[The Ruins by C. F. Volney]@TWC D-Link book
The Ruins

CHAPTER XXI
13/27

The benediction, the Lord be with you, is a literal translation of the formula of admission chou-k, am, p-ka.

See Beausob.Hist.Du Manicheisme, vol.ii.
But the Jewish, Christian, and Mahometan doctors, crying out against this recital, and treating the Parses as idolaters and worshippers of fire, charged them with falsehood, interpolations, falsification of facts; and there arose a violent dispute as to the dates of the events, their order and succession, the origin of the doctrines, their transmission from nation to nation, the authenticity of the books on which they are founded, the epoch of their composition, the character of their compilers, and the validity of their testimony.

And the various parties, pointing out reciprocally to each other, the contradictions, improbabilities, and forgeries, accused one another of having established their belief on popular rumors, vague traditions, and absurd fables, invented without discernment, and admitted without examination by unknown, partial, or ignorant writers, at uncertain or unknown epochs.
A great murmur now arose from under the standards of the various Indian sects; and the Bramins, protesting against the pretensions of the Jews and the Parses, said: "What are these new and almost unheard of nations, who arrogantly set themselves up as the sources of the human race, and the depositaries of its archives?
To hear their calculations of five or six thousand years, it would seem that the world was of yesterday; whereas our monuments prove a duration of many thousands of centuries.

And for what reason are their books to be preferred to ours?
Are then the Vedes, the Chastres, and the Pourans inferior to the Bibles, the Zendavestas, and the Zadders ?* And is not the testimony of our fathers and our gods as valid as that of the fathers and the gods of the West?
Ah! if it were permitted to reveal our mysteries to profane men! if a sacred veil did not justly conceal them from every eye!" These are the sacred volumes of the Hindoos; they are sometimes written Vedams, Pouranams, Chastrans, because the Hindoos, like the Persians, are accustomed to give a nasal sound to the terminations of their words, which we represent by the affixes on and an, and the Portuguese by the affixes om and am.

Many of these books have been translated, thanks to the liberal spirit of Mr.Hastings, who has founded at Calcutta a literary society, and a printing press.


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