India: What can it teach us?
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Title: India: What can it teach us?
Author: F. Max Müller
Commentator: Alexander Wilder
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INDIA:
WHAT CAN IT TEACH US?
A Course of Lectures
DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
BY
F. MAX MUeLLER, K.M.
_TEXT AND FOOT-NOTES COMPLETE._
WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY
PROF. ALEXANDER WILDER, M.D.
NEW YORK:
FUNK & WAGNALLS, PUBLISHERS,
10 AND 12 DEY STREET.
* * * * *
_NOTE OF THE AMERICAN PUBLISHERS._
This volume contains the entire text of the English edition, also all
the footnotes. Those portions of the Appendix which serve to
illustrate the text are inserted in their appropriate places as
footnotes. That part of the Appendix which is of special interest only
to the Sanscrit scholar is omitted.
Professor Max Mueller writes in this book not as a theologian but as a
scholar, not intending either to attack or defend Christian theology.
His style is charming, because he always writes with freedom and
animation. In some passages possibly his language might be
misunderstood. We have thought it best to add a few notes. The notes
of the American editor are signed "A.W.;" ours, "Am. Pubs."
* * * * *
DEDICATED
TO
E. B. COWELL M.A., LL.D.,
PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT AND FELLOW OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.
* * * * *
MY DEAR COWELL: As these Lectures would never have been written or
delivered but for your hearty encouragement, I hope you will now allow
me to dedicate them to you, not only as a token of my sincere
admiration of your great achievements as an Oriental scholar, but also
as a memorial of our friendship, now more than thirty years old, a
friendship which has grown from year to year, has weathered many a
storm, and will last, I trust, for what to both of us may remain of
our short passage from shore to shore.
I must add, however, that in dedicating these Lectures to you, I do
not wish to throw upon you any responsibility for the views which I
have put forward in them. I know that you do not agree with some of my
views on the ancient religion and literature of India, and I am well
aware that with regard to the recent date which I have assigned to the
whole of what is commonly called the Classical Sanskrit Literature, I
stand almost alone. No, if friendship can claim any voice in the
courts of science and literature, let me assure you that I shall
consider your outspoken criticism of my Lectures as the very best
proof of your true and honest friendship. I have through life
considered it the greatest honor if real scholars, I mean men not only
of learning, but of judgment and character, have considered my
writings worthy of a severe and searching criticism; and I have cared
far more for the production of one single new fact, though it spoke
against me, than for any amount of empty praise or empty abuse.
Sincere devotion to his studies and an unswerving love of truth ought
to furnish the true scholar with an armor impermeable to flattery or
abuse, and with a visor that shuts out no ray of light, from whatever
quarter it may come. More light, more truth, more facts, more
combination of facts, these are his quest. And if in that quest he
fails, as many have failed before him, he knows that in the search for
truth failures are sometimes the condition of victory, and the true
conquerors often those whom the world calls the vanquished.
You know better than anybody else the present state of Sanskrit
scholarship. You know that at present and for some time to come
Sanskrit scholarship means discovery and conquest. Every one of your
own works marks a real advance, and a permanent occupation of new
ground. But you know also how small a strip has as yet been explored
of the vast continent of Sanskrit literature, and how much still
remains _terra incognita_. No doubt this exploring work is
troublesome, and often disappointing, but young students must learn
the truth of a remark lately made by a distinguished member of the
Indian Civil Service, whose death we all deplore, Dr. Burnell, "that
no trouble is thrown away which saves trouble to others." We want men
who will work hard, even at the risk of seeing their labors
unrequited; we want strong and bold men who are not afraid of storms
and shipwrecks. The worst sailors are not those who suffer shipwreck,
but those who only dabble in puddles and are afraid of wetting their
feet.
It is easy now to criticise the labors of Sir William Jones, Thomas
Colebrooke, and Horace Hayman Wilson, but what would have become of
Sanskrit scholarship if they had not rushed in where even now so many
fear to tread? and what will become of Sanskrit scholarship if their
conquests are forever to mark the limits of our knowledge? You know
best that there is more to be discovered in Sanskrit literature than
Nalas and _S_akuntalas, and surely the young men who every year go out
to India are not deficient in the spirit of enterprise, or even of
adventure? Why, then, should it be said that the race of bold
explorers, who once rendered the name of the Indian Civil Service
illustrious over the whole world, has well-nigh become extinct, and
that England, which offers the strongest incentives and the most
brilliant opportunities for the study of the ancient language,
literature, and history of India, is no longer in the van of Sanskrit
scholarship?
If some of the young candidates for the Indian Civil Service who
listened to my Lectures, quietly made up their minds that such a
reproach shall be wiped out, if a few of them at least determined to
follow in the footsteps of Sir William Jones, and to show to the world
that Englishmen who have been able to achieve by pluck, by
perseverance, and by real political genius the material conquest of
India, do not mean to leave the laurels of its intellectual conquest
entirely to other countries, then I shall indeed rejoice, and feel
that I have paid back, in however small a degree, the large debt of
gratitude which I owe to my adopted country and to some of its
greatest statesmen, who have given me the opportunity which I could
find nowhere else of realizing the dreams of my life--the publication
of the text and commentary of the Rig-Veda, the most ancient book of
Sanskrit, aye of Aryan literature, and now the edition of the
translations of the "Sacred Books of the East."
I have left my Lectures very much as I delivered them at Cambridge. I
am fond of the form of Lectures, because it seems to me the most natural
form which in our age didactic composition ought to take. As in ancient
Greece the dialogue reflected most truly the intellectual life of the
people, and as in the Middle Ages learned literature naturally assumed
with the recluse in his monastic cell the form of a long monologue, so
with us the lecture places the writer most readily in that position in
which he is accustomed to deal with his fellow-men, and to communicate
his knowledge to others. It has no doubt certain disadvantages. In a
lecture which is meant to be didactic, we have, for the sake of
completeness, to say and to repeat certain things which must be familiar
to some of our readers, while we are also forced to leave out
information which, even in its imperfect form, we should probably not
hesitate to submit to our fellow-students, but which we feel we have not
yet sufficiently mastered and matured to enable us to place it clearly
and simply before a larger public.
But the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. A lecture, by keeping a
critical audience constantly before our eyes, forces us to condense
our subject, to discriminate between what is important and what is
not, and often to deny ourselves the pleasure of displaying what may
have cost us the greatest labor, but is of little consequence to other
scholars. In lecturing we are constantly reminded of what students are
so apt to forget, that their knowledge is meant not for themselves
only, but for others, and that to know well means to be able to teach
well. I confess I can never write unless I think of somebody for whom
I write, and I should never wish for a better audience to have before
my mind than the learned, brilliant, and kind-hearted assembly by
which I was greeted in your University.
Still I must confess that I did not succeed in bringing all I wished
to say, and more particularly the evidence on which some of my
statements rested, up to the higher level of a lecture; and I have
therefore added a number of notes containing the less-organized matter
which resisted as yet that treatment which is necessary before our
studies can realize their highest purpose, that of feeding,
invigorating, and inspiriting the minds of others.
Yours affectionately,
F. MAX MUeLLER.
OXFORD, December, 1882.
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
DEDICATION,
INTRODUCTION,
LECTURE I. WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US?
" II. ON THE TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS,
" III. THE HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE,
" IV. OBJECTIONS,
" V. THE LESSONS OF THE VEDA,
" VI. VEDIC DEITIES,
" VII. VEDA AND VEDANTA,
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION.
Professor Max Mueller has been so long and widely known in the world of
letters as to render any formal introduction unnecessary. He has been
from his early youth an assiduous student of philology, justly
regarding it as an important key to history and an invaluable
auxiliary to intellectual progress. A glance at his personal career
will show the ground upon which his reputation is established.
Friedrich Maximilian Mueller, the son of Wilhelm Mueller, the Saxon
poet, was born at Dessau, December 6th, 1823. He matriculated at
Leipzig in his eighteenth year, giving his principal attention to
classical philology, and receiving his degree in 1843. He immediately
began a course of Oriental studies, chiefly Sanskrit, under the
supervision of Professor Brockhaus, and in 1844 engaged in his
translation of the "Hitopadesa." He removed from Leipzig to Berlin,
and attended the lectures of Bopp, Ruecker, and Schelling. The next
year he went to Paris to listen to Eugene Burnouf at the College de
France. He now began the collecting of material for his great quarto
edition of the "Rig-Veda Sanhita" and the "Commentary of
Saganadranja." He visited England for this purpose to examine the
manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and at the Indian House. At the
recommendation of H. H. Wilson, the Orientalist, he was commissioned
by the East India Company to publish his edition in England at their
expense. The first volume appeared in 1849, and five others followed
during the next few years.
In 1850 he delivered a course of "Lectures on Comparative Philology"
at Oxford, and the next year was made member of Christ Church,
curator, etc., and appointed Taylorian Professor of Modern European
Languages and Literature. He received also numerous other marks of
distinction from universities, and was made one of the eight foreign
members of the Institute of France. The Volney prize was awarded him
by the French Academy for his "Essay on the Comparative Philology of
Indo-European Languages and its Bearing on the Early Civilization of
Mankind."
His writings have been numerous. Besides editing the translations of
the "Sacred Books of the Principal Religions," he has published a
"Handbook for the Study of Sanskrit," a "Sanskrit-English Dictionary
and Grammar," "Lectures upon the Science of Language," "An
Introduction to the Science of Religion," "Essays on Mythology,"
"Chips from a German Workshop," etc. He seems to have no intermission,
but penetrates where others would not have ventured, or have faltered
from utter weariness. In the field of philology he has few peers,
while in early Sanskrit learning he has virtually taken the part of an
innovator. While reverently following after Sir William Jones,
Colebrooke, Windischmann, Bopp, and others of equal distinction, he
sets aside the received views in regard to chronology and historical
occurrences. The era of Vikramaditya and the Golden Age of Sanskrit
literature, bearing a date almost simultaneous with the Augustan
period at the West, are postponed by him to a later century. It may be
that he has overlooked some canon of interpretation that would have
modified his results. Those, however, who hesitate to accept his
conclusions freely acknowledge his scholarly enthusiasm, persistent
energy, and great erudition.
Sanskrit in his judgment constitutes an essential element of a liberal
education. While heartily admiring the employment of some of the best
talent and noblest genius of our age in the study of development in
the outward world, from the first growth of the earth and the
beginning of organic life to the highest stages, he pleads earnestly
that there is an inward and intellectual world also to be studied in
its historical development in strict analogy with the other, leading
up to the beginning of rational thought in its steady progress from
the lowest to the highest stages. In that study of the history of the
human mind, in that study of ourselves, our true selves, India
occupies a place which is second to no other country. Whatever sphere
of the human mind may be selected for special study, whether language,
religion, mythology, or philosophy, whether laws, customs, primitive
art or primitive science, we must go to India, because some of the
most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are
treasured up there, and there only. He inveighs most eloquently
against the narrowing of our horizon to the history of Greeks and
Romans, Saxons and Celts, with a dim background of Palestine, Egypt,
and Babylon, leaving out of sight our nearest intellectual relatives,
the Aryans of India, the framers of that most wonderful language the
Sanskrit, the fellow-workers in the construction of our fundamental
concepts, the fathers of the most natural of natural religions, the
makers of the most transparent of mythologies, the inventors of the
most subtle philosophy, and the givers of the most elaborate laws. It
is the purpose of historical study to enable each generation to
profit from the experience of those who came before, and advance
toward higher aims, without being obliged to start anew from the same
point as its ancestors after the manner of every race of brutes. He
who knows little of those who preceded is very likely to care little
for those coming after. "Life would be to him a chain of sand, while
it ought to be a kind of electric chain that makes our hearts tremble
and vibrate with the most ancient thoughts of the Past, as well as
with the most distant hopes of the Future."
In no just sense is this an exaggeration. Deep as science and research
have explored, extensive as is the field which genius and art have
occupied, they have an Herculean labor yet to perform before India
will have yielded up all her opulence of learning. The literature of
the world in all ages has been richly furnished, if not actually
inspired, from that fountain. The Wisdom of the Ancients, so much
lauded in the earlier writings of Hebrews, Greeks, and Phoenicians,
was abundantly represented in the lore of these Wise Men of the East.
The first Ionian sages lighted the torch of philosophy at the altar of
Zoroaster. The conquest of Asia Minor by the Persians brought Thales,
Anaximenes, and Herakleitos into contact with the Eranian dogmas. The
leaven thus imparted had a potent influence upon the entire mass of
Grecian thought. We find it easy to trace its action upon opinions in
later periods and among the newer nations. Kant, Hegel, Stewart, and
Hamilton, as well as Plato, Zeno, and Aristotle, had their prototypes
in the world and antiquity beyond. Even the first Zarathustra was an
exponent and not the originator of the Religion and Science of Light.
We are thus carried by this route back to the ancient Aryan Home for
the sources from which so many golden streams have issued. In the
Sanskrit books and mantras we must look for the treasures that make
human souls rich. Perhaps we have been too much disposed to regard
that former world as a wonderland, a repertory of folk-lore, or a
theatre of gross and revolting superstition. We are now required by
candor and justice to revise such notions. These primeval peoples, in
their way and in a language akin to ours, adored the Father in heaven,
and contemplated the future of the soul with a sure and certain hope.
Nor did they, while observing the myriads of races intervening between
man and the monad, regard the world beyond as waste and void.
Intelligences of every grade were believed to people the region
between mortals and the Infinite. The angels and archangels, and the
spirits of the just made perfect--_devas_ and _pitris_ they called
them--ministered about the throne of the Supreme Being, and abode in
the various spheres of universal space. Much of the difference between
our thought and theirs consists in the names and not in the substance
of our beliefs.
We may thus be prepared to receive what India can teach us. In her
classic dialect, the Sanskrit, we may read with what success the
children of the men who journeyed from the ancient Aryan Home into the
Punjab and Aryavartta have ventured "to look inward upon themselves,
upward to something not themselves, and to see whether they could not
understand a little of the true purport of that mystery which we call
life upon earth." It was perfectly natural, as well as perfectly
right, that as the beholder caught a glance of the Infinite Beyond,
the image impressed itself upon his sensorium, as would be the case
from looking at the sun, and he would as a result perceive that
Infinite in all that he looked upon. Thus to the Sanskrit-speaking
Aryan, as to the enlightened mind of to-day, not to see it was utter
blindness. What we call science, law, morality, religion, was in his
view pervaded alike throughout by this concept of Divine presence, or
else it would have been less than a dream that had not come to the
awaking. He was a follower of the light, not from the senses or the
logical understanding, but from the eternal world. Let us not dwell on
any darker shade of the picture. Clouds are dark to those who are
beneath them; but on the upper side, where the sun shines, they glow
with golden splendor. Let us be willing to contemplate India
fraternally, and upon that side where the radiance of the Divine sheds
a refulgent illumination.
ALEXANDER WILDER.
NEWARK, N. J., May 14th, 1883.
* * * * *
INDIA.
LECTURE I.
WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US?
When I received from the Board of Historical Studies at Cambridge the
invitation to deliver a course of lectures, specially intended for the
candidates for the Indian Civil Service, I hesitated for some time,
feeling extremely doubtful whether in a few public discourses I could
say anything that would be of real use to them in passing their
examinations. To enable young men to pass their examinations seems now
to have become the chief, if not the only object of the universities;
and to no class of students is it of greater importance to pass their
examinations, and to pass them well, than to the candidates for the
Indian Civil Service.
But although I was afraid that attendance on a few public lectures,
such as I could give, would hardly benefit a candidate who was not
already fully prepared to pass through the fiery ordeal of the three
London examinations, I could not on the other hand shut my eyes
completely to the fact that, after all, universities were not meant
entirely, or even chiefly, as stepping-stones to an examination, but
that there is something else which universities can teach and ought to
teach--nay, which I feel quite sure they were originally meant to
teach--something that may not have a marketable value before a Board
of Examiners, but which has a permanent value for the whole of our
life, and that is a real interest in our work, and, more than that, a
love of our work, and, more than that, a true joy and happiness in our
work. If a university can teach that, if it can engraft that one small
living germ in the minds of the young men who come here to study and
to prepare themselves for the battle of life, and, for what is still
more difficult to encounter, the daily dull drudgery of life, then, I
feel convinced, a university has done more, and conferred a more
lasting benefit on its pupils than by helping them to pass the most
difficult examinations, and to take the highest place among Senior
Wranglers or First-Class men.
Unfortunately, that kind of work which is now required for passing one
examination after another, that process of cramming and crowding which
has of late been brought to the highest pitch of perfection, has often
the very opposite effect, and instead of exciting an appetite for
work, it is apt to produce an indifference, if not a kind of
intellectual nausea, that may last for life.
And nowhere is this so much to be feared as in the case of candidates
for the Indian Civil Service. After they have passed their first
examination for admission to the Indian Civil Service, and given proof
that they have received the benefits of a liberal education, and
acquired that general information in classics, history, and
mathematics, which is provided at our public schools, and forms no
doubt the best and surest foundation for all more special and
professional studies in later life, they suddenly find themselves torn
away from their old studies and their old friends, and compelled to
take up new subjects which to many of them seem strange, outlandish,
if not repulsive. Strange alphabets, strange languages, strange names,
strange literatures and laws have to be faced, "to be got up" as it is
called, not from choice, but from dire necessity. The whole course of
study during two years is determined for them, the subjects fixed, the
books prescribed, the examinations regulated, and there is no time to
look either right or left, if a candidate wishes to make sure of
taking each successive fence in good style, and without an accident.
I know quite well that this cannot be helped. I am not speaking
against the system of examinations in general, if only they are
intelligently conducted; nay, as an old examiner myself, I feel bound
to say that the amount of knowledge produced ready-made at these
examinations is to my mind perfectly astounding. But while the answers
are there on paper, strings of dates, lists of royal names and
battles, irregular verbs, statistical figures and whatever else you
like, how seldom do we find that the heart of the candidates is in the
work which they have to do. The results produced are certainly most
ample and voluminous, but they rarely contain a spark of original
thought, or even a clever mistake. It is work done from necessity, or,
let us be just, from a sense of duty, but it is seldom, or hardly
ever, a labor of love.
Now why should that be? Why should a study of Greek or Latin--of the
poetry, the philosophy, the laws and the art of Greece and Italy--seem
congenial to us, why should it excite even a certain enthusiasm, and
command general respect, while a study of Sanskrit, and of the ancient
poetry, the philosophy, the laws, and the art of India is looked upon,
in the best case, as curious, but is considered by most people as
useless, tedious, if not absurd?
And, strange to say, this feeling exists in England more than in any
other country. In France, Germany, and Italy, even in Denmark, Sweden,
and Russia, there is a vague charm connected with the name of India.
One of the most beautiful poems in the German language is the
_Weisheit der Brahmanen_, the "Wisdom of the Brahmans," by Rueckert, to
my mind more rich in thought and more perfect in form than even
Goethe's _West-oestlicher Divan_. A scholar who studies Sanskrit in
Germany is supposed to be initiated in the deep and dark mysteries of
ancient wisdom, and a man who has travelled in India, even if he has
only discovered Calcutta, or Bombay, or Madras, is listened to like
another Marco Polo. In England a student of Sanskrit is generally
considered a bore, and an old Indian civil servant, if he begins to
describe the marvels of Elephanta or the Towers of Silence, runs the
risk of producing a count-out.
There are indeed a few Oriental scholars whose works are read, and who
have acquired a certain celebrity in England, because they were really
men of uncommon genius, and would have ranked among the great glories
of the country, but for the misfortune that their energies were
devoted to Indian literature--I mean Sir William Jones, "one of the
most enlightened of the sons of men," as Dr. Johnson called him, and
Thomas Colebrooke. But the names of others who have done good work in
their day also, men such as Ballantyne, Buchanan, Carey, Crawfurd,
Davis, Elliot, Ellis, Houghton, Leyden, Mackenzie, Marsden, Muir,
Prinsep, Rennell, Turnour, Upham, Wallich, Warren, Wilkins, Wilson,
and many others, are hardly known beyond the small circle of Oriental
scholars; and their works are looked for in vain in libraries which
profess to represent with a certain completeness the principal
branches of scholarship and science in England.
