"Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal" as having been found on the
northern bank of the Oxus in 1877, and containing coins from Darius
down to Antiochus the Great, and Euthydemus, King of Baktria. This
would seem to indicate that it had been buried there in 208 B.C., when
Baktria was invaded by Antiochus and Euthydemus defeated. The coins,
figures, and ornaments, many of them, were manifestly Persian, and
doubtless had been brought into that country and kept by the
victorious generals of Alexander. Some of the works of art unearthed
by Dr. Schliemann at Mykenae are either Persian or Assyrian in
character, and are like those found on the Oxus. Professor Forchhammer
very plausibly supposes that they were spoils from the Persian camp
which had been awarded to Mykenae as her share after the overthrow of
Mardonius.--A. W.]
[Footnote 4: See "Selected Essays," vol. i., p. 500, "The Migration of
Fables."]
[Footnote 5: Cratylus, 411 A. "Still, as I have put on the lion's
skin, I must not be faint-hearted." Possibly, however, this may refer
to Hercules, and not to the fable of the donkey in the lion's or the
tiger's skin. In the Hitopade_s_a, a donkey, being nearly starved, is
sent by his master into a corn-field to feed. In order to shield him
he puts a tiger's skin on him. All goes well till a watchman
approaches, hiding himself under his gray coat, and trying to shoot
the tiger. The donkey thinks it is a gray female donkey, begins to
bray, and is killed. On a similar fable in AEsop, see Benfey,
"Pantschatantra," vol. i., p. 463; M. M., "Selected Essays," vol. i.,
p. 513.]
[Footnote 6: See "Fragmenta Comic" (Didot), p. 302; Benfey, l. c. vol.
i., p. 374.]
[Footnote 7: "Lectures on the Science of Language," vol. i., p. 231.
The names employed in the Hebrew text of the Bible are said to be
Tamil.--A. W.]
[Footnote 8: 1 Kings 3:25.]
[Footnote 9: The Bible story is dramatic; the other is not. The
"shudder" is a tribute to the dramatic power of the Bible narrative.
The child was in no danger of being cut in twain. In the Buddhist
version the child _is_ injured. Why does not Prof. Mueller shudder when
the child is hurt and cries? The Solomonic child is not hurt and does
not cry. Is not the Bible story the more humane, the more dignified,
the more dramatic? And no canon of criticism requires us to believe
that a poor version of a story is the more primitive.--AM. PUBS.]
[Footnote 10: See some excellent remarks on this subject in Rhys
Davids, "Buddhist Birth-Stories," vol. i., pp. xiii. and xliv. The
learned scholar gives another version of the story from a Singhalese
translation of the _G_ataka, dating from the fourteenth century, and
he expresses a hope that Dr. Fausboell will soon publish the Pali
original.]
[Footnote 11: This is true of what theologians call natural religion,
which is assumed to be a growth out of human consciousness; but the
Christian religion is not a natural religion.--AM. PUBS.]
[Footnote 12: There are traces of Aryan occupation at Babylon,
Rawlinson assures us, about twenty centuries B.C. This would suggest a
possible interchange of religious ideas between the earlier Aryan and
Akkado-Chaldean peoples.--A. W.]
[Footnote 13: See Cunningham, "Journal of the Asiatic Society of
Bengal," 1881, pp. 162-168.]
[Footnote 14: _Sim_, the Persian word for silver, has also the meaning
of one thirteenth; see Cunningham, l. c. p. 165.]
[Footnote 15: The common domestic cat is first mentioned by Caesarius,
the physician, brother of Gregory of Nazianus, about the middle of the
fourth century. It came from Egypt, where it was regarded as sacred.
Herodotus denominates it [Greek: ailouros], which was also
the designation of the weasel and marten. Kallimachus employs the same
title, which his commentator explains as [Greek: kattos]. In
later times this name of uncertain etymology has superseded every
other. The earlier Sanskrit writers appear to have had no knowledge of
the animal; but the mar_g_ara is named by Manu, and the vi_d_ala by
Pa_n_ini.--A. W.]
