Bnnk ' \\^S TRt.Nj^EEKLY PuSLtCKTlOf/ Of^ TKE 8g,ST COK>lE»V^ £v.STANjMTCDl.'y£/<.^TUag 35BmB5 sat CLOTH BINDING for this vohinte can bo obtainod from any bookseller or newsdsalerf price lOcts* il " I>r. Newton has had ^iv«ii to him the spiritual sense of what people wanted, and this he has rer- erently, elearlj and definitely furnished." — Boiton ffgraJdy March 17. THE RIGHT AND WRONG SES I BIB jjIj, By Kevo R. Heber Ne"wton No. 83. ** Loybll's Library," Paper Ooybrs, 20 Cekts; Also IN Cloth, Rbd Sdges, 75 Cents. ** Dr. Newton has not separated his heart from his head in these religious studies, and has thus been preserYed from the mis which a purely critical mind might haYe been led."— JTo T. jme», March 12. "Those who wish to abuse Br. Newton should do so before reading his lectures, as, after reading them, they may find it quite impossible to do so." — N, T. Sta/r, March 11. ** It is impossible to read these sermons without high admiration of th« author's courage ; of his honesty, his reverential spirit, his wide and careful reading, and his true conserYatism," — Ameriean IMwmy Ghv/rchman. For sale by all Newsdealers and Booksellers. JOHN W. LOVELLCO., Publishers. 14 & 16 Vesey St., Ne-w York. LOVELL'S LIBRARY. G-A-T-A-XiOO-TJE- 7. 8. 9. 10. n. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 80. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 20. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 3f). 37. 38. 39. 4J. 41. 42. 43. 44. Hyperion, by H. W. Longfellow.. Outre Mer, by H. W. Longfell )W.. The Happy Boy, byBjornson.. , Arne, by Bjoi-iidon Frankenstein; or. the Modern Pro- luetheuB, by Mr-f. Shi-lk-y The Last of the Mohicans, by J. Fenunore Cooner Cly tie, by Joseph Hatton The MoonsLone, by Collins, P't I. The Moonstone, by CollinP. Ptll Oliver Twist, by (Jhar cs Dickens Thft Coming Race, by Lytlon Leila, by Lord Lytton The Three Spaniards, by Walker. The Tricks of the Grei ksUnveiied; or. the Art of Winnin.Lf ac every Game, by Robert Hond n L'Abbe ConstanLin, by Ha.6vy. Freckles, by R. F. Roc^cliff Tiie Dark Colleen, b/ II < i rictt .Tay They Were Married 1 by Walter Bo- Bant and Jrtmes R,(;e Seekers after (Joil, by Cano'i Farrar The Spanish Nun, by Thus, De Quiiicey Tho Giecn Mountain Boy?, by Judge I). P. Tiionipson F4eurette, by Eugene Scribe , S 1 Thoughts, by Rhoda t 'htou The New Magdalen, by Wilkie Collins Divorce, by Margaret Ler- Life of Washington, by Henley. Social Etiquette, by Mrs. W. A. Saville Sing e Heart and Double Face, by Charles Ri'a»1e Irene, by Carl Detlef ViceVer.-a; or, a Lesson to Father.s, by F. Anstey Ernest Mali ravers, by Lord Lytton The Hauuteil House and CaUieron the Courtier, by Lord Lytton . . John Halifax, by Miss Mulock 80U Leagues on the A'lnzuu, biing Pare 1 of the Gianc R.dc, by Jul* s Verne The Cryptogram, biing Part II of the (iif.nr, Raft, by Jules Verne. Lifn of Marion, i y Horry and Weeins I'aul and V uginia Tale or Two Citips, by Dickens. . . The Hermits, by Kingsley , An Adventure in Thule, and Mar- riage of Moira Fergus, by Wm. Black A Marriage in HigL Life, by Octave Fcuillet Rubin, oy Mrs. Parr T« o on a Tower, byThomas Hardy . llasselas, by S-imuel Johnson, 20 .20 .20 .20 .10 .iO .10 20 .20 .20 • SO .20 .20 15 .10 .20 .20 .20 .10 .20 45. Alice, or, theMysterieP, being Part II of Ernest Maltravers 20 46 Duke of Kandos, by A. Ma*. they . . .20 iy. Baron Munchausen 10 4 s. A lYincess of Thule. by Wm. Black. 20 49. The Secret Despatch, by Grant 20 50. Early Days of Christianity, by Can- on Farrar, D.D., Parti £0 Early Days of Christianity, by Cuu- on Farrar, D.D., Part 11 20 51. Vicar of Wakefield, by Oliver Gold- smith 10 52. Progress and Poverty, by Henry George 20 53. The Spy, by J. Fenimore Couper. . . 20 54. East Lynne. liy Mrs. Henry Wood. 20 53. A Strange SLory. by Lord L" tton . . 20 56. Ad-im Bede, by Geo. Eliot, Part I.. 15 Adam Bede, by Geo. Eliot, Part II. .15 57. Tho Golden Shaft, by Gibbon. 20 58. Portia, or. By Passions Rocked, by The Duchcs.'? 20 51>. Last Days of Pompeii, by Lj'tton.20 CO. The Two Duchesses, being the se- qiicl to the Duke of Kandos, by A. Mathey 20 61. Tom Brown's School Days at Rug- by 20 G2. The Wooing O't, by Mrs. Alexander, Part I 15 TheWooing O't, by Mrs, Alexander, Part II 15 C3. The Vendetta, Ta es of Love and Passion, by Honore de Balzac. 20 64. Hypatin, by Rev. Kingsley, Part I. .15 Hypatia, by Kingsley, Part If. ...15 65. Selma. by Mta. J. Gregory Smith.. 15 6^. -Margar' t f>n I her Bridesmaids. ..'M 67. Horse Shoe Robinson, Part I .... 15 H rseSh .eRobins<^n, Part If 15 68. Gulliver's Travels, by Dean Swift.. 20 6.^. Amos Barton, by George Eliot 10 70. The Berber, by W. E. Mayo 20 71. Silas Marnei, by George Eliot 10 7i. The Queen of the County 20 73. Life of Cromwell, by i'axton Hood.. 15 74. Janlly Bawii. by The Duchess 20 77. I'llione, bv William Bergsoe 15 73. Phyllis, by the Duchess 20 79. Romola, by George Eliot, Part I. ..15 Romola, by Georpre Eliot, Part II.. 15 80. Science in Short Chapters 20 81. Zanoni, by Lord Lvtton 20 82. A Daughter of Heih, by W. Black. 20 83. The Right and Wrong UsesojF the Bible, by Rev. R. Heber Kewtou.SO 84. Night and Morning, by Lord Lyttun Part 1 15 Night and Morning, by Lord Li tton PartH 15 LOVELL'S LIBRARY. C-A.T.A.XiOa-TJEl. 85. Shandon Bella, by Williftm Black. 20 88. Monica, by The Duchess 10 87. Heart and Science, by Wilkie Ool- Um 20 83. The Golden Calf, by Miss M. IJl Braddon .20 89. Th« Dean's Daughter, by Mrs. aore 20 90. Mrs. Geoffrey, by The Duchess.. 20 91. Pickwick Papers, Part 1 20 Pickwick Papers, Part II 20 92. Airy FairyLiliai), by TheDuche8o.20 93. McLeod of Dare, by Wm. Black. 20 94. Tempest Tossed, by Tilton, ft 1,20 Tem^)e8t Tossed, by Tilton, P'tII.20 95. Letters from High Latitudes, by Lord Dufferin 20 96. Gideon Pleyce, by Henry W. Lncy.20 97. India and Ceylon, by B. H8eckle..20 i^. The Gypsy Queen, by Hugh De Normand. 20 99. The Admiral's Ward, by Mrs. Alexander 20 100. Nimport, by B. L. Bynner, P't I.. 15 Nimporr, byB. L. Bynner, P't II. . 15 101. Harry Holbrooke, by Sir H. Ran- dall Roberts . . 20 102. Tritons, by E. Lasseter Bynner, Part I 15 Tritons, by E. Lasseter Bynner, Part II 15 103 Let Nothing You Dismay, by Wal- ter Besa t 10 104. Lady Audley's Secret, by MissM. B. Braddon 20 105. Woman's Place To-Day, by Mrs. LUlie Devereux Blake 20 106. Dun all an, by Kennedy, Part I... 15 Dunallan. by Kennedy, Pnrt II.. 15 107. Housekeeping and Home-Making, by Marion Hririand. 15 108. No New Thin?, by W. E. Norris..20 109. The SpoopendykePapere, by Stan- ley Hunrley 20 110. False Hopes, by Goldwin Smith. .15 111. Labor and Capital, by Edward KeUogg 20 112. Wanda, by Ouida, Part 1 15 Wanda, by Ouida, Part II 15 113. More Words About the Bible, by Rev. Jas. 8. Bush ... 20 114. Monsiear Lecoq, byGaboriau,P"t 1.20 MonsienrLecoq, by Gaboriau,P't 11.20 115. An Outline of Irish History, by Justin H, McCarthy 10 116. The Lerouge Case, by Gaboriau . . £0 117. Paul Clifford, by Lord Lytt ^arika Sz^tras, 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 hesita- tingly 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 learnt to appreciate the value of recent researches into the antecedents of all laws, namely the hist Birth Stories, vol. i, pp. xiii and xliv. The learned scholar gives another version of the story from a Singhalese translation ©f the Gataka,dating from the fourteenth century, and he expresses a hope that 11. I'ausboll will soon publish the Pali original. limA T CAN WD I A TEA CIT t7S9 a foundation and growth of the simplest political com- munities — 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 re- pay careful research. And take that which, after all, whether we con- fess 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, prevades, 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 springs 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, 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 be. tween an immense past and an immense future, with op- portunities 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, par- ^4 IVI/AT CAA^ hvDlA TKACH VS't liamentary representation, codification oflaws,fjnaricej 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 in- sight 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 his- tory, 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 develop- ment, from the first appearance of predicative and demonstrative roots, their combination and differen* WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH us 1 35 tiatipn, leading up to the beginning of rational thoughts 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, v^hether it be Ian" guage, or religion, or mythology, or philosophy, whether it be laws or customs, primitive art or primi- tive 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 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 uni- versal 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 know- ledge of universal history, our insight into the develop- ment 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, and leave out of sight our nearest intellectual relatives, the Aryans of India, the framers of the most wonderful language, the San- skrit, the fellow-workers in the construction of our fundamental concepts, the fathers of the most natural of natural religions, the maker of the most trans- parent of mythologies, the inventors of the most subtle philosophy, and the givers of the most elaborate laws. Jhere at-e many things which we think essential in 24 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH C/Sf 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 inter- preted. 