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 176 THE ARAB AL-BIRUNI ON HINDU RELIGION and small ones, as if they were present in the holy places. This is the cause which leads to the manufacture of the idols, which are originally monuments in honour of certain much venerated persons, prophets, sages, and angels, destined to keep alive their memory when they are absent or dead, and to create for them a lasting AN INSCRIBED BUDDHIST SCULPTURE FROM HASHTNAGAR, DATED 384 A. D. place of grateful veneration in the hearts of men when they die. But when much time passes by after the setting up of the monument, its origin is forgotten, it becomes a matter of custom, and its veneration is devel- oped into a rule for general practice. This being deeply rooted in the nature of man, the legislators of antiquity tried to influence them from this weak point of theirs. Therefore they made the veneration of pictures and similar monuments obligatory on them, as is recounted in historic records, for the times both before and after