The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal SecretsWestbrook, Richard B. (Richard Brodhead)
Religion
The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets
Westbrook, Richard B. (Richard Brodhead)
Free thought
If Egyptian literature was derived in a remote period from India, what
must be the date of old India’s laws as compared with the laws of the
Hebrews? It is no wonder that Max Müller, professor in the orthodox
University of Oxford, says (in Chips, vol. i., p. 11): “After carefully
examining every possible objection that can be made against the date of
the Vedic hymns, their claim to that high antiquity which is ascribed to
them has not, as far as I can judge, been shaken.” The same learned
Sanskrit scholar says, “The opinion that the pagan religions were mere
corruptions of the religion of the Old Testament, once supported by men
of high authority and great learning, is now as completely surrendered
as the attempt at explaining Greek and Latin as corruptions of Hebrew”
(_Science of Religion_, p. 24). This great Sanskrit scholar admits in
many places in his voluminous writings the greater antiquity of the
pagan scriptures, and gives many weighty reasons to show how impossible
and absurd it is to suppose that they have been changed and interpolated
to adapt them to more modern times.
The Vedas, the sacred writings of the Hindoos, according to Sir William
Jones the Orientalist, “cannot be denied to have an antiquity the most
distant.” According to the Brahmans, they are coeval with the creation,
and the Sama-Veda says, “They were formed of the soul of Him who exists
by, or of, himself.” The Hindoo laws were codified by Manu and copied by
all antiquity, notably by Rome in the compilation or digest of the laws
of all nations called the Code of _Justinian_, which has been adopted as
the foundation of all modern legislation. I could, did time permit,
furnish the laws of Manu, the Justinian Code, and the Civil Code of
Napoleon in parallel columns, in a way to show their common origin
beyond a doubt. Laws of betrothal and marriage, paternal authority,
tutelage, and adoption; property, contract, deposit, loan, sale,
partnership, donation, and testamentary bequest,—all were elaborately
promulgated by the Code of Manu in 2680 _slocas_.
Laws were arranged under eighteen principal heads, concerning as many
different causes for which laws are enacted: Debts, deposits and loans
for use, sale without ownership, gifts, non-payment of wages,
agreements, sale and purchase, disputes, boundaries, assaults, slander,
robbery and violence, adultery, altercation between man and wife,
inheritance, and gaming. “The court of Brahma with four faces” is where
four learned Brahmans sat in judgment, one of whom was the king’s chief
counsellor.
One of their trite sayings was, “When justice, having been wounded by
iniquity, approaches the court, and the judges extract not the arrow or
dart, they also shall be wounded by it.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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