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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter III. ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF THE HINDOOS. Having described as briefly as possible the country in which the Hindoos reside, we turn to the origin and antiquity of the people themselves. From the researches which have hitherto been instituted by oriental scholars into the literature of India, it seems sufficiently clear that the Hindoos, notwithstanding the high antiquity of some of their literary monuments, possess no historical works of any very ancient date. Whatever progress in civilization they may have made in the early ages of the world, the era of their establishment in India, the primitive form of their religion and government, and all that succession of great events which constitute the public history of a people, up to a comparatively recent period, must therefore for ever remain unknown. The prodigious antiquity to which the Brahmins lay claim, without proof of any kind, monumental or historical, is a delusion, designed to impose upon a credulous people. Of the origin of their institutions, and the ancient history of their race, they are utterly ignorant. A few vague traditions of remote antiquity are all that remains to guide us in our inquiries concerning the origin and primeval country of this extraordinary people, among whom vanity and a passion for the marvellous, have actively concurred in casting a veil of impenetrable obscurity over historical truth. The Hindoos do not, like the ancient Athenians, pretend to be Autochthones, or sprung from the soil in the very country which they inhabit. Therewas, they acknowledge, a time when India was unpeopled, when the children of Brahma inhabited another country, less beautiful, perhaps, and less fertile than their present abode, but still regarded with religious veneration as the birth-place and cradle of the...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217547307 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217547303 |
| Weight | 0.78 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.54 In |
| List Price | $21.33 |
| Format | Paperback |
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| Pages | 238 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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