Note 77 — Chapter XXVIII · THEÆTETUS.

Respecting the grounds and conditions of belief among the Hindoos, Sir William Sleeman (Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, ch. xxvi. vol. i. pp. 226-228) observes as follows:—

“Every word of this poem (the Ramaen, Ramayana) the people assured me was written, if not by the hand of the Deity himself, at least by his inspiration, which was the same thing, and it must consequently be true. Ninety-nine out of a hundred, among the Hindoos, implicitly believe, not only every word of this poem, but every word of every poem that has ever been written in Sanscrit. If you ask a man whether he really believes any very egregious absurdity quoted from these books, he replies with the greatest naïveté in the world, ‘Is it not written in the book; and how should it be there written if not true?’ … The greater the improbability, the more monstrous and preposterous the fiction, the greater is the charm that it has over their minds; and the greater their learning in the Sanscrit, the more are they under the influence of this charm. Believing all to be written by the Deity, or by his inspirations, and the men and things of former days to have been very different from the men and things of the present day, and the heroes of these fables to have been demigods, or people endowed with powers far superior to those of the ordinary men of their own day, the analogies of nature are never for a moment considered; nor do questions of probability, or possibility, according to those analogies, ever obtrude to dispel the charm with which they are so pleasingly bound. They go on through life reading and talking of these monstrous fictions, which shock the taste and understanding of other nations, without once questioning the truth of one single incident, or hearing it questioned. There was a time, and that not very distant, when it was the same in England and in every other European nation; and there are, I am afraid, some parts of Europe where it is so still. But the Hindoo faith, so far as religious questions are concerned, is not more capacious or absurd than that of the Greeks and Romans in the days of Sokrates and Cicero; the only difference is, that among the Hindoos a greater number of the questions which interest mankind are brought under the head of religion.”