[Footnote 16: Sir William Jones was thirty-seven years of age when he
sailed for India. He received the honor of knighthood in March, 1783,
on his appointment as Judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort
William, at Bengal.--A. W.]
LECTURE II.
TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS.
In my first Lecture I endeavored to remove the prejudice that
everything in India is strange, and so different from the intellectual
life which we are accustomed to in England, that the twenty or
twenty-five years which a civil servant has to spend in the East seem
often to him a kind of exile that he must bear as well as he can, but
that severs him completely from all those higher pursuits by which
life is made enjoyable at home. This need not be so and ought not to
be so, if only it is clearly seen how almost every one of the higher
interests that make life worth living here in England, may find as
ample scope in India as in England.
To-day I shall have to grapple with another prejudice which is even
more mischievous, because it forms a kind of icy barrier between the
Hindus and their rulers, and makes anything like a feeling of true
fellowship between the two utterly impossible.
That prejudice consists in looking upon our stay in India as a kind of
_moral_ exile, and in regarding the Hindus as an inferior race,
totally different from ourselves in their moral character, and, more
particularly in what forms the very foundation of the English
character, respect for truth.
I believe there is nothing more disheartening to any high-minded young
man than the idea that he will have to spend his life among human
beings whom he can never respect or love--natives, as they are called,
not to use even more offensive names--men whom he is taught to
consider as not amenable to the recognized principles of self-respect,
uprightness, and veracity, and with whom therefore any community of
interests and action, much more any real friendship, is supposed to be
out of the question.
So often has that charge of untruthfulness been repeated, and so
generally is it now accepted, that it seems almost Quixotic to try to
fight against it.
Nor should I venture to fight this almost hopeless battle, if I were
not convinced that such a charge, like all charges brought against a
whole nation, rests on the most flimsy induction, and that it has
done, is doing, and will continue to do more mischief than anything
that even the bitterest enemy of English dominion in India could have
invented. If a young man who goes to India as a civil servant or as a
military officer, goes there fully convinced that the people whom he
is to meet with are all liars, liars by nature or by national
instinct, never restrained in their dealings by any regard for truth,
never to be trusted on their word, need we wonder at the feelings of
disgust with which he thinks of the Hindus, even before he has seen
them; the feelings of distrust with which he approaches them, and the
contemptuous way in which he treats them when brought into contact
with them for the transaction of public or private business? When such
tares have once been sown by the enemy, it will be difficult to gather
them up. It has become almost an article of faith with every Indian
civil servant that all Indians are liars; nay, I know I shall never be
forgiven for my heresy in venturing to doubt it.
Now, quite apart from India, I feel most strongly that every one of
these international condemnations is to be deprecated, not only for
the sake of the self-conceited and uncharitable state of mind from
which they spring, and which they serve to strengthen and confirm, but
for purely logical reasons also, namely for the reckless and slovenly
character of the induction on which such conclusions rest. Because a
man has travelled in Greece and has been cheated by his dragoman, or
been carried off by brigands, does it follow that all Greeks, ancient
as well as modern, are cheats and robbers, or that they approve of
cheating and robbery? And because in Calcutta, or Bombay, or Madras,
Indians who are brought before judges, or who hang about the
law-courts and the bazaars, are not distinguished by an unreasoning
and uncompromising love of truth, is it not a very vicious induction
to say, in these days of careful reasoning, that all Hindus are
liars--particularly if you bear in mind that, according to the latest
census, the number of inhabitants of that vast country amounts to two
hundred and fifty-three millions. Are all these two hundred and
fifty-three millions of human beings to be set down as liars, because
some hundreds, say even some thousands of Indians, when they are
brought to an English court of law, on suspicion of having committed a
theft or a murder, do not speak the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth? Would an English sailor, if brought before a
dark-skinned judge, who spoke English with a strange accent, bow down
before him and confess at once any misdeed that he may have committed;
and would all his mates rush forward and eagerly bear witness against
him, when he had got himself into trouble?
