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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION
- INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME
- CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE AND MAJOR WORKS OF ANDREW LANG
- A NOTE ON THE TEXT
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- 1 THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE
- 2 ANTHROPOLOGY AND FOLKLORE
- 3 FAIRY TALES
- 4 ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION
- ‘Anthropology and Ancient Literature’, The Academy (10 March 1883)
- ‘Fetichism and the Infinite’, Custom and Myth (1884)
- ‘Anthropology and Religion’ I, The Making of Religion, 2nd edition (1900)
- ‘On Religion’, from The Making of Religion, 2nd edition (1900)
- ‘Science and Superstition’, Magic and Religion (1901)
- ‘First-Fruits and Taboos’, Magic and Religion (1901)
- ‘Australian Problems’, Anthropological Essays Presented to Edward Burnett Tylor in Honour of his 75th Birthday (1907)
- 5 ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- 6 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- APPENDIX I: NAMES FREQUENTLY CITED BY LANG
- APPENDIX II: ETHINIC GROUPS CITED BY LANG
- EXPLANATORY NOTES
- Index
‘Anthropology and Ancient Literature’, The Academy (10 March 1883)
from 4 - ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION
- INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME
- CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE AND MAJOR WORKS OF ANDREW LANG
- A NOTE ON THE TEXT
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- 1 THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE
- 2 ANTHROPOLOGY AND FOLKLORE
- 3 FAIRY TALES
- 4 ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION
- ‘Anthropology and Ancient Literature’, The Academy (10 March 1883)
- ‘Fetichism and the Infinite’, Custom and Myth (1884)
- ‘Anthropology and Religion’ I, The Making of Religion, 2nd edition (1900)
- ‘On Religion’, from The Making of Religion, 2nd edition (1900)
- ‘Science and Superstition’, Magic and Religion (1901)
- ‘First-Fruits and Taboos’, Magic and Religion (1901)
- ‘Australian Problems’, Anthropological Essays Presented to Edward Burnett Tylor in Honour of his 75th Birthday (1907)
- 5 ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- 6 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- APPENDIX I: NAMES FREQUENTLY CITED BY LANG
- APPENDIX II: ETHINIC GROUPS CITED BY LANG
- EXPLANATORY NOTES
- Index
Summary
A few words may perhaps be added to what Mr. Clodd has said about anthropology and the Vedas. Anthropologists are not really anxious (I hope) to devise reasons for evading the study of the Vedas. They are only anxious that Vedic texts should not be brought forward as proofs on the whole of what man's religious ideas were in the beginning, or near the beginning, of religion. That the Vedas contains some extremely backward notions they are ready, and even anxious, to admit. The Vedic myths of the fire-stealer, of the making of things out of the mangled Purus ha, of the stars, and of certain divine adventures tally with the myths of savages, and are probably survivals from a very rude and remote past. But the lofty, moral, and, so to speak, metaphysical speculations of the Vedas look like the speculations of an advanced civilisation. We are told that the ancestors of the Vedic Indians were practically civilised before Sanskrit was a language – before the Aryan separation. We cannot, therefore, regard elaborate hymns of such an old civilisation, hymns elaborately preserved by a careful teaching, as illustrative (save in certain survivals) of a very early condition of human thought. Prof. Max Müller says, ‘If we mean by primitive the people who have been the first of the Aryan race to leave behind literary relics of their existence on earth, then I say the Vedic poets are primitive.’ But no anthropologist dreams of applying the word ‘primitive’ to a literary, and an elaborately literary, set of poets. Indeed, the word ‘primitive’ might well be discarded from the anthropological vocabulary. The rudest savage with a language, a bow, and a fire has probably travelled farther from primitive life than we have travelled from savagery. We do not find fault (as we are said to do) because the Vedas ‘do not represent primitive men exactly as we think they ought to have been.’ We only find fault when we are told that the Vedas represent primitive men at all. They represent men in a highly interesting state of civilisation, but not exempt from survivals of savage ideas – ideas, to quote Mr. Müller, ‘as rude and crude as any palaeolithic weapon.’
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- Information
- The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Selected Writings of Andrew LangAnthropology, Fairy Tale, Folklore, The Origins of Religion, Psychical Research, pp. 168 - 169Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2015