Excerpt from The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, With Historical Surveys of the Chief Writings of Each Nation, Vol. 9: India and Brahmanism These Hindus were of Aryan stock that same strong and highly intelligent people of remote antiquity from whom have sprung the Persians with their zend-avesta, the Greek and Roman world-conquerors, and every dominating nation of Europe and America to-day. The Hindus by their long association with the Eastern peoples had become markedly different from the Western Aryan races; yet in many ways they seem closer to our remote Aryan ancestors than do any other people of to-day. For one thing, the Hindus unchanging residence and nu broken supremacy oi three thousand years had enabled them to retain a vast amount of ancient and almost purely Aryan writings, such as no other modern Aryan stock possesses. We have recovered recently some portion of the ancient Per sian literature. We recovered, about five centuries ago, what was probably the best of ancient Greek. But the Hindu texts, older than the Greek, and perhaps even Older than the oldest Persian, had never been lost, and had continuously taught and dominated the Hindu civilization. When Britain conquered India this wonderful literature was not immediately revealed to us. It was hidden by the Brahman priesthood, as a sacred treasure. Only by very slow degrees did Western scholars get any word of it or any hint as to its value. Then, there came that epoch of tre mendons enthusiasm, when Western readers declared that the climax of all wisdom was heaped up within the old Hindu books. With them, all spiritual meditation and philosophy were said to begin and end. This period of extravagant praise has passed, and we are ready now to look into this voluminous and ancient Aryan literature and form a calmer estimate of its worth. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.