How many times, when I advised young men, candidates for the Indian
Civil Service, to devote themselves before all things to a study of
Sanskrit, have I been told, "What is the use of our studying Sanskrit?
There are translations of _S_akuntala, Manu, and the Hitopade_s_a, and
what else is there in that literature that is worth reading? Kalidasa
may be very pretty, and the Laws of Manu are very curious, and the
fables of the Hitopade_s_a are very quaint; but you would not compare
Sanskrit literature with Greek, or recommend us to waste our time in
copying and editing Sanskrit texts which either teach us nothing that
we do not know already, or teach us something which we do not care to
know?"
This seems to me a most unhappy misconception, and it will be the
chief object of my lectures to try to remove it, or at all events to
modify it, as much as possible. I shall not attempt to prove that
Sanskrit literature is as good as Greek literature. Why should we
always compare? A study of Greek literature has its own purpose, and a
study of Sanskrit literature has its own purpose; but what I feel
convinced of, and hope to convince you of, is that Sanskrit
literature, if studied only in a right spirit, is full of human
interests, full of lessons which even Greek could never teach us, a
subject worthy to occupy the leisure, and more than the leisure, of
every Indian civil servant; and certainly the best means of making any
young man who has to spend five-and-twenty years of his life in India,
feel at home among the Indians, as a fellow-worker among
fellow-workers, and not as an alien among aliens. There will be
abundance of useful and most interesting work for him to do, if only
he cares to do it, work such as he would look for in vain, whether in
Italy or in Greece, or even among the pyramids of Egypt or the palaces
of Babylon.
You will now understand why I have chosen as the title of my lectures,
"What can India teach us?" True, there are many things which India has
to learn from us; but there are other things, and, in one sense, very
important things, which we too may learn from India.
If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most
richly endowed with all the wealth, power, and beauty that nature can
bestow--in some parts a very paradise on earth--I should point to
India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most full
developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the
greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them
which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato
and Kant--I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from
what literature we, here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost
exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic
race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in
order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more
universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life only,
but a transfigured and eternal life--again I should point to India.
I know you will be surprised to hear me say this. I know that more
particularly those who have spent many years of active life in
Calcutta, or Bombay, or Madras, will be horror-struck at the idea that
the humanity they meet with there, whether in the bazaars or in the
courts of justice, or in so-called native society, should be able to
teach _us_ any lessons.
Let me therefore explain at once to my friends who may have lived in
India for years, as civil servants, or officers, or missionaries, or
merchants, and who ought to know a great deal more of that country
than one who has never set foot on the soil of Aryavarta, that we are
speaking of two very different Indias. I am thinking chiefly of India
such as it was a thousand, two thousand, it may be three thousand
years ago; they think of the India of to-day. And again, when thinking
of the India of to-day, they remember chiefly the India of Calcutta,
Bombay, or Madras, the India of the towns. I look to the India of the
village communities, the true India of the Indians.
What I wish to show to you, I mean more especially the candidates for
the Indian Civil Service, is that this India of a thousand, or two
thousand, or three thousand years ago, ay the India of to-day also, if
only you know where to look for it, is full of problems, the solution
of which concerns all of us, even us in this Europe of the nineteenth
century.
If you have acquired any special tastes here in England, you will find
plenty to satisfy them in India; and whoever has learned to take an
interest in any of the great problems that occupy the best thinkers
and workers at home, need certainly not be afraid of India proving to
him an intellectual exile.
If you care for geology, there is work for you from the Himalayas to
Ceylon.
If you are fond of botany, there is a flora rich enough for many
Hookers.
If you are a zoologist, think of Haeckel, who is just now rushing
through Indian forests and dredging in Indian seas, and to whom his
stay in India is like the realization of the brightest dream of his
life.
If you are interested in ethnology, why India is like a living
ethnological museum.
If you are fond of archaeology, if you have ever assisted at the
opening of a barrow in England, and know the delight of finding a
fibula, or a knife, or a flint in a heap of rubbish, read only General
Cunningham's "Annual Reports of the Archaeological Survey of India,"
and you will be impatient for the time when you can take your spade
and bring to light the ancient Viharas or colleges built by the
Buddhist monarchs of India.
If ever you amused yourselves with collecting coins, why the soil of
India teems with coins, Persian, Carian, Thracian, Parthian, Greek,
Macedonian, Scythian, Roman,[1] and Mohammedan. When Warren Hastings
was Governor-General, an earthen pot was found on the bank of a river
in the province of Benares, containing one hundred and seventy-two
gold darics.[2] Warren Hastings considered himself as making the most
munificent present to his masters that he might ever have it in his
power to send them, by presenting those ancient coins to the Court of
Directors. The story is that they were sent to the melting-pot. At all
events they had disappeared when Warren Hastings returned to England.
It rests with you to prevent the revival of such vandalism.
In one of the last numbers of the _Asiatic Journal of Bengal_ you may
read of the discovery of a treasure as rich in gold almost as some of
the tombs opened by Dr. Schliemann at Mykenae, nay, I should add,
perhaps, not quite unconnected with some of the treasures found at
Mykenae; yet hardly any one has taken notice of it in England![3]
The study of Mythology has assumed an entirely new character, chiefly
owing to the light that has been thrown on it by the ancient Vedic
Mythology of India. But though the foundation of a true Science of
Mythology has been laid, all the detail has still to be worked out,
and could be worked out nowhere better than in India.
Even the study of fables owes its new life to India, from whence the
various migrations of fables have been traced at various times and
through various channels from East to West.[4] Buddhism is now known
to have been the principal source of our legends and parables. But
here, too, many problems still wait for their solution. Think, for
instance, of the allusion to the fable of the donkey in the lion's
skin, which occurs in Plato's Cratylus.[5] Was that borrowed from the
East? Or take the fable of the weasel changed by Aphrodite into a
woman who, when she saw a mouse, could not refrain from making a
spring at it. This, too, is very like a Sanskrit fable; but how then
could it have been brought into Greece early enough to appear in one
of the comedies of Strattis, about 400 B.C.?[6] Here, too, there is
still plenty of work to do.
We may go back even farther into antiquity, and still find strange
coincidences between the legends of India and the legends of the West,
without as yet being able to say how they travelled, whether from East
to West, or from West to East. That at the time of Solomon there was a
channel of communication open between India and Syria and Palestine is
established beyond doubt, I believe, by certain Sanskrit words which
occur in the Bible as names of articles of export from Ophir, articles
such as ivory, apes, peacocks, and sandalwood, which, taken together,
could not have been exported from any country but India.[7] Nor is
there any reason to suppose that the commercial intercourse between
India, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean was ever
completely interrupted, even at the time when the Book of Kings is
supposed to have been written.
Now you remember the judgment of Solomon, which has always been
admired as a proof of great legal wisdom among the Jews.[8] I must
confess that, not having a legal mind, I never could suppress a
certain shudder[9] when reading the decision of Solomon: "Divide the
living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other."
Let me now tell you the same story as it is told by the Buddhists,
whose sacred Canon is full of such legends and parables. In the
Kanjur, which is the Tibetan translation of the Buddhist Tripi_t_aka,
we likewise read of two women who claimed each to be the mother of the
same child. The king, after listening to their quarrels for a long
time, gave it up as hopeless to settle who was the real mother. Upon
this Vi_s_akha stepped forward and said: "What is the use of examining
and cross-examining these women? Let them take the boy and settle it
among themselves." Thereupon both women fell on the child, and when
the fight became violent the child was hurt and began to cry. Then one
of them let him go, because she could not bear to hear the child cry.
That settled the question. The king gave the child to the true mother,
and had the other beaten with a rod.
This seems to me, if not the more primitive, yet the more natural form
of the story--showing a deeper knowledge of human nature and more
wisdom than even the wisdom of Solomon.[10]
Many of you may have studied not only languages, but also the Science
of Language, and is there any country in which some of the most
important problems of that science, say only the growth and decay of
dialects, or the possible mixture of languages, with regard not only
to words, but to grammatical elements also, can be studied to greater
advantage than among the Aryan, the Dravidian, and the Mu_n_da
inhabitants of India, when brought in contact with their various
invaders and conquerors, the Greeks, the Yue-tchi, the Arabs, the
Persians, the Moguls, and lastly the English?
Again, if you are a student of Jurisprudence, there is a history of
law to be explored in India, very different from what is known of the
history of law in Greece, in Rome, and in Germany, yet both by its
contrasts and by its similarities full of suggestions to the student
of Comparative Jurisprudence. New materials are being discovered every
year, as, for instance, the so-called Dharma or Samaya_k_arika Sutras,
which have supplied the materials for the later metrical law-books,
such as the famous Laws of Manu. What was once called "The Code of
Laws of Manu," and confidently referred to 1200, or at least 500 B.C.,
is now hesitatingly referred to perhaps the fourth century A.D., and
called neither a Code, nor a Code of Laws, least of all, the Code of
Laws of Manu.
If you have learned to appreciate the value of recent researches into
the antecedents of all law, namely the foundation and growth of the
simplest political communities--and nowhere could you have had better
opportunities for it than here at Cambridge--you will find a field of
observation opened before you in the still-existing village estates in
India that will amply repay careful research.
And take that which, after all, whether we confess or deny it, we care
for more in this life than for anything else--nay, which is often far
more cared for by those who deny than by those who confess--take that
which supports, pervades, and directs all our acts and thoughts and
hopes--without which there can be neither village-community nor empire,
neither custom nor law, neither right nor wrong--take that which, next
to language, has most firmly fixed the specific and permanent barrier
between man and beast--which alone has made life possible and bearable,
and which, as it is the deepest, though often-hidden spring of
individual life, is also the foundation of all national life--the
history of all histories, and yet the mystery of all mysteries--take
religion, and where can you study its true origin,[11] its natural
growth, and its inevitable decay better than in India, the home of
Brahmanism, the birthplace of Buddhism, and the refuge of
Zoroastrianism, even now the mother of new superstitions--and why not,
in the future, the regenerate child of the purest faith, if only
purified from the dust of nineteen centuries?
You will find yourselves everywhere in India between an immense past
and an immense future, with opportunities such as the old world could
but seldom, if ever, offer you. Take any of the burning questions of
the day--popular education, higher education, parliamentary
representation, codification of laws, finance, emigration, poor-law;
and whether you have anything to teach and to try, or anything to
observe and to learn, India will supply you with a laboratory such as
exists nowhere else. That very Sanskrit, the study of which may at
first seem so tedious to you and so useless, if only you will carry it
on, as you may carry it on here at Cambridge better than anywhere
else, will open before you large layers of literature, as yet almost
unknown and unexplored, and allow you an insight into strata of
thought deeper than any you have known before, and rich in lessons
that appeal to the deepest sympathies of the human heart.
Depend upon it, if only you can make leisure, you will find plenty of
work in India for your leisure hours.
India is not, as you may imagine, a distant, strange, or, at the very
utmost, a curious country. India for the future belongs to Europe, it
has its place in the Indo-European world, it has its place in our own
history, and in what is the very life of history, the history of the
human mind.
You know how some of the best talent and the noblest genius of our age
has been devoted to the study of the development of the outward or
material world, the growth of the earth, the first appearance of
living cells, their combination and differentiation, leading up to the
beginning of organic life, and its steady progress from the lowest to
the highest stages. Is there not an inward and intellectual world also
which has to be studied in its historical development, from the first
appearance of predicative and demonstrative roots, their combination
and differentiation, leading up to the beginning of rational thought
in its steady progress from the lowest to the highest stages? And in
that study of the history of the human mind, in that study of
ourselves, of our true selves, India occupies a place second to no
other country. Whatever sphere of the human mind you may select for
your special study, whether it be language, or religion, or mythology,
or philosophy, whether it be laws or customs, primitive art or
primitive science, everywhere, you have to go to India, whether you
like it or not, because some of the most valuable and most instructive
materials in the history of man are treasured up in India, and in
India only.
And while thus trying to explain to those whose lot will soon be cast
in India the true position which that wonderful country holds or ought
to hold in universal history, I may perhaps be able at the same time
to appeal to the sympathies of other members of this University, by
showing them how imperfect our knowledge of universal history, our
insight into the development of the human intellect, must always
remain, if we narrow our horizon to the history of Greeks and Romans,
Saxons and Celts, with a dim background of Palestine, Egypt, and
Babylon,[12] and leave out of sight our nearest intellectual
relatives, the Aryans of India, the framers of the most wonderful
language, the Sanskrit, the fellow-workers in the construction of our
fundamental concepts, the fathers of the most natural of natural
religions, the makers of the most transparent of mythologies, the
inventors of the most subtle philosophy, and the givers of the most
elaborate laws.
There are many things which we think essential in a liberal education,
whole chapters of history which we teach in our schools and
universities, that cannot for one moment compare with the chapter
relating to India, if only properly understood and freely interpreted.
In our time, when the study of history threatens to become almost an
impossibility--such is the mass of details which historians collect in
archives and pour out before us in monographs--it seems to me more
than ever the duty of the true historian to find out the real
proportion of things, to arrange his materials according to the
strictest rules of artistic perspective, and to keep completely out of
sight all that may be rightly ignored by us in our own passage across
the historical stage of the world. It is this power of discovering
what is really important that distinguishes the true historian from
the mere chronicler, in whose eyes everything is important,
particularly if he has discovered it himself. I think it was Frederick
the Great who, when sighing for a true historian of his reign,
complained bitterly that those who wrote the history of Prussia never
forgot to describe the buttons on his uniform. And it is probably of
such historical works that Carlyle was thinking when he said that he
had waded through them all, but that nothing should ever induce him to
hand even their names and titles down to posterity. And yet how much
is there even in Carlyle's histories that might safely be consigned to
oblivion!
Why do we want to know history? Why does history form a recognized
part of our liberal education? Simply because all of us, and every one
of us, ought to know how we have come to be what we are, so that each
generation need not start again from the same point and toil over the
same ground, but, profiting by the experience of those who came
before, may advance toward higher points and nobler aims. As a child
when growing up might ask his father or grandfather _who_ had built
the house they lived in, or who had cleared the field that yielded
them their food, we ask the historian whence we came, and how we came
into possession of what we call our own. History may tell us afterward
many useful and amusing things, gossip, such as a child might like to
hear from his mother or grandmother; but what history has to teach us
before all and everything, is our own antecedents, our own ancestors,
our own descent.
Now our principal intellectual ancestors are, no doubt, the _Jews_,
the _Greeks_, the _Romans_, and the _Saxons_, and we, here in Europe,
should not call a man educated or enlightened who was ignorant of the
debt which he owes to his intellectual ancestors in Palestine, Greece,
Rome, and Germany. The whole past history of the world would be
darkness to him, and not knowing what those who came before him had
done for him, he would probably care little to do anything for those
who are to come after him. Life would be to him a chain of sand, while
it ought to be a kind of electric chain that makes our hearts tremble
and vibrate with the most ancient thoughts of the past, as well as
with the most distant hopes of the future.
Let us begin with our religion. No one can understand even the
historical possibility of the Christian religion without knowing
something of the Jewish race, which must be studied chiefly in the
pages of the Old Testament. And in order to appreciate the true
relation of the Jews to the rest of the ancient world, and to
understand what ideas were peculiarly their own, and what ideas they
shared in common with the other members of the Semitic stock, or what
moral and religious impulses they received from their historical
contact with other nations of antiquity, it is absolutely necessary
that we should pay some attention to the history of Babylon, Nineveh,
Phoenicia, and Persia. These may seem distant countries and
forgotten people, and many might feel inclined to say, "Let the dead
bury their dead; what are those mummies to us?" Still, such is the
marvellous continuity of history, that I could easily show you many
things which we, even we who are here assembled, owe to Babylon, to
Nineveh, to Egypt, Phoenicia, and Persia.
Every one who carries a watch owes to the Babylonians the division of
the hour into sixty minutes. It may be a very bad division, yet such
as it is, it has come to us from the Greeks and Romans, and it came to
them from Babylon. The sexagesimal division is peculiarly Babylonian.
Hipparchos, 150 B.C., adopted it from Babylon, Ptolemy, 150 A.D., gave
it wider currency, and the French, when they decimated everything
else, respected the dial-plates of our watches, and left them with
their sixty Babylonian minutes.
Every one who writes a letter owes his alphabet to the Romans and
Greeks; the Greeks owed their alphabet to the Phoenicians, and the
Phoenicians learned it in Egypt. It may be a very imperfect
alphabet--as all the students of phonetics will tell you--yet, such as
it is and has been, we owe it to the old Phoenicians and Egyptians,
and in every letter we trace, there lies imbedded the mummy of an
ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic.
What do we owe to the Persians? It does not seem to be much, for they
were not a very inventive race, and what they knew they had chiefly
learned from their neighbors, the Babylonians and Assyrians. Still,
we owe them something. First of all, we owe them a large debt of
gratitude for having allowed themselves to be beaten by the Greeks;
for think what the world would have been if the Persians had beaten
the Greeks at Marathon, and had enslaved--that means, annihilated--the
genius of ancient Greece. However, this may be called rather an
involuntary contribution to the progress of humanity, and I mention it
only in order to show how narrowly, not only Greeks and Romans, but
Saxons and Anglo-Saxons too, escaped becoming Parsis or
Fire-worshippers.
But I can mention at least one voluntary gift which came to us from
Persia, and that is the relation of silver to gold in our bi-metallic
currency. That relation was, no doubt, first determined in Babylonia,
but it assumed its practical and historical importance in the Persian
empire, and spread from there to the Greek colonies in Asia, and
thence to Europe, where it has maintained itself with slight variation
to the present day.
A _talent_[13] was divided into sixty _minae_, a mina into sixty
_shekels_. Here we have again the Babylonian sexagesimal system, a
system which owes its origin and popularity, I believe, to the fact
that _sixty_ has the greatest number of divisors. Shekel was
translated into Greek by _Stater_, and an Athenian gold stater, like
the Persian gold stater, down to the times of Croesus, Darius, and
Alexander, was the sixtieth part of a mina of gold, not very far
therefore from our sovereign. The proportion of silver to gold was
fixed as thirteen or thirteen and a third to one; and if the weight of
a silver shekel was made as thirteen to ten, such a coin would
correspond very nearly to our florin.[14] Half a silver shekel was a
_drachma_, and this was therefore the true ancestor of our shilling.
Again you may say that any attempt at fixing the relative value of
silver and gold is, and always has been, a great mistake. Still it
shows how closely the world is held together, and how, for good or for
evil, we are what we are, not so much by ourselves as by the toil and
moil of those who came before us, our true intellectual ancestors,
whatever the blood may have been composed of that ran through their
veins, or the bones which formed the rafters of their skulls.
And if it is true, with regard to religion, that no one could
understand it and appreciate its full purport without knowing its
origin and growth, that is, without knowing something of what the
cuneiform inscriptions of Mesopotamia, the hieroglyphic and hieratic
texts of Egypt, and the historical monuments of Phoenicia and Persia
can alone reveal to us, it is equally true with regard to all the
other elements that constitute the whole of our intellectual life. If
we are Jewish or Semitic in our religion, we are _Greek_ in our
philosophy, _Roman_ in our politics, and _Saxon_ in our morality; and
it follows that a knowledge of the history of the Greeks, Romans, and
Saxons, or of the flow of civilization from Greece to Italy, and
through Germany to these isles, forms an essential element in what is
called a liberal, that is, an historical and rational education.
But then it might be said, Let this be enough. Let us know by all
means all that deserves to be known about our real spiritual ancestors
in the great historical kingdoms of the world; let us be grateful for
all we have inherited from Egyptians, Babylonians, Phoenicians,
Jews, Greeks, Romans, and Saxons. But why bring in India? Why add a
new burden to what every man has to bear already, before he can call
himself fairly educated? What have we inherited from the dark dwellers
on the Indus and the Ganges, that we should have to add their royal
names and dates and deeds to the archives of our already overburdened
memory?
