“We shall probably not err far if we regard these traces of serpent
worship as indicating the presence in the Northeast of Scotland of the
head of that column of migration, or of propagandism, which, under the
myth of Wodenism, we endeavored in a previous chapter to trace from the
Caucasus to Scandinavia.”
“The arbors under which two of the couples are seated are curious
instances of that sort of summer-house which may be found adorning
tea-gardens in the neighborhood of London to the present day. It is scenes
like these that make us hesitate before asserting that there could not
possibly be any connection between Buddhism and Wodenism” (p. 140).
“One of the most tempting nominal similarities connected with this subject
is suggested by the name of Mâyâ. The mother of Buddha was called Mâyâ.
The mother of Mercury was also Maia, the daughter of Atlas. The Romans
always called Wodin, Mercury, and _dies Mercurii_ and _Wodensday_ alike
designated the fourth day of the week.... These and other similarities
have been frequently pointed out and insisted upon, and they are too
numerous and too distinct not to have some foundation in reality” (p. 186,
note).
Statements like these cannot be allowed to pass unnoticed or
uncontradicted, particularly if supported by the authority of a great
name; and after having spoken so freely of the unscientific character of
the mythological comparisons instituted by scholars like Sir William Jones
and Lieutenant Wilford, who can no longer defend themselves, it would be
mere cowardice to shrink from performing the same unpleasant duty in the
case of a living writer, who has shown that he knows how to wield the
weapons both of defence and attack.
It is perfectly true that the mother of Buddha was called Mâyâ, but it is
equally true that the Sanskrit Mâyâ cannot be the Greek Maiā. It is quite
true, also, that the fourth day of the week is called _dies Mercurii_ in
Latin, and Wednesday in English; nay, that in Sanskrit the same day is
called _Budha-dina_ or _Budha-vâra_. But the origin of all these names
falls within perfectly historical times, and can throw no light whatever
on the early growth of mythology and religion.
First of all, we have to distinguish between _Budha_ and _Buddha_. The two
names, though so like each other, and therefore constantly mistaken one
for the other, have nothing in common but their root. _Buddha_ with two
d’s, is the participle of _budh_, and means awakened, enlightened.(53) It
is the name given to those who have reached the highest stage of human
wisdom, and it is known most generally as the title of Gotama,
_S_âkya-muni, the founder of Buddhism, whose traditional era dates from
543 B. C. _Budha_, on the contrary, with one d, means simply knowing, and
it became in later times, when the Hindus received from the Greeks a
knowledge of the planets, the name of the planet Mercury.
It is well known that the names of the seven days of the week are derived
from the names of the planets,(54) and it is equally well known that in
Europe the system of weeks and week-days is comparatively of very modern
origin. It was not a Greek, nor a Roman, nor a Hindu, but a Jewish or
Babylonian invention. The Sabbath (Sabbata) was known and kept at Rome in
the first century B. C. with many superstitious practices. It is mentioned
by Horace, Ovid, Tibullus (_dies Saturni_), Persius, Juvenal. Ovid calls
it a day “_rebus minus apta gerendis_.” Augustus (Suet. “Aug.” c. 76)
evidently imagined that the Jews fasted on their Sabbath, for he said,
“Not even a Jew keeps the fast of the Sabbath so strictly as I have kept
this day.” In fact, Josephus (“Contra Apion.” ii. 39) was able to say that
there was no town, Greek or not Greek, where the custom observing the
seventh day had not spread.(55) It is curious that we find the seventh
day, the Sabbath, even under its new Pagan name, as _dies Saturni_ or
_Kronike_, mentioned by Roman and Greek writers, before the names of the
other days of the week made their appearance. Tibullus speaks of the day
of Saturn, _dies Saturni_; Julius Frontinus (under Nerva, 96-98) says that
Vespasian attacked the Jews on the day of Saturn, _dies Saturni_; and
Justin Martyr (died 165) states that Christ was crucified the day before
the day of Kronos, and appeared to his disciples the day after the day of
Kronos. He does not use the names of Friday and Sunday. Sunday, as _dies
Solis_, is mentioned by Justin Martyr (“Apolog.” i. 67), and by Tertullian
(died 220), the usual name of that day amongst Christians being the
Lord’s-day, Κυριακή, _dominica_ or _dominicus_. Clemens of Alexandria
(died 220) seems to have been the first who used the names of Wednesday
and Friday, Ἑρμοῦ καὶ Ἀφροδίτης ἡμέρα.
