While expressing the sincerest
admiration for the clever modern methods of reading the past histories
of nations now mostly extinct, and following the progress and evolution
of their respective languages, now dead, the student of Eastern
occultism, and even the profane Hindu scholar acquainted with his
national literature, can hardly be made to share the confidence felt by
Western philologists in these conglutinative methods, when practically
applied to his own country and Sanskrit literature. Three facts, at
least, out of many are well calculated to undermine his faith in these
Western methods:--
1. Of some dozens of eminent Orientalists, no two agree, even in their
verbatim translation of Sanskrit texts. Nor is there more harmony shown
in their interpretation of the possible meaning of doubtful passages.
2. Though Numismatics is a less conjectural branch of science, and when
starting from well-established basic dates, so to say, an exact one
(since it can hardly fail to yield correct chronological data, in our
case, namely, Indian antiquities); archeologists have hitherto failed to
obtain any such position.
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