"And again, "E'en midst drawn swords a herald doth not falsity devise, "And also, "Who does not first test out his strength And eke that of his foe, But blindly starts to do some deed, He meets with naught but woe! "And so remember, in thy comings to the lake, what the great Moon-God says to thee: 'Hear! Thou hast violated my pool, which bears my name, and hast slain my Hares, the protectors of my pool! Dost thou forget that I am known in the world as the Rabbit-Marked? Avoid the pool, and leave my Hares in peace, and great good fortune will come upon thee and thy followers. Thine are the woods to roam in, and my cooling rays (the Hindu regards the rays of the moon as positively cooling, not merely as lacking in heating power) will refresh your heated bodies. But seek again the lake, and my rays shall never more cool you, and you shall perish by the heat of the sun.'" (This threat seems weak to us, but it had the desired effect.) The Elephant was terrified, and hastened to say, "Dear friend, I meant no harm. I would not have hostility with the Moon; tell me how I may appease the blessed God." "Come alone with me then, that I may show thee," replied the Hare. So he led the Elephant to the edge of the lake, and showed him the full orb of the Moon, mirrored in the quiet waters: convincing evidence that this was really a Moon-Pool, under the special protection of the Moon-God. "Bow thyself down now, and do homage," said the Hare. The Elephant did as he was ordered; but he was standing close to the edge of the lake, and as he bowed down, his huge trunk struck the water, making a thousand ripples. Instantly the image of the Moon was seen tremulously reflected in a thousand spots. The Hare said, "Alas, O King of Elephants, what hast thou done? Thou hast doubled the anger of the God." The Elephant asked in consternation, "How have I done this?" The Hare replied, "By disturbing the water. Dost thou not see how his image everywhere quivers with wrath?" And the Elephant humbly said, "Good Sir, implore the God to be gracious toward me, and I will come here no more!" Then the Hare said, "Blessed Moon-God, it was in ignorance that this one sinned against thee; graciously pardon him!" And when the water ceased to ripple, and the Moon's image again became placid, the Hare bade the Elephant go in peace. Thus did the Hares free themselves of the Elephants, and thereafter they lived undisturbed. And therefore I say, If you will call the great your friends, Prosperity comes soon; The Hares have peace, because they claimed You have, I trust, noticed the difference between the unadorned style of Aesop, and the highly embellished Hindu tale. Both were aimed to amuse and to instruct; but the function of instruction was kept more in the foreground with the Sanskrit stories, for they are not isolated tales, but are grouped together in a setting, of which this is a type:14 A King has some worthless young sons, whose reform is undertaken by a Sage. The Sage brings about their reform by narrating to them a series of tales, mostly animal fables, every one of them illustrating some point of wise and proper conduct. All the tales are set in a framework story, the characters of which tell stories to one another to illustrate the points which they wish to make; the characters in these included stories tell stories to each other, until you may have four or five, one within the other like the parts of a Chinese puzzle. It was for this reason that I felt no compunction at telling the tale of how the Hare came to be set in the Moon, in the very middle of the story of the Elephants and the Hares. Hindu procedure is all in favor of such interpolations. 14 Hitopadeça, Introduction; Panchatantra, Introduction. The Hindu tale may be interrupted also by unnecessary descriptions, heaping epithet upon epithet, to the utter weariness of the Occidental reader. In the story of the Elephants and the Hares, a part of the account of the pool to which the herd of Elephants came runs somewhat as follows:15 "A pool named Chandrasaras, adorned with geese, water-hens, seaeagles, ducks, and other water-fowl; encircled with the boughs and branches of trees of various sorts, weighed down with flowers and fruits; made beautiful on every side by trees; with its shores spattered with an abundance of foam caused by the prattling waves which the wind drove on the shore; where the heat of the sun was kept off by the hundreds of parasols formed by the twigs of the trees growing by the shore; where a deep melody was produced by the striking of the waves against the bodies of the bathers; filled with pure water; protected from the heat by a thicket