o spreads the worship of
the Sun." After it has been laid down (p. 116) that Hebrew was derived
from Sanskrit, we are assured that there is little difficulty in deriving
Jehovah from Zeus.(65) Zeus, Jezeus, Jesus, and Isis are all declared to
be the same name, and later on (p. 130) we learn that "at present the
Brahmans who officiate in the pagodas and temples give this title of
Jeseus--_i. e._ the pure essence, the divine emanation--to Christna only,
who alone is recognized as the Word, the truly incarnated, by the
worshippers of Vish_n_u and the freethinkers among the Brahmans."

We are assured that the Apostles, the poor fishermen of Galilee, were able
to read the Veda (p. 356); and it was their greatest merit that they did
not reject the miraculous accounts of the Vedic period, because the world
was not yet ripe for freedom of thought. Kristna, or Christna, we read on
p. 360, signified in Sanskrit, sent by God, promised by God, holy; and as
the name of Christ or _Christos_ is not Hebrew, whence could it have been
taken except from Krishna, the son of Devaki, or, as M. Jacolliot writes,
Devanaguy?

It is difficult, nay, almost impossible, to criticise or refute such
statements, and yet it is necessary to do so; for such is the interest, or
I should rather say the feverish curiosity, excited by anything that bears
on ancient religion, that M. Jacolliot's book has produced a very wide and
very deep impression. It has been remarked with some surprise that Vedic
scholars in Europe had failed to discover these important passages in the
Veda which he has pointed out, or, still worse, that they had never
brought them to the knowledge of the public. In fact, if anything was
wanting to show that a general knowledge of the history of ancient
religion ought to form part of our education, it was the panic created by
M. Jacolliot's book. It is simply the story of Lieutenant Wilford over
again, only far less excusable now than a hundred years ago. Many of the
words which M. Jacolliot quotes as Sanskrit are not Sanskrit at all;
others never have the meaning which he assigns to them; and as to the
passages from the Vedas (including our old friend the Bhagaveda-gita),
they are not from the Veda, they are not from any old Sanskrit writer--they
simply belong to the second half of the nineteenth century. What happened
to Lieutenant Wilford has happened again to M. Jacolliot. He tells us the
secret himself:--

"One day," he says (p. 28