INTRODUCTION

Summary

The Hindoos attribute many of their ancient writings to the gods; but for the origin of the védŭ, they go still higher, and declare it to have been from everlasting. When we look into the védŭ itself, however, we there find the names of the authors; and that all the books composing what is called the védŭ have had an earthly origin.

The period when the most eminent of the Hindoo philosophers flourished, is still involved in much obscurity; but, the apparent agreement, in many striking particulars, between the Hindoo and the Greek systems of philosophy, not only suggests the idea of some union in their origin, but strongly pleads for their belonging to one age, notwithstanding the unfathomable antiquity claimed by the Hindoos; and, after the reader shall have compared the two systems, the author is persuaded he will not consider the conjecture as improbable, that Pythagoras and others did really visit India, or, that Goutŭmŭ and Pythagoras were contemporaries, or nearly so. If this be admitted, it will follow, that the dŭrshŭnŭs were written about five hundred years before the Christian æra. The védŭs, we may suppose, were not written many years before the dŭrshŭnŭs, for Kopilŭ, the founder of the Sankhyŭ sect, was the grandson of Mŭnoo, the preserver and promulgator of the first aphorisms of the védŭs; Goutŭmŭ, the founder of the Noiyayikŭ sect, married the daughter of Brŭmha, the first male: and Kŭnadŭ and Pŭtŭnjŭlee, the founders of two other of these schools, belonged to the same, or nearly the same period.