Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/134

 I IS The Religion of the Veda

two peoples, the Hindus and the Iranians" Separated only by a chain of mountains, they are entirely un- conscious of the close relationship of their languages, literatures, and religions. Nowhere in the Veda is there the slightest knowledge of the Avostn; nowhere is the Avesta conscious that there is going on across the I‘Iimi’ilaya Mountains in India an intense and char» acteristic religious development which started with a good many of the same primitive beliefs as were ab- sorbed by the religion of Zoroaster, As time went by the religions of the two peoples became about as differ— ent as it is possible for religions of civilised peoples to be. On the one side, Parsism or Zoroastrianism, mold- ed by the mind of a single prephet, Zarathushtra, or Zoroaster: a dualistic religion, believing in God and Satan; an ethical, optimistic, but at the bottom really unphilsophical religion ; yet sufﬁcient, as the modern Parsis show, to guide a people into a very superior form of life. On the other side, higher Hinduism, monistic, pessimistic, and speculative; without real leadership, except that which is present in the own spirit of each individual bent upon ﬁnding the way out of a hated round" of existences through a keen. conviction that there is only one fundamental truth, the Brahma in the universe and in one’s self ; that, consequently, this world of things is illusory,

1 See above, p. :13