Gentilism: Religion Previous to ChristianitySadlier, 1876 - 525 pages |
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admitted altogether Amun ancient antiquity appear Aryan Asia asserted barbarism belief Brahma Brahmins called certainly character chiefly Christian civilization Clement of Alexandria consequently deities divine doctrine earth Egypt Egyptian epoch error Eschylus Europe everywhere evidently evil existence fact father globe gods Greece Greek Gustasp heaven Heeren Hellenes Hence Herodotus Hindoo Hindostan Holy Homer human Iamblichus idea idolatry imagination India known language least likewise mankind Max Müller merely modern monotheism moral mythology nations nature object opinion origin Orpheus pantheism passage patriarchal Pelasgians Pelasgic period Persian philosophers Plato poems poets polytheism primitive proved pure quoted race reader religion religious remarkable revelation rites sacred Sanscrit Semitic Sir John Lubbock Siva soul speak supposed Supreme temples thought tion traditions tribes true truth Turanian universal upanishads Vedas Vedic whole word worship writers Zeus Zoroaster
Popular passages
Page 509 - The elementary group is the family, connected by common subjection to the highest male ascendant; the aggregation of families forms the gens or house; the aggregation of houses makes the tribe; the aggregation of tribes constitutes the commonwealth.
Page 117 - The inhabitants give themselves no trouble about the breaking up and division of kingdoms ; while the village remains entire, they care not to what power it is transferred, or to what sovereign it devolves ; its internal economy remains unchanged...
Page 21 - Lift up thy eyes round about, and see : all these are gathered together, they are come to thee : thy sons shall come from afar, and thy daughters shall rise up at thy side.
Page 507 - It is full, in all its provinces, of the clearest indications that society in primitive times was not what it is assumed to be at present, a collection of individuals. In fact, and in the view of the men who composed it, it was an aggregation of families. The contrast may be most forcibly expressed by saying that the unit of an ancient society was the Family, of a modern society the Individual.
Page 144 - We have in the Veda the invocations Dyaus pitar, the Greek Ze£ irdrep, the Latin Jupiter ; and that means in all the three languages what it . meant before these three languages were torn asunder — it means Heaven-Father! These two words are not mere words ; they are to my mind the oldest poem, the oldest prayer of mankind, or at least of that pure branch of it to which we belong — and I am as firmly convinced that this prayer was uttered, that this name was given to the unknown God before Sanskrit...
Page 509 - Romans may be taken as a type of them, and they are so described to us that we can scarcely help conceiving them as a system of concentric circles which have gradually expanded from the same point. The elementary group is the family, connected by common subjection to the highest male ascendant.
Page 141 - Wise and mighty are the works of him who stemmed asunder the wide firmaments (heaven and earth). He lifted on high the bright and glorious heaven ; he stretched out apart the starry sky and the earth.
Page 140 - Who knows exactly, and who shall in this world declare, whence and why this creation took place ? The gods are subsequent to the production of this world : then who can know whence it proceeded ? or whence this varied world arose ? or whether it uphold [itself], or not ? He who, in the highest heaven, is the ruler of this universe, does indeed „ , know ; but not another can possess that knowledge.
Page 143 - These words are not mere words, but they bring before us, with all the vividness of an event which we witnessed ourselves but yesterday, the ancestors of the whole Aryan race, thousands of years it may be before Homer and the Veda, worshipping an unseen Being, under the selfsame name, the best, the most exalted name, they could find in their vocabulary — under the name of Light and Sky.
Page 505 - The effect of the evidence derived from comparative jurisprudence is to establish that view of the primeval condition of the human race which is known as the Patriarchal Theory.