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 perspec- tive, 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 lie 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 but- tons on his uniform. And it is probably of such his- torical 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 con- signed to oblivion ! Why do we want to know history } Why does history forma recognized part of ourliberal education } Simply because all of us, and every one of us, ought |0 knovy how we have conie to be what we are, so 1 tP'ITAJ' CAN INDIA TMACII l/Sf ^^ that each generation need not start again from the same point, and toil over the same ground, but, profit- ing by the experience of those who came before, may advance towards higher points and nobler aims. As a child when growing up, might ask his father or grandfather, w/w 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 afterwards many useful and amusing things, gossip, such as a child might like to hear from his mother or grandmother ; but what his- tory 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 yews, the GreekSy the Romajts, 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 under- stand even the historical possibility of the Christian religion without knowing something of the Jewish race, which must be studied chiefly in the pages of 26 ti^^A T CAN INDIA TEA CH ITSf 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 arid 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, Phioenicia, 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 mum- mies 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 Baby- lonians 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 divi- sion is peculiarly Babylonian. Hipparchos, 150 B.C.. adopted it from Babylon, Ptolemy, 150 a.d., gave it wider currency, and the French, when they 'de cimated everything else, respected the dial plates of our watches, and left them with their sixty Baby Ionian minutes. Everyone who writes a letter, owes his alphabet to the Romans and Greeks ; the Greeks owed thili* alpha- bet to the Phoenicians, and the Phoenicians learnt 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 WHA T CAN INDIA TBA C^ VS9 2 7 and Egyptians, and in every letter we trace, there lies imbedded the mummy of an ancient Egyptian hiero- glyphic. 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 learnt 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 men- tion 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 re- lation 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* was divided into sixty mince, a mina into sixty shekels. Here we have again the Babylonian sexagesimal system, a system which owes its origin * See Cunningham, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1S81, pp. 162 — 168, 2 3 U^^A T CAN INDIA TEA CU t/S f and popularity, I believe, to the fact that sixty has the greatest number of divisors. Shekel was trans- lated 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 13 or 13^ to i ; and if the weight of a silver shekel was made as 13 to 10, such a coin would correspond very nearly to our florin.* 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 pur- port 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 Plioenicia 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 * Sim^ the Persian word for silv«r, has also the meaning ©f one. thirteenth J Cunningham, i. c. p. 165. JVJ^A T CAN INDIA TEA CH USf 29 we are Jewish or Semitic in our religion, we are Greek in our philosophy, /?^;«^;? in our politics, and Saxon in our morality, and it follows that a know- ledge 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 in- herited 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, never- theless, 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 intel- lectual ancestry far more important than that missing 30 ^//-^ T CAN INDIA TEA CH US f 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. Afterwards, 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 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US 1 31 is far more difficult to explain, such striking differ- ences 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 import- ant to us than any of the other chapters, the Jewish, the Greek, the Latin, or the wSaxon. The process by which that ancient chapter of his- tory 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 trust- worthy 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 ag7ii, meaning „ WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH USf fire, in Sanskrit, and ignis, meaning fire, in Latin, we may safely conclude that fire was known to the un- divided 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 Lithu- anian tignls, 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 Romanic languages.? It has withered away and perished, probably because after losing its final un- accentuated syllable, it became awkward to pronounce ; and another word focus, which in Latin meant fire- place, 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 dic- tionaries, and we should find in Sanskrit mush, in Greek ^t)?, in Latin mtis, in Old Slavonic myse, in Old High German m^is, enabling us to say that, at a time so distant from us that we feel inchned 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 con- founded with any other vermin. And if we were to ask whether the enemy of the WHAl" CAN lADIA TEACH US f Z2> 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^ara and vi^ala. In Greek and Latin the words usually given as names of the cat, yaXei] and aiXovpo?^ mustella and feles, did not originally signify the tame cat, but the weasel or marten. The name for the real cat in Greek was Kar r a in 'La.tin cattis, 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. 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 differ- ent from Greek and Latin, 1500 B. c, where can those 34 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US f 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 asini, I am, Greek fV/tz. What would other languages give for such a pure concept as / 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 / am : but, in reality, no work of art has required greater efforts than this little word / 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 / a^n- But all were given up, and this one alone remained, and was preserved for ever in all the lan- guages 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 mU 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 ds, oris. By con- stant wear and tear this root^.f, 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 quaUfication, which has rendered to the higher operations of thought the same service which the nought, likewise the invention of WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH us 1 3^ 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 Turan- ian. 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 earth- quake. Every child now learns at school that English is an Aryan or Indo-European language, that it be- longs to the Teutonic branch, and that this branch, together with the Italic, Greek, Celtic, Slavonic, Iranic, and Indie 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 open- 36 IV^A T CAN INDIA TEACH US f ing 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 learnt but from a study of Indian language and Hterature, 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 scholars 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 compara- tive grarnmiar were treated by my teachers, men such as Gottfried Hermann, Haupt, Westermann, Stall- baum, and others. No one ever was for a time so com- pletely laughed down as Professor Bopp, when he first pubhshed 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 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US} ^h and Latin, and probably looked in their Greek Dic- tionaries to be quite sure of their accents, would never end. Dugald Stewart, rather than admit a relationship between Hindus and Scots, would rather believe t^at the whole Sanskrit language and the whole of Sanskrit literature — mind, a literature ex- tending 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 avery good school it was, with such masters as Nobbe, Forbiger, Funkhaenel, and Palm, — an old school too, which could boast of Leibniz 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 black board, 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 ^neas and Viro-il 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 acquain- 38 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US t tance 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 EngHsh 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 eigh- teenth 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 for ever. 