ich, upon their evidence, will be accepted without appeal as the
outcome of the fairest and ablest critical analysis. While Prof. Max
Muller will hear of no other than a Greek criterion for Indian
chronology, Prof. Weber (op. cit.) finds Greek influence--his universal
solvent--in the development of India's religion, philosophy, literature,
astronomy, medicine, architecture, &c. To support this fallacy the most
tortuous sophistry, the most absurd etymological deductions are resorted
to. If one fact more than another has been set at rest by comparative
mythology, it is that their fundamental religious ideas, and most of
their gods, were derived by the Greeks from religions flourishing in the
north-west of India, the cradle of the main Hellenic stock. This is now
entirely disregarded, because a disturbing element in the harmony of the
critical spheres. And though nothing is more reasonable than the
inference that the Grecian astronomical terms were inherited equally
from the parent stock, Prof. Weber would have us believe that "it was
Greek influence that just infused a real life into Indian astronomy" (p.
251). In fine, the hoary ancestors of the Hindus borrowed their
astronomical terminology and learnt the art of star gazing and even
their zodiac from the Hellenic infant! This proof engenders another:
the relative antiquity of the astronomical texts shall be henceforth
determined upon the presence or absence in them of asterisms and
zodiacal signs, the former being undisguisedly Greek in their names, the
latter are "designated by their Sanskrit names which are translated from
the Greek" (p. 255). Thus "Manu's law being unacquainted with the
planets," is considered as more ancient than Yajnavalkya's Code, which
"inculcates their worship," and so on. But there is still another and a
better test found out by the Sanskritists for determining with
"infallible accuracy" the age of the texts, apart from asterisms and
zodiacal signs any casual mention in them of the name "Yavana," taken in
every instance to designate the "Greeks." This, apart "from an internal
chronology based on the character of the works themselves, and on the
quotations, &c., therein contained, is the only one possible," we are
told. As a result the absurd statement that "the Indian astronomers
regularly speak of the Yavanas as their teachers" (p. 252). Ergo, their
teachers were Greeks. For with Weber and others "Yavana" and "Greek"
are convertible