India: What can it teach us?: A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of CambridgeMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Philosophy
India: What can it teach us?: A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
India; Sanskrit literature -- History and criticism; Vedas
What we call the Morning, the ancient Aryans called the Sun or the
Dawn; "and there is no solemnity so deep to a rightly-thinking
creature as that of the Dawn." (These are not my words, but the words
of one of our greatest poets, one of the truest worshippers of
Nature--John Ruskin.) What we call Noon, and Evening, and Night, what
we call Spring and Winter, what we call Year, and Time, and Life, and
Eternity--all this the ancient Aryans called _Sun_. And yet wise
people wonder and say, How curious that the ancient Aryans should have
had so many solar myths. Why, every time we say "Good-morning," we
commit a solar myth. Every poet who sings about "the May driving the
Winter from the field again" commits a solar myth. Every "Christmas
number" of our newspapers--ringing out the old year and ringing in the
new--is brimful of solar myths. Be not afraid of solar myths, but
whenever in ancient mythology you meet with a name that, according to
the strictest phonetic rules (for this is a _sine qua non_), can be
traced back to a word meaning sun, or dawn, or morning, or night, or
spring or winter, accept it for what it was meant to be, and do not be
greatly surprised, if a story told of a solar eponymos was originally
a solar myth.
No one has more strongly protested against the extravagances of
comparative mythologists in changing everything into solar legends,
than I have; but if I read some of the arguments brought forward
against this new science, I confess they remind me of nothing so much
as of the arguments brought forward, centuries ago, against the
existence of Antipodes! People then appealed to what is called Common
Sense, which ought to teach everybody that Antipodes could not
possibly exist, because they would tumble off. The best answer that
astronomers could give, was, "Go and see." And I can give no better
answer to those learned skeptics who try to ridicule the Science of
Comparative Mythology--"Go and see!" that is, go and read the Veda,
and before you have finished the first Ma_nd_ala, I can promise you,
you will no longer shake your wise heads at solar myths, whether in
India, or in Greece, or in Italy, or even in England, where we see so
little of the sun, and talk all the more about the weather--that is,
about a solar myth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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