Annotations on the Sacred Writings of the Hindus

IT HAS been suggested to the author of the following pages to compile a small treatise which, without professing to be an abridgment of the Hindu sacred writings, should convey in a concise form an "epitome" of the information that has been obtained with respect to the leading dogmas of the Brahminical superstition. When we reflect upon certain peculiarities of the religious worship practiced by Hindus, on its great antiquity, on the fact that two thousand years before the Christian era it was, as at the present day, in full force; that it witnessed the rise, decline and fall of the idolatry of Egypt, and of the great Western mythology of Greece and Rome, that hitherto it has scarcely yielded in the slightest degree to the adverse influence of the Mohammedan race on the one hand, or to European dictation on the other; and that it exercises, by its system of caste, a powerful control over the manners, customs, costume and social status of the entire Hindu community, it becomes a subject fraught with interest to every cultivated mind, and offers an affecting but curious example of the power of a hoary and terrible superstition in degrading and enslaving so large a portion of the human race.