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Some Mistakes Corrected literature, they stand confessing this fact with expressions of wonder and amazement.
You will see, therefore, without enlargement upon a matter too vast to enter upon, that the mistake to which I have referred is a serious one and reflects little honor upon those who persist in it. The character of this mistake may be further seen when you consider the antiquity of the written history of Hindu progress, literature, religion and civilization. It is conceded by some learned scholars, such as Prof. Max Muller, Prof. Weber and Prof. Whitney not to mention others that the Vedic hymns of India date from 1500 to 2000 before Christ, whilst the distinguished doctor, Martin Haug, gives credit for the earliest of these sublime productions to remoter date. It is true that this mistake is pardonable; when we consider that it is only within the memory of the present generation that the scholarship of western civilization has been able with systematic ability to trace their history with exactness of method.
I have spoken of the transmission of historical events from generation to generation by oral tradition from memory to memory, through many centuries before history began to be written in the Sanskrit language the oldest language in the sisterhood of languages. On this point I beg to quote a single paragraph from a lecture delivered by Prof. Muller before the University of Glasgow in 1892. He says : “To those who are not acquainted 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
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