 3 | friadagr | frige däg | Friday |
| Planets. | Old-High German. | Middle-High German. | German. |
| 1 Saturn 1 | sambaztag (sunnûn âband) | samztac (sunnen âbent) | Samstag (Sonnabend) |
| 2 Jupiter 6 | sunnûn dag | sunnen tac | Sonntag |
| 3 Mars 3 | mânin tac (?) | mân tac | Montag |
| 4 Sun 2 | ziuwes tac (cies dac) | zies tac (zies tac) | Dienstag |
| 5 Venus 7 | wuotanes tac (?) (mittawecha) | mittwoch | Mittwoch |
| 6 Mercury 5 | donares tac | donres tac | Donnerstag |
| 7 Moon 3 | fria dag | frîtac | Freitag |
After the names of the week-days had once been settled, we have no difficulty in tracing their migration towards the East and towards the West. The Hindus had their own peculiar system of reckoning days and months, but they adopted at a later time the foreign system of counting by weeks of seven days, and assigning a presiding planetary deity to each of the seven days, according to the system described above. As the Indian name of the planet Mercury was Budha, the dies Mercurii was naturally called Budha-vâra but never Buddha-vâra; and the fact that the mother of Mercury was called Maia, and the mother of Buddha Mâyâ, could, therefore, have had no bearing whatever on the name assigned to the Indian Wednesday.56 The very Buddhists, in Ceylon, distinguish between buddha, the enlightened, and budha, wise, and call Wednesday the day of Budha, not of Buddha.57 Whether the names of the planets were formed in India independently, or after Greek models, is difficult to settle. The name of Budha, the knowing or the clever, given to the planet Mercury, seems, however, inexplicable except on the latter hypothesis.
[pg 120]Having traced the origin of the Sanskrit name of the dies Mercurii, Budha-vâra, let us now see why the Teutonic nations, though perfectly ignorant of Buddhism, called the same day the day of Wodan.
That the Teutonic nations received the names of the week-days from their Greek and Roman neighbors admits of no doubt. For commercial and military arrangements between Romans and Germans some kind of lingua franca must soon have sprung up, and in it the names of the week-days must have found their place. There would have been little difficulty in explaining the meaning of Sun-day and Mon-day to the Germans, but in order to make them understand the meaning of the other names, some explanations must have been given on the nature of the different deities, in order to enable the Germans to find corresponding names in their own language. A Roman would tell his German friend that dies Veneris meant the day of a goddess who represented beauty and love, and on hearing this the German would at once have thought of his own goddess of love, Freyja, and have called the dies Veneris the day of Freyja or Friday.58
If Jupiter was described as the god who wields the thunderbolt, his natural representative in German would be Donar,59 the Anglo-Saxon Thunar, the Old Norse Thor; and hence the dies Jovis would be called the day of Thor, or Thursday. If the fact that Jupiter was the king of the gods had been mentioned, his proper representative in German would, no doubt, have been Wuotan or Odin.60 As it was, Wuotan or [pg 121] Odin was chosen as the nearest approach to Mercury, the character which they share in common, and which led to their identification, being most likely their love of travelling through the air,61 also their granting wealth and fulfilling the wishes of their worshippers, in which capacity Wuotan is known by the name of Wunsch62 or Wish. We can thus understand how it happened that father and son changed places, for while Mercurius is the son of Jupiter, Wuotan is the father of Donar. Mars, the god of war, was identified with the German Tiu or Ziu, a name which, though originally the same as Zeus in Greek or Dyaus in Sanskrit, took a peculiarly national character among the Germans, and became their god of war.63
There remained thus only the dies Saturni, the day of Saturn, and whether this was called so in imitation of the Latin name, or after an old German deity of a similar name and character, is a point which for the present we must leave unsettled.
What, however, is not unsettled is this, that if the Germans, in interpreting these names of Roman deities as well as they could, called the dies Mercurii, the same day which the Hindus had called the day of Budha (with one d), their day of Wuotan, this was not because “the doctrines of the gentle ascetic existed in the bosom of Odin or his followers, while dwelling near the roots of the Caucasus,” but for very different and much more tangible reasons.
But, apart from all this, by what possible process [pg 122] could Buddha and Odin have ever been brought together in the flesh? In the history of ancient religions, Odin belongs to the same stratum of mythological thought as Dyaus in India, Zeus in Greece, Jupiter in Italy. He was worshipped as the supreme deity during a period long anterior to the age of the Veda and of Homer. His travels in Greece, and even in Tyrkland,64 and his half-historical character as a mere hero and a leader of his people, are the result of the latest Euhemerism. Buddha, on the contrary, is not a mythological, but a personal and historical character, and to think of a meeting of Buddha and Odin, or even of their respective descendants, at the roots of Mount Caucasus, would be like imagining an interview between Cyrus and Odin, between Mohammed and Aphrodite.