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 to 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 mem- bers of one family, but it has imparted to the whole WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US"^ 3^ ancient history of man a reality which it never pos- sessed 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, sphin. xes, or bulls ? And where ? Why, in our own language. When I use such words 2i^ 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 in- scriptions 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 45 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US ^ 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 San- skrit, would never have been obtained, form an essen- tial element of what we call a liberal, that is an his- torical education, — an education which will enable a man to do what the French call s' orient er, 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 towards 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 dreamt and the vision seen by Sir William Jones, then simple Mr. Jones : — " When I was at sea last August (that is in August, WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US ? 41 1783), on my voyage to this country (India), I had long and ardently desired to visit, I found one even- ing, on inspecting the observations of the day, that India lay before us, Persia on our left, whilst 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 in- ven tress of delightful and useful arts, the scene of glorious actions, fertile in the productions of human genius, and infinitely diversified in the forms of re- ligion and government, in the laws, manners, customs, and languages, as well as in the features and com- plexions of men. I could not help remarking how im- portant 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 ag«, so it is mow ; or at least, so it may be now. There are many bright dreams to be dreamt about India, and many bright 42 'WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH USf 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 landed at Calcutta* depend upon it, no young Alexander here need despair because there are no kingdoms left for him to con- quer on the ancient shores of the Indus and the Ganges. ®;rutf)fitl Cljaratter of tf)e ^inbu0* 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 accus- tomed 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 v/orth living here in England, may find as ample scope in India as in England. To-day I shall have to grapple with another pre- judice 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 our- selves in their moral character, and, more particularly 44 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US1 in what forms the very foundation of the English chiaracter, 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 recognised principles of self-respect, upright- ness, and veracity, and with whom therefore any com- munity of interests and action, much more any real friendshiiD, 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, arid the contemptuous way, in which he treats them when brought intd contact with them f6r the transaction of public or private TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 45 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 induc- tion 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 t 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 uncom- promising 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 num- ber of inhabitants of that vast country amounts to 253 millions. Are all these 253 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 ? 4.6 WHAT CAN lA'BIA TEACH US\ 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 Hin- dustani, a Bengalese, and a Dravidian than between an Englishman, a Frenchman, a German, and a Rus- sian — yet all are classed as Hindus, and all are supposed to fall under the same sweeping condem- nation. 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 TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 47 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 dis- trict 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 remark- able 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 qriticism. 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 4^ JVHAT CAN INDIA TEACH t/S f experience in published works, partly to the testi- mony 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 ser- vants 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 TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS, 49 cannot be removed, but must be met, and which, I beUeve, 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 Pro- fessor of Sanskrit at Oxford, for many years, and often listened with deep interest to his Indian remini- scences. Let me read you what he. Professor Wilson, says of his native friends, associates, and servants : — * " I lived, both from necessity and choice, very much amongst the Hindus, and had opportunities of be- coming 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 communi- cation with a numerous body of artificers, mechanics, and laborers, and always found amongst 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 compara- tively 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, frank- ness is one of the most universal features in the Indian character. Let the people feel sure of the temper * Mill's History 01 British India, ed. Wilson, vol. i. p. 375. go WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US f 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 charac- teristic of these men, and of the Hindus especially, was- a simplicity truely childish, and a total unac- quaintance with the business and manners of life. Where that feature was lost, it was chiefly by those who had been long familiar with Europeans. Amongst 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 mis- apprehension should prevail.' Speaking, lastly, of the higher classes in Calcutta and elsewhere, Professor Wilson says that he wit- nessed 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, a most TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 31 orthodox, not to say bigoted, Hindu, which has lately, been published, shows on what intimate terms Eng- lishmen 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 recom- mend, and which I wish might be published again in a cheaper form, so as to make it more generally acces- sible, is Colonel Sleeman's Rambles and Recollec- tions of an Indian Official, published in 1844, but written originally in 1 835-1 836. 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 ^2 . WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US ^. 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, Ten nan t, and Ward, all of them neither very competent nor very u-nprejudiced judges. Mill,* 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,t 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 '.% "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 litiga- tion." 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 re- spect 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," § 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 * Mill's History, ed. Wilson, vol. i, p. 368. t Mill's History, vol. i, p. 325. :j: L. c. vol. i, p. 329. § P. 217 tkUTHFUL CHARACTER OP' THE HINDUS. 53 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 \^ '* I have had ample opportunity of observing the Hindus in every situation, and I can affirm, that they are not litigious." f But Mill goes further still, and in one place he actually assures his readers % that a " Brahman may put a man to death when he lists." In fact, he repre- sents the Hindus as such a monstrous mass of all vices that, as Colonel Vans Kennedy § 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 when- ever 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 nothiqg 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. || 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. * Mill's History, ed. Wilson, vol. i. p. 329. t Manu, VIII. 43, says : " Neither a King himself nor his officers must ever promote litigation; nor ever neglect a lawsuit instituted by others." % Mill's History, vol. i. p. 327. § L. c. p. 368. II 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." f CAN IxhiA TEACH USf His sketches being originally addressed to his sistef . this is how he writes to her :— '* My dear Sister, " Were anyone 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 happi- ness, 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 tmpaid magist7'acy to the government of India." There is a touch of the old English chivalry even in these few words addressed to a sister whose appro- bation 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 in- dulged in fiction, either in the narrative, the recollec- tions, or the conversations. What I relate on the TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 55 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 towards them." You may ask why I consider Colonel Sleeman so trustworthy an authority on the Indian character, more trustworthy, for instance, than ever so accurate and unprejudiced an observer as Professor Wilson, My answer is — because Wilson lived chiefly in Cal- cutta, 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 Thuggs 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." * 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 comimuies. It is that village-life which In India has given its peculiar impress to the Indian * Sir Ch, Trevelyan, Christianity and Hinduism, 1882. p. 42, 2 5 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH us i character, more so than in any other country we know. When in Indian history we hear so much of kings and emperors, of rdjahs 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 con- quests, is still the village-community. Some of these political units will occasionally combine, or be com- bined for common purposes (such a confederacy being called a grama^ala), but each is perfect in itself. When we read in the laws of Manu* 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 gene- rally for the good behavior of these villages. And when, in later times, we hear of circles of 84 villages, the so-called Chourasees (iTaturajitif), and of 360 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. J * Manu VII. 115. t H. M. Elliot, Supplement to the Glossary of Indian Terms, p. X 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 TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 57 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 instruc- tive 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 politi- cal 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* 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 most encouraged through Government establishments, the total num- ber 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 substantia^ villages. In the North-Western Provinces the last census gives us 105,124 villages, against 297 towns. See Times, 14th Aug., 1882. * Ancient India as described by Megasthene* and Arrian, by McCrindle, p. 42. 