Faiths of Man (Volume 3); A Cyclopaedia of Religions (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1906. Excerpt: ... counts for evil by the conflict of co-existent, and co-eternal, matter and spirit: "the soul when emancipated continues as an individual in a state of absolute unconsciousness" (see Prof. Garbe's Sankya Philosophy). It declares that "happiness does not really exist here, all pleasures being mingled with pain, and leading to old age and death." Such teaching is found among Christians and Buddhists, as well as among Hindus and Greeks. Sanskrit. See Deva-nagari, Kharoshthi, and India. The sacred Indo-Aryan language is the sister of the Zend in Persia, but it appears not to have been reduced to writing till about 600 B.C., and was first grammatically studied with the Prakrits, or dialects, by Panini--perhaps as late as the 4th century B.C. "The whole Sanskrit literature which we possess," says Prof. Max Miiller (India, 1883), "with the exception of the Vedic, and earliest Buddhistic, cannot be older than about 400 A.C."; and again he says (Biogr. of Words, 1888, pp. 83, 233) that: "In India we find no trace of books before the 5th century B.C." In the 3d century B.C. the inscriptions of Asoka are in dialects, and Buddhism spread in the Pali. The following is the supposed relation of these tongues (Athenaeum, 10th Aug. 1889): -- Vedik. Literary. Vulgar. Khandus. Bhasha. Prakrits. Hymns. Panini. Ungrammatical. Brahmanas. Kanishka. Grammatical. Sutras. Rudra-daman. Renaissance (400 A.c). The literary speech is thus traced from the 4th or 5th century B.C. to the 1st century A.c. (Kanishka), and to the 2d (Rudra-daman's inscriptions). The so-called "ungrammatical" Prakrits are those used by Asoka about 250 B.C., and include the Gatha ("song") dialect, which was scholastic. The "grammatical" dialects are of three classes: (1) the Pali as written in Ceylon in 88 B.C.; (2) the Magadhi as written...