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4 Works of Pandit Guru Datta Vidyarthi
methods, they can only discover mythic or phonetic similarities or
affinities, but cannot explain them. Even if we leave out of
consideration the alternative character of the conclusions arrived
at, the explanations possess, considered from the standpoint of
inductive validity, a very low specific value. We seek the
explanation not from a fact already known to exist — we only
inferentially assume a fact to have existed, whilst we are at the same
time assuming the validity of our inference. The assumed fact, from
which the desired explanation is sought, is not inferred from any
independent evidence, but is itself a link in the self returning.series
of concatenated facts. Further, the growth of mythology is
deductively inferred from some psychological data. It might as
easily have been inferred as a degenerate, crippled, and then
stitched and glossed remnant of a purer and truer religion. An
author has well spoken of the degeneracy of things including
doctrines pre-eminently, if left alone. Nor is this fact in any way
an obscure one to the student of the history of church dogmas and
opinions. Who does not know of religious practices primarily
designed to meet certain real wants, degenerating, after a lapse of
time on the cessation of those wants, into mere ceremonies and
customs which are regarded, not as accidents, but as essentials?
Mythologies, as well as mythic practices, then, may arise either as
products of human imagination working under subdued intellect
and petrified reason, or, as an outgrowth of a distorted remnant of
a purer and truer form of religion.
There is not one hypothesis in connection with this subject
that has not a counter-hypothesis, not one theory whose claims are
not met with by a rival theory. Independently of the vague character
of these hypotheses — the philological and mythological ones — the
uncertainty of the conclusions deduced from them cannot be lost
sight of. Like the conclusions arrived at by Mr. Pocock in his 'India
in Greece,' wherein he traces the origin of all Greek geographical
names to Sanskrit Indian names, and whereby he infers the
colonization of Greece by the Indians, the conclusions arrived at
according to the aforesaid hypothesis constitute one full chain of
circular reasonings continually returning into themselves.
Admitting the cognate relation that exists between the Greek and
Sanskrit languages it must follow that Greek names of localities
must bear a remote and far-fetched, as contrasted with a direct and