Forlong - Rivers of Life

xxxvi
Preface.
all its plenitude of vigor, when images were taken in preference for the things of a
more sensible nature, and which made a deeper and more abiding impression.”
It is still necessary to tell the world some of these truths, and to remind it that
Religion at its base is the product of imagination working on early man’s wants and
fears, and that it is in no sense supernatural nor the result of any preconceived
and deliberate thought or desire to work out a system of morals. It arose in each
case form what appeared to be the pressing needs of the day or season on the man
or his tribe. The codification and expansion of Faiths would then be merely the slow
outcome of the cogitation and teachings of reflective minds, working usually with a
refining tendency on the aforesaid primitive Nature-worship, and in elucidation
of its ideas, symbolisms and legends. Early rude worshipers could not grasp
abstractions nor follow sermons even if they had been preached, and certainly not
recondite discourses on what the West designates “Solar and other theories.” These
were the outcome. of a far later, purifying and spiritualizing period of man’s life, and
were not such as the multitude could readily understand. This accounts for the
common remark that “it is astonishing how little the actual conduct of a people is
affected by their so-called national faith; that ancient Greece and Rome will bear
comparison with the present, and that Bbnāres has as large a percentage of good men
and woman as London.”
A word now as to Orthography. When the first proofs of parts of this work
were struck off in India, several years ago, the spelling of foreign words was in a
transition stage, and the popular English system was adopted. Varuna was Varoona,
because the u and a are used indifferently in English, and here deviation seemed
unnecessary as the reader could thus correctly pronounce such words us Vishnu and
Rudra. Diacritical mark and diphthongs were avoided, but as the work progressed
and began to deal with a great variety of tongues, it became necessary to adopt some
such system as that now authoratatively laid down by the Government of India; and
these changes were radical in regard to all words not too firmly fixed in the popular
mind, voice and eye, and where the pronunciation was sufficiently correct.
Of course it is impossible to accommodate thirty-eight distinct English sounds
to our twenty-six letters; how much more so, some fifty sounds, if one would rightly pro-
nounce the words dealt with in such a polyglotal work as this. At the same time,
spelling reformers were everywhere making their voices heard, and Oxford may be said
to have theoretically sided with them in 1876, when Professor Max Müller wrote his
celebrated article in the April Fortnightly, decIaring against the supposed sacredness