Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/21

 vest pocket he pulled out a small silver coin, a piece a little smaller than our American quarter dollar, and passed it  over to me. Upon one side it bore a representation of the zodiacal constellation pisces, on the other were Persian  characters, the meaning of which I was, of course, unable to  understand.

“George, what is that?” he asked in the same dreamy fashion.

“One of your Hindoo coins, of course,” I answered, wondering what he was driving at. “I think you told me it was one of a series called the Zodiac rupees.”

“Precisely. I told you so, and having faith in me you believe my assertion.”

“Certainly.”

“Would you have known that those seemingly unmeaning marks on the reverse were Persian letters if I had not told  you?”

“No; but of course I should have known they were Oriental letters of some sort.”

“Very likely; because so far and no further has your education in such matters advanced. But suppose you were to take that coin and show it to a New York longshoreman who did not know you, and consequently had no  faith in you; suppose you were to assure him that those  marks were letters, what conclusion do you suppose he  would draw?”

“Either that I was making sport of him or that I was a fool.”

“Then there you have it. As the longshoreman is to the coin so are we to the Buddhist philosophic acumen of  the East. To our minds their doctrines are rubbish, absurd to the last degree. Why? Simply because we are incapable of comprehending them; because we are wholly unaccustomed to their methods of thought. Remember this much; when our forefathers were savages, these people  were enjoying the height of a glorious civilization. When the naked Britons drove the hosts of Cæsar into the sea,  Angkor was old, and, for all we know, even then deserted. George, it required a motive to build this massive pile, as well as unlimited treasure, architectural skill and physical strength. What was that motive? Religion! A profound sense of the littleness of man and the greatness of the God  who constructed the mighty temple of the universe; call