The Bibles of the world are the koran of the Mohammedans, the
tripitaka of the Buddhists, the five kings of the Chinese, the three
vedas of the Hindoos, the zendavesta of the Parsees and the scriptures
of the Christians. The koran, says the Chicago Times, is the most
recent, dating from the seventh century after Christ. It is a compound
of quotations from both the Old and the New Testaments and from the
talmud. The tripitaka contain sublime morals and pure aspirations.
Their author lived and died in the sixth century before Christ.
The sacred writings of the Chinese are called the five kings, the word
"king" meaning web of cloth. From this it is presumed that they were
originally written on five rolls of cloth. They contain wise sayings
from the sages on the duties of life, but they can not be traced
further back than the eleventh century before our era. The vedas are
the most ancient books in the language of the Hindoos, but they do
not, according to late commentators, antedate the twelfth before the
Christian era. The zendaveata of the Parsees, next to our Bible, is
reckoned among scholars as being the greatest and most learned of
the sacred writings. Zoroaster, whose sayings it contains, lived and
worked in the twelfth century before Christ. Moses lived and wrote
the pentateuch 1,500 years before the birth of Jesus, therefore that
portion of our Bible is at least 300 years older than the most
ancient of other sacred writings. The eddas, a semi-sacred work of the
Scandinavians, was first given to the world in the fourteen century
A.D.