That is about all Western history knows of its genesis. Like Ravana's
brother, Kumbhakarna,--the Hindu Rip van Winkle--it slept for a long
series of ages a dreamless, heavy sleep. And when at last it awoke to
consciousness, it was but to find the "nascent Aryan race" grown into
scores of nations, peoples and races, most of them effete and crippled
with age, many irretrievably extinct, while the true origin of the
younger ones it was utterly unable to account for. So much for the
"youngest brother." As for "the eldest brother, the Hindu," who,
Professor Max Muller tells us, "was the last to leave the central home
of the Aryan family," and whose history this eminent philologist has now
kindly undertaken to impart to him,--he, the Hindu, claims that while
his Indo-European relative was soundly sleeping under the protecting
shadow of Noah's ark, he kept watch and did not miss seeing one event
from his high Himalayan fastnesses; and that he has recorded the
history thereof, in a language which, though as incomprehensible as the
Iapygian inscriptions to the Indo-European immigrant, is quite clear to
the writers.
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