________________
295
graph from a lecture delivered by Prof. Muller before the University of Glasgow in 1892. He says: "To those who are not aquainted with the powers of the human memory when well disciplined or rather when not systematically ruined as ours have been, it may seem almost incredible that so much of the ancient traditional literature should have been composed, and should have survived during so many centuries before it was finally consigned to writing. Still, we have got so far (and I beg to call your attention to this remarkable concession) that every body now admits that the poets of the Veda did not write there hymns, and that Zoroaster did not leave any written documents. The truth is that there is no equivalent word for writing or to write in the Vedas."
But my American brothers and sisters, the argument for the more ancient history of India than the date of the Vedas, that is to say the committal of the Vedic hymns to writing which is conceded to have been done two thousand years before the birth of Christ, will be found in the study and comprehension of the Vedas themselves. In their composition in the fullness of expression, in the sublimity of thought, in the perfection of imaginary, and in the simplicity of detail, they show a lineage and point to evolutions, gradations and acquired perfections, that imply untold centuries of human
development in
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
