Introduction to the Science of Religion

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

Page 61

56
LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION.
With these eight religions the library of the Sacred Books of the whole human race is complete, and an accurate study of these eight codes, written in Sanskrit, Pâli, and Zend, in Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic, lastly in Chinese, might in itself not seem too formidable an undertaking for a single scholar. Yet, let us begin at home, and look at the enormous literature devoted to the interpretation of the Old Testament, and the number of books published every year on controverted points in the doctrine or the history of the Gospels, and you may then form an idea of what a theological library would be that should contain the necessary materials for an accurate and scholarlike interpretation of the eight sacred codes. The Tao-te-king, the canonical book of the followers of Lao-tse, contains only about 5,320 words, the commentaries written to explain its meaning are endless 1 Even in so modern, and, in the beginning, at least, so illiterate a religion as that of Mohammed, the sources that have to be consulted for the history of the faith during the early centuries of its growth are so abundant, that few critical scholars could master them in their completeness 2.
If we turn our eyes to the Aryan religions, the
1 Julien, Tao-te-king,' p. XXXV; see infra, p. 62.
Sprenger, Das Leben des Mohammed,' vol. i. p.9:-Die Quellen, die ich benutzt habe, sind so zahlreich, und der Zustand der Gelehrsamkeit war unter den Moslimen in ihrer Urzeit von dem unsrigen so verschieden, dass die Materialien, die ich über die Quellen gesammelt habe, ein ziemlich beleibtes Bändchen bilden werden. Es ist in der That nothwendig, die Literaturgeschichte des Islam der ersten zwei Jahrhunderte zu schreiben, um den Leser in den Stand zu setzen, den hier gesammelten kritischen Apparat zu benutzen. Ich gedenke die Resultate meiner Forschungen als eins separates Werkchen nach der Prophetenbiographie herauszugeben.'