Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/122

114 remains to be noticed: "If we find that people three thousand years ago were familiar with ideas that seem novel and nineteenth-century-like to us, well, we must somewhat modify our conceptions of the primitive savage," &c. What can this sentence mean? Its two parts have no bearing on each other. We know perfectly well that several races were highly civilised more than three thousand years ago. Some of the ideas of these civilised folks may seem "nineteenth century-like" to us. But what has all this to do with " the primitive savage"? If any one said "three thousand years ago all men were primitive savages," the evidence of Chaldaea, Egypt, India, would disprove the absurd remark. But no one is saying anything of the kind. If we found that people used telephones thirty thousand years ago, all that could be said would be that thirty thousand years ago some people had a mechanical civilisation. The discovery would have no bearing on the "primitive savage," and would only throw still further back the savage period of the race which, thirty thousand years ago, had invented the telephone. Or should we be asked to believe that the telephone came down from heaven to a race born civilised? Mr. Müller adds that anthropologists "seem only bent on inventing excuses why the Vedas need not be studied." On the other hand of all boons to the anthropologist the completion of Mr. Müller's rendering of the Rig-Veda into English would be the most welcome. In the meantime we work away with Ludwig and Dr. Muir's Ancient Sanskrit Texts, and with Hang's Aitareya Brahmana, and the translation of the Satapatha Brahmana, by Eggeling, in the Sacred Books of the East. But it is rather disheartening to find how very much the learned translators differ among themselves. It is actually said (by an American critic) that Ahana never means the dawn, and could never, by any known process, become Dahana, and so Daphne. And if this be true, where are we all?