A comparative study of ancient religions and mythologies, as will be seen from these instances, is not a subject to be taken up lightly. It requires not only an accurate acquaintance with the minutest details of comparative philology, but a knowledge of the history of religions which can hardly be gained without a study of original documents. As long, however, as researches of this kind are carried on for their own sake, and from a mere desire of discovering truth, without any ulterior objects, they deserve no blame, though, for a time, they may lead to erroneous results. But when coincidences between different religions and mythologies are searched out simply in support of preconceived theories, whether by the friends or enemies of religion, the sense of truth, the very life of all science, is sacrificed, and serious mischief will follow without fail. Here we have a right, not [pg 123] only to protest, but to blame. There is on this account a great difference between the books we have hitherto examined, and a work lately published in Paris by M. Jacolliot, under the sensational title of “La Bible dans l'Inde, Vie de Jeseus Christna.” If this book had been written with the pure enthusiasm of Lieutenant Wilford, it might have been passed by as a mere anachronism. But when one sees how its author shuts his eyes against all evidence that would tell against him, and brings together, without any critical scruples, whatever seems to support his theory that Christianity is a mere copy of the ancient religion of India, mere silence would not be a sufficient answer. Besides, the book has lately been translated into English, and will be read, no doubt, by many people who cannot test the evidence on which it professes to be founded. We learn that M. Jacolliot was some years ago appointed President of the Court of Justice at Chandernagore, and that he devoted the leisure left him from the duties of his position to studying Sanskrit and the holy books of the Hindus. He is said to have put himself in communication with the Brahmans, who had obtained access to a great number of MSS. carefully stored up in the depths of the pagodas. “The purport of his book is” (I quote from a friendly critic), “that our civilization, our religion, our legends, our gods, have come to us from India, after passing in succession through Egypt, Persia, Judea, Greece, and Italy.” This statement, we are told, is not confined to M. Jacolliot, but has been admitted by almost all Oriental scholars. The Old and New Testaments are found again in the Vedas, and the texts quoted by M. Jacolliot in support of his theory are said to leave it without doubt. Brahma [pg 124] created Adima (in Sanskrit, the first man) and gave him for companion Heva (in Sanskrit, that which completes life). He appointed the island of Ceylon for their residence. What follows afterwards is so beautifully described that I may be pardoned for quoting it. Only I must warn my readers, lest the extract should leave too deep an impression on their memory, that what M. Jacolliot calls a simple translation from Sanskrit is, as far as I can judge, a simple invention of some slightly mischievous Brahman, who, like the Pandits of Lieutenant Wilford, took advantage of the zeal and credulity of a French judge:—
“Having created the Man and the Woman (simultaneously, not one after the other), and animated them with the divine afflatus—the Lord said unto them: ‘Behold, your mission is to people this beautiful Island [Ceylon], where I have gathered together everything pleasant and needful for your subsistence—the rest of the Earth is as yet uninhabitable, but should your progeny so increase as to render the bounds of paradise too narrow a habitation, let them inquire of me by sacrifice and I will make known my will.’
“And thus saying, the Lord disappeared....
“Then Adam and Eve dwelt together for a time in perfect happiness; but ere long a vague disquietude began to creep upon them.... The Spirit of Evil, jealous of their felicity and of the work of Brahma, inspired them with disturbing thoughts;—‘Let us wander through the Island,’ said Adam to his companion, ‘and see if we may not find some part even more beautiful than this.’ ...
“And Eve followed her husband ... wandering for days and for months; ... but as they advanced the woman was seized with strange and inexplicable [pg 125] terrors: ‘Adam,’ said she, ‘let us go no farther: it seems to me that we are disobeying the Lord; have we not already quitted the place which he assigned us for a dwelling and forbade us to leave?’
“ ‘Fear not,’ replied Adam; ‘this is not that fearful wilderness of which he spake to us.’ ....
“And they wandered on....
“Arriving at last at the extremity of the Island, they beheld a smooth and narrow arm of the sea, and beyond it a vast and apparently boundless country, connected with their Island only by a narrow and rocky pathway arising from the bosom of the waters.
“The wanderers stood amazed: the country before them was covered with stately trees, birds of a thousand colors flitting amidst their foliage.
“... ‘Behold, what beautiful things!’ cried Adam, ‘and what good fruit such trees must produce; ... let us go and taste them, and if that country is better than this, we will dwell there.’
“Eve, trembling, besought Adam to do nothing that might irritate the Lord against them. ‘Are we not well here? Have we not pure water and delicious fruits? Wherefore seek other things?’
“ ‘True,’ replied Adam, ‘but we will return; what harm can it be to visit this unknown country that presents itself to our view?’ .... And as he approached the rocks, Eve, trembling, followed.