The rules of induction are general, but they depend on the subjects to
which they are applied. We may, to follow an Indian proverb, judge of
a whole field of rice by tasting one or two grains only, but if we
apply this rule to human beings, we are sure to fall into the same
mistake as the English chaplain who had once, on board an English
vessel, christened a French child, and who remained fully convinced
for the rest of his life that all French babies had very long noses.
I can hardly think of anything that you could safely predicate of
_all_ the inhabitants of India, and I confess to a little nervous
tremor whenever I see a sentence beginning with "The people of India,"
or even with "All the Brahmans," or "All the Buddhists." What follows
is almost invariably wrong. There is a greater difference between an
Afghan, a Sikh, a Hindustani, a Bengalese, and a Dravidian than
between an Englishman, a Frenchman, a German, and a Russian--yet all
are classed as Hindus, and all are supposed to fall under the same
sweeping condemnation.
Let me read you what Sir John Malcolm says about the diversity of
character to be observed by any one who has eyes to observe, among the
different races whom we promiscuously call Hindus, and whom we
promiscuously condemn as Hindus. After describing the people of Bengal
as weak in body and timid in mind, and those below Calcutta as the
lowest of our Hindu subjects, both in character and appearance, he
continues: "But from the moment you enter the district of Behar, the
Hindu inhabitants are a race of men, generally speaking, not more
distinguished by their lofty stature and robust frame than they are
for some of the finest qualities of the mind. They are brave,
generous, humane, and their truth is as remarkable as their courage."
But because I feel bound to protest against the indiscriminating abuse
that has been heaped on the people of India from the Himalaya to
Ceylon, do not suppose that it is my wish or intention to draw an
ideal picture of India, leaving out all the dark shades, and giving
you nothing but "sweetness and light." Having never been in India
myself, I can only claim for myself the right and duty of every
historian, namely, the right of collecting as much information as
possible, and the duty to sift it according to the recognized rules of
historical criticism. My chief sources of information with regard to
the national character of the Indians in ancient times will be the
works of Greek writers and the literature of the ancient Indians
themselves. For later times we must depend on the statements of the
various conquerors of India, who are not always the most lenient
judges of those whom they may find it more difficult to rule than to
conquer. For the last century to the present day, I shall have to
appeal, partly to the authority of those who, after spending an active
life in India and among the Indians, have given us the benefit of
their experience in published works, partly to the testimony of a
number of distinguished civil servants and of Indian gentlemen also,
whose personal acquaintance I have enjoyed in England, in France, and
in Germany.
As I have chiefly to address myself to those who will themselves be
the rulers and administrators of India in the future, allow me to
begin with the opinions which some of the most eminent, and, I
believe, the most judicious among the Indian civil servants of the
past have formed and deliberately expressed on the point which we are
to-day discussing, namely, the veracity or want of veracity among the
Hindus.
And here I must begin with a remark which has been made by others
also, namely, that the civil servants who went to India in the
beginning of this century, and under the auspices of the old East
India Company, many of whom I had the honor and pleasure of knowing
when I first came to England, seemed to have seen a great deal more of
native life, native manners, and native character than those whom I
had to examine five-and-twenty years ago, and who are now, after a
distinguished career, coming back to England. India is no longer the
distant island which it was, where each Crusoe had to make a home for
himself as best he could. With the short and easy voyages from England
to India and from India to England, with the frequent mails, and the
telegrams, and the Anglo-Indian newspapers, official life in India has
assumed the character of a temporary exile rather, which even English
ladies are now more ready to share than fifty years ago. This is a
difficulty which cannot be removed, but must be met, and which, I
believe, can best be met by inspiring the new civil servants with new
and higher interests during their stay in India.
I knew the late Professor Wilson, our Boden Professor of Sanskrit at
Oxford, for many years, and often listened with deep interest to his
Indian reminiscences.
