In the second volume of the "History of British India," by
James Mill, Esq., we are told that the Araucanians invented the
game of chess.
Forbes sums up an article upon this claim by saying, "We must
in charity suppose that Mr. Mill really knew nothing of chess,
whether Hindu, Persian, or Chinese."
Professor Wilson's opinion of Mr. Mill's work is better worth
recording. "History of British India," by James Mill, Esq.,
fourth edition, with notes and continuation, by Horace Hayman
Wilson, M.A., F.R.S., &c., London 1840, 9 vols., 8 vo., Vide
Preface by Professor Wilson, page vii, &c.
Of the proofs which may be discovered in Mr. Mill's history of
the operation of preconceived opinions, in confining a vigorous
and active understanding to a partial and one-sided view of a
great question, no instance is more remarkable than the
unrelenting pertinacity with which he labours to establish the
barbarism of the Hindus. Indignant at the exalted, and it may
be granted, sometimes exaggerated descriptions of their advance
in civilization, of their learning, their sciences, their talents,
their virtues which emanated from the amiable enthusiasm of Sir
William Jones, Mr. Mill has entered the lists against him with
equal enthusiasm, but a less commendable purpose, and has sought
to reduce them as far below their proper level as their encomiasts
may have formerly elevated them above it. With very imperfect
knowledge, with materials exceedingly defective, with an implicit
faith in all testimony hostile to Hindu pretensions, he has
elaborated a portrait of the Hindus which has no resemblance
whatever to the original, and which almost outrages humanity.
As he represents them, the Hindus are not only on a par with the
least civilized nations of the old and new world, but they are
plunged almost without exception in the lowest depths of
immorality and crime. Considered merely in a literary capacity,
the description of the Hindus, in the history of British India is
open to censure for its obvious unfairness and injustice, but in
the effect which it is likely to exercise upon the connexion
between the people of England and the people of India, it is
chargeable with more than literary element, its tendency is evil,
it is calculated to destroy all sympathy between the rulers and
the ruled.
A writer in Fraser's Magazine, observes: "The native
of India is defective in that mental and moral energy, that
restless enterprise, which distinguishes the Anglo Saxon genius,
and which gives him such a preponderance over the impassive
and contemplative Oriental, but, on the other hand, the
native of India possesses in a high degree that acute perception
and common sense strengthened by numerical traditions and
maxims, which enable him to judge correctly of both the acts and
motives of his Foreign superior. It should be recollected to their
credit, that the germ of almost every known invention, the
original idea of nearly every useful secret in arts, the knowledge
of the highest branches of the abstract sciences, had been familiar
to the wise men of the East, and were taught in the most perfect
language in the world, the mother of all other languages, the
Sanskrit.
The anonymous or rather unknown author of the Asiatic
Society's M.S. often declares that the Hindus were far too stupid
a people to have invented chess.
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