The Inhavitants of Asia

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

BEYOND all other continents, Asia is full of varied interest to the inquiring and reflective mind. By its vast extent, its diversity of climates and physical features, its variety of population, its scattered tribes, its mighty empires and their wonderful history, its strange superstitions, its profound moral teachers, and its powerful religions, the Orient continent appeals in succession or in combination to the most far-reaching of our faculties and sympathies. Its historic records go back farther than those of any continent, unless perhaps Egyptian records may claim something like equality in this respect, and Egypt may almost be regarded as an annex of Asia. The prehistoric remains of Asia are as yet little known, but from what we already know of them early man in Asia passed through the same stages of using rough and polished stone implements for long ages as in Europe; and it may be inferred from the great age of historic re- cords in Asia that the first men lived in Asia at an earlier period even than in Europe.

Instead of displaying the almost exclusive sway and progress of a single group of peoples, like Europe, Asia has been the theatre in which the Semite. the Aryan, and the Mongol have developed, have varied, have struggled with one another, and have thrown off branches which, as peaceful emigrants or conquering hordes, have invaded more or less all the other continents and islands. What the ancestors of the American Indians, the Polynesians. the Malays, and the Finns probably did long ages ago, the Turks, the Jews, the Arubs, the Hindus, and the Chinese are doing in various ways in our own day. The last three in particular are so prolific and hardy, that they seem capable of supplying a population for the entire globe, and their spread in many regions has excited keen hostility.

As Asia has been the cradle of peoples, so it has been the cradle of religions. In many respects the Asiatic is more religious than the European, and profoundly believes in the existence of superior and invisible powers. We are compelled to allow that nearly all great religions have arisen in Asia. Ancestor-worship and reverence for the spirits of the dead, combined with nature worship, are at the bottom of the varied developments of Confucianism, Taoism, Shintoism, Vedism, and Hinduism, while on them profound philosophers have grafted many of the most important moral teachings known to man- kind. Buddhism and Zoroastrianism are extremes of divergence from primitive Aryan beliefs. It is remark- able that in Asia there have arisen the three great religions which have spread fur beyond the confines of the race which gave them birth. Buddhism, a Hindu pro- duct, has made its home among such divergent people as the Japanese and the Tibetans. Christianity, at first purely Semitic, is professed by multitudes of Aryans, besides large numbers of Negroes, Polynesians, Melanesians, and a considerable number of Asiatics. Mahomet- an.sm, equally Semitic in origin, is the religion of Turks, Persians, many Negroes and North Africans, Hindus, and Malays.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages