F. Max Müller: THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA

F. Max Müller
THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA
Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism
and Christianity
(Scripta Minora, vol. iii, 2013)

Contents:
1. Confucianism
2. Taoism
3. Buddhism and Christianity


Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900) was Anglo-German orientalist and comparative philologist. His studies in mythology led him to another field of activity in which his influence was more durable and extensive, that of the comparative science of religions.


“The Chinese idea of religion was evidently very different from our own. Religion was to them giving good advice, improving the manners of the people; and they seem to have thought that for such a purpose they could never have enough teachers and preachers.”

--F. Max Müller, The Religions of China

Max Müller: TAOISM (Excerpt)

The next home-grown religion in China is Taoism, ascribed to Lâo-tzé. Of him and of his life, if we exclude mere legends, even less is known than of Confucius. Some have, indeed, gone so far as to deny his existence altogether, and though his reported interview with Confucius has been generally considered as establishing once for all the historical character of both these sages, even that meeting, fixed as having taken place about 517 B.C., might well be the product of tradition only. Something like it has happened, indeed, to most founders of religion. Tradition adds so many fanciful and miraculous traits to the real story of their lives that, like a tree smothered and killed by ivy, the subject of all these fables, the stem round which the ivy clusters, becomes almost invisible, and seems at last to be fabulous itself. Still the trunk must have been there, and must have been real in order to serve as the support of that luxuriant ivy. It is said, for instance, of Lâo-tzé that his mother bore him for seventy-two years, and that, when he was born at last, in 604 B.C., he had already white hair. Is it not palpable how this tradition arose? Lâo-tzé was the name given to him, and that name signifies Old Child, or Old Boy. This name being once given, everything else followed. He was born with white hair, and spoke words of wisdom like an old man. Even the very widely spread idea that the fathers of these wonderful heroes were old men recurs in this instance, for the father of Confucius also was said to have been well stricken in years. But, after all, the parents and what was fabled or believed about them in China are nothing to us.

Emily Gerard & Agnes Murgoci: TRANSYLVANIAN SUPERSTITIONS

Emily Gerard & Agnes Murgoci
TRANSYLVANIAN
SUPERSTITIONS
(Scripta Minora, vol. ii, 2013)

Contents:
1. Emily Gerard, Transylvanian Superstitions
2. Agnes Murgoci, The Vampire in Roumania

"Transylvanian Superstitions" written by Emily Gerard and first published in 1885  is widely held to have provided key inspiration to Bram Stoker while creating the novel Dracula.

On the other hand, "The Vampire in Roumania" by Agnes Murgoci is one of the best accounts of the belief in vampires in Romania.

“Transylvania might well be termed the land of superstition, for nowhere else does this curious crooked plant of delusion flourish as persistently and in such bewildering variety. It would almost seem as though the whole species of demons, pixies, witches, and hobgoblins, driven from the rest of Europe by the wand of science, had taken refuge within this mountain rampart, well aware that here they would find secure lurking-places, whence they might defy their persecutors yet awhile.”

--Emily Gerard, 1885

William Miller: BOSNIA BEFORE THE TURKISH CONQUEST

William Miller
BOSNIA BEFORE
THE TURKISH CONQUEST

(Scripta Minora, vol. i, 2013)

Contents:
I. The History of Bosnia down to 1180
II. The Great Bosnian Bans (1180-1376)
III. The Kings of Bosnia (1376-1463)


"Bosnia before the Turkish Conquest" written by William Miller and first published in 1898 is a brief history of this Balkan country from the earliest time to the end of the Middle Ages.

"But the old Illyrian inhabitants had to acknowledge the superiority of another race. About 380 B.C. the Celts invaded the peninsula, and, by dint of continual pushing, ousted the natives of what is now Servia, and so became neighbours of the Ardiaei. Their next step was to drive the latter southward into the modern Herzegovina, and to seize their possessions in North Bosnia. Instead of uniting against the Celtic invaders the Illyrian tribes fell to quarrelling among themselves over some salt springs, which were unfortunately situated at the spot where their confines met. This fratricidal struggle had the effect of so weakening both parties that they fell an easy prey to the common foe. The victorious Celts pursued their southward course, and by 335 B.C. both Bosnia and Herzegovina were in their power, and the Illyrians either exiles or else subject to the Celtic sway. This is the first instance of that fatal tendency to disunion which has throughout been the curse of these beautiful lands. The worst foes of Bosnia and the Herzegovina have been those of their own household."

