________________
MARCE, 1903.]
ORIGIN OF THE QORAN.
127
Presto! Gone! Withont lingering on the way he came to the north-east foot of the holy Mahamoru. There was no one else whom he met, except Kunjarakarna, With abouts of joy, Kunjarakarna greeted and entertained him. After that they went to make a hermitage, and, when it was fittingly arranged inside, they began their Samadhi practices. How then did they practise asceticism? What was cold was made still colder ; what was hot was made still hotter ; & handful of rice; a drop of water ; a pinch of salt, and in fact without allowing themselves to make it taste sweet. For some time they practised asceticism; and when the twelve years were ended, the grace of the Lord was granted them: Parnavijaya and Kunjarakarna became Siddhas, and returned to their heaven which was called the Siddha-heaven.
ORIGIN OF THE QORAN.
BY DL. HUBERT GRIMME.
(Translated by G. K. Nariman.) Islax, like most of the great religions of the world, is based upon a Sacred Book, as a proof of the truth of its doctrines. But in its case the interdependence of the religion and the book is remarkably close, inasmuch as its origin coincides with the appearanoe of Islamic teaching, and thus between the two an indissoluble relation has naturally developed.
The common name of the holy book is Qoran, which means "reading." It is one of the several designations used by Muhammad to denote the revelations communicated to him by God. And indeed with bim each single revelation, as well as the whole course of inspiration, is Qorán. It must be, therefore, regarded as an act of fatal narrow-mindedness that later generations restricted the term to the tenets fixed in writing, and further discerned in the collection a anity designed by the Prophet. But we should act more in conformity with Mubammad's intentions, if we considered eack of the 114 component sections of the Qorán as a whole, but the entire colleotion as a fragment of the Prophet's dogmas.
Muhammad commenced with religious discourses. To judge from the terse, obscare, and ill-balanced structure of these sections, it is impossible that the oldest Súras should repeat the very words of the sermons. That the sermons could have been first written down before delivery is out of the question. He claimed indeed for his preachings divine verity and celestial origin, but not that they were delivered to man rerbatim in God's words. When he had preached like this for a year, the necessity appeared to him of clothing on his own account, and in the interest of the faith, the essential parts of his discourses in a permanent form, taking care that the first happily turned periods were not lost in the process. The ultimate object of this novel departure was to make his precepts easier, as is attested by the Qoran in occasional phrases, which we have to look upon as the earliest testimony to the fixing and final determination of the texts of the revelations.
Sura 57, 17. (Refrain.) We have made the Qorán i. e., our heavenly prelection) easy of inculcation, Would not then more people accept the preaching ?
Sura 44, 58. We have made it (the Qordn) easy in thy own tongue, only to this end that it may be preached.
Súra 19, 97. We have made it easy in thy tongue so that thou mayest therewith announce joy to the God-fearing and warn the contumacious.
Súra 73, 20. Recite, then, of the divine prelection what has been rendered easy.
By the significant expression making easy" the Prophet could not but have meant the final determination of the wording of a number of didactic homilies. That the fixing of the text was
[For the meaning of the term "Arabic Aorta," see Dr. Hirschfeld, ante, Vol. XXIX. p. 146. Palmer, S, B, E. Vol. VI. Ivii. -TB.)