It is generally stated, on the authority of Cassius Dio, that the system
of counting by weeks and weekdays was first introduced in Egypt, and that
at his time, early in the third century, the Romans had adopted it, though
but recently. Be this as it may, it would seem that, if Tibullus could use
the name of _dies Saturni_ for Saturday, the whole system of weekdays must
have been settled and known at Rome in his time. Cassius Dio tells us that
the names were assigned to each day διὰ τεσσάρων, by fours; or by giving
the first hour of the week to Saturn, then giving one hour to each planet
in succession, till the twenty-fifth hour became again the first of the
next day. Both systems lead to the same result, as will be seen from the
following table:—
_Planets._ _Latin._ _French._ _Sanskrit._
1 Saturn 1 Dies Saturni Samedi (dies Saui-vāra
sabbati)
2 Jupiter 6 Dies Solis Dimanche Ravi-vāra
(dominicus)
3 Mars 4 Dies Lunæ Lundi Soma-vāra
4 Sun 2 Dies Martis Mardi Bhauma-vāra
5 Venus 7 Dies Mercurii Mercredi Brihaspati-vāra
7 Moon 3 Dies Veneris Vendredi Sukra-vāra
_Planets._ _Old Norse._ _Anglo-Saxon._ _English._
1 Saturn 1 laugardagr sätres däg Saturday
(washing day)
2 Jupiter 6 sunnadagr sunnan däg Sunday
3 Mars 4 mânadagr monan däg Monday
4 Sun 2 tysdagr tives däg Tuesday
5 Venus 7 odhinsdagr vôdenes däg Wednesday
6 Mercury 5 thôrsdagr thunores däg Thursday
7 Moon 3 friadagr frige däg Friday
_Planets._ _Old-High _Middle-High _German._
German._ German._
1 Saturn 1 sambaztag (sunnûn samztac (sunnen Samstag
âband) âbent) (Sonnabend)
2 Jupiter 6 sunnûn dag sunnen tac Sonntag
3 Mars 3 mânin tac (?) mân tac Montag
4 Sun 2 ziuwes tac (cies zies tac (zies Dienstag
dac) tac)
5 Venus 7 wuotanes tac (?) mittwoch Mittwoch
(mittawecha)
6 Mercury 5 donares tac donres tac Donnerstag
7 Moon 3 fria dag frîtac Freitag
After the names of the week-days had once been settled, we have no
difficulty in tracing their migration towards the East and towards the
West. The Hindus had their own peculiar system of reckoning days and
months, but they adopted at a later time the foreign system of counting by
weeks of seven days, and assigning a presiding planetary deity to each of
the seven days, according to the system described above. As the Indian
name of the planet Mercury was Budha, the _dies Mercurii_ was naturally
called _Budha-vâra_ but never _Buddha-vâra_; and the fact that the mother
of Mercury was called Maia, and the mother of Buddha Mâyâ, could,
therefore, have had no bearing whatever on the name assigned to the Indian
Wednesday.(56) The very Buddhists, in Ceylon, distinguish between buddha,
the enlightened, and budha, wise, and call Wednesday the day of Budha, not
of Buddha.(57) Whether the names of the planets were formed in India
independently, or after Greek models, is difficult to settle. The name of
Budha, the knowing or the clever, given to the planet Mercury, seems,
however, inexplicable except on the latter hypothesis.
Having traced the origin of the Sanskrit name of the _dies Mercurii_,
Budha-vâra, let us now see why the Teutonic nations, though perfectly
ignorant of Buddhism, called the same day the day of Wodan.