There is some justice in this complaint. The ancient inhabitants of
India are not our intellectual ancestors in the same direct way as
Jews, Greeks, Romans, and Saxons are; but they represent,
nevertheless, a collateral branch of that family to which we belong by
language, that is, by thought, and their historical records extend in
some respects so far beyond all other records and have been preserved
to us in such perfect and such legible documents, that we can learn
from them lessons which we can learn nowhere else, and supply missing
links in our intellectual ancestry far more important than that
missing link (which we can well afford to miss), the link between Ape
and Man.
I am not speaking as yet of the literature of India as it is, but of
something far more ancient, the language of India, or Sanskrit. No one
supposes any longer that Sanskrit was the common source of Greek,
Latin, and Anglo-Saxon. This used to be said, but it has long been
shown that Sanskrit is only a collateral branch of the same stem from
which spring Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon; and not only these, but
all the Teutonic, all the Celtic, all the Slavonic languages, nay, the
languages of Persia and Armenia also.
What, then, is it that gives to Sanskrit its claim on our attention,
and its supreme importance in the eyes of the historian?
First of all, its antiquity--for we know Sanskrit at an earlier period
than Greek. But what is far more important than its merely
chronological antiquity is the antique state of preservation in which
that Aryan language has been handed down to us. The world had known
Latin and Greek for centuries, and it was felt, no doubt, that there
was some kind of similarity between the two. But how was that
similarity to be explained? Sometimes Latin was supposed to give the
key to the formation of a Greek word, sometimes Greek seemed to betray
the secret of the origin of a Latin word. Afterward, when the ancient
Teutonic languages, such as Gothic and Anglo-Saxon, and the ancient
Celtic and Slavonic languages too, came to be studied, no one could
help seeing a certain family likeness among them all. But how such a
likeness between these languages came to be, and how, what is far more
difficult to explain, such striking differences too between these
languages came to be, remained a mystery, and gave rise to the most
gratuitous theories, most of them, as you know, devoid of all
scientific foundation. As soon, however, as Sanskrit stepped into the
midst of these languages, there came light and warmth and mutual
recognition. They all ceased to be strangers, and each fell of its own
accord into its right place. Sanskrit was the eldest sister of them
all, and could tell of many things which the other members of the
family had quite forgotten. Still, the other languages too had each
their own tale to tell; and it is out of all their tales together that
a chapter in the human mind has been put together which, in some
respects, is more important to us than any of the other chapters, the
Jewish, the Greek, the Latin, or the Saxon.
The process by which that ancient chapter of history was recovered is
very simple. Take the words which occur in the same form and with the
same meaning in all the seven branches of the Aryan family, and you
have in them the most genuine and trustworthy records in which to read
the thoughts of our true ancestors, before they had become Hindus, or
Persians, or Greeks, or Romans, or Celts, or Teutons, or Slaves. Of
course, some of these ancient charters may have been lost in one or
other of these seven branches of the Aryan family, but even then, if
they are found in six, or five, or four, or three, or even two only of
its original branches, the probability remains, unless we can prove a
later historical contact between these languages, that these words
existed before the great _Aryan Separation_. If we find _agni_,
meaning fire, in Sanskrit, and _ignis_, meaning fire, in Latin, we may
safely conclude that _fire_ was known to the undivided Aryans, even if
no trace of the same name of fire occurred anywhere else. And why?
Because there is no indication that Latin remained longer united with
Sanskrit than any of the other Aryan languages, or that Latin could
have borrowed such a word from Sanskrit, after these two languages had
once become distinct. We have, however, the Lithuanian _ugnis_, and
the Scottish _ingle_, to show that the Slavonic and possibly the
Teutonic languages also, knew the same word for fire, though they
replaced it in time by other words. Words, like all other things, will
die, and why they should live on in one soil and wither away and
perish in another, is not always easy to say. What has become of
_ignis_, for instance, in all the Romance languages? It has withered
away and perished, probably because, after losing its final
unaccentuated syllable, it became awkward to pronounce; and another
word, _focus_, which in Latin meant fireplace, hearth, altar, has
taken its place.
Suppose we wanted to know whether the ancient Aryans before their
separation knew the mouse: we should only have to consult the principal
Aryan dictionaries, and we should find in Sanskrit _mush_, in Greek
[Greek: mus], in Latin _mus_, in Old Slavonic myse, in Old High German
_mus_, enabling us to say that, at a time so distant from us that we
feel inclined to measure it by Indian rather than by our own chronology,
the mouse was known, that is, was named, was conceived and recognized as
a species of its own, not to be confounded with any other vermin.
And if we were to ask whether the enemy of the mouse, the _cat_, was
known at the same distant time, we should feel justified in saying
decidedly, No. The cat is called in Sanskrit mar_g_ara and vi_d_ala.
In Greek and Latin the words usually given as names of the cat,
[Greek: _galee_] and [Greek: _ailouros_], _mustella_ and _feles_,
did not originally signify the tame cat, but the weasel or marten. The
name for the real cat in Greek was [Greek: _katta_], in Latin
_catus_, and these words have supplied the names for cat in all the
Teutonic, Slavonic, and Celtic languages. The animal itself, so far as
we know at present, came to Europe from Egypt, where it had been
worshipped for centuries and tamed; and as this arrival probably dates
from the fourth century A.D., we can well understand that no common
name for it could have existed when the Aryan nations separated.[15]
In this way a more or less complete picture of the state of
civilization, previous to the Aryan Separation, can be and has been
reconstructed, like a mosaic put together with the fragments of
ancient stones; and I doubt whether, in tracing the history of the
human mind, we shall ever reach to a lower stratum than that which is
revealed to us by the converging rays of the different Aryan
languages.
Nor is that all; for even that Proto-Aryan language, as it has been
reconstructed from the ruins scattered about in India, Greece, Italy,
and Germany, is clearly the result of a long, long process of thought.
One shrinks from chronological limitations when looking into such
distant periods of life. But if we find Sanskrit as a perfect literary
language, totally different from Greek and Latin, 1500 B.C., where can
those streams of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin meet, as we trace them
back to their common source? And then, when we have followed these
mighty national streams back to their common meeting-point, even then
that common language looks like a rock washed down and smoothed for
ages by the ebb and flow of thought. We find in that language such a
compound, for instance, as _asmi_, I am, Greek [Greek: esmi].
What would other languages give for such a pure concept as _I am_?
They may say, _I stand_, or _I live_, or _I grow_, or _I turn_, but it
is given to few languages only to be able to say _I am_. To us nothing
seems more natural than the auxiliary verb _I am_; but, in reality, no
work of art has required greater efforts than this little word _I am_.
And all those efforts lie beneath the level of the common Proto-Aryan
speech. Many different ways were open, were tried, too, in order to
arrive at such a compound as _asmi_, and such a concept as _I am_. But
all were given up, and this one alone remained, and was preserved
forever in all the languages and all the dialects of the Aryan family.
In _as-mi_, _as_ is the root, and in the compound _as-mi_, the
predicative root _as_, to be, is predicated of _mi_, I. But no
language could ever produce at once so empty, or, if you like, so
general a root as _as_, to be. _As_ meant originally _to breathe_, and
from it we have _asu_, breath, spirit, life, also _as_ the mouth,
Latin _os_, _oris_. By constant wear and tear this root _as_, to
breathe, had first to lose all signs of its original material
character, before it could convey that purely abstract meaning of
existence, without any qualification, which has rendered to the higher
operations of thought the same service which the nought, likewise the
invention of Indian genius, has to render in arithmetic. Who will say
how long the friction lasted which changed _as_, to breathe, into
_as_, to be? And even a root _as_, to breathe, was an Aryan root, not
Semitic, not Turanian. It possessed an historical individuality--it
was the work of our forefathers, and represents a thread which unites
us in our thoughts and words with those who first thought for us, with
those who first spoke for us, and whose thoughts and words men are
still thinking and speaking, though divided from them by thousands, it
may be by hundreds of thousands of years.
This is what I call _history_ in the true sense of the word, something
really worth knowing, far more so than the scandals of courts, or the
butcheries of nations, which fill so many pages of our Manuals of
History. And all this work is only beginning, and whoever likes to
labor in these the most ancient of historical archives will find
plenty of discoveries to make--and yet people ask, What is the use of
learning Sanskrit?
We get accustomed to everything, and cease to wonder at what would
have startled our fathers and upset all their stratified notions,
like a sudden earthquake. Every child now learns at school that
English is an Aryan or Indo-European language, that it belongs to the
Teutonic branch, and that this branch, together with the Italic,
Greek, Celtic, Slavonic, Iranic, and Indic branches, all spring from
the same stock, and form together the great Aryan or Indo-European
family of speech.
But this, though it is taught now in our elementary schools, was
really, but fifty years ago, like the opening of a new horizon of the
world of the intellect, and the extension of a feeling of closest
fraternity that made us feel at home where before we had been
strangers, and changed millions of so-called barbarians into our own
kith and kin. To speak the same language constitutes a closer union
than to have drunk the same milk; and Sanskrit, the ancient language
of India, is substantially the same language as Greek, Latin, and
Anglo-Saxon. This is a lesson which we should never have learned but
from a study of Indian language and literature, and if India had
taught us nothing else, it would have taught us more than almost any
other language ever did.
It is quite amusing, though instructive also, to read what was written
by scholars and philosophers when this new light first dawned on the
world. They would not have it, they would not believe that there could
be any community of origin between the people of Athens and Rome, and
the so-called Niggers of India. The classical scholar scouted the
idea, and I myself still remember the time, when I was a student at
Leipzig, and began to study Sanskrit, with what contempt any remarks
on Sanskrit or comparative grammar were treated by my teachers, men
such as Gottfried Hermann, Haupt, Westermann, Stallbaum, and others.
No one ever was for a time so completely laughed down as Professor
Bopp, when he first published his Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit,
Zend, Greek, Latin, and Gothic. All hands were against him; and if in
comparing Greek and Latin with Sanskrit, Gothic, Celtic, Slavonic, or
Persian, he happened to have placed one single accent wrong, the
shouts of those who knew nothing but Greek and Latin, and probably
looked in their Greek dictionaries to be quite sure of their accents,
would never end. Dugald Stewart, rather than admit a relationship
between Hindus and Scots, would rather believe that the whole Sanskrit
language and the whole of Sanskrit literature--mind, a literature
extending over three thousand years and larger than the ancient
literature of either Greece or Rome--was a forgery of those wily
priests, the Brahmans. I remember too how, when I was at school at
Leipzig (and a very good school it was, with such masters as Nobbe,
Forbiger, Funkhaenel, and Palm--an old school too, which could boast
of Leibnitz among its former pupils) I remember, I say, one of our
masters (Dr. Klee) telling us one afternoon, when it was too hot to do
any serious work, that there was a language spoken in India, which was
much the same as Greek and Latin, nay, as German and Russian. At first
we thought it was a joke, but when one saw the parallel columns of
numerals, pronouns, and verbs in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin written on
the blackboard, one felt in the presence of facts, before which one
had to bow. All one's ideas of Adam and Eve, and the Paradise, and the
tower of Babel, and Shem, Ham, and Japhet, with Homer and AEneas and
Virgil too, seemed to be whirling round and round, till at last one
picked up the fragments and tried to build up a new world, and to live
with a new historical consciousness.
Here you will see why I consider a certain knowledge of India an
essential portion of a liberal or an historical education. The concept
of the European man has been changed and widely extended by our
acquaintance with India, and we know now that we are something
different from what we thought we were. Suppose the Americans, owing
to some cataclysmal events, had forgotten their English origin, and
after two or three thousand years found themselves in possession of a
language and of ideas which they could trace back historically to a
certain date, but which, at that date, seemed, as it were, fallen from
the sky, without any explanation of their origin and previous growth,
what would they say if suddenly the existence of an English language
and literature were revealed to them, such as they existed in the
eighteenth century--explaining all that seemed before almost
miraculous, and solving almost every question that could be asked?
Well, this is much the same as what the discovery of Sanskrit has done
for us. It has added a new period to our historical consciousness, and
revived the recollections of our childhood, which seemed to have
vanished forever.
Whatever else we may have been, it is quite clear now that, many
thousands of years ago, we were something that had not yet developed
into an Englishman, or a Saxon, or a Greek, or a Hindu either, yet
contained in itself the germs of all these characters. A strange
being, you may say. Yes, but for all that a very real being, and an
ancestor too of whom we must learn to be proud, far more than of any
such modern ancestors, as Normans, Saxons, Celts, and all the rest.
And this is not all yet that a study of Sanskrit and the other Aryan
languages has done for us. It has not only widened our views of man,
and taught us to embrace millions of strangers and barbarians as
members of one family, but it has imparted to the whole ancient
history of man a reality which it never possessed before.
We speak and write a great deal about antiquities, and if we can lay
hold of a Greek statue or an Egyptian Sphinx or a Babylonian Bull, our
heart rejoices, and we build museums grander than any royal palaces to
receive the treasures of the past. This is quite right. But are you
aware that every one of us possesses what may be called the richest
and most wonderful Museum of Antiquities, older than any statues,
sphinxes, or bulls? And where? Why, in our own language. When I use
such words as _father_ or _mother_, _heart_ or _tear_, _one_, _two_,
_three_, _here_ and _there_, I am handling coins or counters that were
current before there was one single Greek statue, one single
Babylonian Bull, one single Egyptian Sphinx. Yes, each of us carries
about with him the richest and most wonderful Museum of Antiquities;
and if he only knows how to treat those treasures, how to rub and
polish them till they become translucent again, how to arrange them
and read them, they will tell him marvels more marvellous than all
hieroglyphics and cuneiform inscriptions put together. The stories
they have told us are beginning to be old stories now. Many of you
have heard them before. But do not let them cease to be marvels, like
so many things which cease to be marvels because they happen every
day. And do not think that there is nothing left for you to do. There
are more marvels still to be discovered in language than have ever
been revealed to us; nay, there is no word, however common, if only
you know how to take it to pieces, like a cunningly contrived work of
art, fitted together thousands of years ago by the most cunning of
artists, the human mind, that will not make you listen and marvel more
than any chapter of the Arabian Nights.
But I must not allow myself to be carried away from my proper subject.
All I wish to impress on you by way of introduction is that the
results of the Science of Language, which, without the aid of
Sanskrit, would never have been obtained, form an essential element of
what we call a liberal, that is an historical education--an education
which will enable a man to do what the French call _s'orienter_, that
is, "to find his East," "his true East," and thus to determine his
real place in the world; to know, in fact, the port whence man
started, the course he has followed, and the port toward which he has
to steer.
We all come from the East--all that we value most has come to us from
the East, and in going to the East, not only those who have received a
special Oriental training, but everybody who has enjoyed the
advantages of a liberal, that is, of a truly historical education,
ought to feel that he is going to his "old home," full of memories, if
only he can read them. Instead of feeling your hearts sink within you,
when next year you approach the shores of India, I wish that every one
of you could feel what Sir William Jones felt, when, just one hundred
years ago, he came to the end of his long voyage from England, and saw
the shores of India rising on the horizon. At that time, young men
going to the wonderland of India were not ashamed of dreaming dreams
and seeing visions; and this was the dream dreamed and the vision seen
by Sir William Jones, then simple Mr. Jones:
"When I was at sea last August (that is in August, 1783), on
my last voyage to this country (India) I had long and
ardently desired to visit, I found one evening, on inspecting
the observations of the day, that _India_ lay before us,
_Persia_ on our left, while a breeze from _Arabia_ blew
nearly on our stern. A situation so pleasing in itself and to
me so new, could not fail to awaken a train of reflections in
a mind which had early been accustomed to contemplate with
delight the eventful histories and agreeable fictions of this
Eastern world. It gave me inexpressible pleasure to find
myself in the midst of so noble an amphitheatre, almost
encircled by the vast regions of Asia, which has ever been
esteemed the nurse of sciences, the inventress of delightful
and useful arts, the scene of glorious actions, fertile in
the productions of human genius, and infinitely diversified
in the forms of religion and government, in the laws,
manners, customs, and languages, as well as in the features
and complexions of men. I could not help remarking how
important and extensive a field was yet unexplored, and how
many solid advantages unimproved."
India wants more such dreamers as that young Mr. Jones, standing alone
on the deck of his vessel and watching the sun diving into the
sea--with the memories of England behind and the hopes of India before
him, feeling the presence of Persia and its ancient monarchs, and
breathing the breezes of Arabia and its glowing poetry. Such dreamers
know how to make their dreams come true, and how to change their
visions into realities.
And as it was a hundred years ago, so it is now; or at least, so it
may be now. There are many bright dreams to be dreamed about India,
and many bright deeds to be done in India, if only you will do them.
Though many great and glorious conquests have been made in the history
and literature of the East, since the days when Sir William Jones[16]
landed at Calcutta, depend upon it, no young Alexander here need
despair because there are no kingdoms left for him to conquer on the
ancient shores of the Indus and the Ganges.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Pliny (VI. 26) tells us that in his day the annual drain
of bullion into India, in return for her valuable produce, reached the
immense amount of "five hundred and fifty millions of sesterces." See
E. Thomas, "The Indian Balhara," p. 13.]
[Footnote 2: Cunningham, in the "Journal of the Asiatic Society of
Bengal," 1881, p. 184.]
[Footnote 3: General Cunningham describes this treasure in the
"Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal" as having been found on the
northern bank of the Oxus in 1877, and containing coins from Darius
down to Antiochus the Great, and Euthydemus, King of Baktria. This
would seem to indicate that it had been buried there in 208 B.C., when
Baktria was invaded by Antiochus and Euthydemus defeated. The coins,
figures, and ornaments, many of them, were manifestly Persian, and
doubtless had been brought into that country and kept by the
victorious generals of Alexander. Some of the works of art unearthed
by Dr. Schliemann at Mykenae are either Persian or Assyrian in
character, and are like those found on the Oxus. Professor Forchhammer
very plausibly supposes that they were spoils from the Persian camp
which had been awarded to Mykenae as her share after the overthrow of
Mardonius.--A. W.]
[Footnote 4: See "Selected Essays," vol. i., p. 500, "The Migration of
Fables."]
[Footnote 5: Cratylus, 411 A. "Still, as I have put on the lion's
skin, I must not be faint-hearted." Possibly, however, this may refer
to Hercules, and not to the fable of the donkey in the lion's or the
tiger's skin. In the Hitopade_s_a, a donkey, being nearly starved, is
sent by his master into a corn-field to feed. In order to shield him
he puts a tiger's skin on him. All goes well till a watchman
approaches, hiding himself under his gray coat, and trying to shoot
the tiger. The donkey thinks it is a gray female donkey, begins to
bray, and is killed. On a similar fable in AEsop, see Benfey,
"Pantschatantra," vol. i., p. 463; M. M., "Selected Essays," vol. i.,
p. 513.]
[Footnote 6: See "Fragmenta Comic" (Didot), p. 302; Benfey, l. c. vol.
i., p. 374.]
[Footnote 7: "Lectures on the Science of Language," vol. i., p. 231.
The names employed in the Hebrew text of the Bible are said to be
Tamil.--A. W.]
[Footnote 8: 1 Kings 3:25.]
[Footnote 9: The Bible story is dramatic; the other is not. The
"shudder" is a tribute to the dramatic power of the Bible narrative.
The child was in no danger of being cut in twain. In the Buddhist
version the child _is_ injured. Why does not Prof. Mueller shudder when
the child is hurt and cries? The Solomonic child is not hurt and does
not cry. Is not the Bible story the more humane, the more dignified,
the more dramatic? And no canon of criticism requires us to believe
that a poor version of a story is the more primitive.--AM. PUBS.]
[Footnote 10: See some excellent remarks on this subject in Rhys
Davids, "Buddhist Birth-Stories," vol. i., pp. xiii. and xliv. The
learned scholar gives another version of the story from a Singhalese
translation of the _G_ataka, dating from the fourteenth century, and
he expresses a hope that Dr. Fausboell will soon publish the Pali
original.]
[Footnote 11: This is true of what theologians call natural religion,
which is assumed to be a growth out of human consciousness; but the
Christian religion is not a natural religion.--AM. PUBS.]
[Footnote 12: There are traces of Aryan occupation at Babylon,
Rawlinson assures us, about twenty centuries B.C. This would suggest a
possible interchange of religious ideas between the earlier Aryan and
Akkado-Chaldean peoples.--A. W.]
