Oriental scholars, particularly
at Calcutta, and an interest for Oriental antiquities in the public at
large, of which we in these days of apathy for Eastern literature can
hardly form an adequate idea. Everybody wished to be first in the field,
and to bring to light some of the treasures which were supposed to be
hidden in the sacred literature of the Brahmans. Sir William Jones, the
founder of the Asiatic Society at Calcutta, published in the first volume
of the "Asiatic Researches" his famous essay, "On the Gods of Greece,
Italy, and India;" and he took particular care to state that his essay,
though published only in 1788, had been written in 1784. In that essay he
endeavored to show that there existed an intimate connection, not only
between the mythology of India and that of Greece and Italy, but likewise
between the legendary stories of the Brahmans and the accounts of certain
historical events as recorded in the Old Testament. No doubt, the
temptation was great. No one could look down for a moment into the rich
mine of religious and mythological lore that was suddenly opened before
the eyes of scholars and theologians, without being struck by a host of
similarities, not only in the languages, but also in the ancient
traditions of the Hindus, the Greeks, and the Romans; and if at that time
the Greeks and Romans were still supposed to have borrowed their language
and their religion from Jewish quarters, the same conclusion could hardly
be avoided with regard to the language and the religion of the Brahmans of
India.

The first impulse to look in the ancient religion of India for
reminiscences of revealed truth seems to have come from missionaries
rather than from scholars. It arose from a motive, in itself most
excellent, of finding some common ground for those who wished to convert
and those who were to be converted. Only, instead of looking for that
common ground where it really was to be found--namely, in the broad
foundations on which all religions are built up: the belief in a divine
power, the acknowledgment of sin, the habit of prayer, the desire to offer
sacrifice, and the hope of a future life--the students of Pagan religion as
well as Christian missionaries were bent on discovering more striking and
more startling coincidences, in order to use them in confirmation of their
favorite theory that some rays of a primeval revelation, or some
reflection of the Jewish religion, had reached the uttermost ends of