India and Her People

THE PREVAILING PHILOSOPHY OF TO-DAY.

Centuries before the Christian era, nay, long before the advent of the prophet and founder of Judaism, when the forefathers of the Anglo-Saxon races were living in caves and forests, tattooing their bodies, eating raw animal flesh, wearing animal skins, — in that remote antiquity, the dawn of true civilization broke upon the iiorizon of India, or Bhdrata Varsha, as it is called in Sanskrit.

The ancient Vedic sages had already perfected their lofty system of moral philosophy, and their followers were well-established in the practice of tlie ethical and spiritual teachings of the Vedas even before Moses had reformed the lawless and nomadic tribes of Israel by giving them the ten commandments in the name of Jahveh. And while thinkers among the Semitic tribes were still trying to explain the origin of the human race and of the universe through the mythological stories of creation collected from the Chaldeans, Phoenicians, Babylonians, and Persians, the Aryan philosophers of India had already discovered the evolution of the universe out of one eternal Energy, and of man from the lower animals.