5 8 WNA T CA N I A -I) /A -J 'EA CH US f and equity in an Indian village.* 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 trie 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.f Let us hear now what Colonel Sleeman tells us about the moral character of the members of these village-communities, 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 ideas 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 * " Perjury seems to be committed by the meanest and encouraged by some of the better sort among the Hindus and Mussuhnans, 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. Cam.pbell^ quoted by S. Johnson, Oriental Religions, India, p. 288. t Vasish/ha, translated by Bahler, VIII. 8. TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 59 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 charac- ter. But I am not pleading here for Gonds, or Bhils, or Santhals, and other non-Aryan tribes. I am speak- ing of the Aryan and more or less civilized inhabitants of India. Now amono* them, where ri2:hts, 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 *. 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 rustlinsf. The de- cs ( ponent 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 punchdyets, Sleeman tells us, men adhere habitually and religiously to the truth, and " I have had before me hundreds of cases," he says, " in which * Sleeman, vol. ii. p. iii. 6o WHA 7' CAN INDIA TEACH US f a man's property, liberty, and life has depended upon his telhno; 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 cot- ton-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. * It was an excellent superstition, inculcated in the ancient law-books, that the ancestors watched the an- swer of a witness, because, according as it was true or false they themselves would go to heaven or to hell, f Allow me to read you the abstract of a conversa- tion 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 practised 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." * Sleeraan, vel. ii. p. n6. Vasi3h/*/5« XVII. 32. TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS, 6 1 " 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 re- strained 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 " iV^," 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. (32 WHAT CAN INJ:)IA TEACH USf " 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 frorn the village-communities, — the peasantry of the country V ''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-Vv^ater in their hands, would refuse to tell lies, if questioned before the people of their vil- liages, 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 vil- lage." " You think that the people of the village-commu- nities are more ashamed to tell lies before their neighbors than the people of towns ? '' TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS, 63 " Much more — there is no comparison." " And the people of towns and cities bear in India Dut 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 ques- tioned 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 his- torically 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 when- 64 ■ WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US J €ver, either in Greek, or in Chinese, or in Persian, or in Arab writings, we meet with any attempts at des- cribing 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 des- cribed at the Persian court, has a special chapter * On the justice of the Indians.'* Megasthenes,^ the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator at the court of Sandrocottus in Palibothra (Pa/aliputra, the modern Patna), states that thefts were extremely rare, and that they honored truth and virtue. $ Arrian (in the second century, the pupil of Epic- tetus) when speaking of the public overseers or super- intendents in India, says : § " They oversee what goes on in the country or towns, anH 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. || 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. Let me quote Hiouen-thsang, the most famous of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims, who visited India in the seventh *Ktesiae Fragmenta (ed. Didot), p. 8i. t See Indian Antiquary, 1876, p. 333. X Megasthenis Fragmenta (ed. Didot) in Fragm. Histor. Grace, vol. ii. p. 426 b : ^AXiipBidiv te o/ioiaoi Hal apEzr/v ditodaxovTca, § Indica, cap. xii. 6. y See McCrindle in Indian Antiquary, 1876, p. 92, TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OP THE HUN BUS. 55 century^. " 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 un- justly ; with regard to justice, they make even excessive concessions .... Straightforwardness is the dis- tinguishing feature of their administration." If we turn to the accounts given by the Mohamme- dan conquerors of India, we find Idrisi, in his Geo- graphy (written in the nth century), summing up their opinion of the Indians in the following words if " The Indians are naturally inclined to justice, and never depart from it in their actions. The 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." In the thirteenth century we have the testimony of Marco Polo, J who thus speaks of the Abraiamajt, 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 the 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 * Vol. ii. p. 83. t Elliot, History of India, vol. i. p. 8S. X Marco Polo, ed. H. Yule, vol. ii. p. 350. 66 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US} Lesser India (South and Western India), are true in speech and eminent in justice.* In the fifteenth century Kamal-eddin Abd-errazak Samarkandi (141 3-1482), 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.f In the sixteenth century, Abu Fazl, the minister of the Emperor Akbar, says in his Ayin Akbari : '* The Hindus are rehgious, affable, cheerful, lovers of just- ice, 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.' ■$ And even in quite modern times Mohammedans seem willing to admit that the Hindus, at all events in their dealings with Hindus, are more staightforward than Mohammedans in their dealings with Moham- medans. 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 authorised 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 Moham- mendans ; and every one of these sects would not only take in the followers of every other religion on earth, * Marco Polo, ed. H, Yule, Vol ii. t Notices des Manuscrits, torn. 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. X Samuel Johnson, India, p, 294, TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. Qy 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." * 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 false- hood. 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 in- habitants invariably speak the truth. Read the ac- counts 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 un- friendly to the people of India ; at the utmost tolerates and patronizes them, but v/ill 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 gentleman- * Sleeman, Rambles, vol. i. p, d-^, ^ 68 ^VI/A r CAN INDIA TEA CII US f like. 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 sceptical with regard to unsuspected virtues among them, while we are quite disposed to ac- cept 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*," 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 descrip- tion 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, judges, police-magistrates, officers of revenue or cus- toms, and even diplomatists, do not see the most vir- tuous 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 * Elphinstone's History of India, ed. Cowell, p. 213, TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HIAWUS. 