thetical to the religious institutions of the ancient Egyptians, amongst whom the king was high priest and god, and where civil could hardly be distinguished from religious rank. It was equally opposed to the feelings of the Arabic or at least Semitic races, that superseded the Coptic in that country, and could consequently hardly have existed at all, unless introduced from some foreign source and maintained by some extraneous influence. The Essenes are the only sect to whom in the ancient world in the West anything like the peculiar institutions of monasticism can be traced; but unfortunately we do not know how or when they adopted them. Josephus represents them as only one of the three principal sects into which the Jews in his time were divided; but the silence not only of the Bible but of the Rabbis weakens the force of his statement, while his unfortunate omission of the name of their Lawgiver[1] leaves us in the dark on the most essential point. That it was not Moses, whose name is usually interpolated, is quite certain. He never inculcated any such doctrines, and one hardly dares to suggest the Indian name, which would clear up the whole mystery at once. Be this as it may, the sect only arose apparently in the time of the Maccabees, and practically disappeared with the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus; all which would accord perfectly with the hypothesis of their Indian origin, but would hardly suffice to support the idea that they were the sect from whom, in the fourth century, the Christian Church adopted the principles and practices of Asceticism.
When from these sparse indications we turn to the East, we are met by the difficulty that none of the books we possess were reduced to writing in their present form till the time of Buddhaghosa, A.D. 412,[2] or even later; and any one who knows what wild
- ↑ Josephus, 'B. J.,' II. viii. p. 9.
- ↑ "The prestige of such a witness as Buddhaghosa soon dwindles away, and his statements as to kings and councils 800 years before his time are, in truth, worth no more than the stories told of Arthur, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, or the accounts we read in Livy of the early history of Rome"—Chips from a German Workshop, i. p. 198. As a mere linguist, and dependent wholly on books, Max Müller was perfectly justified in making this statement, while his ignorance of everything connected with the archæology or art of India, prevented his perceiving how these wild statements could be verified or controlled. Till he learns that there are other means of investigation than mere words his statements on these subjects are untrustworthy, and, in many cases, absolutely worthless.