“Placing his wife upon his shoulders, he proceeded to cross the space that separated him from the object of his desires, but no sooner did he touch the shore than trees, flowers, fruits, birds, all that they had perceived from the opposite side, in an instant vanished amidst terrific clamor; ... the rocks by which they had crossed sunk beneath the waters, a few [pg 126] sharp peaks alone remaining above the surface, to indicate the place of the bridge which had been destroyed by Divine displeasure.
“The vegetation which they had seen from the opposite shore was but a delusive mirage raised by the Spirit of Evil to tempt them to disobedience.
“Adam fell, weeping, upon the naked sands, ... but Eve throwing herself into his arms, besought him not to despair; ... ‘let us rather pray to the Author of all things to pardon us.’ ....
“And as she spake there came a voice from the clouds, saying,
“ ‘Woman! thou hast only sinned from love to thy husband, whom I commanded thee to love, and thou hast hoped in me.
“ ‘I therefore pardon thee—and I pardon him also for thy sake: ... but ye may no more return to paradise, which I had created for your happiness; ... through your disobedience to my commands the Spirit of Evil has obtained possession of the Earth.... Your children reduced to labor and to suffer by your fault will become corrupt and forget me....
“ ‘But I will send Vishnu, who will be born of a woman, and who will bring to all the hope of a reward in another life, and the means by prayer of softening their sufferings.’ ”
The translator from whom I have quoted exclaims at the end, as well he might:—
“What grandeur and what simplicity is this Hindu legend! and at the same time how simply logical!... Behold here the veritable Eve—the true woman.”
But much more extraordinary things are quoted [pg 127] by M. Jacolliot, from the Vedas and the commentaries.
On p. 63 we read that Manu, Minos, and Manes, had the same name as Moses; on p. 73, the Brahmans who invaded India are represented as the successors of a great reformer called Christna. The name of Zoroaster is derived from the Sanskrit Sûryastara (p. 110), meaning “he who spreads the worship of the Sun.” After it has been laid down (p. 116) that Hebrew was derived from Sanskrit, we are assured that there is little difficulty in deriving Jehovah from Zeus.65 Zeus, Jezeus, Jesus, and Isis are all declared to be the same name, and later on (p. 130) we learn that “at present the Brahmans who officiate in the pagodas and temples give this title of Jeseus—i. e. the pure essence, the divine emanation—to Christna only, who alone is recognized as the Word, the truly incarnated, by the worshippers of Vishnu and the freethinkers among the Brahmans.”
We are assured that the Apostles, the poor fishermen of Galilee, were able to read the Veda (p. 356); and it was their greatest merit that they did not reject the miraculous accounts of the Vedic period, because the world was not yet ripe for freedom of thought. Kristna, or Christna, we read on p. 360, signified in Sanskrit, sent by God, promised by God, holy; and as the name of Christ or Christos is not Hebrew, whence could it have been taken except from Krishna, the son of Devakî, or, as M. Jacolliot writes, Devanaguy?
It is difficult, nay, almost impossible, to criticise or refute such statements, and yet it is necessary to [pg 128] do so; for such is the interest, or I should rather say the feverish curiosity, excited by anything that bears on ancient religion, that M. Jacolliot's book has produced a very wide and very deep impression. It has been remarked with some surprise that Vedic scholars in Europe had failed to discover these important passages in the Veda which he has pointed out, or, still worse, that they had never brought them to the knowledge of the public. In fact, if anything was wanting to show that a general knowledge of the history of ancient religion ought to form part of our education, it was the panic created by M. Jacolliot's book. It is simply the story of Lieutenant Wilford over again, only far less excusable now than a hundred years ago. Many of the words which M. Jacolliot quotes as Sanskrit are not Sanskrit at all; others never have the meaning which he assigns to them; and as to the passages from the Vedas (including our old friend the Bhagaveda-gîta), they are not from the Veda, they are not from any old Sanskrit writer—they simply belong to the second half of the nineteenth century. What happened to Lieutenant Wilford has happened again to M. Jacolliot. He tells us the secret himself:—
“One day,” he says (p. 280), “when we were reading the translation of Manu, by Sir W. Jones, a note led us to consult the Indian commentator, Kullûka Bhatta, when we found an allusion to the sacrifice of a son by his father prevented by God himself after he had commanded it. We then had only one idée fixe—namely, to find again in the dark mass of the religious books of the Hindu, the original account of that event. We should never have succeeded but for ‘the complaisance’ of a Brahman with whom we [pg 129] were reading Sanskrit, and who, yielding to our request, brought us from the library of his pagoda the works of the theologian Ramatsariar, which have yielded us such precious assistance in this volume.”