of lotuses in bloom; a veritable little piece of heaven"—but enough; and this is only typical. The specifically Hindu doctrine of Non-Injury, or the avoidance of doing physical harm to living creatures, appeared in the story of how the Hare came to be in the Moon. There the self-sacrificing Hare threw himself into the fire, not allowing the supposed Beggar to put him on the coals; for in that case the Beggar would have incurred guilt. For the same reason the Hare shook himself thrice before the leap into the fire, that he might not carry any insects with him and be responsible for their death. This doctrine of Non-Injury is found in most of the Hindu religions, but especially in Buddhism; in fact, the story of the Hare and the Moon, which you have heard, is taken from a Buddhistic text, written in the Pali language, and is not found in Sanskrit at all, so far as I know. The Hindu carries this Non-Injury to great lengths; he is led to complete avoidance of animal food, excepting milk, and members of the sect known as the Jains actually sweep the path before them with a whisk-broom lest they trample on an insect, and breathe through a veil that they may not 15 Panchatantra III, 1, in the Textus Ornatior, translated by R. Schmidt. incontinently swallow and drown a gnat or a fly. Should a mosquito sting them, it must be allowed to finish its meal undisturbed. Oddly, this has a philosophical and etymological basis in the meaning of the word for "meat" in Sanskrit, which is related in one of the oldest law-books of the Hindus. Now the Hindu philosophers were very strong on punning etymologies, almost all of which, including the present one, are utterly preposterous. Yet this one, unlike most puns, is perfectly translatable into English, so that it may be given without a single Sanskrit word: THE ME-IT-NESS OF MEAT.16 One should not at any time slay a beast to please his appetite; for he who does so will be born again upon earth and suffer death again, as many times as are the hairs upon the body of that beast, before he may be everlastingly freed from the fetters of the body and attain to heaven. Further, me-it shall eat in the other world, whose meat I eat in this; this the Sages declare the reason why meat is called meat, or (as the Sanskrit puts it) the me-it-ness of meat. These are a few samples from the Folklore of India, with some characteristically Hindu features. They are not dead stories, buried in the oblivion of palm-leaf manuscripts, but still live in the consciousness of the people. In all the myriad dialects of India they are still told and retold, and are a great influence in shaping the character of the nation. They may seem strange to us, yet we ought to realize the fundamental resemblances to the Folklore of other and nearer lands; then by an understanding of the differences, the specifically Indian traits, we may come to a better and more sympathetic comprehension of that vast land where nearly one-quarter of the human race are born, live and die. 16 Mānavadharmaçãstra V, 37–55. UNPROVED PROPOSITIONS AND UNDEFINED RELATIONS BY GEORGE H. HALLETT Professor of Mathematics The programme of modern science comprehends no less than the reduction of all phenomena to the operation of the law of necessity and its object is the removal of all contingent matter from the universe. The scientist is not dogmatic in regard to the possibility or impossibility of the ultimate attainment of this object, he simply points to the achievements of science as showing clearly that what at one time may be regarded as contingent matter, at a later period can be proven to be necessary. Even though modern science has constantly extended and broadened its field of research, and though the scientist recognizes no limits to this field save those which are artificial and self-imposed, yet it is regarded by some to be an open question whether real limits exist or not; but we shall return to this point. The growth of science has been stimulated in the past by the active opposition of powerful organizations, the members of which were actuated by motives which proceeded from upright and laudable causes. But modern science takes no account of opposition of any sort whatsoever; it assumes that in the face of truth all opposition will vanish precisely as the morning mists vanish in the rays of the rising sun. The method of modern science is mathematics and the constant aim of the scientist is to crystallize truth in a mathematical formula. Mathematics, therefore, in that it is the method of modern science, is of supreme importance. Its value can only be estimated when we consider the primary and fundamental |