That the Teutonic nations received the names of the week-days from their
Greek and Roman neighbors admits of no doubt. For commercial and military
arrangements between Romans and Germans some kind of _lingua franca_ must
soon have sprung up, and in it the names of the week-days must have found
their place. There would have been little difficulty in explaining the
meaning of Sun-day and Mon-day to the Germans, but in order to make them
understand the meaning of the other names, some explanations must have
been given on the nature of the different deities, in order to enable the
Germans to find corresponding names in their own language. A Roman would
tell his German friend that _dies Veneris_ meant the day of a goddess who
represented beauty and love, and on hearing this the German would at once
have thought of his own goddess of love, _Freyja_, and have called the
_dies Veneris_ the day of _Freyja_ or Friday.(58)
If _Jupiter_ was described as the god who wields the thunderbolt, his
natural representative in German would be _Donar_,(59) the Anglo-Saxon
_Thunar_, the Old Norse _Thor_; and hence the _dies Jovis_ would be called
the day of _Thor_, or Thursday. If the fact that Jupiter was the king of
the gods had been mentioned, his proper representative in German would, no
doubt, have been _Wuotan_ or _Odin_.(60) As it was, _Wuotan_ or _Odin_ was
chosen as the nearest approach to _Mercury_, the character which they
share in common, and which led to their identification, being most likely
their love of travelling through the air,(61) also their granting wealth
and fulfilling the wishes of their worshippers, in which capacity Wuotan
is known by the name of _Wunsch_(62) or _Wish_. We can thus understand how
it happened that father and son changed places, for while _Mercurius_ is
the son of _Jupiter_, _Wuotan_ is the father of _Donar_. _Mars_, the god
of war, was identified with the German _Tiu_ or _Ziu_, a name which,
though originally the same as _Zeus_ in Greek or _Dyaus_ in Sanskrit, took
a peculiarly national character among the Germans, and became their god of
war.(63)
There remained thus only the _dies Saturni_, the day of Saturn, and
whether this was called so in imitation of the Latin name, or after an old
German deity of a similar name and character, is a point which for the
present we must leave unsettled.
What, however, is not unsettled is this, that if the Germans, in
interpreting these names of Roman deities as well as they could, called
the _dies Mercurii_, the same day which the Hindus had called the day of
_Budha_ (with one _d_), their day of _Wuotan_, this was not because “the
doctrines of the gentle ascetic existed in the bosom of Odin or his
followers, while dwelling near the roots of the Caucasus,” but for very
different and much more tangible reasons.
But, apart from all this, by what possible process could Buddha and Odin
have ever been brought together in the flesh? In the history of ancient
religions, Odin belongs to the same stratum of mythological thought as
_Dyaus_ in India, _Zeus_ in Greece, _Jupiter_ in Italy. He was worshipped
as the supreme deity during a period long anterior to the age of the Veda
and of Homer. His travels in Greece, and even in Tyrkland,(64) and his
half-historical character as a mere hero and a leader of his people, are
the result of the latest Euhemerism. Buddha, on the contrary, is not a
mythological, but a personal and historical character, and to think of a
meeting of Buddha and Odin, or even of their respective descendants, at
the roots of Mount Caucasus, would be like imagining an interview between
Cyrus and Odin, between Mohammed and Aphrodite.
A comparative study of ancient religions and mythologies, as will be seen
from these instances, is not a subject to be taken up lightly. It requires
not only an accurate acquaintance with the minutest details of comparative
philology, but a knowledge of the history of religions which can hardly be
gained without a study of original documents. As long, however, as
researches of this kind are carried on for their own sake, and from a mere
desire of discovering truth, without any ulterior objects, they deserve no
blame, though, for a time, they may lead to erroneous results. But when
coincidences between different religions and mythologies are searched out
simply in support of preconceived theories, whether by the friends or
enemies of religion, the sense of truth, the very life of all science, is
sacrificed, and serious mischief will follow without fail. Here we have a
right, not only to protest, but to blame. There is on this account a great
difference between the books we have hitherto examined, and a work lately
published in Paris by M. Jacolliot, under the sensational title of “La
Bible dans l’Inde, Vie de Jeseus Christna.” If this book had been written
with the pure enthusiasm of Lieutenant Wilford, it might have been passed
by as a mere anachronism. But when one sees how its author shuts his eyes
against all evidence that would tell against him, and brings together,
without any critical scruples, whatever seems to support his theory that
Christianity is a mere copy of the ancient religion of India, mere silence
would not be a sufficient answer. Besides, the book has lately been
translated into English, and will be read, no doubt, by many people who
cannot test the evidence on which it professes to be founded. We learn
that M. Jacolliot was some years ago appointed President of the Court of
Justice at Chandernagore, and that he devoted the leisure left him from
the duties of his position to studying Sanskrit and the holy books of the
Hindus. He is said to have put himself in communication with the Brahmans,
who had obtained access to a great number of MSS. carefully stored up in
the depths of the pagodas. “The purport of his book is” (I quote from a
friendly critic), “that our civilization, our religion, our legends, our
gods, have come to us from India, after passing in succession through
Egypt, Persia, Judea, Greece, and Italy.” This statement, we are told, is
not confined to M. Jacolliot, but has been admitted by almost all Oriental
scholars. The Old and New Testaments are found again in the Vedas, and the
texts quoted by M. Jacolliot in support of his theory are said to leave it
without doubt. Brahma created Adima (in Sanskrit, the first man) and gave
him for companion Heva (in Sanskrit, that which completes life). He
appointed the island of Ceylon for their residence. What follows
afterwards is so beautifully described that I may be pardoned for quoting
it. Only I must warn my readers, lest the extract should leave too deep an
impression on their memory, that what M. Jacolliot calls a simple
translation from Sanskrit is, as far as I can judge, a simple invention of
some slightly mischievous Brahman, who, like the Pandits of Lieutenant
Wilford, took advantage of the zeal and credulity of a French judge:—
“Having created the Man and the Woman (_simultaneously_, not one after the
other), and animated them with the divine afflatus—the Lord said unto
them: ‘Behold, your mission is to people this beautiful Island [Ceylon],
where I have gathered together everything pleasant and needful for your
subsistence—the rest of the Earth is as yet uninhabitable, but should your
progeny so increase as to render the bounds of paradise too narrow a
habitation, let them inquire of me by sacrifice and I will make known my
will.’