69 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 sus- ceptible of gratitude for kindness shown them, and less prompted to vengeance for wrongs inflicted than ^o WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH us f any people on the face of the earth ; faithful, affec- tionate, 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/'* Elphin stone states : " No set of people among the Hindus are so depraved as the dregs of our own great towns. The villagers are everywhere amiable, affec- tionate to their families, kind to their neighbors, and towards 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. t" Yet Elphinstone can be most severe on the real faults of the people of India. He states that, at pre- sent, want of veracity is one of their prominent vices, but he addsj " 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. § * Samuel Johnson, 1. c. p. 293. t See History of India, pp. 375-381. X L. c. p. 215, § L. c. p. 218, TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. yi Sir John Malcolm writes '^ *' 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 positi-on in society, but I am positive that they are not more addicted to untruth." Sir Thomas Munro bears even stronger testimony. He writes :t " If a good S3^stem of agriculture, unri- valled manufacturing skill, a capacity ta produce what- ever can contribute to either convenience or luxury, schools established in every village for teaching read- ing, writing, and arithmetic,^ the general practice of hospitality and charity amongst each other, and above all, a treatment of the female sex full of confidence, respect, and delicacy, are among the signs which de- * Mill's History of India, ed. Wilson, vol. i. p. 370. t Mill's History, vol. i. p. 371. \ 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 Gov- ernment Report of 1835, there was a village school for every 400 per- sons. Missionary Intelligencer, IX. 183-193. ^. Ludlow (British India, I. 62) writes: "In every Hindu village which has retained its old form I am assured tbat the children generally are able to read, write, and cipher; but where we have swept away the village system, as in Bengal, there the vilJage school has also dis- appeared. .., . - ^2 tVHAT CAN- INDIA TEACH U^f note a civilized people — then the Hindus are not in. ferior 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 careo." 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 per sonally 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 natu- rally 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 ex- cellent 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 rude- ness ; nay I know that nothing has surprised them so much as the coarse invective to which certain San- skrit 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. TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 73 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, sat 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 6V for Eaov., and the Latin seits, in prcesens. 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, 74 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US f whatever bishops, archbishops, or popes, may say to the contrary. Another name for truth is the Sanskrit r/ta, which originally seems to have meant straight, direct, while a.nrit3. 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 ; * 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.! A d r o g h a-v a /§ means, he whose word is never broken. Thus Indra, the Vedic Jupiter, is said to have been praised by the fathers J "as reaching -the enemy, overcoming him, standing on the summit, true of speech, most powerful in thought." Droghava>^,§ on the contrary, is used for deceit- ful men. Thus Vasish^ha, one of the great Vedic poets, says : " If I had worshipped false gods, or if I believed in the gods vainl)' — but why art' thou angry with us, O 6"atavedas } May liars go to destruction ! " Satyam, 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 satyam by the true, that is, the real, ro ovrcD? ov. It sounds, no doubt, very well to translate Satyena uttabhita bhlimi/^, * Rig-veda I. 87, 4 ; I45» 5 ; ^74> i ; V. 23, 2. t Rig-veda III. 32, 9; VI. 5, i. I Rig-veda VI 22, 2. § Rig-veda III. 14, 6, TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 75 by " the earth is founded on truth ; " and I believe every translator has taken satya in that sense here. Ludwig translates, " Von der Wahrheit ist die Erde gestiitzt." 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 some- thing real, though we may not see it, on something which they called the Real,* and to which, in course of time, they gave many more names, such 2iS R it a, the right. Brahman, etc. Of course where there is that strong reveience 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,f whatever evil there is in me, wherever I may have deceived, or may have cursed, and also all untruth (an/'rtam)."J 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/^as, or theological treatises of the Brahmans, I shall quote a few passages only : * Sometimes they trace even tliis Satya or Riiz, the Real or Right^ to a still higher cause, and say (Rig-veda X. 190, i ) : " 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:^zvatsara, the year, he who ordereth day and night, the Lord of all that moves (winks). The Maker (dhatrz) shaped Sun and Moon in order ; he shaped the sky, the earth, the welkin, and the highest heaven." t Rig-veda L 23, 22. t Or it may mean, "Wherever I may have deceived, or sworn false." y6 WHAT CAN- INDIA TEACH US f " Whosoever* 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. And again :% " A man becomes impure by uttering falsehood." And again : § " 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 bindins:. In the Ka^'/^a-Upanishad, for instance, a father is introduced offering what is called an ^//-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 v/ill, 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 * ^atapatha BrS,hma«a II. 2, ^, 19. t Cf. Muir, Metrical Translations, p. 268. t S3.t. Br. III. I, 2, 10. § Taitt. Ara«yaka X. 9. fkVTHFUL CBARACTEk OF THE lilNDUS. >jj 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/^a, rests on a rash promise given by Dai-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/^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 Gahali and Prince Rama, of which I shall give some extracts :* ''The Brdhman, 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 anyone with another ? A man is born alone and dies alone. Hence he who is attached to anyone as his father or his mother, is to be regarded as if he X Muir, Metrical Translations, p. 218. 78 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US f were insane, for no one belongs to another. Thoii 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. Daj-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 fore- fathers) 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 5raddhas 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, con- secrate 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 dis- tressed, while the unrighteous are seen to be happy.'" These positivist sentiments sound strange, particu- larly 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 every- thing 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 seefns to be right and salutary, advise, r'RUTHFUL CHARACTEk OP THE mNDtJS. ifg 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 pre- tender 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 world 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 virture 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 truth; ful injunction given by my father.? Neither through covetousness, nor delusion, nor ignorance, will I, over- powered 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 forest, 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 lavish 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 Sik- handin, whom he takes to be a woman.^ Were I to quote from all the law-books, and from ♦ Holtzmann Das alte indische Epos, p 21, note 83^ 8o ^//-^ T CAN 1Mb I A TEA cM t/S ? still later works, everywhere you would hear the same keynote 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 : * " An untruth spoken by people under the in- fluence 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 mad men, does not cause the speaker to fall, or as we should say, is a venial, not a mortal sin." This is a large admission, yet even in that open ad- mission there is a certain amount of honesty. Again and again in the Mah^bharata is this excuse pleaded. % Nay there is in the Mahabharata § the well-known story in Kaui"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 Kaujika, which way the fugitives had taken. He told them the truth, and the men were caught by the robbers and killed. But Kaujika, 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 Maha- bharata dares to say : " Let a thousand sacrifices (of a horse) and truth be weighed in the balance — truth will exceed the thousand sacrifices." || * V. 24. X I3412. Ill 13844 ; VII. 8742 ; VIII. 3436 3464. § Mahabbarata VIII. 3448. II Muir, 1. c. p. 268 ; Mahabharata I. 3095. TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 8l These are words addressed by 5akuntala, the deserted wife, to King Dushyanta, when he decHned to recognize her and his son. And when he refuses to Hsten to her appeal, what does she appeal to as the highest authority ? — The voice of conscience, " If you think I am alon*e," 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."* This must suffice. I say once more that I do not wish to represent the people of India as 253 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. If you frighten a child, that child will tell a lie — if you ter- rorise 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 * Mahibharata I. 3015-16. 82 JVHA T CAN- INDIA TEA CH US ? 