Introduction to the Science of Religion

Author(s): Max Muller
Publisher: Longmans Green and Compny London

Page 60

centre of foot among Turb transplanted the
LECTURE II.
.55 cipal religions of the Semitic stock, only that, chronologically, Mohammedanism is later than Christianity, while Zoroastrianism is earlier than Buddhism.
Observe also another, and, as we shall see, by no means accidental coincidence in the parallel ramifications of these two religious stems.
Buddhism, which is the offspring of, but at the same time marks a reaction against, the ancient Brahmanism of India, withered away after a time on the soil, from which it had sprung, and assumed its real importance only after it had been transplanted from India, and struck root among Turanian nations in the very centre of the Asiatic continent. Buddhism, being at its birth an Aryan religion, ended by becoming the principal religion of the Turanian world.
The same transference took place in the second stem. Christianity, being the offspring of Mosaism, was rejected by the Jews as Buddhism was by the Brahmans. It failed to fulfil its purpose as a mere reform of the ancient Jewish faith, and not till it had been transferred from Semitic to Aryan ground, from the Jews to the Gentiles, did it develope its real nature and assume its world-wide importance. Having been at its birth a Semitic religion, it became the principal religion of the Aryan world.
There is one other nation only, outside the pale of the Aryan and Semitic families, which can claim one, or even two book-religions as its own. China is the mother of two religions, each founded on a sacred code-the "religion of Confucius, (Kung Fu-tze, i. e. Kung, the Master,) and the religion of Lao-tse, the former resting on the Five King and the Four Shu, the latter on the Tao-te-king.