The Religious Quest of India : The Religion of the Rigveda Volume Series : 6

Language: - English, About The Book : Two things have attracted the author to the study of the Rigveda; first, the living interest which has lured him on ever since he began the study of Vedic in 1889 with Prof. Weber of Berlin, after previously reading Sanskrit with Prof. Macdonell of Oxford; and secondly, the fact that he has had the advantage of living nearly thirty years in the Punjab, the very habitat of the Vedic Indians. The religion of the Rigveda in the form in which it was professed and practised is, of course, dead, and yet, in a sense, it still lives. As the Old Testament has fulfilled itself in three monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, so the Rigveda has fulfilled itself in the popular polytheism, the philosophic pantheism and the occasional monotheism of India. If it is impossible to understand present-day Hinduism without a knowledge of the Rigveda, the reverse is also true that it is impossible to understand the Rigveda without a knowledge of modern Hinduism; for very many of the doctrines and rites of Hinduism point back to the Rigveda as their fountain-head and as such are survivals of that ancient time. While it is true that the Rigvedic gods have passed into the twilight, yet the Rigveda itself abides as a permanent source of material for the reconstruction of the ancient religion. About The Author : Hervey De Witt Griswold (1860 —1945) was an American writer and missionary. He attended Union College in Schenectady, New York from 1881 to 1885 then went to Union Theological Seminary in New York City from 1885 to 1888. During the following two years Griswold had a fellowship at Oxford and Berlin Universities. Griswold began his 36-year-long career as a missionary in 1890 in Jhansi, India as a representative of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church. In 1894 Griswold became Professor of Philosophy at Forman Christian College in Lahore, India (now Pakistan), teaching English and history there as well. As its librarian Gris