ails to understand. To
the Oriental of an age still later all the facts deducible from such
statements as are embodied in the hoary literature of antiquity appear
to be historical data, and, if mystic in tone, these statements are to
him an old revelation of profoundest truth. But the Occidental, who
recognizes no hidden wisdom in palpable mystification, should hesitate
also to accept at their face value such historical notes as have been
drafted by the same priestly hand.

Nor would we confine the application of this principle to the output
of extant Brahmanic works. The same truth cuts right and left among
many utterances of the Vedic seers and all the theories built upon
them. To pick out here and there an _ipse dixit_ of one of the later
fanciful Vedic poets, who lived in a period as Brahmanic (that is, as
ritualistic) as is that which is represented by the actual
ritual-texts, and attempt to reconstruct the original form of
divinities on the basis of such vagaries is useless, for it is an
unhistorical method which ignores ancient conditions.

In less degree, because here the conditions are more obvious, does
this apply to the religious interpretation of the great body of
literature which has conserved for posterity the beginnings of
Hinduism. But upon this we have already animadverted, and now need
only range this literature in line with its predecessors. Not because
the epic pictures Krishna as making obeisance to Civa is Krishna here
the undeveloped man-god, who represents but the beginning of his
(later) greatness, and is still subject to the older Civa. On the
contrary, it is the
epic's last extravagance in regard to Civa (who has already bowed
before the great image of Krishna-Vishnu) that demands a furious
counter-blast against the rival god. It is the Civaite who says that
Krishna-Vishnu bows; and because it is the Civaite, and because this
is the national mode of expression of every sectary, therefore what
the Civaite says is in all probability historically false, and the
sober historian will at least not discover 'the earlier Krishna' in
the Krishna portrayed by his rival's satellites.

But when one comes to the modern sects, then he has to deplore not so
much the lack of historical data as the grotesque form into which this
same over-vivid imagination of the Hindu has builded his gods. As the
scientific systems grow more and more fancifully, detailed, and as the
liturgy flowers out into the most extra