--William Miller

Max Müller (biography)

Max Müller

MAX MÜLLER, FRIEDRICH (1823-1900), Anglo-German orientalist and comparative philologist, was born at Dessau on the 6th of December 1823, being the son of Wilhelm Müller (1794-1827), the German poet, celebrated for his phil-Hellenic lyrics, who was ducal librarian at Dessau. The elder Müller had endeared himself to the most intellectual circles in Germany by his amiable character and his genuine poetic gift; his songs had been utilized by musical composers, notably Schubert; and it was his son's good fortune to meet in his youth with a succession of eminent friends, who, already interested in him for his father's sake, and charmed by the qualities which they discovered in the young man himself, powerfully aided him by advice and patronage. Mendelssohn, who was his godfather, dissuaded him from indulging his natural bent to the study of music; Professor Brockhaus of the University of Leipzig, where Max Müller matriculated in 1841, induced him to take up Sanskrit; Bopp, at the University of Berlin (1844), made the Sanskrit student a scientific comparative philologist; Schelling at the same university, inspired him with a love for metaphysical speculation, though failing to attract him to his own philosophy; Burnouf, at Paris in the following year, by teaching him Zend, started him on the track of inquiry into the science of comparative religion, and impelled him to edit the Rig Veda; and when, in 1846, Max Müller came to England upon this errand, Bunsen, in conjunction with Professor H. H. Wilson, prevailed upon the East India Company to undertake the expense of publication. Up to this time Max Müller had lived the life of a poor student, supporting himself partly by copying manuscripts, but Bunsen's introductions to Queen Victoria and the prince consort, and to Oxford University, laid the foundation for him of fame and fortune. In 1848 the printing of his Rig Veda at the University Press obliged him to settle in Oxford, a step which decided his future career. He arrived at a favourable conjuncture: the Tractarian strife, which had so long thrust learning into the background, was just over, and Oxford was becoming accessible to modern ideas. The young German excited curiosity and interest, and it was soon discovered that, although a genuine scholar, he was no mere bookworm. Part of his social success was due to his readiness to exert his musical talents at private parties. Max Müller was speedily subjugated by the genius loci. He was appointed deputy Taylorian professor of modern languages in 1850, and the German government failed to tempt him back to Strassburg. In the following year he was made M.A. and honorary fellow of Christ Church, and in 1858 he was elected a fellow of All Souls. In 1854 the Crimean War gave him the opportunity of utilizing his oriental learning in vocabularies and schemes of transliteration. In 1857 he successfully essayed another kind of literature in his beautiful story Deutsche Liebe, written both in German and English. He had by this time become an extensive contributor to English periodical literature, and had written several of the essays subsequently collected as Chips from a German Workshop. The most important of them was the fascinating essay on “Comparative Mythology” in the Oxford Essays for 1856. His valuable History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the primitive religion of the Brahmans (and hence the Vedic period only), was published in 1859.

William Miller (biography)

William Miller (1864-1945), was English journalist and historian.

Miller was educated at Rugby and Oxford, after which he devoted himself to the study of Turkish and Balkan society and politics. His book Travels and Politics in the Near East (1898) was, as he points out in the “Preface,” “the result of four visits to the Balkan Peninsula in the years 1894, 1896, 1897, and 1898, and a long study of the Eastern question” (p. ix).

Agnes Murgoci (biography)

Dr. Agnes Murgoci (1875-1929), born Kelly, was an English zoologist and folklorist.

Born in Adelaide, South Australia, she graduated from Bedford College in 1896, obtained first class honours in zoology, and a PhD from the University of Munich. She married Gheorghe Munteanu-Murgoci, a Romanian professor of mineralogy and moved to Bucharest. She published articles on the folklore of her new home, especially early studies on vampirism, and a book, Rumania and the Rumanians. Her works appeared in the journal of the Folklore Society.

Emily Gerard (biography)

(Jane) Emily Gerard (7 May 1849 – 11 January 1905) was a nineteenth-century author best known for the influence her collections of Transylvanian folklore had on Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Emily Gerard was born in Scotland, the daughter of Archibald Gerard and Euphemia Erskine Robison (daughter of Sir John Robison).
She is sometimes referred to as Emily Gerard, Mrs de Laszowska, Emily Laszowska, Emily Gerard, or Emily de Laszowska Gerard, after her husband, Chevalier Mieczislas de Laszowski, an Polish cavalry officer serving in the Austro-Hungarian Army. Her familiarity with Transylvanian folklore came about as a result of his stationing in the town of Hermannstadt (now known by its Romanian name of Sibiu) which is now located in the Romanian province of Transylvania, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before 1918.
She reviewed German literature for the Times, having been educated in Tyrol. She spent much of her life in Austria, where she met and befriended Mark Twain, to whom The Extermination of Love (1901) is dedicated.
Her sister Dorothea (Gerard) Longard de Longgarde (1855–1915), who was arguably the more successful and certainly the more prolific novelist, also married an Austro-Hungarian officer and spent much of her life in Austria. Their novels were often set in Eastern Europe. The Gerard family also included at least two brothers, the Jesuit provincial Father John Gerard (1840–1912) and General Sir Montagu Gilbert Gerard (1843–1905), who made minor contributions to the siblings' collective literary output that eventually totaled nearly 60 books and novels. Both brothers were considered sufficiently noteworthy to be listed alongside Emily Gerard in Black's Who Was Who, 1897-1916 (1953).