[Footnote 13: See Cunningham, "Journal of the Asiatic Society of
Bengal," 1881, pp. 162-168.]
[Footnote 14: _Sim_, the Persian word for silver, has also the meaning
of one thirteenth; see Cunningham, l. c. p. 165.]
[Footnote 15: The common domestic cat is first mentioned by Caesarius,
the physician, brother of Gregory of Nazianus, about the middle of the
fourth century. It came from Egypt, where it was regarded as sacred.
Herodotus denominates it [Greek: ailouros], which was also
the designation of the weasel and marten. Kallimachus employs the same
title, which his commentator explains as [Greek: kattos]. In
later times this name of uncertain etymology has superseded every
other. The earlier Sanskrit writers appear to have had no knowledge of
the animal; but the mar_g_ara is named by Manu, and the vi_d_ala by
Pa_n_ini.--A. W.]
[Footnote 16: Sir William Jones was thirty-seven years of age when he
sailed for India. He received the honor of knighthood in March, 1783,
on his appointment as Judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort
William, at Bengal.--A. W.]
LECTURE II.
TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS.
In my first Lecture I endeavored to remove the prejudice that
everything in India is strange, and so different from the intellectual
life which we are accustomed to in England, that the twenty or
twenty-five years which a civil servant has to spend in the East seem
often to him a kind of exile that he must bear as well as he can, but
that severs him completely from all those higher pursuits by which
life is made enjoyable at home. This need not be so and ought not to
be so, if only it is clearly seen how almost every one of the higher
interests that make life worth living here in England, may find as
ample scope in India as in England.
To-day I shall have to grapple with another prejudice which is even
more mischievous, because it forms a kind of icy barrier between the
Hindus and their rulers, and makes anything like a feeling of true
fellowship between the two utterly impossible.
That prejudice consists in looking upon our stay in India as a kind of
_moral_ exile, and in regarding the Hindus as an inferior race,
totally different from ourselves in their moral character, and, more
particularly in what forms the very foundation of the English
character, respect for truth.
I believe there is nothing more disheartening to any high-minded young
man than the idea that he will have to spend his life among human
beings whom he can never respect or love--natives, as they are called,
not to use even more offensive names--men whom he is taught to
consider as not amenable to the recognized principles of self-respect,
uprightness, and veracity, and with whom therefore any community of
interests and action, much more any real friendship, is supposed to be
out of the question.
So often has that charge of untruthfulness been repeated, and so
generally is it now accepted, that it seems almost Quixotic to try to
fight against it.
Nor should I venture to fight this almost hopeless battle, if I were
not convinced that such a charge, like all charges brought against a
whole nation, rests on the most flimsy induction, and that it has
done, is doing, and will continue to do more mischief than anything
that even the bitterest enemy of English dominion in India could have
invented. If a young man who goes to India as a civil servant or as a
military officer, goes there fully convinced that the people whom he
is to meet with are all liars, liars by nature or by national
instinct, never restrained in their dealings by any regard for truth,
never to be trusted on their word, need we wonder at the feelings of
disgust with which he thinks of the Hindus, even before he has seen
them; the feelings of distrust with which he approaches them, and the
contemptuous way in which he treats them when brought into contact
with them for the transaction of public or private business? When such
tares have once been sown by the enemy, it will be difficult to gather
them up. It has become almost an article of faith with every Indian
civil servant that all Indians are liars; nay, I know I shall never be
forgiven for my heresy in venturing to doubt it.
Now, quite apart from India, I feel most strongly that every one of
these international condemnations is to be deprecated, not only for
the sake of the self-conceited and uncharitable state of mind from
which they spring, and which they serve to strengthen and confirm, but
for purely logical reasons also, namely for the reckless and slovenly
character of the induction on which such conclusions rest. Because a
man has travelled in Greece and has been cheated by his dragoman, or
been carried off by brigands, does it follow that all Greeks, ancient
as well as modern, are cheats and robbers, or that they approve of
cheating and robbery? And because in Calcutta, or Bombay, or Madras,
Indians who are brought before judges, or who hang about the
law-courts and the bazaars, are not distinguished by an unreasoning
and uncompromising love of truth, is it not a very vicious induction
to say, in these days of careful reasoning, that all Hindus are
liars--particularly if you bear in mind that, according to the latest
census, the number of inhabitants of that vast country amounts to two
hundred and fifty-three millions. Are all these two hundred and
fifty-three millions of human beings to be set down as liars, because
some hundreds, say even some thousands of Indians, when they are
brought to an English court of law, on suspicion of having committed a
theft or a murder, do not speak the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth? Would an English sailor, if brought before a
dark-skinned judge, who spoke English with a strange accent, bow down
before him and confess at once any misdeed that he may have committed;
and would all his mates rush forward and eagerly bear witness against
him, when he had got himself into trouble?
The rules of induction are general, but they depend on the subjects to
which they are applied. We may, to follow an Indian proverb, judge of
a whole field of rice by tasting one or two grains only, but if we
apply this rule to human beings, we are sure to fall into the same
mistake as the English chaplain who had once, on board an English
vessel, christened a French child, and who remained fully convinced
for the rest of his life that all French babies had very long noses.
I can hardly think of anything that you could safely predicate of
_all_ the inhabitants of India, and I confess to a little nervous
tremor whenever I see a sentence beginning with "The people of India,"
or even with "All the Brahmans," or "All the Buddhists." What follows
is almost invariably wrong. There is a greater difference between an
Afghan, a Sikh, a Hindustani, a Bengalese, and a Dravidian than
between an Englishman, a Frenchman, a German, and a Russian--yet all
are classed as Hindus, and all are supposed to fall under the same
sweeping condemnation.
Let me read you what Sir John Malcolm says about the diversity of
character to be observed by any one who has eyes to observe, among the
different races whom we promiscuously call Hindus, and whom we
promiscuously condemn as Hindus. After describing the people of Bengal
as weak in body and timid in mind, and those below Calcutta as the
lowest of our Hindu subjects, both in character and appearance, he
continues: "But from the moment you enter the district of Behar, the
Hindu inhabitants are a race of men, generally speaking, not more
distinguished by their lofty stature and robust frame than they are
for some of the finest qualities of the mind. They are brave,
generous, humane, and their truth is as remarkable as their courage."
But because I feel bound to protest against the indiscriminating abuse
that has been heaped on the people of India from the Himalaya to
Ceylon, do not suppose that it is my wish or intention to draw an
ideal picture of India, leaving out all the dark shades, and giving
you nothing but "sweetness and light." Having never been in India
myself, I can only claim for myself the right and duty of every
historian, namely, the right of collecting as much information as
possible, and the duty to sift it according to the recognized rules of
historical criticism. My chief sources of information with regard to
the national character of the Indians in ancient times will be the
works of Greek writers and the literature of the ancient Indians
themselves. For later times we must depend on the statements of the
various conquerors of India, who are not always the most lenient
judges of those whom they may find it more difficult to rule than to
conquer. For the last century to the present day, I shall have to
appeal, partly to the authority of those who, after spending an active
life in India and among the Indians, have given us the benefit of
their experience in published works, partly to the testimony of a
number of distinguished civil servants and of Indian gentlemen also,
whose personal acquaintance I have enjoyed in England, in France, and
in Germany.
As I have chiefly to address myself to those who will themselves be
the rulers and administrators of India in the future, allow me to
begin with the opinions which some of the most eminent, and, I
believe, the most judicious among the Indian civil servants of the
past have formed and deliberately expressed on the point which we are
to-day discussing, namely, the veracity or want of veracity among the
Hindus.
And here I must begin with a remark which has been made by others
also, namely, that the civil servants who went to India in the
beginning of this century, and under the auspices of the old East
India Company, many of whom I had the honor and pleasure of knowing
when I first came to England, seemed to have seen a great deal more of
native life, native manners, and native character than those whom I
had to examine five-and-twenty years ago, and who are now, after a
distinguished career, coming back to England. India is no longer the
distant island which it was, where each Crusoe had to make a home for
himself as best he could. With the short and easy voyages from England
to India and from India to England, with the frequent mails, and the
telegrams, and the Anglo-Indian newspapers, official life in India has
assumed the character of a temporary exile rather, which even English
ladies are now more ready to share than fifty years ago. This is a
difficulty which cannot be removed, but must be met, and which, I
believe, can best be met by inspiring the new civil servants with new
and higher interests during their stay in India.
I knew the late Professor Wilson, our Boden Professor of Sanskrit at
Oxford, for many years, and often listened with deep interest to his
Indian reminiscences.
Let me read you what he, Professor Wilson, says of his native friends,
associates, and servants:[17]
"I lived, both from necessity and choice, very much among the
Hindus, and had opportunities of becoming acquainted with
them in a greater variety of situations than those in which
they usually come under the observation of Europeans. In the
Calcutta mint, for instance, I was in daily personal
communication with a numerous body of artificers, mechanics,
and laborers, and always found among them cheerful and
unwearied industry, good-humored compliance with the will of
their superiors, and a readiness to make whatever exertions
were demanded from them; there was among them no drunkenness,
no disorderly conduct, no insubordination. It would not be
true to say that there was _no_ dishonesty, but it was
comparatively rare, invariably petty, and much less
formidable than, I believe, it is necessary to guard against
in other mints in other countries. There was considerable
skill and ready docility. So far from there being any
servility, there was extreme frankness, and I should say that
where there is confidence without fear, frankness is one of
the most universal features in the Indian character. Let the
people feel sure of the temper and good-will of their
superiors, and there is an end of reserve and timidity,
without the slightest departure from respect...."
Then, speaking of the much-abused Indian Pandits, he says: "The
studies which engaged my leisure brought me into connection with the
men of learning, and in them I found the similar merits of industry,
intelligence, cheerfulness, frankness, with others peculiar to their
avocation. A very common characteristic of these men, and of the
Hindus especially, was a simplicity truly childish, and a total
unacquaintance with the business and manners of life. Where that
feature was lost, it was chiefly by those who had been long familiar
with Europeans. Among the Pandits or the learned Hindus there
prevailed great ignorance and great dread of the European character.
There is, indeed, very little intercourse between any class of
Europeans and Hindu scholars, and it is not wonderful, therefore, that
mutual misapprehension should prevail."
Speaking, lastly, of the higher classes in Calcutta and elsewhere,
Professor Wilson says that he witnessed among them "polished manners,
clearness and comprehensiveness of understanding, liberality of
feeling, and independence of principle that would have stamped them
gentlemen in any country in the world." "With some of this class," he
adds, "I formed friendships which I trust to enjoy through life."
I have often heard Professor Wilson speak in the same, and in even
stronger terms of his old friends in India, and his correspondence
with Ram Comul Sen, the grandfather of Keshub Chunder Sen,[18] a most
orthodox, not to say bigoted, Hindu, which has lately been published,
shows on what intimate terms Englishmen and Hindus may be, if only the
advances are made on the English side.
There is another Professor of Sanskrit, of whom your University may
well be proud, and who could speak on this subject with far greater
authority than I can. He too will tell you, and I have no doubt has
often told you, that if only you look out for friends among the
Hindus, you will find them, and you may trust them.
There is one book which for many years I have been in the habit of
recommending, and another against which I have always been warning
those of the candidates for the Indian Civil Service whom I happened
to see at Oxford; and I believe both the advice and the warning have
in several cases borne the very best fruit. The book which I consider
most mischievous, nay, which I hold responsible for some of the
greatest misfortunes that have happened to India, is Mill's "History
of British India," even with the antidote against its poison, which is
supplied by Professor Wilson's notes. The book which I recommend, and
which I wish might be published again in a cheaper form, so as to
make it more generally accessible, is Colonel Sleeman's "Rambles and
Recollections of an Indian Official," published in 1844, but written
originally in 1835-1836.
Mill's "History," no doubt, you all know, particularly the candidates
for the Indian Civil Service, who, I am sorry to say, are recommended
to read it, and are examined in it. Still, in order to substantiate my
strong condemnation of the book, I shall have to give a few proofs:
Mill in his estimate of the Hindu character is chiefly guided by
Dubois, a French missionary, and by Orme and Buchanan, Tennant, and
Ward, all of them neither very competent nor very unprejudiced judges.
Mill,[19] however, picks out all that is most unfavorable from their
works, and omits the qualifications which even these writers felt
bound to give to their wholesale condemnation of the Hindus. He quotes
as serious, for instance, what was said in joke,[20] namely, that "a
Brahman is an ant's nest of lies and impostures." Next to the charge
of untruthfulness, Mill upbraids the Hindus for what he calls their
litigiousness. He writes:[21] "As often as courage fails them in
seeking more daring gratification to their hatred and revenge, their
malignity finds a vent in the channel of litigation." Without imputing
dishonorable motives, as Mill does, the same fact might be stated in a
different way, by saying, "As often as their conscience and respect of
law keep them from seeking more daring gratification to their hatred
and revenge, say by murder or poisoning, their trust in English
justice leads them to appeal to our courts of law." Dr. Robertson, in
his "Historical Disquisitions concerning India,"[22] seems to have
considered the litigious subtlety of the Hindus as a sign of high
civilization rather than of barbarism, but he is sharply corrected by
Mr. Mill, who tells him that "nowhere is this subtlety carried higher
than among the wildest of the Irish." That courts of justice, like the
English, in which a verdict was not to be obtained, as formerly in
Mohammedan courts, by bribes and corruption, should at first have
proved very attractive to the Hindus, need not surprise us. But is it
really true that the Hindus are more fond of litigation than other
nations? If we consult Sir Thomas Munro, the eminent Governor of
Madras, and the powerful advocate of the Ryotwar settlements, he tells
us in so many words:[23] "I have had ample opportunity of observing
the Hindus in every situation, and I can affirm, that they are not
litigious."[24]
But Mill goes further still, and in one place he actually assures his
readers[25] that a "Brahman may put a man to death when he lists." In
fact, he represents the Hindus as such a monstrous mass of all vices,
that, as Colonel Vans Kennedy[26] remarked, society could not have
held together if it had really consisted of such reprobates only. Nor
does he seem to see the full bearing of his remarks. Surely, if a
Brahman might, as he says, put a man to death whenever he lists, it
would be the strongest testimony in their favor that you hardly ever
hear of their availing themselves of such a privilege, to say nothing
of the fact--and a fact it is--that, according to statistics, the
number of capital sentences was one in every 10,000 in England, but
only one in every million in Bengal.[27]
Colonel Sleeman's "Rambles" are less known than they deserve to be. To
give you an idea of the man, I must read you some extracts from the
book.
His sketches being originally addressed to his sister, this is how he
writes to her:
"MY DEAR SISTER: Were any one to ask your countrymen in
India, what had been their greatest source of pleasure while
there, perhaps nine in ten would say the letters which they
receive from their sisters at home.... And while thus
contributing so much to our happiness, they no doubt tend to
make us better citizens of the world and servants of
government than we should otherwise be; for in our
'struggles through life' in India, we have all, more or
less, an eye to the approbation of those circles which our
kind sisters represent, who may therefore be considered in
the exalted light of a valuable species of _unpaid
magistracy_ to the government of India."
There is a touch of the old English chivalry even in these few words
addressed to a sister whose approbation he values, and with whom he
hoped to spend the winter of his days. Having been, as he confesses,
idle in answering letters, or rather, too busy to find time for long
letters, he made use of his enforced leisure, while on his way from
the Nerbuddah River to the Himmaleh Mountains, in search of health, to
give to his sister a full account of his impressions and experiences
in India.
Though what he wrote was intended at first "to interest and amuse his
sister only and the other members of his family at home," he adds, in
a more serious tone: "Of one thing I must beg you to be assured, that
I have nowhere indulged in fiction, either in the narrative, the
recollections, or the conversations. What I relate on the testimony of
others, I believe to be true; and what I relate on my own, you may
rely upon as being so."
When placing his volumes before the public at large in 1844, he
expresses a hope that they may "tend to make the people of India
better understood by those of our countrymen whose destinies are cast
among them, and inspire more kindly feelings toward them."
You may ask why I consider Colonel Sleeman so trustworthy an authority
on the Indian character, more trustworthy, for instance, than even so
accurate and unprejudiced an observer as Professor Wilson. My answer
is--because Wilson lived chiefly in Calcutta, while Colonel Sleeman
saw India, where alone the true India can be seen, namely, in the
village-communities. For many years he was employed as Commissioner
for the suppression of Thuggee. The Thugs were professional assassins,
who committed their murders under a kind of religious sanction. They
were originally "all Mohammedans, but for a long time past Mohammedans
and Hindus had been indiscriminately associated in the gangs, the
former class, however, still predominating."[28]
In order to hunt up these gangs, Colonel Sleeman had constantly to
live among the people in the country, to gain their confidence, and to
watch the good as well as the bad features in their character.
Now what Colonel Sleeman continually insists on is that no one knows
the Indians who does not know them in their village-communities--what
we should now call their _communes_. It is that village-life which in
India has given its peculiar impress to the Indian character, more so
than in any other country we know. When in Indian history we hear so
much of kings and emperors, of rajahs and maharajahs, we are apt to
think of India as an Eastern monarchy, ruled by a central power, and
without any trace of that self-government which forms the pride of
England. But those who have most carefully studied the political life
of India tell you the very opposite.
The political unit, or the social cell in India has always been, and, in
spite of repeated foreign conquests, is still the village-community.
Some of these political units will occasionally combine or be combined
for common purposes (such a confederacy being called a grama_g_ala), but
each is perfect in itself. When we read in the Laws of Manu[29] of
officers appointed to rule over ten, twenty, a hundred, or a thousand of
these villages, that means no more than that they were responsible for
the collection of taxes, and generally for the good behavior of these
villages. And when, in later times, we hear of circles of eighty-four
villages, the so-called Chourasees (_K_atura_s_iti[30]), and of three
hundred and sixty villages, this too seems to refer to fiscal
arrangements only. To the ordinary Hindu, I mean to ninety-nine in every
hundred, the village was his world, and the sphere of public opinion,
with its beneficial influences on individuals, seldom extended beyond
the horizon of his village.[31]
Colonel Sleeman was one of the first who called attention to the
existence of these village-communities in India, and their importance
in the social fabric of the whole country both in ancient and in
modern times; and though they have since become far better known and
celebrated through the writings of Sir Henry Maine, it is still both
interesting and instructive to read Colonel Sleeman's account. He
writes as a mere observer, and uninfluenced as yet by any theories on
the development of early social and political life among the Aryan
nations in general.
I do not mean to say that Colonel Sleeman was the first who pointed
out the palpable fact that the whole of India is parcelled out into
estates of villages. Even so early an observer as Megasthenes[32]
seems to have been struck by the same fact when he says that "in India
the husbandmen with their wives and children live in the country, and
entirely avoid going into town." What Colonel Sleeman was the first to
point out was that all the native virtues of the Hindus are
intimately connected with their village-life.
That village-life, however, is naturally the least known to English
officials, nay, the very presence of an English official is often said to
be sufficient to drive away those native virtues which distinguish both
the private life and the public administration of justice and equity in an
Indian village.[33] Take a man out of his village-community, and you
remove him from all the restraints of society. He is out of his element,
and, under temptation, is more likely to go wrong than to remain true to
the traditions of his home-life. Even between village and village the
usual restraints of public morality are not always recognized. What would
be called theft or robbery at home is called a successful raid or conquest
if directed against distant villages; and what would be falsehood or
trickery in private life is honored by the name of policy and diplomacy if
successful against strangers. On the other hand, the rules of hospitality
applied only to people of other villages, and a man of the same village
could never claim the right of an _Atithi_, or guest.[34]
Let us hear now what Colonel Sleeman tells us about the moral
character of the members of these village-communities,[35] and let us
not forget that the Commissioner for the suppression of Thuggee had
ample opportunities of seeing the dark as well as the bright side of
the Indian character.
He assures us that falsehood or lying between members of the same
village is almost unknown. Speaking of some of the most savage tribes,
the Gonds, for instance, he maintains that nothing would induce them
to tell a lie, though they would think nothing of lifting a herd of
cattle from a neighboring plain.
