ure to pronounce our verdict, the difficulties of this
task are such that in them more than in anything else, must be sought
the cause why so few of our best thinkers and writers have devoted
themselves to a critical and historical study of the religions of the
world. All important religions have sprung up in the East. Their
sacred books are written in Eastern tongues, and some of them are of
such ancient date that those even who profess to believe in them,
admit that they are unable to understand them without the help of
translations and commentaries. Until very lately the sacred books of
three of the most important religions, those of the Brahmans, the
Buddhists, and the Parsis, were totally unknown in Europe. It was one
of the most important results of the study of Sanskrit, or the ancient
language of India, that through it the key, not only to the sacred
books of the Brahmans, the Vedas, but likewise to those of the
Buddhists and Zoroastrians, was recovered. And nothing shows more
strikingly the rapid progress of Sanskrit scholarship than that even
Sir William Jones, whose name has still, with many, a more familiar
sound than the names of Colebrooke, Burnouf, and Lassen, should have
known nothing of the Vedas; that he should never have read a line of
the canonical books of the Buddhists, and that he actually expressed
his belief that Buddha was the same as the Teutonic deity Wodan or
Odin, and _S_akya, another name of Buddha, the same as Shishac, king
of Egypt. The same distinguished scholar never perceived the intimate
relationship between the language of the Zend-Avesta and Sanskrit, and
he declared the whole of the Zoroastrian writings to be modern
forgeries.

Even at present we are not yet in possession of a complete edition,
much less of any trustworthy translation, of the Vedas; we only
possess the originals of a few books of the Buddhist canon; and though
the text of the Zend-Avesta has been edited in its entirety, its
interpretation is beset with greater difficulties than that of the
Vedas or the Tripi_t_aka. A study of the ancient religions of China,
those of Confucius and Lao-tse, presupposes an acquaintance with
Chinese, a language which it takes a life to learn thoroughly; and
even the religion of Mohammed, though more accessible than any other
Eastern religion, cannot be fully examined except by a master of
Arabic. It is less surprising, therefore, than it might at first
appear, that a comprehensive an