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44
RELIGIOUS PRACTICES AND OPINIONS
too-unless my own experience deceive me-- that there will not be wanting on their journey objects, if not of beauty, yet of exceeding curiosity and interest, to enliven their way, and beguile them of the consciousness of fatigue.
The history of the Hindu religion, although not traceable with chronological precision, exhibits imequivocal proof that it is by no means of that imalterable character which has been commonly ascribed to it. There are many indications which cannot be mistaken, that it has undergone at different periods important alterations in both form and spirit. These are little heeded, have been little investigated, and are little known by even the most learned of the Brahmans. Some have been pointed out by the late Hindu reformer Rájá Rámmohan Roy, but even he was unaware of their full extent, and they are of themselves fatal to the pretensions of the Hindu faithi, as it now mostly prevails, to an inspired origin and unfathomable antiquity.
The oldest monuments of the Hindu religion are the Vedas. It is much to be regretted that we have not a translation of these works in any of the languages of Europe; if we had, they would no doubt, in like manner as the Koran of the Mohammedans and the Zend-avesta of the fire-worshippers of Persia, supply us with irrefutable arguments against the credibility of the religion of which they were once the oracles. A summary of the contents of the Vedas - as satisfactory as a summary can be-was published
