Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/259

Rh have possessed a copious historical literature, but there are other things to take into account which explain why the contrary is the case. A German writer has put the case very summarily. "Their religion," he says, "has destroyed all history for the Hindus. They are taught to look on life as a mere passing condition of probation and sorrow, and its incidents, consequently, as unworthy to be recorded." But this is a hardly fair statement, and only true to a certain extent. Benfey perhaps reaches nearer the mark when he says,—"The life of man was for them but a small portion of the immense divine life pervading the whole universe. It lay, so to speak, rolled up in a fold of the mantle of the godhead. Viewed thus, history became a theme so vast that the infinitesimal human element of it was lost to view. Theosophies, idealisms, allegories, myths, filled up the place of the record of the doings of mortals." Troyer takes nearly the same view, but further calls attention to the influence exercised by the religious teaching concerning re-births and transmigration of souls in working against history becoming a science. Historical characters lost their positive identity, and the effect a man's acts under a previous existence were taught to exercise on his fate diminished the responsibility and merit of, and consequently the interest in, his actions.

To arrive at a more exact view, however, it is necessary to distinguish between the parts which Brahman