... that case there can be nothing binding in the results of Comparative Mythology and one theory will be as good as another; for there is no reason why one particular mass of incoherence should be held to be more valid than another mass of incoherence differently composed. There is much that is useful in the speculations of Comparative Mythology; but in order that the bulk of its results should be sound... hesitating identification of certain of the less prominent deities as Sun-Powers was taken as a general clue to the system of primitive myth-making and elaborate sun-myth and star-myth theories of comparative mythology were founded. In this new light the Vedic hymnology has come to be interpreted as a half-superstitious, half-poetic allegory of Nature with an important astronomical element. The rest is partly... his temperament, the chief tendencies of his thought, art and religion, can have proceeded from no primitive savagery. They are the result of a deep and puissant prehistoric development. Comparative Mythology has deformed the sense of man's early traditions by ignoring this important stage in human progress. It has founded its interpretation on a theory which saw nothing between the early savage ...
... Haeckel and Rockefeller, conceiving ancient culture as necessarily primitive culture and primitive culture as necessarily half-savage culture, has turned the light of its Comparative Philology & Comparative Mythology on the Veda. The result we all know. Not only all vestige of sanctity, but all pretension to any kind of spiritual knowledge or experience disappears from the Veda. The old Rishis are revealed... but are none the less impostures upon posterity. European scholars believe that they have fixed finally the meaning of Veda. Using as their tools the “Sciences” of Comparative Philology & Comparative Mythology, itself a part of the strangely termed Science of Comparative Religion, they have excavated for us out of the ancient Veda a buried world, a forgotten civilisation, lost names of kings and nations... from us; only the over-confident statement of doubtful discoveries and ephemeral theories reaches our knowledge. We should realise that these so-called Sciences of Comparative Philology and Comparative Mythology on which the European interpretation of Veda is founded are not true Sciences at all. They are, rather, if Sciences at all, then pseudo-Sciences. All the European mental sciences, not excluding ...
... nineteenth century results goes farther than is possible to any European scepticism. The Science of comparative religion in Europe seems to me to be based on a blunder. The sun & star theory of comparative mythology with its extravagant scholastic fancies & lawless inferences carries no conviction to my reason. I find in the Aryan & Dravidian tongues, the Aryan and Dravidian races not separate & unconnected... lord of night & darkness, and also a god of lightning slaying Vritra the lord of the drought. Stated generally, these hypotheses seem plausible enough; systematically stated & supported by Comparative Mythology and some Puranic details their easy acceptance & great vogue is readily intelligible. It is only when we look carefully at the actual expressions used by the Rishis, that they no longer seem ...
... Comparative Philology that many deny even the possibility of an etymological Science. There is no doubt an element of exaggeration in some of these views; but it is true that Comparative Philology, Comparative Mythology, ethnology, anthropology and their kindred “sciences” are largely a mass of conjectures,—shifting intellectual quagmires in which we can find no sure treading. Only the airy wings of an ingenious... law or rule for its own guidance. It has fixed one or two sure signposts; the rest is speculation and conjecture.We are not therefore bound to worship at the shrines of Comparative Science & Comparative Mythology & offer up on these dubious altars the Veda & Vedanta. The question of Vedic truth & the meaning of Veda still lies open. If Sayana’s interpretation of Vedic texts is largely conjectural and ...
... a brilliant piece of research. I had seen in this book the birth of a new dawn on the horizon of Indian historiography. Scholars had so far used the modern lore - linguistics, comparative mythology, archaeology, and the rest - for denigrating and dismissing India's indigenous historical traditions. Here was a scholar at last who had employed the same lore for vindicating and sustaining ...
... Reason. Only within such a framework, can we explain the profundity of the concepts that we find in the Vedic intuitions and in the Platonic rational insights. The modem theories rely upon comparative mythology which is the creation of the Hellenists interpreting un-Hellenic Page 3 data from the standpoint which is itself founded on a misunderstanding of the Greek mind. The modem theories ...
... not Sir William Jones’ Shakuntala or the first edition of the Vedas. The discovery of Sanscrit has, it is true, had a considerable effect on the so-called Sciences of Comparative Philology, Comparative Mythology, Science of Religion, ethnology and sociology; but these branches of knowledge are not sciences, they are systematised speculations. Their particular conclusions often change from generation ...
... professionalism. Sethna has pioneered research in areas as diverse as Blake and Shakespeare Studies, Aryan Invasion Theory and Ancient Indian History, Overhead Poetry, Christology, Comparative Mythology, the Study of Hellenic Literature and Culture, Indian systems of Yoga, International Affairs, the question of the English language and the Indian spirit, Philosophy, Literary Criticism, Mystical ...
... Indian scholars did not use the same freedom or the same systematic minuteness in their speculations. Still this element in Sayana's commentary is the true parent of the European Science of Comparative Mythology. But it is the ritualistic conception that pervades; that is the persistent note in which all others lose themselves. In the formula of the philosophic schools, the hymns, even while standing ...
... apparatus of critical research and upheld by a number of Sciences, unhappily still young and still largely conjectural in their methods and shifting in their results,—Comparative Philology, Comparative Mythology and the Science of Comparative Religion. It is my object in these chapters to suggest a new view of the ancient problem. I do not propose to use a negative and destructive method directed ...
... have presented to us as the ascertained meaning of the Veda. They base their version on the inchoate sciences, so-styled, but not so admitted by serious scientists, of Comparative Philology, Comparative Mythology and Archaeology,—branches of conjectural learning which may well be the obscure dawn of a great and illuminative knowledge, but, as yet and in themselves, are so inchoate, so imperfect, so devoid ...
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