Of these men it might perhaps be said that they have not yet learned
the value of a lie; yet even such blissful ignorance ought to count in
a nation's character. But I am not pleading here for Gonds, or Bhils,
or Santhals, and other non-Aryan tribes. I am speaking of the Aryan
and more or less civilized inhabitants of India. Now among them, where
rights, duties, and interests begin to clash in one and the same
village, public opinion, in its limited sphere, seems strong enough
to deter even an evil-disposed person from telling a falsehood. The
fear of the gods also has not yet lost its power.[36] In most villages
there is a sacred tree, a pipal-tree (Ficus Indica), and the gods are
supposed to delight to sit among its leaves, and listen to the music
of their rustling. The deponent takes one of these leaves in his hand,
and invokes the god, who sits above him, to crush him, or those dear
to him, as he crushes the leaf in his hand, if he speaks anything but
the truth. He then plucks and crushes the leaf, and states what he has
to say.
The pipal-tree is generally supposed to be occupied by one of the
Hindu deities, while the large cotton-tree, particularly among the
wilder tribes, is supposed to be the abode of local gods, all the more
terrible because entrusted with the police of a small settlement only.
In their punchayets, Sleeman tells us, men adhere habitually and
religiously to the truth, and "I have had before me hundreds of
cases," he says, "in which a man's property, liberty, and life has
depended upon his telling a lie, and he has refused to tell it."
Could many an English judge say the same?
In their own tribunals under the pipal-tree or cotton-tree,
imagination commonly did what the deities, who were supposed to
preside, had the credit of doing. If the deponent told a lie, he
believed that the god who sat on his sylvan throne above him, and
searched the heart of man, must know it; and from that moment he knew
no rest, he was always in dread of his vengeance. If any accident
happened to him, or to those dear to him, it was attributed to this
offended deity; and if no accident happened, some evil was brought
about by his own disordered imagination.[37] It was an excellent
superstition, inculcated in the ancient law-books, that the ancestors
watched the answer of a witness, because, according as it was true or
false, they themselves would go to heaven or to hell.[38]
Allow me to read you the abstract of a conversation between an English
official and a native law-officer as reported by Colonel Sleeman. The
native lawyer was asked what he thought would be the effect of an act
to dispense with oaths on the Koran and Ganges-water, and to
substitute a solemn declaration made in the name of God, and under the
same penal liabilities as if the Koran or Ganges-water had been in the
deponent's hand.
"I have practiced in the courts," the native said, "for thirty years,
and during that time I have found only three kinds of witnesses--two
of whom would, by such an act, be left precisely where they were,
while the third would be released by it from a very salutary check."
"And, pray, what are the three classes into which you divide the
witnesses in our courts?"
"First, Sir, are those who will always tell the truth, whether they
are required to state what they know in the form of an oath or not."
"Do you think this a large class?"
"Yes, I think it is; and I have found among them many whom nothing on
earth could make to swerve from the truth. Do what you please, you
could never frighten or bribe them into a deliberate falsehood.
"The second are those who will not hesitate to tell a lie when they
have a motive for it, and are not restrained by an oath. In taking an
oath, they are afraid of two things, the anger of God and the odium of
men.
"Only three days ago," he continued, "I required a power of attorney
from a lady of rank, to enable me to act for her in a case pending
before the court in this town. It was given to me by her brother, and
two witnesses came to declare that she had given it. 'Now,' said I,
'this lady is known to live under the curtain, and you will be asked
by the judge whether you saw her give this paper: what will you say?'
They both replied: 'If the judge asks us the question without an oath,
we will say "_Yes_;" it will save much trouble, and we know that she
_did_ give the paper, though we did not really _see_ her give it; but
if he puts the Koran into our hands, we must say "_No_," for we should
otherwise be pointed at by all the town as perjured wretches--our
enemies would soon tell everybody that we had taken a false oath.'
"Now," the native lawyer went on, "the form of an oath is a great
check on this sort of persons.
"The third class consists of men who will tell lies whenever they have
a sufficient motive, whether they have the Koran or Ganges-water in
their hand or not. Nothing will ever prevent their doing so; and the
declaration which you propose would be just as well as any other for
them."
"Which class do you consider the most numerous of the three?"
"I consider the second the most numerous, and wish the oath to be
retained for them."
"That is, of all the men you see examined in our courts, you think the
most come under the class of those who will, under the influence of
strong motives, tell lies, if they have not the Koran or Ganges-water
in their hands?"
"Yes."
"But do not a great many of those whom you consider to be included
among the second class come from the village-communities--the
peasantry of the country?"
"Yes."
"And do you not think that the greatest part of those men who will
tell lies in the court, under the influence of strong motives, unless
they have the Koran or Ganges-water in their hands, would refuse to
tell lies, if questioned before the people of their villages, among
the circle in which they live?"
"Of course I do; three-fourths of those who do not scruple to lie in
the courts, would be ashamed to lie before their neighbors, or the
elders of their village."
"You think that the people of the village-communities are more ashamed
to tell lies before their neighbors than the people of towns?"
"Much more--there is no comparison."
"And the people of towns and cities bear in India but a small
proportion to the people of the village-communities?"
"I should think a very small proportion indeed."
"Then you think that in the mass of the population of India, _out of
our courts_, the first class, or those who speak truth, whether they
have the Koran or Ganges-water in their hands or not, would be found
more numerous than the other two?"
"Certainly I do; if they were always to be questioned before their
neighbors or elders, so that they could feel that their neighbors and
elders could know what they say."
It was from a simple sense of justice that I felt bound to quote this
testimony of Colonel Sleeman as to the truthful character of the
natives of India, when _left to themselves_. My interest lies
altogether with the people of India, _when left to themselves_, and
historically I should like to draw a line after the year one thousand
after Christ. When you read the atrocities committed by the Mohammedan
conquerors of India from that time to the time when England stepped in
and, whatever may be said by her envious critics, made, at all events,
the broad principles of our common humanity respected once more in
India, the wonder, to my mind, is how any nation could have survived
such an _Inferno_ without being turned into devils themselves.
Now, it is quite true that during the two thousand years which precede
the time of Mahmud of Gazni, India has had but few foreign visitors,
and few foreign critics; still it is surely extremely strange that
whenever, either in Greek, or in Chinese, or in Persian, or in Arab
writings, we meet with any attempts at describing the distinguishing
features in the national character of the Indians, regard for truth
and justice should always be mentioned first.
_Ktesias_, the famous Greek physician of Artaxerxes Mnemon (present at
the battle of Cunaxa, 404 B.C.), the first Greek writer who tells us
anything about the character of the Indians, such as he heard it
described at the Persian court, has a special chapter "On the Justice
of the Indians."[39]
_Megasthenes_,[40] the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator at the court of
Sandrocottus in Palibothra (Pa_t_aliputra, the modern Patna), states
that thefts were extremely rare, and that they honored truth and
virtue.[41]
_Arrian_ (in the second century, the pupil of Epictetus), when
speaking of the public overseers or superintendents in India,
says:[42] "They oversee what goes on in the country or towns, and
report everything to the king, where the people have a king, and to
the magistrates, where the people are self-governed, and it is against
use and wont for these to give in a false report; _but indeed no
Indian is accused of lying_."[43]
The Chinese, who come next in order of time, bear the same, I believe,
unanimous testimony in favor of the honesty and veracity of the
Hindus. [The earliest witness is Su-we, a relative of Fan-chen, King
of Siam, who between 222 and 227 A.D. sailed round the whole of India,
till he reached the mouth of the Indus, and then explored the country.
After his return to Sinto, he received four Yueh-chi horses, sent by a
king of India as a present to the King of Siam and his ambassador. At
the time when these horses arrived in Siam (it took them four years to
travel there), there was staying at the court of Siam an ambassador of
the Emperor of China, Khang-thai, and this is the account which he
received of the kingdom of India: "It is a kingdom in which the
religion of Buddha flourishes. The inhabitants are straightforward and
honest, and the soil is very fertile. The king is called Meu-lun, and
his capital is surrounded by walls," etc. This was in about 231 A.D.
In 605 we hear again of the Emperor Yang-ti sending an ambassador,
Fei-tu, to India, and this is what among other things he points out as
peculiar to the Hindus: "They believe in solemn oaths."][44] Let me
quote Hiouen-thsang, the most famous of the Chinese Buddhist
pilgrims, who visited India in the seventh century.[45] "Though the
Indians," he writes, "are of a light temperament, they are
distinguished by the straightforwardness and honesty of their
character. With regard to riches, they never take anything unjustly;
with regard to justice, they make even excessive concessions....
Straightforwardness is the distinguishing feature of their
administration."
If we turn to the accounts given by the Mohammedan conquerors of
India, we find Idrisi, in his Geography (written in the eleventh
century), summing up their opinion of the Indians in the following
words:[46]
"The Indians are naturally inclined to justice, and never
depart from it in their actions. Their good faith, honesty,
and fidelity to their engagements are well known, and they
are so famous for these qualities that people flock to their
country from every side."
Again, in the thirteenth century, Shems-ed-din Abu Abdallah quotes the
following judgment of Bedi ezr Zenan: "The Indians are innumerable,
like grains of sand, free from all deceit and violence. They fear
neither death nor life."[47]
In the thirteenth century we have the testimony of Marco Polo,[48]who
thus speaks of the _Abraiaman_, a name by which he seems to mean the
Brahmans who, though, not traders by profession, might well have been
employed for great commercial transactions by the king. This was
particularly the case during times which the Brahmans would call
times of distress, when many things were allowed which at other times
were forbidden by the laws. "You must know," Marco Polo says, "that
these Abraiaman are the best merchants in the world, and the most
truthful, for they would not tell a lie for anything on earth."
In the fourteenth century we have Friar Jordanus, who goes out of his
way to tell us that the people of Lesser India (South and Western
India) are true in speech and eminent in justice.[49]
In the fifteenth century, Kamal-eddin Abd-errazak Samarkandi
(1413-1482), who went as ambassador of the Khakan to the prince of
Kalikut and to the King of Vidyanagara (about 1440-1445), bears
testimony to the perfect security which merchants enjoy in that
country.[50]
In the sixteenth century, Abu Fazl, the minister of the Emperor Akbar,
says in his Ayin Akbari: "The Hindus are religious, affable, cheerful,
lovers of justice, given to retirement, able in business, admirers of
truth, grateful and of unbounded fidelity; and their soldiers know not
what it is to fly from the field of battle."[51]
And even in quite modern times the Mohammedans seem willing to admit
that the Hindus, at all events in their dealings with Hindus, are more
straightforward than Mohammedans in their dealings with Mohammedans.
Thus Meer Sulamut Ali, a venerable old Mussulman, and, as Colonel
Sleeman says, a most valuable public servant, was obliged to admit
that "a Hindu may feel himself authorized to take in a Mussulman, and
might even think it meritorious to do so; but he would never think it
meritorious to take in one of his own religion. There are no less than
seventy-two sects of Mohammedans; and every one of these sects would
not only take in the followers of every other religion on earth, but
every member of every one of the other seventy-one sects; and the
nearer that sect is to his own, the greater the merit of taking in its
members."[52]
So I could go on quoting from book after book, and again and again we
should see how it was love of truth that struck all the people who
came in contact with India, as the prominent feature in the national
character of its inhabitants. No one ever accused them of falsehood.
There must surely be some ground for this, for it is not a remark that
is frequently made by travellers in foreign countries, even in our
time, that their inhabitants invariably speak the truth. Read the
accounts of English travellers in France, and you will find very
little said about French honesty and veracity, while French accounts
of England are seldom without a fling at _Perfide Albion_!
But if all this is true, how is it, you may well ask, that public
opinion in England is so decidedly unfriendly to the people of India;
at the utmost tolerates and patronizes them, but will never trust
them, never treat them on terms of equality?
I have already hinted at some of the reasons. Public opinion with
regard to India is made up in England chiefly by those who have spent
their lives in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, or some other of the
principal towns in India. The native element in such towns contains
mostly the most unfavorable specimens of the Indian population. An
insight into the domestic life of the more respectable classes, even
in towns, is difficult to obtain; and, when it is obtained, it is
extremely difficult to judge of their manners according to our
standard of what is proper, respectable, or gentlemanlike. The
misunderstandings are frequent and often most grotesque; and such, we
must confess, is human nature, that when we hear the different and
often most conflicting accounts of the character of the Hindus, we are
naturally skeptical with regard to unsuspected virtues among them,
while we are quite disposed to accept unfavorable accounts of their
character.
Lest I should seem to be pleading too much on the native side of the
question, and to exaggerate the difficulty of forming a correct estimate
of the character of the Hindus, let me appeal to one of the most
distinguished, learned, and judicious members of the Indian Civil
Service, the author of the "History of India," Mountstuart Elphinstone.
"Englishmen in India,"[53] he says, "have less opportunity than might be
expected of forming opinions of the native character. Even in England,
few know much of the people beyond their own class, and what they do
know, they learn from newspapers and publications of a description which
does not exist in India. In that country also, religion and manners put
bars to our intimacy with the natives, and limit the number of
transactions as well as the free communication of opinions. We know
nothing of the interior of families but by report, and have no share in
those numerous occurrences of life in which the amiable parts of
character are most exhibited." "Missionaries of a different
religion,[54] judges, police-magistrates, officers of revenue or
customs, and even diplomatists, do not see the most virtuous portion of
a nation, nor any portion, unless when influenced by passion, or
occupied by some personal interest. What we _do_ see we judge by our own
standard. We conclude that a man who cries like a child on slight
occasions must always be incapable of acting or suffering with dignity;
and that one who allows himself to be called a liar would not be ashamed
of any baseness. Our writers also confound the distinctions of time and
place; they combine in one character the Maratta and the Bengalese, and
tax the present generation with the crimes of the heroes of the
Mahabharata. It might be argued, in opposition to many unfavorable
testimonies, that those who have known the Indians longest have always
the best opinion of them; but this is rather a compliment to human
nature than to them, since it is true of every other people. It is more
in point, that all persons who have retired from India think better of
the people they have left, after comparing them with others, even of the
most justly-admired nations."
But what is still more extraordinary than the ready acceptance of
judgments unfavorable to the character of the Hindus, is the
determined way in which public opinion, swayed by the statements of
certain unfavorable critics, has persistently ignored the evidence
which members of the Civil Service, officers and statesmen--men of the
highest authority--have given again and again, in direct opposition to
these unfavorable opinions.
Here, too, I must ask to be allowed to quote at least a few of these
witnesses on the other side.
Warren Hastings thus speaks of the Hindus in general: "They are gentle
and benevolent, more susceptible of gratitude for kindness shown them,
and less prompted to vengeance for wrongs inflicted than any people on
the face of the earth; faithful, affectionate, submissive to legal
authority."
Bishop Heber said: "The Hindus are brave, courteous, intelligent, most
eager for knowledge and improvement; sober, industrious, dutiful to
parents, affectionate to their children, uniformly gentle and patient,
and more easily affected by kindness and attention to their wants and
feelings than any people I ever met with."[55]
Elphinstone states: "No set of people among the Hindus are so depraved
as the dregs of our own great towns. The villagers are everywhere
amiable, affectionate to their families, kind to their neighbors, and
toward all but the government honest and sincere. Including the Thugs
and Dacoits, the mass of crime is less in India than in England. The
Thugs are almost a separate nation, and the Dacoits are desperate
ruffians in gangs. The Hindus are mild and gentle people, more
merciful to prisoners than any other Asiatics. Their freedom from
gross debauchery is the point in which they appear to most advantage;
and their superiority in purity of manners is not flattering to our
self-esteem."[56]
Yet Elphinstone can be most severe on the real faults of the people of
India. He states that, at present, want of veracity is one of their
prominent vices, but he adds[57] "that such deceit is most common in
people connected with government, a class which spreads far in India,
as, from the nature of the land-revenue, the lowest villager is often
obliged to resist force by fraud."[58]
Sir John Malcolm writes:[59] "I have hardly ever known where a person
did understand the language, or where a calm communication was made to
a native of India, through a well-informed and trustworthy medium,
that the result did not prove, that what had at first been stated as
falsehood had either proceeded from fear or from misapprehension. I by
no means wish to state that our Indian subjects are more free from
this vice than other nations that occupy a nearly equal position in
society, but I am positive that they are not more addicted to
untruth."
Sir Thomas Munro bears even stronger testimony. He writes:[60] "If a
good system of agriculture, unrivalled manufacturing skill, a capacity
to produce whatever can contribute to either convenience or luxury,
schools established in every village for teaching reading, writing,
and arithmetic,[61] the general practice of hospitality and charity
among each other, and, above all, a treatment of the female sex full
of confidence, respect, and delicacy, are among the signs which
denote a civilized people--then the Hindus are not inferior to the
nations of Europe--and if civilization is to become an article of
trade between England and India, I am convinced that England will gain
by the import cargo."
My own experience with regard to the native character has been, of
course, very limited. Those Hindus whom I have had the pleasure to
know personally in Europe may be looked upon as exceptional, as the
best specimens, it may be, that India could produce. Also, my
intercourse with them has naturally been such that it could hardly
have brought out the darker sides of human nature. During the last
twenty years, however, I have had some excellent opportunities of
watching a number of native scholars under circumstances where it is
not difficult to detect a man's true character--I mean in literary
work and, more particularly, in literary controversy. I have watched
them carrying on such controversies both among themselves and with
certain European scholars, and I feel bound to say that, with hardly
one exception, they have displayed a far greater respect for truth and
a far more manly and generous spirit than we are accustomed to even in
Europe and America. They have shown strength, but no rudeness; nay, I
know that nothing has surprised them so much as the coarse invective
to which certain Sanskrit scholars have condescended, rudeness of
speech being, according to their view of human nature, a safe sign not
only of bad breeding, but of want of knowledge. When they were wrong,
they have readily admitted their mistakes; when they were right, they
have never sneered at their European adversaries. There has been,
with few exceptions, no quibbling, no special pleading, no
untruthfulness on their part, and certainly none of that low cunning
of the scholar who writes down and publishes what he knows perfectly
well to be false, and snaps his fingers at those who still value truth
and self-respect more highly than victory or applause at any price.
Here, too, we might possibly gain by the import cargo.
Let me add that I have been repeatedly told by English merchants that
commercial honor stands higher in India than in any other country, and
that a dishonored bill is hardly known there.
I have left to the last the witnesses who might otherwise have been
suspected--I mean the Hindus themselves. The whole of their literature
from one end to the other is pervaded by expressions of love and
reverence for truth. Their very word for truth is full of meaning. It
is s a t or s a t y a, s a t being the participle of the verb _as_, to be.
True, therefore, was with them simply _that which is_. The English
_sooth_ is connected with sat, also the Greek [Greek: on] for
[Greek: _eson_], and the Latin _sens_, in _praesens_.
We are all very apt to consider truth to be what is trowed by others,
or believed in by large majorities. That kind of truth is easy to
accept. But whoever has once stood alone, surrounded by noisy
assertions, and overwhelmed by the clamor of those who ought to know
better, or perhaps who did know better--call him Galileo or Darwin,
Colenso or Stanley, or any other name--he knows what a real delight it
is to feel in his heart of hearts, this is true--this is--this is
s a t--whatever daily, weekly, or quarterly papers, whatever bishops,
archbishops, or popes, may say to the contrary.
Another name for truth is the Sanskrit _r i_t a, which originally seems
to have meant _straight_, _direct_, while a n_r i_t a is untrue, false.
Now one of the highest praises bestowed upon the gods in the Veda is
that they are s a t y a, true, truthful, trustworthy;[62] and it is well
known that both in modern and ancient times, men always ascribe to God
or to their gods those qualities which they value most in themselves.
Other words applied to the gods as truthful beings are, a d r o g h a,
lit. not deceiving.[63] A d r o g h a-v a _k_ means, he whose word is
never broken. Thus Indra, the Vedic Jupiter, is said to have been
praised by the fathers[64] "as reaching the enemy, overcoming him,
standing on the summit, _true of speech_, most powerful in thought."
D r o g h a v a _k_,[65] on the contrary, is used for deceitful men. Thus
Vasish_th_a, one of the great Vedic poets, says: "If I had worshipped
false gods, or if I believed in the gods vainly--but why art thou
angry with us, O _G_atavedas? May liars go to destruction!"
