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event; the Persians saw the splendor, and ran to pay tribute. He fulfilled what was said of old by the twenty-four saints; he organized, by his precepts, both families and kingdoms; he instituted the new religion according to the true notion of the Trinity in Unity; he regulated conscience by the true faith; he signified to the world the eight commandments, and purged humanity from its pollutions by opening the door to the three virtues. He diffused life and extinguished death; he suspended the luminous sun to destroy the dwelling of darkness, and then the lies of demons passed away. He directed the bark of mercy towards the palace of light, and all creatures endowed with intelligence have been succored. After having consummated this act of power, he rose at midday towards the Truth. Twenty-seven books have been left. He has enlarged the springs of mercy, that men might be converted. The baptism by water and by the Spirit is a law that purifies the soul and beautifies the exterior. The sign of the cross unites the four quarters of the world, and restores the harmony that had been destroyed. By striking upon a piece of wood, we make the voice of charity and mercy resound; by sacrificing towards the east we indicate the way of life and glory.

Our ministers allow their beards to grow, to show that they are devoted to their neighbors. The tonsure that they wear at the top of their heads indicates that they have renounced worldly desires. In giving liberty to slaves we become a link between the powerful and weak. We do not accumulate riches, and we share with the poor that which we possess. Fasting strengthens the intellectual powers, abstinence and moderation preserve health. We worship seven times a day, and by our prayers we aid the living and the dead. On the seventh day we offer sacrifice, after having purified our hearts and received absolution for our sins. This religion, so perfect and so excellent, is difficult to name, but it enlightens darkness by its brilliant precepts. It is called the Luminous Religion.

5. Learning alone without sanctity has no grandeur, sanctity without learning makes no progress. When learning and sanctity proceed harmoniously, the universe is adorned and resplendent.

The Emperor Tai-Tsoung illustrated the Empire. He opened the revolution, and governed men in holiness. In his time there was a man of high virtue named Olopen, who came from the kingdom of Ta-Thsin. Directed by the blue clouds, he bore the Scriptures of the true doctrine; he observed the rules of the winds, and traversed difficult and perilous countries

In the ninth year of Tching-Kouan (636) he arrived at Tchangngan. The Emperor ordered Fang-hi-wen-Ling, first minister of the Empire, to go with a great train of attendants to the western suburb, to meet the stranger and bring him to the palace. He had the Holy Scriptures translated in the Imperial library. The court listened to the doctrine, meditated on it profoundly, and understood the great unity of truth. A special edict was promulgated for its publication and diffusion.

In the twelfth year of Tching-Kouan, in the seventh moon, during the autumn, the new edict was promulgated in these terms:

The doctrine has no fixed name, the holy has no determinate substance; it institutes religions suitable to various countries, and carries men in crowds in its tracks. Olopen, a man of Ta-Thsin, and of a lofty virtue, bearing Scriptures and images, has come to offer them in the Supreme Court. After a minute examination of the spirit of this religion, it has been found to be excellent, mysterious, and pacific. The contemplation of its radical principle gives birth to perfection and fixes the will. It is exempt from verbosity; it considers only good results. It is useful to men, and consequently ought to be published under the whole extent of the heavens. I, therefore, command the magistrates to have a TaThsin temple constructed in the quarter named T-ning of the Imperial city, and twenty-one religious men shall be installed therein.

10. Sou-Tsoung, the illustrious and brilliant emperor, erected at Ling-ou and other towns, five in all, luminous temples. The primitive good was thus strengthened, and felicity flourished. Joyous solemnities were inaugurated, and the Empire entered on a wide course of prosperity.

11. Tai-Tsoung (764), a lettered and a warlike emperor, propagated the holy revolution. He sought for peace and tranquillity. Every year, at the hour of the Nativity (Christmas), he burnt celestial perfumes in remembrance of the divine benefit; he prepared imperial feasts, to honor the luminous (Christian) multitude.

21. This stone was raised in the second year of Kien-Tchoung of the great dynasty of Thang (A. D. 781), on the seventh day of the moon of the great increase. At this time the devout NingChou, lord of the doctrine, governed the luminous multitude in the Eastern country.

Such is the translation of the famous inscription found at Si-ngauFou, in 1625. On the left of the monument are to be read the following words in the Syriac language: "In the days of the Father of Fathers, Anan-Yeschouah, Patriarch Catholicos." To the right can be traced, "Adam, Priest, and Chor-Episcopus"; and at the base of the inscription: "In the year of the Greeks one thousand nine hundred and two (A. D. 781), Mar Yezd-bouzid, Priest and Chor-Episcopus of the Imperial city of Komdam, son of Millesins, priest of happy memory, of Balkh, a town of Tokharistan (Turkistan), raised this tablet of stone, on which are described the benefits of our Saviour, and the preaching of our fathers in the kingdom of the Chinese. Adam, Deacon, son of Yezd-bouzid, Chor-Episcopus; Sabar-Jesu, Priest; Gabriel, Priest, Archdeacon, and Ecclesiarch of Komdam and Sarage."

The abridgment of Christian doctrine given in the Syro-Chinese inscription of Si-ngau-Fou shows us, also, that the propagators of the faith in Upper Asia in the seventh century professed the Nestorian errors.

Through the vague and obscure yerbiage which characterizes the Chinese style, we recognize the mode in which that heresiarch admitted the union of the Word with man, by indwelling plenitude of grace superior to that of all the saints. One of the persons of the Trinity communicated himself to the very illustrious and venerable Messiah, "veiling his majesty." That is certainly the doctrine of Nestorius; upon that point the authority of the critics is unanimous.

