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The literature shows a degree of credulity and submission on the part of
the people and of absolute power on the part of the priests, which
reminds us of the Middle Ages in Europe. The old inspiring wars with the
aborigines are over. The time of bearing a noble creed, meaning culture
and civilization as against savagery and idolatry, is past, and only
intestine quarrels and local strife have succeeded. The age of creative
literature is over, and commentators, critics and grammarians have
succeeded. Still more startling are the facts disclosed by literary
history. The liquid poetry has become frozen prose; the old flaming fuel
of genius is now slag and ashes. We see Hindus doing exactly what Jewish
rabbis, and after them Christian schoolmen and dogma-makers, did with
the old Hebrew poems and prophecies. Construing literally the prayers,
songs and hopes of an earlier age, they rebuild the letter of the text
into creeds and systems, and erect an amazing edifice of steel-framed
and stone-cased tradition, to challenge which is taught to be heresy and
impiety. The poetical similes used in the Rig Vedas have been
transformed into mythological tales. In the change of language the Vedas
themselves are unreadable, except by the priests, who fatten on popular
beliefs in the transmigration of souls and in the power of priestcraft
to make that transmigration blissful--provided liberal gifts are duly
forthcoming.
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