S a t y a m, as a neuter, is often used as an abstract, and is then
rightly translated by truth. But it also means that which is, the true,
the real; and there are several passages in the Rig-Veda where, instead
of _truth_, I think we ought simply to translate s a t y a m by the
true, that is, the real, [Greek: to ontos on].[66] It sounds, no doubt,
very well to translate Satyena uttabhita bhumi_h_ by "the earth is
founded on truth;" and I believe every translator has taken s a t y a in
that sense here. Ludwig translates, "Von der Wahrheit ist die Erde
gestuetzt." But such an idea, if it conveys any tangible meaning at all,
is far too abstract for those early poets and philosophers. They meant
to say "the earth, such as we see it, is held up, that is, rests on
something real, though we may not see it, on something which they called
the Real,[67] and to which, in course of time, they gave many more
names, such as _R i_ t a, the right, B r a h m a n," etc.
Of course where there is that strong reverence for truth, there must
also be the sense of guilt arising from untruth. And thus we hear one
poet pray that the waters may wash him clean, and carry off all his
sins and all untruth:
"Carry away, ye waters,[68] whatever evil there is in me,
wherever I may have deceived, or may have cursed, and also
all untruth (an_ri_tam)."[69]
Or again, in the Atharva-Veda IV. 16:
"May all thy fatal snares, which stand spread out seven by
seven and threefold, catch the man who tells a lie, may they
pass by him who tells the truth!"
From the Brahma_n_as, or theological treatises of the Brahmans, I
shall quote a few passages only:
"Whosoever[70] speaks the truth, makes the fire on his own
altar blaze up, as if he poured butter into the lighted fire.
His own light grows larger, and from to-morrow to to-morrow
he becomes better. But whosoever speaks untruth, he quenches
the fire on his altar, as if he poured water into the lighted
fire; his own light grows smaller and smaller, and from
to-morrow to to-morrow he becomes more wicked. Let man
therefore speak truth only."[71]
And again:[72] "A man becomes impure by uttering falsehood."
And again:[73] "As a man who steps on the edge of a sword placed over
a pit cries out, I shall slip, I shall slip into the pit, so let a man
guard himself from falsehood (or sin)."
In later times we see the respect for truth carried to such an
extreme, that even a promise, unwittingly made, is considered to be
binding.
In the Ka_th_a-Upanishad, for instance, a father is introduced
offering what is called an _All_-sacrifice, where everything is
supposed to be given up. His son, who is standing by, taunts his
father with not having altogether fulfilled his vow, because he has
not sacrificed his son. Upon this, the father, though angry and
against his will, is obliged to sacrifice his son. Again, when the son
arrives in the lower world, he is allowed by the Judge of the Dead to
ask for three favors. He then asks to be restored to life, to be
taught some sacrificial mysteries, and, as the third boon, he asks to
know what becomes of man after he is dead. Yama, the lord of the
Departed, tries in vain to be let off from answering this last
question. But he, too, is bound by his promise, and then follows a
discourse on life after death, or immortal life, which forms one of
the most beautiful chapters in the ancient literature of India.
The whole plot of one of the great epic poems, the Ramaya_n_a, rests
on a rash promise given by Da_s_aratha, king of Ayodhya, to his second
wife, Kaikeyi, that he would grant her two boons. In order to secure
the succession to her own son, she asks that Rama, the eldest son by
the king's other wife, should be banished for fourteen years. Much as
the king repents his promise, Rama, his eldest son, would on no
account let his father break his word, and he leaves his kingdom to
wander in the forest with his wife Sita and his brother Lakshma_n_a.
After the father's death, the son of the second wife declines the
throne, and comes to Rama to persuade him to accept the kingdom of his
father. But all in vain. Rama will keep his exile for fourteen years,
and never disown his father's promise. Here follows a curious dialogue
between a Brahman _G_abali and Prince Rama, of which I shall give some
extracts:[74]
"The Brahman, who is a priest and courtier, says, 'Well,
descendant of Raghu, do not thou, so noble in sentiments, and
austere in character, entertain, like a common man, this
useless thought. What man is a kinsman of any other? What
relationship has any one with another? A man is born alone
and dies alone. Hence he who is attached to any one as his
father or his mother, is to be regarded as if he were insane,
for no one belongs to another. Thou oughtest not to abandon
thy father's kingdom and stay here in a sad and miserable
abode, attended with many trials. Let thyself be inaugurated
king in the wealthy Ayodhya. Da_s_aratha, thy father is
nothing to thee, or thou to him; the king is one, and thou
another, do therefore what is said.... Then offer oblations
to the departed spirits (of thy forefathers) on prescribed
days; but see what a waste of food! For what can a dead man
eat? If what is eaten by one here enters into the body of
another (viz., of the departed), let _S_raddhas be offered to
those who are travelling; they need not then get food to eat
on their journey. These books (the Vedas), (which enjoin men
to) sacrifice, give, consecrate themselves, practise
austerities, and forsake the world, are composed by clever
men to induce others to bestow gifts. Authoritative words do
not fall from heaven. Let me, and others like yourselves,
embrace whatever assertion is supported by reason. Adhere to
what is apparent to the senses, and reject what is
invisible.... _This world is the next world_; do thou
therefore enjoy pleasure, for every virtuous man does not
gain it. Virtuous men are greatly distressed, while the
unrighteous are seen to be happy.'"
These positivist sentiments sound strange, particularly from the mouth
of a Brahman. But the poet evidently wishes to represent a Brahman
living at court, who has an argument ready for anything and everything
that is likely to please his king.
But what does Rama answer? "The words," he says, "which you have
addressed to me, though they recommend what _seems_ to be right and
salutary, advise, in fact, the contrary. The sinful transgressor, who
lives according to the rules of heretical systems, obtains no esteem
from good men. It is good conduct that marks a man to be noble or
ignoble, heroic or a pretender to manliness, pure or impure. Truth and
mercy are immemorial characteristics of a king's conduct. Hence royal
rule is in its essence _truth_. On truth the word is based. Both sages
and gods have esteemed truth. The man who speaks truth in this world
attains the highest imperishable state. Men shrink with fear and
horror from a liar as from a serpent. In this world the chief element
in virtue is truth; it is called the basis of everything. Truth is
lord in the world; virtue always rests on truth. All things are
founded on truth; nothing is higher than it. Why, then, should I not
be true to my promise, and faithfully observe the truthful injunction
given by my father? Neither through covetousness, nor delusion, nor
ignorance, will I, overpowered by darkness, break through the barrier
of truth, but remain true to my promise to my father. How shall I,
having promised to him that I would thus reside in the forests,
transgress his injunction, and do what Bharata recommends?"
The other epic poem too, the Mahabharata, is full of episodes showing
a profound regard for truth and an almost slavish submission to a
pledge once given. The death of Bhishma, one of the most important
events in the story of the Mahabharata, is due to his vow never to
hurt a woman. He is thus killed by _S_ikhandin, whom he takes to be a
woman.[75]
Were I to quote from all the law-books, and from still later works,
everywhere you would hear the same key-note of truthfulness vibrating
through them all.
We must not, however, suppress the fact that, under certain
circumstances, a lie was allowed, or, at all events, excused by Indian
lawgivers. Thus Gautama says:[76] "An untruth spoken by people under
the influence of anger, excessive joy, fear, pain, or grief, by
infants, by very old men, by persons laboring under a delusion, being
under the influence of drink, or by madmen, does not cause the speaker
to fall, or, as we should say, is a venial, not a mortal sin."[77]
This is a large admission, yet even in that open admission there is a
certain amount of honesty. Again and again in the Mahabharata is this
excuse pleaded.[78] Nay, there is in the Mahabharata[79] the
well-known story of Kau_s_ika, called Satyavadin, the Truth-speaker,
who goes to hell for having spoken the truth. He once saw men flying
into the forest before robbers (dasyu). The robbers came up soon after
them, and asked Kau_s_ika, which way the fugitives had taken. He told
them the truth, and the men were caught by the robbers and killed.
But Kau_s_ika, we are told, went to hell for having spoken the truth.
The Hindus may seem to have been a priest-ridden race, and their
devotion to sacrifice and ceremonial is well known. Yet this is what
the poet of the Mahabharata dares to say:
"Let a thousand sacrifices (of a horse) and truth be weighed
in the balance--truth will exceed the thousand
sacrifices."[80]
These are words addressed by _S_akuntala, the deserted wife, to King
Dushyanta, when he declined to recognize her and his son. And when he
refuses to listen to her appeal, what does she appeal to as the
highest authority?--_The voice of conscience._
"If you think I am alone," she says to the king, "you do not know that
wise man within your heart. He knows of your evil deed--in _his_ sight
you commit sin. A man who has committed sin may think that no one
knows it. The gods know it and the old man within."[81]
This must suffice. I say once more that I do not wish to represent the
people of India as two hundred and fifty-three millions of angels, but
I do wish it to be understood and to be accepted as a fact, that the
damaging charge of untruthfulness brought against that people is
utterly unfounded with regard to ancient times. It is not only not
true, but the very opposite of the truth. As to modern times, and I
date them from about 1000 after Christ, I can only say that, after
reading the accounts of the terrors and horrors of Mohammedan rule, my
wonder is that so much of native virtue and truthfulness should have
survived. You might as well expect a mouse to speak the truth before a
cat, as a Hindu before a Mohammedan judge.[82] If you frighten a
child, that child will tell a lie; if you terrorize millions, you must
not be surprised if they try to escape from your fangs. Truthfulness
is a luxury, perhaps the greatest, and let me assure you, the most
expensive luxury in our life--and happy the man who has been able to
enjoy it from his very childhood. It may be easy enough in our days
and in a free country, like England, never to tell a lie--but the
older we grow, the harder we find it to be always true, to speak the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The Hindus too had
made that discovery. They too knew how hard, nay how impossible it is,
always to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
There is a short story in the _S_atapatha Brahma_n_a, to my mind full
of deep meaning, and pervaded by the real sense of truth, the real
sense of the difficulty of truth. His kinsman said to Aru_n_a
Aupave_s_i, "Thou art advanced in years, establish thou the
sacrificial fires." He replied: "Thereby you tell me henceforth to
keep silence. For he who has established the fires must not speak an
untruth, and only by not speaking at all, one speaks no untruth. To
that extent the service of the sacrificial fires consists in
truth."[83]
I doubt whether in any other of the ancient literatures of the world
you will find traces of that extreme sensitiveness of conscience which
despairs of our ever speaking the truth, and which declares silence
gold, and speech silver, though, in a much higher sense than our
proverb.
What I should wish to impress on those who will soon find themselves
the rulers of millions of human beings in India, is the duty to shake
off national prejudices, which are apt to degenerate into a kind of
madness. I have known people with a brown skin whom I could look up to
as my betters. Look for them in India, and you will find them, and if
you meet with disappointments, as no doubt you will, think of the
people with white skins whom you have trusted, and whom you can trust
no more. We are all apt to be Pharisees in international judgments. I
read only a few days ago in a pamphlet written by an enlightened
politician, the following words:
"Experience only can teach that nothing is so truly
astonishing to a morally depraved people as the phenomenon of
a race of men in whose word perfect confidence may be
placed[84].... The natives are conscious of their inferiority
in nothing so much as in this. They require to be taught
rectitude of conduct much more than literature and science."
If you approach the Hindus with such feelings, you will teach them
neither rectitude, nor science, nor literature. Nay, they might appeal
to their own literature, even to their law-books, to teach us at least
one lesson of truthfulness, truthfulness to ourselves, or, in other
words, humility.
What does Ya_gn_avalkya say?[85]
"It is not our hermitage," he says--our religion we might
say--"still less the color of our skin, that produces virtue;
virtue must be practiced. Therefore let no one do to others
what he would not have done to himself."
And the laws of the Manavas, which were so much abused by Mill, what
do they teach?[86]
"Evil-doers think indeed that no one sees them; but the gods
see them, and the old man within."
"Self is the witness of Self, Self is the refuge of Self. Do
not despise thy own Self, the highest witness of men."[87]
"If, friend, thou thinkest thou art self-alone, remember
there is the silent thinker (the Highest Self) always within
thy heart, and _he_ sees what is good and what is evil."[88]
"O friend, whatever good thou mayest have done from thy very
birth, all will go to the dogs, if thou speak an untruth."
Or in Vasish_th_a, XXX. 1:
"Practice righteousness, not unrighteousness; speak truth,
not untruth; look far, not near; look up toward the highest,
not toward anything low."
No doubt there is moral depravity in India, and where is there no
moral depravity in this world? But to appeal to international
statistics would be, I believe, a dangerous game. Nor must we forget
that our standards of morality differ, and, on some points, differ
considerably from those recognized in India; and we must not wonder if
sons do not at once condemn as criminal what their fathers and
grandfathers considered right. Let us hold by all means to _our_ sense
of what is right and what is wrong; but in judging others, whether in
public or in private life, whether as historians or politicians, let
us not forget that a kindly spirit will never do any harm. Certainly
I can imagine nothing more mischievous, more dangerous, more fatal to
the permanence of English rule in India, than for the young civil
servants to go to that country with the idea that it is a sink of
moral depravity, an ants' nest of lies; for no one is so sure to go
wrong, whether in public or in private life, as he who says in his
haste: "All men are liars."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 17: Mill's "History of British India," ed. Wilson, vol. i.,
p. 375.]
[Footnote 18: Keshub Chunder Sen is the present spiritual director of
the Brahmo Sama_g_, the theistic organization founded by the late
Rammohun Roy.--A. W.]
[Footnote 19: Mill's "History," ed. Wilson, vol. i., p. 368.]
[Footnote 20: L. c. p. 325.]
[Footnote 21: L. c. p. 329.]
[Footnote 22: P. 217.]
[Footnote 23: Mill's "History," vol. i., p. 329.]
[Footnote 24: Manu, VIII. 43, says: "Neither a King himself nor his
officers must ever promote litigation; nor ever neglect a lawsuit
instituted by others."]
[Footnote 25: Mill's "History," vol. i., p. 327.]
[Footnote 26: L. c. p. 368.]
[Footnote 27: See Elphinstone, "History of India," ed. Cowell, p. 219,
note. "Of the 232 sentences of death 64 only were carried out in
England, while the 59 sentences of death in Bengal were all carried
out."]
[Footnote 28: Sir Ch. Trevelyan, Christianity and Hinduism, 1882, p.
42.
This will be news to many. It has been quite common to include the
Thugs with the worshippers of Bhavani, the consort of Siva. The word
signifies a deceiver, which eliminates it from every religious
association.--A. W.]
[Footnote 29: Manu VII. 115.]
[Footnote 30: H. M. Elliot, "Supplement to the Glossary of Indian
Terms," p. 151.]
[Footnote 31: I see from Dr. Hunter's latest statistical tables that
the whole number of towns and villages in British India amounts to
493,429. Out of this number 448,320 have less than 1000 inhabitants,
and may be called villages. In Bengal, where the growth of towns has
been most encouraged through Government establishments, the total
number of homesteads is 117,042, and more than half of these contain
less than 200 inhabitants. Only 10,077 towns in Bengal have more than
1000 inhabitants, that is, no more than about a seventeenth part of
all the settlements are anything but what we should call substantial
villages. In the North-Western Provinces the last census gives us
105,124 villages, against 297 towns. See London _Times_, 14th Aug.
1882.]
[Footnote 32: "Ancient India as described by Megasthenes and Arrian,"
by McCrindle, p. 42.]
[Footnote 33: "Perjury seems to be committed by the meanest and
encouraged by some of the better sort among the Hindus and Mussulmans,
with as little remorse as if it were a proof of ingenuity, or even a
merit."--Sir W. Jones, Address to Grand Jury at Calcutta, in Mill's
"History of India," vol. i., p. 324. "The longer we possess a
province, the more common and grave does perjury become."--Sir G.
Campbell, quoted by Rev. Samuel Johnson, "Oriental Religions, India,"
p. 288.]
[Footnote 34: Vasish_th_a, translated by Buehler, VIII. 8.]
[Footnote 35: Mr. J. D. Baldwin, author of "Prehistoric Nations,"
declares that this system of village-communities existed in India long
before the Aryan conquest. He attributes it to Cushite or AEthiopic
influence, and with great plausibility. Nevertheless, the same system
flourished in prehistoric Greece, even till the Roman conquests. Mr.
Palgrave observed it existing in Arabia. "Oman is less a kingdom than
an aggregation of municipalities," he remarks; "each town, each
village has its separate existence and corporation, while towns and
villages, in their turn, are subjected to one or other of the
ancestral chiefs." The Ionian and Phoenician cities existed by a
similar tenure, as did also the Free Cities of Europe. It appears,
indeed, to have been the earlier form of rule. Megasthenes noticed it
in India. "The village-communities," says Sir Charles Metcalf, "are
little republics, having everything they want within themselves, and
almost independent of any foreign relations. They seem to last where
nothing else lasts." These villages usually consist of the holders of
the land, those who farm and cultivate it, the established
village-servants, priest, blacksmith, carpenter, accountant,
washerman, potter, barber, watchman, shoemaker, etc. The tenure and
law of inheritance varies with the different native races, but
tenantship for a specific period seems to be the most common.--A. W.]
[Footnote 36: "Sleeman," vol. ii., p. 111.]
[Footnote 37: Sleeman, "Rambles," vol. ii., p. 116.]
[Footnote 38: Vasish_th_a XVI. 32.]
[Footnote 39: Ktesiae Fragmenta (ed. Didot), p. 81.]
[Footnote 40: See "Indian Antiquary," 1876, p. 333.]
[Footnote 41: Megasthenis Fragmenta (ed. Didot) in "Fragm. Histor.
Graec." vol. ii., p. 426 b: [Greek: _Aletheian te humoios kai areten
apodechontai_]]
[Footnote 42: Indica, cap. xii. 6.]
[Footnote 43: See McCrindle in. "Indian Antiquary," 1876, p. 92.]
[Footnote 44: See Stanislas Julien, _Journal Asiatique_, 1847, Aout,
pp. 98, 105.]
[Footnote 45: Vol. ii., p. 83.]
[Footnote 46: Elliot, "History of India," vol. i., p. 88.]
[Footnote 47: See Mehren: "Manuel de la Cosmographie du moyen age,
traduction de l'ouvrage de Shems-ed-din Abou Abdallah de Damas."
Paris: Leroux, 1874, p. 371.]
[Footnote 48: "Marco Polo," ed. H. Yule, vol. ii., p. 350.]
[Footnote 49: "Marco Polo," vol. ii., p. 354.]
[Footnote 50: "Notices des Manuscrits," tom. xiv., p. 436. He seems to
have been one of the first to state that the Persian text of the
Kalilah and Dimna was derived from the wise people of India.]
[Footnote 51: Samuel Johnson, "India," p. 294.]
[Footnote 52: Sleeman, "Rambles," vol. i., p. 63.]
[Footnote 53: Elphinstone's "History of India," ed. Cowell, p. 213.]
[Footnote 54: This statement may well be doubted. The missionary staff
in India is very large and has been for years past. There is no reason
to doubt that many of its members are well informed respecting Hindoo
character in all grades of society.--AM. PUBS.]
[Footnote 55: Samuel Johnson, "India," p. 293.]
[Footnote 56: See "History of India," pp. 375-381.]
[Footnote 57: L. c., p. 215.]
[Footnote 58: "History of India," p. 218.]
[Footnote 59: Mill's "History of India," ed. Wilson, vol. i., p. 370.]
[Footnote 60: L. c., p. 371.]
[Footnote 61: Sir Thomas Munro estimated the children educated at
public schools in the Madras presidency as less than one in three. But
low as it was, it was, as he justly remarked, a higher rate than
existed till very lately in most countries of Europe.--Elphinstone,
"Hist. of India," p. 205.
In Bengal there existed no less than 80,000 native schools, though,
doubtless, for the most part, of a poor quality. According to a
Government Report of 1835, there was a village-school for every 400
persons.--"Missionary Intelligencer," IX. 183-193.
Ludlow ("British India," I. 62) writes: "In every Hindu village which
has retained its old form I am assured that the children generally are
able to read, write, and cipher; but where we have swept away the
village-system, as in Bengal, there the village-school has also
disappeared."]
