Max Muller, enthusiastic Indophile as he seems, crams centuries into his
chronological thimble without the smallest apparent compunction....
These two Orientalists are instances, because they are accepted beacons
of philology and Indian paleography. Our national monuments are dated
and our ancestral history perverted to suit their opinions; the
pernicious evil has ensued, that as a result History is now recording
for the misguidance of posterity the false annals and distorted facts
which, upon their evidence, will be accepted without appeal as the
outcome of the fairest and ablest critical analysis. While Prof. Max
Muller will hear of no other than a Greek criterion for Indian
chronology, Prof. Weber (op. cit.) finds Greek influence--his universal
solvent--in the development of India's religion, philosophy, literature,
astronomy, medicine, architecture, &c. To support this fallacy the most
tortuous sophistry, the most absurd etymological deductions are resorted
to. If one fact more than another has been set at rest by comparative
mythology, it is that their fundamental religious ideas, and most of
their gods, were derived by the Greeks from religions flourishing in the
north-west of India, the cradle of the main Hellenic stock.
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