“And thus saying, the Lord disappeared....
“Then Adam and Eve dwelt together for a time in perfect happiness; but ere
long a vague disquietude began to creep upon them.... The Spirit of Evil,
jealous of their felicity and of the work of Brahma, inspired them with
disturbing thoughts;—‘Let us wander through the Island,’ said Adam to his
companion, ‘and see if we may not find some part even more beautiful than
this.’ ...
“And Eve followed her husband ... wandering for days and for months; ...
but as they advanced the woman was seized with strange and inexplicable
terrors: ‘Adam,’ said she, ‘let us go no farther: it seems to me that we
are disobeying the Lord; have we not already quitted the place which he
assigned us for a dwelling and forbade us to leave?’
“ ‘Fear not,’ replied Adam; ‘this is not that fearful wilderness of which
he spake to us.’ ....
“And they wandered on....
“Arriving at last at the extremity of the Island, they beheld a smooth and
narrow arm of the sea, and beyond it a vast and apparently boundless
country, connected with their Island only by a narrow and rocky pathway
arising from the bosom of the waters.
“The wanderers stood amazed: the country before them was covered with
stately trees, birds of a thousand colors flitting amidst their foliage.
“... ‘Behold, what beautiful things!’ cried Adam, ‘and what good fruit
such trees must produce; ... let us go and taste them, and if that country
is better than this, we will dwell there.’
“Eve, trembling, besought Adam to do nothing that might irritate the Lord
against them. ‘Are we not well here? Have we not pure water and delicious
fruits? Wherefore seek other things?’
“ ‘True,’ replied Adam, ‘but we will return; what harm can it be to visit
this unknown country that presents itself to our view?’ .... And as he
approached the rocks, Eve, trembling, followed.
“Placing his wife upon his shoulders, he proceeded to cross the space that
separated him from the object of his desires, but no sooner did he touch
the shore than trees, flowers, fruits, birds, all that they had perceived
from the opposite side, in an instant vanished amidst terrific clamor; ...
the rocks by which they had crossed sunk beneath the waters, a few sharp
peaks alone remaining above the surface, to indicate the place of the
bridge which had been destroyed by Divine displeasure.
“The vegetation which they had seen from the opposite shore was but a
delusive mirage raised by the Spirit of Evil to tempt them to
disobedience.
“Adam fell, weeping, upon the naked sands, ... but Eve throwing herself
into his arms, besought him not to despair; ... ‘let us rather pray to the
Author of all things to pardon us.’ ....
“And as she spake there came a voice from the clouds, saying,
“ ‘Woman! _thou_ hast only sinned from love to thy husband, whom I
commanded thee to love, and thou hast hoped in me.
“ ‘I therefore pardon thee—and I pardon him also for _thy_ sake: ... but
ye may no more return to paradise, which I had created for your happiness;
... through your disobedience to my commands the Spirit of Evil has
obtained possession of the Earth.... Your children reduced to labor and to
suffer by your fault will become corrupt and forget me....