[Footnote 62: Rig-Veda I. 87, 4; 145, 5; 174, 1; V. 23, 2.]
[Footnote 63: Rig-Veda III. 32, 9; VI. 5, 1.]
[Footnote 64: Rig-Veda VI. 22, 2.]
[Footnote 65: Rig-Veda III. 14, 6.]
[Footnote 66: This is the favorite expression of Plato for the Divine,
which Cary, Davis, and others render "Real Being."--A. W.]
[Footnote 67: Sometimes they trace even this S a t y a or _R i_ t a, the
Real or Right, to a still higher cause, and say (Rig-Veda X. 190, 1):
"The Right and Real was born from the Lighted Heat; from thence was
born Night, and thence the billowy sea. From the sea was born
Sa_m_vatsara, the year, he who ordereth day and night, the Lord of all
that moves (winks). The Maker (dhat_ri_) shaped Sun and Moon in order;
he shaped the sky, the earth, the welkin, and the highest heaven."]
[Footnote 68: Rig-Veda I. 23, 22.]
[Footnote 69: Or it may mean, "Wherever I may have deceived, or sworn
false."]
[Footnote 70: _S_atapatha Brahma_n_a II. 2, 3, 19.]
[Footnote 71: Cf. Muir, "Metrical Translations," p. 268.]
[Footnote 72: _S_at. Br. III. 1, 2, 10.]
[Footnote 73: Taitt. Ara_n_yaka X. 9.]
[Footnote 74: Muir, "Metrical Translations," p. 218.]
[Footnote 75: Holtzmann, "Das alte indische Epos," p. 21, note 83.]
[Footnote 76: V. 24.]
[Footnote 77: This permission to prevaricate was still further
extended. The following five untruths are enumerated by various
writers as not constituting mortal sins--namely, at the time of
marriage, during dalliance, when life is in danger, when the loss of
property is threatened, and for the sake of a Brahma_n_a. Again,
another writer cites the declaration that an untruth is venial if it
is spoken at the time of marriage, during dalliance, in jest, or while
suffering great pain. It is evident that Venus laughed at lovers'
oaths in India as well as elsewhere; and that false testimony
extracted by torture was excused. Manu declared that in some cases the
giver of false evidence from a pious motive would not lose his seat in
heaven; indeed, that whenever the death of a man of any of the four
castes would be occasioned by true evidence, falsehood was even better
than truth. He gives as the primeval rule, to say what is true and
what is pleasant, but not what is true and unpleasant, or what is
pleasant and not true. The Vish_n_u-pura_n_a gives like counsel,
adding the following aphorism: "A considerate man will always
cultivate, in act, thought, and speech, that which is good for living
beings, both in this world and in the next." About the same license
appears to be used in this country and winked at.--A. W.]
[Footnote 78: I. 3412; III. 13844; VII. 8742; VIII. 3436, 3464.]
[Footnote 79: Mahabharata VIII. 3448.]
[Footnote 80: Muir, l. c. p. 268; Mahabharata I. 3095.]
[Footnote 81: Mahabharata I. 3015-16.]
[Footnote 82: This explains satisfactorily how the Hindoos became
liars, and of course admits that they did become so.--AM. PUBS.]
[Footnote 83: _S_atapatha Brahma_n_a, translated by Eggeling, "Sacred
Books of the East," vol. xii., p. 313, Sec. 20.]
[Footnote 84: Sir Charles Trevelyan, "Christianity and Hinduism," p.
81.]
[Footnote 85: IV. 65.]
[Footnote 86: VIII. 85.]
[Footnote 87: VIII. 90.]
[Footnote 88: VIII. 92.]
LECTURE III.
HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE.
My first lecture was intended to remove the prejudice that India is
and always must be a strange country to us, and that those who have to
live there will find themselves stranded, and far away from that
living stream of thoughts and interests which carries us along in
England and in other countries of Europe.
My second lecture was directed against another prejudice, namely, that
the people of India with whom the young civil servants will have to
pass the best years of their life are a race so depraved morally, and
more particularly so devoid of any regard for truth, that they _must_
always remain strangers to us, and that any real fellowship or
friendship with them is quite out of the question.
To-day I shall have to grapple with a third prejudice, namely, that
the literature of India, and more especially the classical Sanskrit
literature, whatever may be its interest to the scholar and the
antiquarian, has little to teach us which we cannot learn better from
other sources, and that at all events it is of little practical use to
young civilians. If only they learn to express themselves in
Hindustani or Tamil, that is considered quite enough; nay, as they
have to deal with men and with the ordinary affairs of life, and as,
before everything else, they are to be men of the world and men of
business, it is even supposed to be dangerous, if they allowed
themselves to become absorbed in questions of abstruse scholarship or
in researches on ancient religion, mythology, and philosophy.
I take the very opposite opinion, and I should advise every young man
who wishes to enjoy his life in India, and to spend his years there
with profit to himself and to others, to learn Sanskrit, and to learn
it well.
I know it will be said, What can be the use of Sanskrit at the present
day? Is not Sanskrit a dead language? And are not the Hindus
themselves ashamed of their ancient literature? Do they not learn
English, and do they not prefer Locke, and Hume, and Mill to their
ancient poets and philosophers?
No doubt Sanskrit, in one sense, is a dead language. It was, I
believe, a dead language more than two thousand years ago. Buddha,
about 500 B.C., commanded his disciples to preach in the dialects of
the people; and King A_s_oka, in the third century B.C., when he put
up his Edicts, which were intended to be read, or at least to be
understood by the people, had them engraved on rocks and pillars in
the various local dialects from Cabul[89] in the north to Ballabhi in
the south, from the sources of the Ganges and the Jumnah to Allahabad
and Patna, nay even down to Orissa. These various dialects are as
different from Sanskrit as Italian is from Latin, and we have
therefore good reason to suppose that, in the third century B.C., if
not earlier, Sanskrit had ceased to be the spoken language of the
people at large.
There is an interesting passage in the _K_ullavagga, where we are told
that, even during Buddha's lifetime, some of his pupils, who were
Brahmans by birth, complained that people spoiled the words of Buddha
by every one repeating them in his own dialect (nirutti). They
proposed to translate his words into Sanskrit; but he declined, and
commanded that each man should learn his doctrine in his own
language.[90]
And there is another passage, quoted by Hardy in his Manual of
Buddhism, p. 186, where we read that at the time of Buddha's first
preaching each of the countless listeners thought that the sage was
looking toward him, and was speaking to him in his own tongue, though
the language used was Magadhi.[91]
Sanskrit, therefore, as a language spoken by the people at large, had
ceased to exist in the third century B.C.
Yet such is the marvellous continuity between the past and the present
in India, that in spite of repeated social convulsions, religious
reforms, and foreign invasions, Sanskrit may be said to be still the
only language that is spoken over the whole extent of that vast
country.
Though the Buddhist sovereigns published their edicts in the
vernaculars, public inscriptions and private official documents
continued to be composed in Sanskrit during the last two thousand
years. And though the language of the sacred writings of Buddhists and
_G_ainas was borrowed from the vulgar dialects, the literature of
India never ceased to be written in Pa_n_inean Sanskrit, while the few
exceptions, as, for instance, the use of Prakrit by women and inferior
characters in the plays of Kalidasa and others, are themselves not
without an important historical significance.
Even at the present moment, after a century of English rule and
English teaching, I believe that Sanskrit is more widely understood in
India than Latin was in Europe at the time of Dante.
Whenever I receive a letter from a learned man in India, it is written
in Sanskrit. Whenever there is a controversy on questions of law and
religion, the pamphlets published in India are written in Sanskrit.
There are journals written in Sanskrit which must entirely depend for
their support on readers who prefer that classical language to the
vulgar dialects. There is _The Pandit_, published at Benares,
containing not only editions of ancient texts, but treatises on modern
subjects, reviews of books published in England, and controversial
articles, all in Sanskrit.
Another paper of the same kind is the _Pratna-Kamra-nandini_, "the
Delight of lovers of old things," published likewise at Benares, and
full of valuable materials.
There is also the _Vidyodaya_, "the Rise of Knowledge," a Sanskrit
journal published at Calcutta, which sometimes contains important
articles. There are probably others, which I do not know.
There is a monthly serial published at Bombay, by M. Moreshwar Kunte,
called the _Shad-darshana-Chintanika_, or "Studies in Indian
Philosophy," giving the text of the ancient systems of philosophy,
with commentaries and treatises, written in Sanskrit, though in this
case accompanied by a Marathi and an English translation.
Of the Rig-Veda, the most ancient of Sanskrit books, two editions are
now coming out in monthly numbers, the one published at Bombay, by
what may be called the liberal party, the other at Prayaga (Allahabad)
by Dayananda Sarasvati, the representative of Indian orthodoxy. The
former gives a paraphrase in Sanskrit, and a Marathi and an English
translation; the latter a full explanation in Sanskrit, followed by a
vernacular commentary. These books are published by subscription, and
the list of subscribers among the natives of India is very
considerable.
There are other journals, which are chiefly written in the spoken
dialects, such as Bengali, Marathi, or Hindi; but they contain occasional
articles in Sanskrit, as, for instance, the Hari_sk_andra_k_andrika,
published at Benares, the _Tattvabodhini_, published at Calcutta, and
several more.
It was only the other day that I saw in the _Liberal_, the journal of
Keshub Chunder Sen's party,[92] an account of a meeting between
Brahmavrata Samadhyayi, a Vedic scholar of Nuddea, and Kashinath
Trimbak Telang, a M.A. of the University of Bombay. The one came from
the east, the other from the west, yet both could converse fluently in
Sanskrit.[93]
Still more extraordinary is the number of Sanskrit texts, issuing from
native presses, for which there seems to be a large demand, for if we
write for copies to be sent to England, we often find that, after a
year or two, all the copies have been bought up in India itself. That
would not be the case with Anglo-Saxon texts in England, or with Latin
texts in Italy!
But more than this, we are told that the ancient epic poems of the
Mahabharata and Ramaya_n_a are still recited in the temples for the
benefit of visitors, and that in the villages large crowds assemble
around the Kathaka, the reader of these ancient Sanskrit poems, often
interrupting his recitations with tears and sighs, when the hero of
the poem is sent into banishment, while when he returns to his
kingdom, the houses of the village are adorned with lamps and
garlands. Such a recitation of the whole of the Mahabharata is said to
occupy ninety days, or sometimes half a year.[94] The people at large
require, no doubt, that the Brahman narrator (Kathaka) should
interpret the old poem, but there must be some few people present who
understand, or imagine they understand, the old poetry of Vyasa and
Valmiki.
There are thousands of Brahmans[95] even now, when so little
inducement exists for Vedic studies, who know the whole of the
Rig-Veda by heart and can repeat it; and what applies to the Rig-Veda
applies to many other books.
But even if Sanskrit were more of a dead language than it really is,
all the living languages of India, both Aryan and Dravidian, draw
their very life and soul from Sanskrit.[96] On this point, and on the
great help that even a limited knowledge of Sanskrit would render in
the acquisition of the vernaculars, I, and others better qualified
than I am, have spoken so often, though without any practical effect,
that I need not speak again. Any candidate who knows but the elements
of Sanskrit grammar will well understand what I mean, whether his
special vernacular may be Bengali, Hindustani, or even Tamil. To a
classical scholar I can only say that between a civil servant who
knows Sanskrit and Hindustani, and another who knows Hindustani only,
there is about the same difference in their power of forming an
intelligent appreciation of India and its inhabitants, as there is
between a traveller who visits Italy with a knowledge of Latin, and a
party personally conducted to Rome by Messrs. Cook & Co.
Let us examine, however, the objection that Sanskrit literature is a
dead or an artificial literature, a little more carefully, in order to
see whether there is not some kind of truth in it. Some people hold
that the literary works which we possess in Sanskrit never had any
real life at all, that they were altogether scholastic productions,
and that therefore they can teach us nothing of what we really care
for, namely, the historical growth of the Hindu mind. Others maintain
that at the present moment, at all events, and after a century of
English rule, Sanskrit literature has ceased to be a motive power in
India, and that it can teach us nothing of what is passing now through
the Hindu mind and influencing it for good or for evil.
Let us look at the facts. Sanskrit literature is a wide and a vague
term. If the Vedas, such as we now have them, were composed about 1500
B.C., and if it is a fact that considerable works continue to be
written in Sanskrit even now, we have before us a stream of literary
activity extending over three thousand four hundred years. With the
exception of China there is nothing like this in the whole world.
It is difficult to give an idea of the enormous extent and variety of
that literature. We are only gradually becoming acquainted with the
untold treasures which still exist in manuscripts, and with the titles
of that still larger number of works which must have existed formerly,
some of them being still quoted by writers of the last three or four
centuries.[97]
The Indian Government has of late years ordered a kind of
bibliographical survey of India to be made, and has sent some learned
Sanskrit scholars, both European and native, to places where
collections of Sanskrit MSS. are known to exist, in order to examine
and catalogue them. Some of these catalogues have been published, and
we learn from them that the number of separate works in Sanskrit, of
which mss. are still in existence, amounts to about 10,000.[98] This
is more, I believe, than the whole classical literature of Greece and
Italy put together. Much of it, no doubt, will be called mere rubbish;
but then you know that even in our days the writings of a very eminent
philosopher have been called "mere rubbish." What I wish you to see is
this, that there runs through the whole history of India, through its
three or four thousand years, a high road, or, it is perhaps more
accurate to say, a high mountain-path of literature. It may be remote
from the turmoil of the plain, hardly visible perhaps to the millions
of human beings in their daily struggle of life. It may have been
trodden by a few solitary wanderers only. But to the historian of the
human race, to the student of the development of the human mind, those
few solitary wanderers are after all the true representatives of India
from age to age. Do not let us be deceived. The true history of the
world must always be the history of the few; and as we measure the
Himalaya by the height of Mount Everest, we must take the true measure
of India from the poets of the Veda, the sages of the Upanishads, the
founders of the Vedanta and Sankhya philosophies, and the authors of
the oldest law-books, and not from the millions who are born and die
in their villages, and who have never for one moment been roused out
of their drowsy dream of life.
To large multitudes in India, no doubt, Sanskrit literature was not
merely a dead literature, it was simply non-existent; but the same
might be said of almost every literature, and more particularly of the
literatures of the ancient world.
Still, even beyond this, I am quite prepared to acknowledge to a
certain extent the truth of the statement, that a great portion of
Sanskrit literature has never been living and national, in the same
sense in which the Greek and Roman literatures reflected at times the
life of a whole nation; and it is quite true besides, that the
Sanskrit books which are best known to the public at large, belong to
what might correctly be called the Renaissance period of Indian
literature, when those who wrote Sanskrit had themselves to learn the
language, as we learn Latin, and were conscious that they were writing
for a learned and cultivated public only, and not for the people at
large.
This will require a fuller explanation.
We may divide the whole of Sanskrit literature, beginning with the
Rig-Veda and ending with Dayananda's Introduction to his edition of
the Rig-Veda, his by no means uninteresting Rig-Veda-bhumika, into two
great periods: that preceding the great Turanian invasion, and that
following it.
The former comprises the Vedic literature and the ancient literature
of Buddhism, the latter all the rest.
If I call the invasion which is generally called the invasion of the
_S_akas, or the Scythians, or Indo-Scythians, or Turushkas, the
_Turanian[99] invasion_, it is simply because I do not as yet wish to
commit myself more than I can help as to the nationality of the tribes
who took possession of India, or, at least, of the government of
India, from about the first century B.C. to the third century A.D.
They are best known by the name of _Yueh-chi_, this being the name by
which they are called in Chinese chronicles. These Chinese chronicles
form the principal source from which we derive our knowledge of these
tribes, both before and after their invasion of India. Many theories
have been started as to their relationship with other races. They are
described as of pink and white complexion and as shooting from
horseback; and as there was some similarity between their Chinese name
_Yueh-chi_ and the _Gothi_ or _Goths_, they were identified by
Remusat[100] with those German tribes, and by others with the _Getae_,
the neighbors of the Goths. Tod went even a step farther, and traced
the _G_ats in India and the Rajputs back to the _Yueh-chi_ and
_Getae_.[101] Some light may come in time out of all this darkness, but
for the present we must be satisfied with the fact that, between the
first century before and the third century after our era, the greatest
political revolution took place in India owing to the repeated inroads
of Turanian, or, to use a still less objectionable term, of Northern
tribes. Their presence in India, recorded by Chinese historians, is
fully confirmed by coins, by inscriptions, and by the traditional
history of the country, such as it is; but to my mind nothing attests
the presence of these foreign invaders more clearly than the break,
or, I could almost say, the blank in the Brahmanical literature of
India from the first century before to the third century after our
era.[102]
If we consider the political and social state of that country, we can
easily understand what would happen in a case of invasion and conquest
by a warlike race. The invaders would take possession of the
strongholds or castles, and either remove the old Rajahs, or make them
their vassals and agents. Everything else would then go on exactly as
before. The rents would be paid, the taxes collected, and the life of
the villagers, that is, of the great majority of the people of India,
would go on almost undisturbed by the change of government. The only
people who might suffer would be, or, at all events, might be the
priestly caste, unless they should come to terms with the new
conquerors. The priestly caste, however, was also to a great extent
the literary caste, and the absence of their old patrons, the native
Rajahs, might well produce for a time a complete cessation of literary
activity. The rise of Buddhism and its formal adoption by King Asoka
had already considerably shaken the power and influence of the old
Brahmanic hierarchy. The Northern conquerors, whatever their religion
may have been, were certainly not believers in the Veda. They seem to
have made a kind of compromise with Buddhism, and it is probably due
to that compromise, or to an amalgamation of _S_aka legends with
Buddhist doctrines, that we owe the so-called Mahayana form of
Buddhism--and more particularly the Amitabha worship--which was
finally settled at the Council under Kanishka, one of the Turanian
rulers of India in the first century A.D.
If then we divide the whole of Sanskrit literature into these two
periods, the one anterior to the great Turanian invasion, the other
posterior to it, we may call the literature of the former period
_ancient_ and _natural_, that of the latter _modern_ and _artificial_.
Of the former period we possess, _first_, what has been called the
_Veda_, _i.e._, Knowledge, in the widest sense of the word--a
considerable mass of literature, yet evidently a wreck only, saved out
of a general deluge; _secondly_, the works collected in the Buddhist
Tripi_t_aka, now known to us chiefly in what is called the Pali
dialect, the Gatha dialects, and Sanskrit, and probably much added to
in later times.
The second period of Sanskrit literature comprehends everything else.
Both periods may be subdivided again, but this does not concern us at
present.
Now I am quite willing to admit that the literature of the second
period, the modern Sanskrit literature, never was a living or national
literature. It here and there contains remnants of earlier times,
adapted to the literary, religious, and moral tastes of a later
period; and whenever we are able to disentangle those ancient
elements, they may serve to throw light on the past, and, to a certain
extent, supplement what has been lost in the literature of the Vedic
times. The metrical Law-books, for instance, contain old materials
which existed during the Vedic period, partly in prose, as Sutras,
partly in more ancient metres, as Gathas. The Epic poems, the
Mahabharata and Ramaya_n_a, have taken the place of the old Itihasas
and Akhyanas. The Pura_n_as, even, may contain materials, though much
altered, of what was called in Vedic literature the Pura_n_a.[103]
But the great mass of that later literature is artificial or
scholastic, full of interesting compositions, and by no means devoid
of originality and occasional beauty; yet with all that, curious only,
and appealing to the interests of the Oriental scholar far more than
the broad human sympathies of the historian and the philosopher.
It is different with the ancient literature of India, the literature
dominated by the Vedic and the Buddhistic religions. That literature
opens to us a chapter in what has been called the Education of the
Human Race, to which we can find no parallel anywhere else. Whoever
cares for the historical growth of our language, that is, of our
thoughts; whoever cares for the first intelligible development of
religion and mythology; whoever cares for the first foundation of what
in later times we call the sciences of astronomy, metronomy, grammar,
and etymology; whoever cares for the first intimations of
philosophical thought, for the first attempts at regulating family
life, village life, and state life, as founded on religion,
ceremonial, tradition and contract (samaya)--must in future pay the
same attention to the literature of the Vedic period as to the
literatures of Greece and Rome and Germany.