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 5atapatha Brahma/^a, to my mind full of deep mean- ing, and pervaded by the real sense of truth, the real sense of the difficulty of truth. His kinsman said to Aru;/a Aupave^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 fire consists in truth."* I doubt whether in any other of the ancient litera- tures 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 pre- judices, 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 * 5atapatha Brahniawa, taarislated by Eggeling, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xii. p. 313, § 20. TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS, 83 meet with disappointments, as, no doubt you wilV, think of the people with white skins wliom 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 ^ . . . . The natives are conscious of their inferiority in nothing so much as in this. They require to be taught rectitude of con- duct 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 Uterature, even to their law-books, to teach us at least one lesson of truthfulness, truthfulness to ourselves, or, in other words, — humility. What does Yao-;lavalkya say t f " 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 practised. There- fore 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 t % " 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 wit- ness of men." * Sir Charles Trevelyan, Christianity and Hinduism, p. 81. t IV. 65. X VIII. 85. § VIII. 90. 84 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US f "If, friend, thou thinkest thou art self-alone, re- member there is the silent thinker (the Highest Self) always within thy heart, and he sees what is good, and what is evil." * " 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 VasishZ/m, XXX. i : " Practise righteousness, not unrighteousness ; speak truth, not untruth ; look far, not near ; look up towards the Highest, not towards 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 grand- fathers 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 ant's 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." * VIII. $2. ^uman Kntcre^t of Sanakrit Citerature* My first Lecture was intended to remove the pre- judice that India is and always must be a strange country to us, and that those vvrho 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 pre- judice, 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 B6 iVHA T cAAT India Tea Ch us f 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 everi supposed to be dangerous, if they allowed themselves to become absorbed in questions of abstruse scholar- ship or in researches on ancient religion, mythology, and philosophy. I take the very opposite opinion, and I should advise every yoiing 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 philoso- phers ? 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 com manded his disciples to preach in the dialects of the people ; and King A^roka, 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* 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 Urissa.^ These various dialects are as diffierent from Sanskrit as Italian is from Latin, and we have there- • See Cunningham, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. i, ,877., , HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERA TURE. 87 fore 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 ^ullavagga, where we are told that, even during Buddha's life- time, 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 comiUianded that each man should learn his doctrine in his own language.* 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 towards him, and was speaking to him in his own tongue, though the language used was Magadhi.f Sanskrit,' therefore, as a language spoken by the people at large, had ceased to exist in the third cen- tury 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 * ^ullavagga V. 33, i. The expression used is A'/^andaso arope- ma 'ti. * See Rhys Davids, Buddhist Suttas, Sacred Books of the East, yol. xi. p. 142, «t gg WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH USi private official documents continued to be composed in Sanskrit during the last two thousand yeafs. And though the language of the sacred writings of Bud- dhists and (9ainas was borrowed from the vulgar dialects, the literature of India never ceased to be written in Pawinean Sanskrit, while the few excep- tions, 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 his- torical 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 Eng- land, 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 Know- ledge," a Sanskrit journal published at Calcutta, which sometimes contains important articles. There are probably others, which I do not know. HUMAN- INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITER A TURE. 89 There is a Monthly Serial published at Bombay, by M. Moreshwar Kunte, called the Shad-darshana- Chintanikd., 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 Hberal party, the other at Prayaga (Allahabad) by Dayananda Sarasvati, the representative of Indian orthodoxy. The former gives a paraphrase in San- skrit, 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 San- skrit, as, for instance, the Harii'A^andra/^andrika, pub- lished at Benares, the lattvabodhin% 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, 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 fiftently in Sanskrit.* Still more extraordinary is the number of Sanskrit * The Liberal, March I2, 1882. 90 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US1 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 that Mahabharata and Ramayaz/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 Sanskirt 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. * The people at large required, 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 f 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 lansfuao-e * See R. G. Bhandarkar, Consideration of the date of the Maha- bharata, Journal of the R. A. S. of Bombay, i872; Talboys Wheeler, History of India, ii. 365, 572 ; Holtzmanli, Uber das alte indische Epos 1881, p. I ; Phear, The Aryan Village in India and Ceylon, P. 19. t Hibbert Lectures, p. 157. . HUMAN IN TERES T OF SANSKRIT LITER A TURE. 9 j than it really is, ail the living languages of India, both Aryan and Dravidian, draw their very life and soul from Sanskirt. ^ 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 being 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 San- skirt grammer will well understand what I mean, whether his special vernacular may be Bengali, Hindu- stani, or even Tamil. To a classical scholar I can only say that between a Civil Servant who knows San- skrit and Hindustani, and another who knows Hindu- stani 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 and Co. Let us examine, however the objection that San- skrit literature is a dead or an artificial literature, a little more carefully, in order to see whether there is not some kind of truth init. Some people hold that the literary works which we possess in Sanskirt never had any real life at all, that they were altogether schol- astic productions, and that therefore they can teach us * " Every person acquainted with the spoken speech of India knows perfectly well that its elevation to the dignity and usefulness of written speech has depended, and must still depend, upon its borrow- ing largely from its parent or kindred source ; that no man who is ignorant of Arabic or Sanskrit can write Hindustani or Bengali with elegance, purity, or precision, and that the condemnation of the classi- cal languages to oblivion would consign the dialects to utter helpless- ness and irretrievable barbarism." H. H. Wilson, Asiatic Journal^ Jan. 1836; vol. xix. p. 15. g2 tVHAT CAN INDIA TEACH tJSf nothing of what we really care for, namely the histori- cal growth of the Hindu mind. Others maintain that to the present moment, at all events, and after a cen- tury of English rule, Sanskirt 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 large number of works which must have existed formerly, some of them being still quoted by writers of the last three or four centuries."* The Indian Government has of late years ordered a kind of biblographical 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 * It would be a most useful word for any young scholar to draw up a list of Sanskrit books which are quoted by later writers, but have not yet been met with in Indian libraries. HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITER A TURE. 93 in existence, amounts to about 10,000.* 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 philo- sopher 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 thou- sand 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 Vepa, the sages of the Upanishads, the found- ers of the Vedanta and Sankhya philosphies and the authors of the oldest law-books, and not from the millions who are bom 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 literature of the ancient world. * Hibbert L,ectures, p, 133, 94 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US1 Still, even beyond this, I am quite prepared to acknowledge to a certain extent the truth of the state- ment, 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, wheR 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 Daya- nanda's Introduction to his edition of the Rig-veda, his by no means uninteresting Rig-veda-bh?hiiika, 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 6"akas, or the Scythians, or Indo-Scy- thians, or Turushkas, the Turanian 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 HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERA TURE. 95 being the name by which they are called in Chinese chronicles. These Chinese chronicles form the prin- cipal 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* with those German tribes, and by others with the Getae, the neighbors of the Goths, Tod went even a step urther, and traced the (9ats in India and the Rajputs back to the Yueh- chi and Qetae.'