“ ‘But I will send Vish_n_u, who will be born of a woman, and who will
bring to all the hope of a reward in another life, and the means by prayer
of softening their sufferings.’ ”
The translator from whom I have quoted exclaims at the end, as well he
might:—
“What grandeur and what simplicity is this Hindu legend! and at the same
time how simply logical!... Behold here the veritable Eve—the true woman.”
But much more extraordinary things are quoted by M. Jacolliot, from the
Vedas and the commentaries.
On p. 63 we read that Manu, Minos, and Manes, had the same name as Moses;
on p. 73, the Brahmans who invaded India are represented as the successors
of a great reformer called Christna. The name of Zoroaster is derived from
the Sanskrit Sûryastara (p. 110), meaning “he who spreads the worship of
the Sun.” After it has been laid down (p. 116) that Hebrew was derived
from Sanskrit, we are assured that there is little difficulty in deriving
Jehovah from Zeus.(65) Zeus, Jezeus, Jesus, and Isis are all declared to
be the same name, and later on (p. 130) we learn that “at present the
Brahmans who officiate in the pagodas and temples give this title of
Jeseus—_i. e._ the pure essence, the divine emanation—to Christna only,
who alone is recognized as the Word, the truly incarnated, by the
worshippers of Vish_n_u and the freethinkers among the Brahmans.”
We are assured that the Apostles, the poor fishermen of Galilee, were able
to read the Veda (p. 356); and it was their greatest merit that they did
not reject the miraculous accounts of the Vedic period, because the world
was not yet ripe for freedom of thought. Kristna, or Christna, we read on
p. 360, signified in Sanskrit, sent by God, promised by God, holy; and as
the name of Christ or _Christos_ is not Hebrew, whence could it have been
taken except from Krishna, the son of Devakî, or, as M. Jacolliot writes,
Devanaguy?
It is difficult, nay, almost impossible, to criticise or refute such
statements, and yet it is necessary to do so; for such is the interest, or
I should rather say the feverish curiosity, excited by anything that bears
on ancient religion, that M. Jacolliot’s book has produced a very wide and
very deep impression. It has been remarked with some surprise that Vedic
scholars in Europe had failed to discover these important passages in the
Veda which he has pointed out, or, still worse, that they had never
brought them to the knowledge of the public. In fact, if anything was
wanting to show that a general knowledge of the history of ancient
religion ought to form part of our education, it was the panic created by
M. Jacolliot’s book. It is simply the story of Lieutenant Wilford over
again, only far less excusable now than a hundred years ago. Many of the
words which M. Jacolliot quotes as Sanskrit are not Sanskrit at all;
others never have the meaning which he assigns to them; and as to the
passages from the Vedas (including our old friend the Bhagaveda-gîta),
they are not from the Veda, they are not from any old Sanskrit writer—they
simply belong to the second half of the nineteenth century. What happened
to Lieutenant Wilford has happened again to M. Jacolliot. He tells us the
secret himself:—
“One day,” he says (p. 280), “when we were reading the translation of
Manu, by Sir W. Jones, a note led us to consult the Indian commentator,
Kullûka Bha_tt_a, when we found an allusion to the sacrifice of a son by
his father prevented by God himself after he had commanded it. We then had
only one _idée fixe_—namely, to find again in the dark mass of the
religious books of the Hindu, the original account of that event. We
should never have succeeded but for ‘the complaisance’ of a Brahman with
whom we were reading Sanskrit, and who, yielding to our request, brought
us from the library of his pagoda the works of the theologian Ramatsariar,
which have yielded us such precious assistance in this volume.”
As to the story of the son offered as a sacrifice by his father, and
released at the command of the gods, M. Jacolliot might have found the
original account of it from the Veda, both text and translation, in my
“History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature.” He would soon have seen that the
story of _S_una_hs_epa being sold by his father in order to be sacrificed
in the place of an Indian prince, has very little in common with the
intended sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. M. Jacolliot has, no doubt, found
out by this time that he has been imposed upon; and if so, he ought to
follow the example of Colonel Wilford, and publicly state what has
happened. Even then, I doubt not that his statements will continue to be
quoted for a long time, and that _Adima_ and _Heva_, thus brought to life
again, will make their appearance in many a book and many a lecture-room.
Lest it be supposed that such accidents happen to Sanskrit scholars only,
or that this fever is bred only in the jungles of Indian mythology, I
shall mention at least one other case which will show that this disease is
of a more general character, and that want of caution will produce it in
every climate.