As to the lessons which the early literature of Buddhism may teach us,
I need not dwell on them at present. If I may judge from the numerous
questions that are addressed to me with regard to that religion and
its striking coincidences with Christianity, Buddhism has already
become a subject of general interest, and will and ought to become so
more and more.[104] On that whole class of literature, however, it is
not my intention to dwell in this short course of Lectures, which can
hardly suffice even for a general survey of Vedic literature, and for
an elucidation of the principal lessons which, I think, we may learn
from the Hymns, the Brahma_n_as, the Upanishads, and the Sutras.
It was a real misfortune that Sanskrit literature became first known
to the learned public in Europe through specimens belonging to the
second, or, what I called, the Renaissance period. The Bhagavadgita,
the plays of Kalidasa, such as _S_akuntala or Urva_s_i, a few episodes
from the Mahabharata and Ramaya_n_a, such as those of Nala and the
Ya_gn_adattabadha, the fables of the Hitopadesa, and the sentences of
Bhart_ri_hari are, no doubt, extremely curious; and as, at the time
when they first became known in Europe, they were represented to be of
extreme antiquity, and the work of a people formerly supposed to be
quite incapable of high literary efforts, they naturally attracted the
attention of men such as Sir William Jones in England, Herder and
Goethe in Germany, who were pleased to speak of them in terms of
highest admiration. It was the fashion at that time to speak of
Kalidasa, as, for instance, Alexander von Humboldt did even in so
recent a work as his Kosmos, as "the great contemporary of Virgil and
Horace, who lived at the splendid court of Vikramaditya," this
Vikramaditya being supposed to be the founder of the Samvat era, 56
B.C. But all this is now changed. Whoever the Vikramaditya was who is
supposed to have defeated the _S_akas, and to have founded another
era, the Samvat era, 56 B.C., he certainly did not live in the first
century B.C. Nor are the Indians looked upon any longer as an
illiterate race, and their poetry as popular and artless. On the
contrary, they are judged now by the same standards as Persians and
Arabs, Italians or French; and, measured by that standard, such works
as Kalidasa's plays are not superior to many plays that have long been
allowed to rest in dust and peace on the shelves of our libraries.
Their antiquity is no longer believed in by any critical Sanskrit
scholar. Kalidasa is mentioned with Bharavi as a famous poet in an
inscription[105] dated A.D. 585-6 (507 _S_aka era), and for the
present I see no reason to place him much earlier. As to the Laws of
Manu, which used to be assigned to a fabulous antiquity,[106] and are
so still sometimes by those who write at random or at second-hand, I
doubt whether, in their present form, they can be older than the
fourth century of our era, nay I am quite prepared to see an even
later date assigned to them. I know this will seem heresy to many
Sanskrit scholars, but we must try to be honest to ourselves. Is there
any evidence to constrain us to assign the Manava-dharma-_s_astra,
such as we now possess it, written in continuous _S_lokas, to any date
anterior to 300 A.D.? And if there is not, why should we not openly
state it, challenge opposition, and feel grateful if our doubts can be
removed?
That Manu was a name of high legal authority before that time, and
that Manu and the Manavam are frequently quoted in the ancient legal
Sutras, is quite true; but this serves only to confirm the conviction
that the literature which succeeded the Turanian invasion is full of
wrecks saved from the intervening deluge. If what we call the _Laws of
Manu_ had really existed as a code of laws, like the Code of
Justinian, during previous centuries, is it likely that it should
nowhere have been quoted and appealed to?
Varahamihira (who died 587 A.D.) refers to Manu several times, but not
to a Manava-dharma-_s_astra; and the only time where he seems actually
to quote a number of verses from Manu, these verses are not to be met
with in our text.[107]
I believe it will be found that the century in which Varahamihara
lived and wrote was the age of the literary Renaissance in India.[108]
That Kalidasa and Bharavi were famous at that time, we know from the
evidence of inscriptions. We also know that during that century the
fame of Indian literature had reached Persia, and that the King of
Persia, Khosru Nushirvan, sent his physician, Barzoi, to India, in
order to translate the fables of the Pa_nk_atantra, or rather their
original, from Sanskrit into Pahlavi. The famous "Nine Gems," or
"the nine classics," as we should say, have been referred, at least in
part, to the same age,[109] and I doubt whether we shall be able to
assign a much earlier date to anything we possess of Sanskrit
literature, excepting always the Vedic and Buddhistic writings.
Although the specimens of this modern Sanskrit literature, when they
first became known, served to arouse a general interest, and serve
even now to keep alive a certain superficial sympathy for Indian
literature, more serious students had soon disposed of these
compositions, and while gladly admitting their claim to be called
pretty and attractive, could not think of allowing to Sanskrit
literature a place among the world-literatures, a place by the side of
Greek and Latin, Italian, French, English, or German.
There was indeed a time when people began to imagine that all that was
worth knowing about Indian literature was known, and that the only
ground on which Sanskrit could claim a place among the recognized
branches of learning in a university was its usefulness for the study
of the Science of Language.
At that very time, however, now about forty years ago, a new start was
made, which has given to Sanskrit scholarship an entirely new
character. The chief author of that movement was Burnouf, then
professor at the _College de France_ in Paris, an excellent scholar,
but at the same time a man of wide views and true historical
instincts, and the last man to waste his life on mere Nalas and
_S_akuntalas. Being brought up in the old traditions of the classical
school in France (his father was the author of the well-known Greek
Grammar), then for a time a promising young barrister, with
influential friends such as Guizot, Thiers, Mignet, Villemain, at his
side, and with a brilliant future before him, he was not likely to
spend his life on pretty Sanskrit ditties. What he wanted when he
threw himself on Sanskrit was history, human history, world-history,
and with an unerring grasp he laid hold of Vedic literature and
Buddhist literature, as the two stepping-stones in the slough of
Indian literature. He died young, and has left a few arches only of
the building he wished to rear. But his spirit lived on in his pupils
and his friends, and few would deny that the first impulse, directly
or indirectly, to all that has been accomplished since by the students
of Vedic and Buddhist literature, was given by Burnouf and his
lectures at the _College de France_.
What then, you may ask, do we find in that ancient Sanskrit literature
and cannot find anywhere else? My answer is: We find there the Aryan
man, whom we know in his various characters, as Greek, Roman, German,
Celt, and Slave, in an entirely new character. Whereas in his
migrations northward his active and political energies are called out
and brought to their highest perfection, we find the other side of the
human character, the passive and meditative, carried to its fullest
growth in India. In some of the hymns of the Rig-Veda we can still
watch an earlier phase. We see the Aryan tribes taking possession of
the land, and under the guidance of such warlike gods as Indra and the
Maruts, defending their new homes against the assaults of the
black-skinned aborigines as well as against the inroads of later Aryan
colonists. But that period of war soon came to an end, and when the
great mass of the people had once settled down in their homesteads,
the military and political duties seem to have been monopolized by
what we call a _caste_,[110] that is by a small aristocracy, while the
great majority of the people were satisfied with spending their days
within the narrow spheres of their villages, little concerned about
the outside world, and content with the gifts that nature bestowed on
them, without much labor. We read in the Mahabharata (XIII. 22):
"There is fruit on the trees in every forest, which every one
who likes may pluck without trouble. There is cool and sweet
water in the pure rivers here and there. There is a soft bed
made of the twigs of beautiful creepers. And yet wretched
people suffer pain at the door of the rich!"
At first sight we may feel inclined to call this quiet enjoyment of
life, this mere looking on, a degeneracy rather than a growth. It
seems so different from what _we_ think life ought to be. Yet, from a
higher point of view it may appear that those Southern Aryans have
chosen the good part, or at least the part good for them, while we,
Northern Aryans, have been careful and troubled about many things.
It is at all events a problem worth considering whether, as there is
in nature a South and a North, there are not two hemispheres also in
human nature, both worth developing--the active, combative, and
political on one side, the passive, meditative, and philosophical on
the other; and for the solution of that problem no literature
furnishes such ample materials as that of the Veda, beginning with the
Hymns and ending with the Upanishads. We enter into a new world--not
always an attractive one, least of all to us; but it possesses one
charm, it is real, it is of natural growth, and like everything of
natural growth, I believe it had a hidden purpose, and was intended to
teach us some kind of lesson that is worth learning, and that
certainly we could learn nowhere else. We are not called upon either
to admire or to despise that ancient Vedic literature; we have simply
to study and to try to understand it.
There have been silly persons who have represented the development of
the Indian mind as superior to any other, nay, who would make us go
back to the Veda or to the sacred writings of the Buddhists in order
to find there a truer religion, a purer morality, and a more sublime
philosophy than our own. I shall not even mention the names of these
writers or the titles of their works. But I feel equally impatient
when I see other scholars criticising the ancient literature of India
as if it were the work of the nineteenth century, as if it represented
an enemy that must be defeated, and that can claim no mercy at our
hands. That the Veda is full of childish, silly, even to our minds
monstrous conceptions, who would deny? But even these monstrosities
are interesting and instructive; nay, many of them, if we can but make
allowance for different ways of thought and language, contain germs of
truth and rays of light, all the more striking because breaking upon
us through the veil of the darkest night.
Here lies the general, the truly human interest which the _ancient_
literature of India possesses, and which gives it a claim on the
attention, not only of Oriental scholars or of students of ancient
history, but of every educated man and woman.
There are problems which we may put aside for a time, ay, which we
must put aside while engaged each in our own hard struggle for life,
but which will recur for all that, and which, whenever they do recur,
will stir us more deeply than we like to confess to others, or even to
ourselves. It is true that with us one day only out of seven is set
apart for rest and meditation, and for the consideration of what the
Greeks called [Greek: ta megista]--"the greatest things."
It is true that that seventh day also is passed by many of us either
in mere church-going routine or in thoughtless rest. But whether on
week-days or on Sundays, whether in youth or in old age, there are
moments, rare though they be, yet for all that the most critical
moments of our life, when the old simple questions of humanity return
to us in all their intensity, and we ask ourselves, What are we? What
is this life on earth meant for? Are we to have no rest here, but to
be always toiling and building up our own happiness out of the ruins
of the happiness of our neighbors? And when we have made our home on
earth as comfortable as it can be made with steam and gas and
electricity, are we really so much happier than the Hindu in his
primitive homestead?
With us, as I said just now, in these Northern climates, where life is
and always must be a struggle, and a hard struggle too, and where
accumulation of wealth has become almost a necessity to guard against
the uncertainties of old age or the accidents inevitable in our
complicated social life--with us, I say, and in our society, hours of
rest and meditation are but few and far between. It was the same as
long as we know the history of the Teutonic races; it was the same
even with Romans and Greeks. The European climate, with its long cold
winters, in many places also the difficulty of cultivating the soil,
the conflict of interests between small communities, has developed the
instinct of self-preservation (not to say self-indulgence) to such an
extent that most of the virtues and most of the vices of European
society can be traced back to that source. Our own character was
formed under these influences, by inheritance, by education, by
necessity. We all lead a fighting-life; our highest ideal of life is a
fighting-life. We work till we can work no longer, and are proud, like
old horses, to die in harness. We point with inward satisfaction to
what we and our ancestors have achieved by hard work, in founding a
family or a business, a town or a state. We point to the marvels of
what we call civilization--our splendid cities, our high-roads and
bridges, our ships, our railways, our telegraphs, our electric light,
our pictures, our statues, our music, our theatres. We imagine we have
made life on earth quite perfect--in some cases so perfect that we are
almost sorry to leave it again. But the lesson which both Brahmans and
Buddhists are never tired of teaching is that this life is but a
journey from one village to another, and not a resting-place. Thus we
read:[111]
"As a man journeying to another village may enjoy a night's
rest in the open air, but, after leaving his resting-place,
proceeds again on his journey the next day, thus father,
mother, wife, and wealth are all but like a night's rest to
us--wise people do not cling to them forever."
Instead of simply despising this Indian view of life, might we not
pause for a moment and consider whether their philosophy of life is
entirely wrong, and ours entirely right; whether this earth was really
meant for work only (for with us pleasure also has been changed into
work), for constant hurry and flurry; or whether we, sturdy Northern
Aryans, might not have been satisfied with a little less of work, and
a little less of so-called pleasure, but with a little more of thought
and a little more of rest. For, short as our life is, we are not mere
may-flies, that are born in the morning to die at night. We have a
past to look back to and a future to look forward to, and it may be
that some of the riddles of the future find their solution in the
wisdom of the past.
Then why should we always fix our eyes on the present only? Why should
we always be racing, whether for wealth or for power or for fame? Why
should we never rest and be thankful?
I do not deny that the manly vigor, the silent endurance, the public
spirit, and the private virtues too, of the citizens of European
states represent one side, it may be a very important side, of the
destiny which man has to fulfil on earth.
But there is surely another side of our nature, and possibly another
destiny open to man in his journey across this life, which should not
be entirely ignored. If we turn our eyes to the East, and particularly
to India, where life is, or at all events was, no very severe
struggle, where the climate was mild, the soil fertile, where
vegetable food in small quantities sufficed to keep the body in health
and strength, where the simplest hut or cave in a forest was all the
shelter required, and where social life never assumed the gigantic, ay
monstrous proportions of a London or Paris, but fulfilled itself
within the narrow boundaries of village-communities--was it not, I
say, natural there, or, if you like, was it not _intended_ there, that
another side of human nature should be developed--not the active, the
combative, and acquisitive, but the passive, the meditative, and
reflective? Can we wonder that the Aryans, who stepped as strangers
into some of the happy fields and valleys along the Indus or the
Ganges, should have looked upon life as a perpetual Sunday or holiday,
or a kind of long vacation, delightful so long as it lasts, but which
must come to an end sooner or later? Why should they have accumulated
wealth? why should they have built palaces? why should they have
toiled day and night? After having provided from day to day for the
small necessities of the body, they thought they had the right, it may
be the duty, to look round upon this strange exile, to look inward
upon themselves, upward to something not themselves, and to see
whether they could not understand a little of the true purport of that
mystery which we call life on earth.
Of course _we_ should call such notions of life dreamy, unreal,
unpractical, but may not _they_ look upon our notions of life as
short-sighted, fussy, and, in the end, most unpractical, because
involving a sacrifice of life for the sake of life?
No doubt these are both extreme views, and they have hardly ever been
held or realized in that extreme form by any nation, whether in the
East or in the West. We are not always plodding--we sometimes allow
ourselves an hour of rest and peace and thought--nor were the ancient
people of India always dreaming and meditating on [Greek: ta megista],
on the great problems of life, but, when called upon, we know that they
too could fight like heroes, and that, without machinery, they could by
patient toil raise even the meanest handiwork into a work of art, a real
joy to the maker and to the buyer.
All then that I wish to put clearly before you is this, that the Aryan
man, who had to fulfil his mission in India, might naturally be
deficient in many of the practical and fighting virtues, which were
developed in the Northern Aryans by the very struggle without which
they could not have survived, but that his life on earth had not
therefore been entirely wasted. His very view of life, though we
cannot adopt it in this Northern climate, may yet act as a lesson and
a warning to us, not, for the sake of life, to sacrifice the highest
objects of life.
The greatest conqueror of antiquity stood in silent wonderment before
the Indian Gymnosophists, regretting that he could not communicate
with them in their own language, and that their wisdom could not reach
him except through the contaminating channels of sundry interpreters.
That need not be so at present. Sanskrit is no longer a difficult
language, and I can assure every young Indian civil servant that if he
will but go to the fountain-head of Indian wisdom, he will find there,
among much that is strange and useless, some lessons of life which are
worth learning, and which we in our haste are too apt to forget or to
despise.
Let me read you a few sayings only, which you may still hear repeated
in India when, after the heat of the day, the old and the young
assemble together under the shadow of their village tree--sayings
which to them seem truth; to us, I fear, mere truism!
"As all have to sleep together laid low in the earth, why do
foolish people wish to injure one another?[112]
"A man seeking for eternal happiness (moksha) might obtain it
by a hundredth part of the sufferings which a foolish man
endures in the pursuit of riches.[113]
"Poor men eat more excellent bread than the rich: for hunger
gives it sweetness.[114]
"Our body is like the foam of the sea, our life like a bird,
our company with those whom we love does not last forever;
why then sleepest thou, my son?[115]
"As two logs of wood meet upon the ocean and then separate
again, thus do living creatures meet.[116]
"Our meeting with wives, relations, and friends occurs on our
journey. Let a man therefore see clearly where he is, whither
he will go, what he is, why tarrying here, and why grieving
for anything.[117]
"Family, wife, children, our very body and our wealth, they
all pass away. They do not belong to us. What then is ours?
Our good and our evil deeds.[118]
"When thou goest away from here, no one will follow thee.
Only thy good and thy evil deeds, they will follow thee
wherever thou goest.[119]
"Whatever act, good or bad, a man performs, of that by
necessity he receives the recompense.[120]
"According to the Veda[121] the soul (life) is eternal, but
the body of all creatures is perishable. When the body is
destroyed, the soul departs elsewhere, fettered by the bonds
of our works.
"If I know that my own body is not mine, and yet that the
whole earth is mine, and again that it is both mine and
thine, no harm can happen then.[122]
"As a man puts on new garments in this world, throwing aside
those which he formerly wore, even so the Self[123] of man
puts on new bodies which are in accordance with his
acts.[124]
"No weapons will hurt the Self of man, no fire will burn it,
no water moisten it, no wind will dry it up.
"It is not to be hurt, not to be burnt, not to be moistened,
not to be dried up. It is imperishable, unchanging,
immovable, without beginning.
"It is said to be immaterial, passing all understanding, and
unchangeable. If you know the Self of man to be all this,
grieve not.
"There is nothing higher than the attainment of the knowledge
of the Self.[125]
"All living creatures are the dwelling of the Self who lies
enveloped in matter, who is immortal, and spotless. Those who
worship the Self, the immovable, living in a movable
dwelling, become immortal.
"Despising everything else, a wise man should strive after
the knowledge of the Self."
We shall have to return to this subject again, for this knowledge of
the Self is really the _Vedanta_, that is, the end, the highest goal
of the Veda. The highest wisdom of Greece was "to know ourselves;" the
highest wisdom of India is "to know our Self."
If I were asked to indicate by one word the distinguishing feature of
the Indian character, as I have here tried to sketch it, I should say
it was _transcendent_, using that word, not in its strict technical
sense, as fixed by Kant, but in its more general acceptation, as
denoting a mind bent on transcending the limits of empirical
knowledge. There are minds perfectly satisfied with empirical
knowledge, a knowledge of facts, well ascertained, well classified,
and well labelled. Such knowledge may assume very vast proportions,
and, if knowledge is power, it may impart great power, real
intellectual power to the man who can wield and utilize it. Our own
age is proud of that kind of knowledge, and to be content with it, and
never to attempt to look beyond it, is, I believe, one of the happiest
states of mind to be in.[126]
But, for all that, there is a Beyond, and he who has once caught a
glance of it, is like a man who has gazed at the sun--wherever he
looks, everywhere he sees the image of the sun. Speak to him of finite
things, and he will tell you that the Finite is impossible and
meaningless without the Infinite. Speak to him of death, and he will
call it birth; speak to him of time, and he will call it the mere
shadow of eternity. To us the senses seem to be the organs, the tools,
the most powerful engines of knowledge; to him they are, if not
actually deceivers, at all events heavy fetters, checking the flight
of the spirit. To us this earth, this life, all that we see, and hear,
and touch is certain. Here, we feel, is our home, here lie our duties,
here our pleasures. To him this earth is a thing that once was not,
and that again will cease to be; this life is a short dream from which
we shall soon awake. Of nothing he professes greater ignorance than of
what to others seems to be most certain, namely what we see, and hear,
and touch; and as to our home, wherever that may be, he knows that
certainly it is not here.
Do not suppose that such men are mere dreamers. Far from it! And if we
can only bring ourselves to be quite honest to ourselves, we shall
have to confess that at times we all have been visited by these
transcendental aspirations, and have been able to understand what
Wordsworth meant when he
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