As to the story of the son offered as a sacrifice by his father, and released at the command of the gods, M. Jacolliot might have found the original account of it from the Veda, both text and translation, in my “History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature.” He would soon have seen that the story of Sunahsepa being sold by his father in order to be sacrificed in the place of an Indian prince, has very little in common with the intended sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. M. Jacolliot has, no doubt, found out by this time that he has been imposed upon; and if so, he ought to follow the example of Colonel Wilford, and publicly state what has happened. Even then, I doubt not that his statements will continue to be quoted for a long time, and that Adima and Heva, thus brought to life again, will make their appearance in many a book and many a lecture-room.
Lest it be supposed that such accidents happen to Sanskrit scholars only, or that this fever is bred only in the jungles of Indian mythology, I shall mention at least one other case which will show that this disease is of a more general character, and that want of caution will produce it in every climate.
Before the discovery of Sanskrit, China had stood for a long time in the place which was afterwards occupied by India. When the ancient literature and civilization of China became first known to the scholars of Europe, the Celestial Empire had its admirers and prophets as full of enthusiasm as Sir W. Jones and Lieutenant Wilford, and there was nothing, [pg 130] whether Greek philosophy or Christian morality, that was not supposed to have had its first origin among the sages of China. The proceedings of the Jesuit missionaries in China were most extraordinary. They had themselves admitted the antiquity of the writings of Confucius and Lao-tse, both of whom lived in the sixth century B. C.66 But in their zeal to show that the sacred books of the Chinese contained numerous passages borrowed from the Bible, nay, even some of the dogmas of the later Church, they hardly perceived that, taking into account the respective dates of these books, they were really proving that a kind of anticipated Christianity had been accorded to the ancient sages of the Celestial Empire. The most learned advocate of this school was Father Prémare. Another supporter of the same view, Montucci,67 speaking of Lao-tse's Tao-te-king, says:—
“We find in it so many sayings clearly referring to the triune God, that no one who has read this book can doubt that the mystery of the most holy Trinity was revealed to the Chinese more than five centuries before the advent of Christ. Everybody, therefore, who knows the strong feeling of the Chinese for their own teachers, will admit that nothing more efficient could be found in order to fix the dogmas of the Christian religion in the mind of the Chinese than the demonstration that these dogmas agree with their own books. The study, therefore, and the translation of this singular book (the Tao-te-king) would prove most useful to the missionaries, in order to bring to a happy issue the desired gathering in of the Apostolic harvest.”
[pg 131]What followed is so extraordinary that, though it has often been related, it deserves to be related again, more particularly as the whole problem which was supposed to have been solved once for all by M. Stanislas Julien, has of late been opened again by Dr. von Strauss, in the “Journal of the German Oriental Society,” 1869.
There is a passage at the beginning of the fourteenth chapter of the Tao-te-king in which Father Amyot felt certain that the three Persons of the Trinity could be recognized. He translated it:—
“He who is as it were visible but cannot be seen is called Khi.
“He whom we cannot hear, and who does not speak to our ear, is called Hi.
“He who is as it were tangible, but cannot be touched, is called Wei.”
Few readers, I believe, would have been much startled by this passage, or would have seen in it what Father Amyot saw. But more startling revelations were in store. The most celebrated Chinese scholar of his time, Abel Rémusat, took up the subject; and after showing that the first of the three names had to be pronounced, not Khi, but I, he maintained that the three syllables I Hi Wei, were meant for Je-ho-vah. According to him, the three characters employed in this name have no meaning in Chinese; they are only signs of sounds foreign to the Chinese language; and they were intended to render the Greek Ἰαῶ, the name which, according to Diodorus Siculus, the Jews gave to their God. Rémusat goes on to remark that Lao-tse had really rendered this Hebrew name more accurately than the Greeks, because he had preserved the aspiration of [pg 132] the second syllable, which was lost in Greek. In fact, he entertained no doubt that this word, occurring in the work of Lao-tse, proves an intellectual communication between the West and China, in the sixth century B. C.
Fortunately, the panic created by this discovery did not last long. M. Stanislas Julien published in 1842 a complete translation of this difficult book; and here all traces of the name of Jehovah have disappeared.
“The three syllables, he writes, “which Abel Rémusat considered as purely phonetic and foreign to the Chinese language, have a very clear and intelligible meaning, and have been fully explained by Chinese commentators. The first syllable, I, means without color; the second, Hi, without sound or voice; the third, Wei, without body. The proper translation therefore is:—”
“You look (for the Tao, the law) and you see it not: it is colorless.
“You listen and you hear it not: it is voiceless.
“You wish to touch it and you reach it not: it is without body.”
Until, therefore, some other traces can be discovered in Chinese literature proving an intercourse between China and Judæa in the sixth century B. C., we can hardly be called upon to believe that the Jews should have communicated this one name, which they hardly trusted themselves to pronounce at home, to a Chinese philosopher; and we must treat the apparent similarity between I-Hi-Wei and Jehovah as an accident, which ought to serve as a useful warning, though it need in no way discourage a careful and honest study of Comparative Theology.