Before the discovery of Sanskrit, China had stood for a long time in the
place which was afterwards occupied by India. When the ancient literature
and civilization of China became first known to the scholars of Europe,
the Celestial Empire had its admirers and prophets as full of enthusiasm
as Sir W. Jones and Lieutenant Wilford, and there was nothing, whether
Greek philosophy or Christian morality, that was not supposed to have had
its first origin among the sages of China. The proceedings of the Jesuit
missionaries in China were most extraordinary. They had themselves
admitted the antiquity of the writings of Confucius and Lao-tse, both of
whom lived in the sixth century B. C.(66) But in their zeal to show that
the sacred books of the Chinese contained numerous passages borrowed from
the Bible, nay, even some of the dogmas of the later Church, they hardly
perceived that, taking into account the respective dates of these books,
they were really proving that a kind of anticipated Christianity had been
accorded to the ancient sages of the Celestial Empire. The most learned
advocate of this school was Father Prémare. Another supporter of the same
view, Montucci,(67) speaking of Lao-tse’s Tao-te-king, says:—
“We find in it so many sayings clearly referring to the triune God, that
no one who has read this book can doubt that the mystery of the most holy
Trinity was revealed to the Chinese more than five centuries before the
advent of Christ. Everybody, therefore, who knows the strong feeling of
the Chinese for their own teachers, will admit that nothing more efficient
could be found in order to fix the dogmas of the Christian religion in the
mind of the Chinese than the demonstration that these dogmas agree with
their own books. The study, therefore, and the translation of this
singular book (the Tao-te-king) would prove most useful to the
missionaries, in order to bring to a happy issue the desired gathering in
of the Apostolic harvest.”
What followed is so extraordinary that, though it has often been related,
it deserves to be related again, more particularly as the whole problem
which was supposed to have been solved once for all by M. Stanislas
Julien, has of late been opened again by Dr. von Strauss, in the “Journal
of the German Oriental Society,” 1869.
There is a passage at the beginning of the fourteenth chapter of the
Tao-te-king in which Father Amyot felt certain that the three Persons of
the Trinity could be recognized. He translated it:—
“He who is as it were visible but cannot be seen is called _Khi_.
“He whom we cannot hear, and who does not speak to our ear, is called
_Hi_.
“He who is as it were tangible, but cannot be touched, is called _Wei_.”
Few readers, I believe, would have been much startled by this passage, or
would have seen in it what Father Amyot saw. But more startling
revelations were in store. The most celebrated Chinese scholar of his
time, Abel Rémusat, took up the subject; and after showing that the first
of the three names had to be pronounced, not Khi, but I, he maintained
that the three syllables I Hi Wei, were meant for _Je-ho-vah_. According
to him, the three characters employed in this name have no meaning in
Chinese; they are only signs of sounds foreign to the Chinese language;
and they were intended to render the Greek Ἰαῶ, the name which, according
to Diodorus Siculus, the Jews gave to their God. Rémusat goes on to remark
that Lao-tse had really rendered this Hebrew name more accurately than the
Greeks, because he had preserved the aspiration of the second syllable,
which was lost in Greek. In fact, he entertained no doubt that this word,
occurring in the work of Lao-tse, proves an intellectual communication
between the West and China, in the sixth century B. C.
Fortunately, the panic created by this discovery did not last long. M.
Stanislas Julien published in 1842 a complete translation of this
difficult book; and here all traces of the name of Jehovah have
disappeared.
“The three syllables, he writes, “which Abel Rémusat considered as purely
phonetic and foreign to the Chinese language, have a very clear and
intelligible meaning, and have been fully explained by Chinese
commentators. The first syllable, I, means without color; the second, Hi,
without sound or voice; the third, Wei, without body. The proper
translation therefore is:—”
“You look (for the Tao, the law) and you see it not: it is colorless.
“You listen and you hear it not: it is voiceless.
“You wish to touch it and you reach it not: it is without body.”
Until, therefore, some other traces can be discovered in Chinese
literature proving an intercourse between China and Judæa in the sixth
century B. C., we can hardly be called upon to believe that the Jews
should have communicated this one name, which they hardly trusted
themselves to pronounce at home, to a Chinese philosopher; and we must
treat the apparent similarity between I-Hi-Wei and Jehovah as an accident,
which ought to serve as a useful warning, though it need in no way
discourage a careful and honest study of Comparative Theology.