mple materials as that of the Veda, beginning with the
Hymns and ending with the Upanishads. We enter into a new world--not
always an attractive one, least of all to us; but it possesses one
charm, it is real, it is of natural growth, and like everything of
natural growth, I believe it had a hidden purpose, and was intended to
teach us some kind of lesson that is worth learning, and that
certainly we could learn nowhere else. We are not called upon either
to admire or to despise that ancient Vedic literature; we have simply
to study and to try to understand it.

There have been silly persons who have represented the development of
the Indian mind as superior to any other, nay, who would make us go
back to the Veda or to the sacred writings of the Buddhists in order
to find there a truer religion, a purer morality, and a more sublime
philosophy than our own. I shall not even mention the names of these
writers or the titles of their works. But I feel equally impatient
when I see other scholars criticising the ancient literature of India
as if it were the work of the nineteenth century, as if it represented
an enemy that must be defeated, and that can claim no mercy at our
hands. That the Veda is full of childish, silly, even to our minds
monstrous conceptions, who would deny? But even these monstrosities
are interesting and instructive; nay, many of them, if we can but make
allowance for different ways of thought and language, contain germs of
truth and rays of light, all the more striking because breaking upon
us through the veil of the darkest night.

Here lies the general, the truly human interest which the _ancient_
literature of India possesses, and which gives it a claim on the
attention, not only of Oriental scholars or of students of ancient
history, but of every educated man and woman.

There are problems which we may put aside for a time, ay, which we
must put aside while engaged each in our own hard struggle for life,
but which will recur for all that, and which, whenever they do recur,
will stir us more deeply than we like to confess to others, or even to
ourselves. It is true that with us one day only out of seven is set
apart for rest and meditation, and for the consideration of what the
Greeks called [Greek: ta megista]--"the greatest things."
It is true that that seventh day also is passed by many of us either
in mere church-going routine or in thoughtless rest. But whether on
week-days or on Sundays, w