Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/388

Rh 370 RELIGIONS (c) Worship of manlike but superhuman ami semi-ethical beings. Anthropomorphic PolytheiMii. The ancient Vaidic religion (India). The pre-Zarathustrian Iranii: religion (Ractria, Media, Persia). The younger Babylonian and Assyrian religion. The religions of the other civilized Semites (Phoenicia, Canaan, Aramsea, Sabaeans in South Arabia). The Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, and Grajco-Roman religions. II. ETHICAL RELIGIONS. (a) National Nomistic (Nomothetic) religious communities. Taoism and Confucianism in China. Brahmanisra, with its various ancient and modern sects. Jainism and primitive Buddhism. Mazdaism (Zarathustriauism), with its sects. Mosaisin. Judaism. (b) Universalistic religious communities. Islam, Buddhism, Christianity. Bistory We conclude with a few remarks on the history and spread of religions. Between the history of religions and that of religion in general there is no real difference. A ' history of religions must be something other and more than a collection of the histories of the principal religions, arranged after a chronological or an ethnological scheme. The connecting links and historical relations between them must be kept in view. It ought to be shown how every religion coming to the front on the stage of history is rooted in the past, has been fostered so to speak by one or more of its predecessors, and cannot be maintained without taking up and assimilating the still living elements of the old faith. Special attention must be paid to the spread and intermixture of religions and systems, myths and rites, the cause of so many changes, of thorough reforms as well as of corruption and decay. Thus, even undesignedly the history of religions exhibits the progress of the religious idea in the history of mankind. The oldest historical documents, contemporaneous with the facts they record, are undoubtedly those of ancient Egypt and Babylonia ; perhaps the latter may in the end prove the more ancient of the two. Be this as it may, documentary history begins in western Asia and north- eastern Africa. And it is remarkable that even in that remote past we find the religions both of ancient Babylonia and of Egypt in anything but a primitive state remark- able, but only natural, as civilization must have reached a rather elevated standpoint to produce such written docu- ments and works of art. Many centuries, at all events a long period, of religious evolution must have preceded the dawn of religious history. Even then and there, just as elsewhere, that which lies behind can only be conjectured, but conjecture may be raised to a high degree of probability by comparing the myths and rites surviving in the historical religions, though they really belong to a former state of development, with those still prevailing among uncivilized tribes. For several centuries these two religions, whatever may have been their genealogical relation, were developed independently, and the task of the historian is, by studying the most ancient records, to give a notion of their earliest state and to point out the faint traces of their internal changes which are still extant. There are some vague allusions to an early Babylonian conquest of western Asia, which might account for the agreement of some ancient modes of worship in the Western countries with those of Babylonia; but before the XVIIIth Dynasty of Egypt (15th or 16th century B.C.) the empires on the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris and that on the banks of the Nile seem not yet to have come into contact. From that time, at least during the rule of the XlXth Dynasty, not a few Semitic deities were admitted into the Egyptian pantheon. In a well-known hymn the victorious Egyptian king is compared to the Semitic Ba'al as well as to the national god Mentu. the other hand, but much later, some Egyptian religious emblems find their way into Assyria, and several Egyptian gods with Egyptian modes of worship into Phoenicia. Assyrian religion, being an early offshoot of the Babylonian, and with the lapse of time more and more imbued with younger Babylonian elements, spreads westwards with the extension of the Assyrian empire, penetrates into Asia Minor and Syria, and finds followers even among the kings of Judah. But there the prophets, true to their national god Jahveh, and reforming his worship on purely ethical principles, wrestle with unbending perseverance against those foreign idolatrous customs and lay the foundations of that monotheistic community which sur- vives the Babylonian exile, and, having been organized as Judaism, becomes the cradle of Christianity. Did space permit we would fain pursue the rapid historical sketch, which tends to show how even in ancient times there was a continuous interchange of ideas and rites between the leading religions, those even which are commonly considered as being purely national that is, so entirely fused with the social and political life of a nation that they seem unfit for adoption by peoples widely different. But a general survey of the history of religions cannot be given here. All that can be done is to indicate in a few words its further course, not without hinting that the same interchange as we have observed in western Asia and Egypt is to be found everywhere. In eastern Asia the dominating religions are those of China and of India. They too have been developed inde- pendently, each radiating from its centre, China proper and Hindustan, so far as either the vast Chinese empire or the Aryan dominion over the Indian peninsula extended. The Chinese civilization seems to be much older than the Indian. But the sources from which a knowledge of the ancient Chinese religion might be drawn have come down to us thoroughly revised and expurgated either by Con- fucius himself or by some of his followers. The ancient religious literature of India is very extensive, and in it three or four stages of religious thought may without difficulty be found ; but the real ancient history of Indian religion is not to be gathered from it. Neither Chinese nor Indian religions have exercised any influence on the pro- gress of religion in the west of Asia or in Europe. They form a world apart. The Chinese religion was adopted by some Mongolian tribes and was introduced into Corea and Japan ; Indian settlers, Vaishnavas, (^aivas, or Bauddhas, carried Indian thought and Indian worship with them to some parts of Further India and of the Indian archipelago, but this happened in relatively recent times. For ages and ages they lived quite isolated and self-sufficient the Chinese either with Lao-tsze seeking the veritable Tao in the highest ideal of absolute isolation, or with Confucius amiably moralizing on the duties of "the perfect man"; the Indian dreaming his monotonous and fantastic dreams and longing for absorption in the eternal Brahm ; neither of them suspecting that without them, among what they would have called Western barbarians if they had known of their existence, the world's history was going on as a mighty stream of which they did not even hear the distant roar. It was not until Darius the son of Hystaspes, but chiefly Alexander the Great, had opened the gates of India to Western civilization that an Indian sovereign, converted to Buddhism, could think of benefiting foreign nations by the message of salvation from the miseries of existence, and that Buddhist missionaries went ou to nearly every part of Asia. Meanwhile Medo-Persian supremacy had supplanted the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian, and with it the Zarathus- trian religion (Mazdaism) had come in contact with those