A literary history of Persia

ORIGIN OF SUF1ISM 301not convinced that the existence of Indian influence has beensatisfactorily proved. Persian studies have suffered much atthe hands of Indianists and Comparative Mythologists andPhilologists, t.g. yin the attempts made to explain the Avestasolely from the Vedas without regardto the Zoroastriantradition on the one hand, and in the favour accorded,particularly in England and Germany,to the hideous Indianpronunciation of the modern language on the other, not tomention the exaggerated admiration often expressed for thePersian compositions of Indian writers, and the concurrentneglect of all Persian literature produced in Persia during thelast four centuries x ;and we have goodreason to be on ourguard against the tendency of Indianists to trace everything,so far as possible, to an Indian origin, or to generalise about" the Aryan genius." Longbefore Neo-Platonism came tothe Arabs itwas, as has been already observed (p. 167 supra}brought to Persia in the days of Nushirwan (sixth century ofour era), and I confess that, so far as I can judge, Sufipantheism presents far more striking analogies with Neo-Platonism than with either Vedantism or Buddhism, whilehistorically it much is more likely that it borrowed from thefirst than from either of the two last. To the later developmentsof Sufiism, to which alone those remarks apply, weshall recur in a subsequent chapter.Before leaving the religious manifestations of this epoch, itisproper to remind the reader what religions, besides Judaism,Zoroastrianism, and Christianity, and whateMugh