\ 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 litera- ture of India from the first century before to the third century after our era. If we consider the political and social state of that * Recherches sur les langues Tartares, 1820, vol. i. p. 327 ; Lassen, I. A., vol. ii. p. 359. t Lassen, who at first rejected the identification of 6^^ts and Yueh- chi, was afterwards inclined to accept it. 96 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH us i 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 pro- duce for a time a complete cessation of literary activity. The rise of Buddhism and its formal adoption by King Aj"oka had already considerably shaken the power and influence of the old Brah manic 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 com- promise with Buddhism, and it is probably due to that compromise, or to an amalgamation of 6'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 litera- ture 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 ancie7it HUMAN IN TEREST OF SANS^IT LITER A TURE. g^ and natural, that of the latter '^nodern and artu fieial. 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/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 compre- hends everything else. Both periods may be sub- divided again, but this does not concern us at presen^t. 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 Mahabha- rata and Ramaya?/a, have taken the place of the old Itihasas and Akhyanas. The Pura^as, even, may contain materials, though much altered, of what was called in Vedic literature the Pura«a.* ^ But the great mass of that later literature is artifi- cial or scholastic, full of interesting compositions, and * Hibbert Lectures, p. 154, note. 98 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US I 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 b}^ the Vedic and the Bud- dhistic 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 lang- uage, that is, of our thoughts ; whoever cares for the first intelligible development of religion and my- thology ; 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 Chris- tianity, Buddhism has already become a subject of general interest, and will and ought to become so more and more. 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 HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITER A TURE, go 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;^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 5akuntala or Urvai-f, a few episodes from the Mahabharata and Ramaya;^a» such as those of Nala and the Ya^/ladattabadha, the fables of the Hitopa'deja, and the sentences of Bhartr/- 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 iquite 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 Vikra- maditya being supposed to be the founder of the Sam vat era, 56 B.C. But all this is now changed. Whoever the Vikramaditya was who is supposed to have defeated the ^akas, and to have founded another era, the Tamvat 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 lOO WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US} 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 an- tiquity is no longer believed in by any critical San- skrit scholar. Kalidasa is mentioned v/ith Bhdravi as a famous poet in an inscription* dated a.d. 585-6 (507 ►Saka 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,! 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 San- skrit scholars, but we must try to be honest to our- selves. Is there any evidence to constrain us to assign the Manava-dharma-i"astra, such as we now possess it, written in continuous vSlokas, to any date anterior to 300 A.D, 1 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 be- fore 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 in- * Published by Fleet in the Indian Antiquary, 1876, pp. 68-73, ^'"'^ first mentioned by Dr. Bhao Daji, Journal Asiatic Society, Bombay Branch, vol. ix. t Sir William Jones fixed their date at 12S0 B.C.; Elphinstone as 900 B.C. It has recently been stated that they could not reasonably be placed later than the fifth century s.c. HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE. loi vasion is full of wrecks saved from the intervening deluge. If what we call the Laws of Maim 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 I'who died 587 a.d.) refers to Manu several times, but not to a Manava-dharma-jastra ; 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.* * A very useful indication of the age of the Dharma-sutras, as com- pared with the metrical Dharma-jastras or Sa7;^hitas, is to be found in the presence or absence in them of any reference to written documents. Such written documents, if they existed, could hardly be passed over in silence in law books, particularly when the nature of witnesses is discussed in support of loans, pledges, etc. Now v*?e see that in treat- ing of the law of debt and debtors,^ the Dharma-sutras of Gautama, Baudhayana, and Apastamba never mention evidence in writing. Vasish/^a only refers to written evidence, but in a passage which may be interpolated,- considering that in other respects his treatment of the law of debt is very crude. Manu's metrical code shows here again its usual character. It is evidently based on ancient originals, and when it simply reproduces them, gives us the impression of great antiquity. But it freely admits more modern ingredients, and does so in our case. It speaks of witnesses, fixes their minimum number at three, and discusses very minutely their qualifications and disqualifi- cations, without saying a word about written documents. But in one place (VIII. 168) it speaks of the valuelessness of v/ritten agreements obtained by force, thus recognizing the practical employment of writing for commercial transactions. Professor Joly,"^ it is true, suggests that this verse may be a later addition, particularly as it occurs totidem verbis in Narada (IV. 55) ; but the final composition of Manu's Sa;«hita, such as we possess it, can hardly be referred to a period when writing was not yet used, at all events for commercial purposes. Manu's Law-book is older than Ya^«avalkya's, in which ■^ Uber das Indische Schuldrecht von J. Jolly, p. 29 [. * Jolly, 1. c. p-. 322. - L. c. p' 2Q0 102 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US ^ I believe it will be found that the century in which Varahamihara lived and wrote was the age of the literary Renaissance in India. 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 Nushir- van, sent his physician, Barzoi, to India, in order to translate the fables of the Pa?1/^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,* and I doubt whether we shall be able to assign a much earlier date to anything we possess of San- skrit literature, excepting always. the Vedic and Bud- dhistic 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 litera- ture, 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 writing has become a familiar subject. Vislvm often agrees literally with Ya^^zavalkya, while Narada, as showing the fullest development of the law of debt, is most likely the latest.* See Br/hatsa;;^hita, ed. Kern, pref. p. 43; Journal of the R. A. S. 1875, p. 106. * Kern, Preface to Brmatsa;/^hita, p. 20. * Jolly, 1. c. p. 322. He places Katyayana and B/'/haspati after Narada, possibly Vyasa and Harita also. See ^Iso Stenzler, Z. d, D. M, G. ix. 664. Mm AN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITER A TURE. 103 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 recog- nized 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 San- skrit scholarship an entirely new character. The chief author of that movement was Burnouf, then Professor at the College de France in Paris, an excel- lent 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 5akuntalas. 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 Irfe 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 104 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US^ of Vedic and Buddhist literature, was given by Burnouf and his lectures at the College de Fra?tce. 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 charac- ter. 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"^, that is by a small aristocracy, while the great * During times of conquest and migration, such as are represented to us in the hymns of the Rig-veda, the system of castes, as it is described, for instance, in the Laws of Manu, would have been a simple impossibility. It is doubtful whether such a system was ever more than a social ideal, but even for such an ideal the materials would have been wanting during the period when the Aryas were first taking possession of the land of the Seven Rivers. On the other hand, even during that early period, there must have been a division of labor, and hence we expect to find and do find in the gramas of the Five Nations, warriors, sometimes called nobles, leaders, kings ; counsellors^ sometimes called priests, prophets, judges ; and vjorking men, whether ploughers, or builders, or road- HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITER A TURE. 103 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 (XI 1 1. 