History, as we have elsewhere remarked, records the rapid progress of the Nestorian sects in the interior of Asia, and their being able to hold their ground, even under the sway of the Mussulmans, by means of compromises and concessions of every kind.

Setting out from the banks of the Tigris or the Euphrates, these ardent and courageous propagators of the Gospel probably proceeded to Khorassan, and then crossing the Oxus, directed their course toward the Lake of Lop, and entered the Chinese Empire by the province of Chen-si. Olopen, and his successors in the Christian mission, whether Syrians or Persians by birth, certainly belonged to the Nestorian church.

Voltaire, who did not like to trouble himself with scientific arguments, and who was much stronger in sarcasm than in erudition, roundly accuses the missionaries of having fabricated the inscription on the monument of Si-ngau-Fou, from motives of "pious fraud." "As if," says Remusat, "such a fabrication could have been practicable in the midst of a distrustful and suspicious nation, in a country in which magistrates and private people are equally illdisposed towards foreigners, and especially missionaries, where all eyes are open to their most trivial proceedings, and where the authorities watch with the most jealous care over everything relating to the historical traditions and monuments of antiquity. It would be very difficult to explain how the missionaries could have been bold enough to have printed and published in China, and in Chinese, an inscription that had never existed, and how they could have imitated the Chinese style, counterfeited the manner of the writers of the dynasty of Thang, alluded to customs little known, to local circumstances, to dates calculated from the mysterious figures of Chinese astrology, and the whole without betraying themselves for a moment; and with such perfection as to impose on the most skilful men of letters, induced, of course, by the singularity of the discovery to dispute its authenticity. It could only have been done by one of the most erudite of Chinese scholars, joining with the missionaries to impose on his own countrymen."

"Even that would not be all, for the borders of the inscription are covered with Syrian names in fine estranghelo characters. The forgers must, then, have been not only acquainted with these characters, but have been able to get engraved with perfect exactness

ninety lines of them, and in the ancient writing, known at present to very few."

"This argument of Remusat's," says another learned Orientalist, M. Felix Neve, "is of irresistible force, and we have formerly heard a similar one maintained with the greatest confidence by M. Quatremère, of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, and we allow ourselves to quote the opinion of so highly qualified a judge upon this point. Before the last century it would have been absolutely impossible to forge in Europe a series of names and titles belonging to a Christian nation of Western Asia; it is only since the fruits of Assemani's labors have been made public by his family at Rome, that there existed a sufficient knowledge of the Syriac for such a purpose; and it is only by the publication of the manuscripts of the Vatican, that the extent to which Nestorianism spread in the centre of Asia, and the influence of its hierarchy in the Persian provinces could have been estimated. There is no reason to suppose that missionaries who left Europe in the very beginning of the seventeenth century could have acquired a knowledge which could only be obtained from reading the originals and not vague accounts of them."

The sagacity of M. Saint Martin, who was for a long time the colleague of M. Quatremère, has pointed out in a note worthy of his erudition, another special proof, which is by no means to be neglected.

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Amongst the various arguments," he says, "that might be urged in favor of the legitimacy of the monument, but of which, as yet, no use has been made, must not be forgotten the name of the priest by whom it is said to have been erected. The name Yezdbouzid is Persian, and at the epoch when the monument was discovered it would have been impossible to invent it, as there existed no work where it could have been found. Indeed, I do not think that, even since then, there has ever been any one published in which it could have been met with.

"It is a very celebrated name among the Armenians, and comes to them from a martyr, a Persian by birth, and of the royal race, who perished towards the middle of the seventh century, and rendered his name illustrious amongst the Christian nations of the East." Saint Martin adds in the same place, that the famous monument of Si-ngau Fou, whose authenticity has for a long time been called in question from the hatred entertained against the Jesuit missionaries who discovered it, rather than from a candid examination of its contents, is now regarded as above all suspicion.

CHAPTER IIL

BRAHMANISM.

§ 1. Our Knowledge of Brahmanism. Sir William Jones. § 2. Difficulty of this Study. The Complexity of the System. The Hindoos have no History. Their Ultra-Spiritualism. § 3. Helps from Comparative Philology. The Aryans in Central Asia. § 4. The Aryans in India. The Native Races. The Vedic Age. Theology of the Vedas. § 5. Second Period. Laws of Manu. The Brahmanic Age. § 6. The Three Hindoo Systems of Philosophy, the Sánkhya, Vedanta, and Nyasa.

§ 7. Origin of the Hindoo Triad. § 8. The Epics, the Puranas, and Modern Hindoo Worship. § 9. Relation of Brahmanism to Christianity.

§ 1. Our Knowledge of Brahmanism. Sir William Jones.

IT

T is more than forty years since the writer, then a boy, was one day searching among the heavy works of a learned library in the country to find some entertaining reading for a summer afternoon. It was a library rich in theology, in Greek and Latin classics, in French and Spanish literature, but contained little to amuse a child. Led by some happy fortune, in turning over a pile of the "Monthly Anthology" his eye was attracted by the title of a play, "Sácontala,* or the Fatal Ring; an Indian Drama, translated from the original Sanskrit and Pracrit. Calcutta, 1789," and reprinted in the Anthology in successive numbers. Gathering them together, the boy took them into a great chestnut-tree, amid the limbs of which he had constructed a study, and there, in the warm, fragrant shade, read hour after hour this bewitching story. The tale was suited to the day and the scene, filled with images of tender girls and religious sages, who lived amid. a tropical abundance of flowers and fruits; so blending the beauty of nature with the charm of love. Nature becomes in it alive, and is interpenetrated with human sentiments. * Now usually written Sákoontala or Sákuntalá.

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