7. The Vedas are supposed by the Brahmins to have existed from the most remote antiquity. The words are Sanscrit and the letters Nagari.[1] On this subject Sir W. Jones says, “That the Vedas were actually written before the flood, I shall never believe.” Sir William, in his first Dissertation, makes many professions of disinterestedness, of a mind perfectly free from prejudice; but the author must be excused by his friends for observing, that the declaration of his firm resolution not to believe a plain historical fact, “I shall never believe,” gives us very little reason to hope for a fair and candid examinatian of any question, which shall in any way concern the truth or falsity of the doctrines he had previously determined to receive or reject. As might be expected, the result of this pious determination may be seen in almost every page of his works. The author finds no fault with the declaration; it is a mark of candour and sincerity, and it has had two good effects: it has secured to Sir William the praise of the priesthood; and it has put the philosophical inquirer upon his guard. But it would have been a great advantage if so learned a man, and a man possessing so powerful an understanding, as Sir William Jones, could have been induced to examine the subject without prejudice or partiality, or any predetermination to believe either one thing or another. After this declaration of Sir William’s, every thing which he admits in opposition to his favourite dogma, must be taken as the evidence of an unwilling witness.
The Vedas are four very voluminous books, which contain the code of laws of Brahma. Mr. Dow supposes them to have been written 4887 years before the year 1769. Sir W. Jones informs us that the principal worship inculcated in them, is that of the solar fire; and, in the discourse on the Literature of the Hindoos, he acquaints us, that “The author of the Dabistan describes a race of old Persian sages,[2] who appear, from the whole of his account, to have been Hindoos; that the book of Menu, said to be written in a celestial dialect, and alluded to by the author, means the Vedas, written in the Devanagari character, and that as Zeratusht was only a reformer, in India may be discovered the true source of the Persian religion.[3] This is rendered extremely probable by the wonderful similarity of the caves, as well as the doctrines, of the two countries. The principal temple of the Magi in the time of Darius Hystaspes was at Balch, the capital of Bactria, the most Eastern province of Persia, situated on the North-west frontiers of India and very near to where the religion of Bramha is yet in its greatest purity, and where the most ancient and famous temples and caverns of the Hindoos were situate.”[4] As we know very well that there are no caves in the Western or Southern part of Persia answering to the description above, we are under the necessity of referring what is said here and in the quotation in Section 4, from Porphyry, to the great caves of the Buddhists and the Brahmins in the Northern parts of India and Northern Thibet. This proves their existence in the reputed time of Zoroaster.
8. Mr. Maurice says, “Of exquisite workmanship, and of stupendous antiquity—antiquity to which neither the page of history nor human traditions can ascend—that magnificent piece of sculpture so often alluded to in the cavern of Elephanta decidedly establishes the solemn fact, that, from the remotest æras, the Indian nations have adored a Triune Deity. There the traveller with awe and astonishment beholds, carved out of the solid rock, in the most conspicuous part of the most ancient and venerable temple of the world, a bust, expanding in breadth near twenty feet, and no less than eighteen feet in altitude, by which amazing proportion, as well as its gorgeous decorations, it is known to be the image of the grand presiding Deity of that hallowed retreat: he beholds, I say, a bust composed of three heads united to one body,
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