There is much that appears to be foreign in the epic.  This passage seems rather to be a recollection of some shrine where monotheism without Christianity was acknowledged.  On the other hand, even in the pseudo-epic, there is much apparently borrowed which yet is altogether native to Brahmanic land and sect.  It is not in any passage which is proved to be of foreign origin that one reads of the boy of twelve years who entered among the wise men and confuted their reasoning (above, p. 382).  It is not of course due to Christian influence that the great ‘saint of the stake’ is taken by the ‘king’s men,’ is crucified (or literally impaled) among thieves, and lives so long that the guard go and tell the king of the miracle;[68] nor is it necessary to assume that everything elevated is borrowed.  “When I revile, I revile not again,” sounds indeed like an echo of Christian teaching, but how thoroughly Hindu is the reason.  “For I know that self-control is the door of immortality.”  And in the same breath, with a connection of meaning patent only when one regards the whole not as borrowed but as native, follow the words that we have ventured to put upon the title-page of this volume, as the highest and at the same time the truest expression of a religion that in bringing the gods to men raised man to equally with God—­“This is a holy mystery which I declare unto you:  There is nothing nobler than humanity."[69]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 1:  He appears in different complete manifestations, while Vishnu appears only in part, as a ‘descent,’ avatar, i.e., Vishnu is incarnate, Civa appears whole.]

[Footnote 2:  The original story perhaps antedates the Brahmanic Brahm[=a].  But, for all one knows, when the poem was first written Brahm[=a] was already decadent as chief god.  In that case two strata of religious belief have been formally super-imposed, Vishnuism and Civaism.]

[Footnote 3:  While agreeing with Telang that the original G[=i]t[=a] is an old poem, we cannot subscribe to his argument (SBE.  VIII. p. 19) that the priority of the S[=a]man over the Rig Veda is evidence of antiquity; still less to the argument, p. 21, from the castes.]

     [Footnote 4:  Compare Manu, i. 7:  “He the subtile,
     indiscernible, eternal, inconceivable One, who makes all
     creatures.”]

     [Footnote 5:  Possibly the original opening of another poem.]

[Footnote 6:  The avatars of Vishnu are meant.  The very knight to whom he speaks is later regarded (in South India) as incarnate god, and today is worshipped as an avatar of Vishnu.  The idea of the ‘birth-stories’ of the Buddhists is thought by some scholars to have been connected historically with the avatars of Vishnu.]

     [Footnote 7:  This is one of the notes struck in the later
     Upanishads, the doctrine of ‘special grace,’ originating
     perhaps still earlier in the V[=a]c hymn (see above).]