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 dif- ferent 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 antl 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 o^ that problem no literature furnishes such ample materials as that of the Veda, beginning with the Hym.ns and ending with the Upanishads. We enter into a new world — not always an attractive one, least makers. These three divisions we can clearly perceive even in the early hymns of the Rig-veda. 1 06 ^^^ T CAN INDIA TEA CH US ? • 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 no- where 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 writing of the Buddhists in order to find there a truer religion, a purer morality, and a more sublime philosoph}^ 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 literatures of India as if it were the work of the nineteenth century, as if it re- presented 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 concep- tions, 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 whicli 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 HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE. 107 time, aye, 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 medita- tion, and for the consideration of what the Greeks called r<^ /ie;/z(rr<^,— " the greatest things." It is true that the 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, 3^et 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 com- fortable 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 io8 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH USf with its long cold winters, in many places also the difficulty of cultivating the soil, the conflict of inter- ests between small comunities has developed the in- stinct of self-preservation (not to say, self-indulgence) to such an extent that most of the virtues and most of the vices of the 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 : * " 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 jus — wise people do not cling to them for ever." Instead of sirtiply despising this Indian view of life, might we not pause for a moment and consider * Eochtlingk, Sprliche, 5101. Mm AN- iMTkREST OF SANSKIRT LITE k A TURK, 109 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 Mayflies 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 sid«, 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 possible 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, aye monstrous proportions of X I o ^//^ ^ CA N INDIA TEA CH US f 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 Holyday, 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 hav- ing provided from day to day for the small necessi- ties 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 zve 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 dream- HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKIRT LITERA TUkh. n i iiig and meditating on roc jikyiara 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 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 warn- ing 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, regret- ting 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 ti2 ■WI^AT CAN tNblA TEACH t/Sf under the shadow of their village tree— sayings which to them seern 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 ?* " A man seeking for eternal happiness (moksha) might obtain it by a hundredth part of the suffer- ings which a foolish man endures in the pursuit of riches. t " Poor men eat more excellent bread than the rich ; for hunger gives it sweetness. $ " Our body is like the foam of the sea, our life like a bird, our company with those whom we love does not last for ever ; why then sleepest thou, my son ? § *' As two logs of wood meet upon the ocean and then separate again, thus do living creatures meet.li " 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 tarry- ing here, and why grieving for anything.^ "Family, wife, children, our very body and our wealth, they all pass away. They do not belong to us. What then is ours 1 Our good and our evil deeds.** " 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.tt " Whatever act, good or bad, a man performs, of that by necessity he receives the recompense.ft "According to the Veda §§ the soul (life) is eternal, but the body of all creatures is perishable. When * Mahabh XL 121. t Pan^at. II. 127 (117). X Mahabh. V. 1144. § Mahabh. XII. 12050. 1! L. c. XII. 869. IT L. c. XII. 872. ** L. c. XII. 12453. tt L. c. XIL 12456. n L. c. III. 13846 (239). §§ L. c. III. 13864. HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE, 113 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.^ " As a man puts on new garments in this world, throwing aside those which he formerly wore, even so the Self of man puts on new bodies which are in accordance with his acts.f " 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, immoveable, without beginning. " It is said to be immaterial, passing all understand- ing, 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.$ " 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 immove- able, living in a moveable 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 Veddnta, 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." * Kam. Nitis, i, 33 (Boehtlingk, 918). % Vish«u-sAtras XX. 50-53. t Apastamba Dharma-sutras I. 8, 22. 1 14 WHA T CAN- INDIA TEA CH US ? If I were asked to indicate by one word the dis- tinguishing feature of the Indian character, as I have here tried to sketch it, I should say it was a transcen- dent, 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 tke limits of empirical knowledge. There are minds perfectly satisfied with empirical knowledge, a knowl- edge 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. 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 impossi- ble 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 eter- nity. 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 HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRJT LITER A TURE. 115 soon awake. Of nothing he professes greater ignor- ance than of what to others seems to be most certain, namely that we see, and hear, and touch ; and as to our home, wherever that may be, he knows that cer- tainly 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 trans- cendental aspirations, and have been able to under- stand what Wordsworth meant when he spoke of those ' Obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things. Fallings from us, vanishings ; Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in virorlds not realised.' The transcendent temperament acquired no doubt a more complete supremacy in the Indian character than anywhere else : but no nation, and no individual, is entirely without that " yearning beyond ;" indeed we all know it under a more familiar name — namely, Religion. It is necessary, however, to distinguish between religion and a religion, quite as much as in another branch of philosophy we have to distinguish between language and a language or many languages. A man may accept a religion, he may be converted to the Christian religion, and he may change hiis own particular religion from time to time, just as he may speak different languages. But in order to have a religion, a man must have religion. He must once at least in his life have looked beyond the horizon of 1 1 6 WIIA T CAN INDIA TEA CH US t this world, and carried away in his mind an impres- sion of the Infinite, which will never leave him again. A being satisfied with the world of sense, unconscious of its finite nature, undisturbed by the limited or negative character of all perceptions of the senses, would be incapable of any religious concepts. Only when the finite character of all human knowledge has been perceived is it possible for the human mind to conceive that which is beyond the Finite, call it what you like, the Beyond, the Unseen, the Infinite, the Supernatural, or the Divine. That step must have been taken before religion of any kind becomes possible. What kind of religion it will be, depends on the character of the race which elaborates it, its surroundings in nature, and its experience in history. Now we may seem to know a great many religions — J speak here, of course, of ancient religions only, of what are sometimes called national or autochthonous religions — not of those founded in later times by in- dividual prophets or reformers. Yet, among those ancient religions we seldom know, what after all is the most important point, their origin and their gradual growth. The Jewish religion is represented to us as perfect and complete from the very first, and it is with great difficulty that we can discover its real beginnings and its historical growth. And take the Greek and the Roman religions, take the religions of the Teutonic, Slavonic or Celtic tribes, and you will find that their period of growth has al- ways passed, long before we know them, and that from the time we know them all their changes are purely metainorpkie^-'C\iZx\%