Quote#Time
The translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on…
Quote byFriedrich Max Müller · 1823–1900
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Letter to his wife Georgina (December 1866), published in The Life and Letters of Right Honorable Friedrich Max Müller (1902) edited by Georgina Müller ; also quoted in Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas (1994) by Arun Shourie.
English (original)
The translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion, and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years.
— Friedrich Max Müller
More from Friedrich Max Müller
The worship of Shiva, Vishnu, and other popular deities was of the same and in many cases of a more degraded and savage character than the worship of Jupiter, Apollo or Minerva.
India is much riper for Christianity than Rome or Greece was at the time of St. Paul. The rotten tree has for some time had artificial supports, because its fall would have been inconvenient for the Government.
It is curious to see how the descendants of the same race, to which the first conquerors and masters of India belonged, return . . . to accomplish the glorious work of civilization, which had been left unfinished by their Arian bretheren.
That there are startling coincidences between Buddhism and Christianity cannot be denied, and it must likewise be admitted that Buddhism existed at least 400 years before Christianity. I go even further, and should feel extremely grateful …
[A]s in his language and in his grammar [the Indian] has preserved something of what seems peculiar to each of the northern [Indo-european] dialects singly, as he agrees with the Greek and the German where the Greek and the German seem to …
As early as in 1850, he wrote to Bunsen ‘…if Wilson would write from the standpoint of a missionary, and would show how the knowledge and bringing into light of the Veda would upset the whole existing system of Indian theology, it might …