human will naturally be expected to show
the moral taint of lapsed humanity. The waters cannot rise higher than
the fountain-head, nor can one gather figs from thistles. In our social
intercourse with men we sooner or later find out their true moral level.
And so in what is written, the exact grade of the author will surely
appear. And it is by this very test that we can with tolerable accuracy
distinguish the human from the divine in religious records. It is not
difficult to determine what is from heaven and what is of the earth.

No enlightened reader of Greek mythology can proceed far without
discovering that he is dealing with the prurient and often lascivious
imaginings of semi-barbarous poets. He finds the poetry and the art of
Greece both reflecting the character of a passionate people, bred under
a southern sun and in an extremely sensuous age. If he ventures into the
lowest depths of the popular religious literature of Greece or Rome, or
ancient Egypt or Phoenicia, he finds unspeakable vice enshrined among
the mysteries of religion, and corruptions which an age of refinement
refuses to translate or depict abound on every hand. Or apply the same
test to the literature of Hinduism, even in its earliest and purest
stages. The sacred Vedas, which are supposed to have been breathed into
the souls of ancient rishis by direct divine effluence, are tainted here
and there by debasing human elements, and that not incidentally but as
the very soul of the Hindu system. For example, when the Vedic hymns
promise as future rewards the lowest sensual indulgences[225] none can
doubt the earthly source of their inspiration. As for the Upanishads,
which are regarded as _Sruti_ or inspired, Professor Max Mueller, in his
Introduction to the first volume of "The Sacred Books of the East,"
virtually admits the impropriety of translating them for English readers
without expurgation. Mr. Ram Chandra Bose, of Lucknow, declares himself
unable, for the same reason, to give a full and unabridged account of
the ancient Hindu sacrifices.[226] The later literatures of the Puranas
and the Tantras are lower still. Anti-Christian Orientalists have so
generally conveyed the popular impression that their culled and
expurgated translations were fair representations of Hindu literature
that Wilson finally felt called upon in the interest of truth and
honesty to lift the veil from some of the later revelations of the
Puranas, and it is sufficient to