Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 3: Essays on Literature, Biography, and AntiquitiesMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Religion
Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 3: Essays on Literature, Biography, and Antiquities
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Comparative linguistics; Folklore; Literature -- History and criticism; Mythology; Religions
of Yemmee Gooda, others again near Shapoor, Hyderabad, and other places.
All these monuments in the South of India are no doubt extremely
interesting; but to call them Celtic, Druidical, or Scythic, is
unscientific, or, at all events, exceedingly premature. There is in all
architectural monuments a natural or rational, and a conventional, or, it
may be, irrational element. A striking agreement in purely conventional
features may justify the assumption that monuments so far distant from
each others as the cromlechs of Anglesea and the “Mori-Munni” of Shorapoor
owe their origin to the same architects, or to the same races. But an
agreement in purely natural contrivances goes for nothing, or, at least,
for very little. Now there is very little that can be called conventional
in a mere stone pillar, or in a cairn, that is, an artificial heap of
stones. Even the erection of a cromlech can hardly be claimed as a
separate style of architecture. Children, all over the world, if building
houses with cards, will build cromlechs; and people, all over the world,
if the neighborhood supplies large slabs of stone, will put three stones
together to keep out the sun or the wind, and put a fourth stone on the
top to keep out the rain. Before monuments like those described by Captain
Meadows Taylor can be classed as Celtic or Druidical, a possibility, at
all events, must be shown that Celts, in the true sense of the word, could
ever have inhabited the Dekhan. Till that is done, it is better to leave
them anonymous, or to call them by their native names, than to give to
them a name which is apt to mislead the public at large, and to encourage
theories which exceed the limits of legitimate speculation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account