Let me read you what he, Professor Wilson, says of his native friends,
associates, and servants:[17]
"I lived, both from necessity and choice, very much among the
Hindus, and had opportunities of becoming acquainted with
them in a greater variety of situations than those in which
they usually come under the observation of Europeans. In the
Calcutta mint, for instance, I was in daily personal
communication with a numerous body of artificers, mechanics,
and laborers, and always found among them cheerful and
unwearied industry, good-humored compliance with the will of
their superiors, and a readiness to make whatever exertions
were demanded from them; there was among them no drunkenness,
no disorderly conduct, no insubordination. It would not be
true to say that there was _no_ dishonesty, but it was
comparatively rare, invariably petty, and much less
formidable than, I believe, it is necessary to guard against
in other mints in other countries. There was considerable
skill and ready docility. So far from there being any
servility, there was extreme frankness, and I should say that
where there is confidence without fear, frankness is one of
the most universal features in the Indian character. Let the
people feel sure of the temper and good-will of their
superiors, and there is an end of reserve and timidity,
without the slightest departure from respect...."
Then, speaking of the much-abused Indian Pandits, he says: "The
studies which engaged my leisure brought me into connection with the
men of learning, and in them I found the similar merits of industry,
intelligence, cheerfulness, frankness, with others peculiar to their
avocation. A very common characteristic of these men, and of the
Hindus especially, was a simplicity truly childish, and a total
unacquaintance with the business and manners of life. Where that
feature was lost, it was chiefly by those who had been long familiar
with Europeans. Among the Pandits or the learned Hindus there
prevailed great ignorance and great dread of the European character.
There is, indeed, very little intercourse between any class of
Europeans and Hindu scholars, and it is not wonderful, therefore, that
mutual misapprehension should prevail."
Speaking, lastly, of the higher classes in Calcutta and elsewhere,
Professor Wilson says that he witnessed among them "polished manners,
clearness and comprehensiveness of understanding, liberality of
feeling, and independence of principle that would have stamped them
gentlemen in any country in the world." "With some of this class," he
adds, "I formed friendships which I trust to enjoy through life."
I have often heard Professor Wilson speak in the same, and in even
stronger terms of his old friends in India, and his correspondence
with Ram Comul Sen, the grandfather of Keshub Chunder Sen,[18] a most
orthodox, not to say bigoted, Hindu, which has lately been published,
shows on what intimate terms Englishmen and Hindus may be, if only the
advances are made on the English side.
There is another Professor of Sanskrit, of whom your University may
well be proud, and who could speak on this subject with far greater
authority than I can. He too will tell you, and I have no doubt has
often told you, that if only you look out for friends among the
Hindus, you will find them, and you may trust them.
There is one book which for many years I have been in the habit of
recommending, and another against which I have always been warning
those of the candidates for the Indian Civil Service whom I happened
to see at Oxford; and I believe both the advice and the warning have
in several cases borne the very best fruit. The book which I consider
most mischievous, nay, which I hold responsible for some of the
greatest misfortunes that have happened to India, is Mill's "History
of British India," even with the antidote against its poison, which is
supplied by Professor Wilson's notes. The book which I recommend, and
which I wish might be published again in a cheaper form, so as to
make it more generally accessible, is Colonel Sleeman's "Rambles and
Recollections of an Indian Official," published in 1844, but written
originally in 1835-1836.
Mill's "History," no doubt, you all know, particularly the candidates
for the Indian Civil Service, who, I am sorry to say, are recommended
to read it, and are examined in it. Still, in order to substantiate my
strong condemnation of the book, I shall have to give a few proofs:
Mill in his estimate of the Hindu character is chiefly guided by
Dubois, a French missionary, and by Orme and Buchanan, Tennant, and
Ward, all of them neither very competent nor very unprejudiced judges.
Mill,[19] however, picks out all that is most unfavorable from their
works, and omits the qualifications which even these writers felt
bound to give to their wholesale condemnation of the Hindus. He quotes
as serious, for instance, what was said in joke,[20] namely, that "a
Brahman is an ant's nest of lies and impostures." Next to the charge
of untruthfulness, Mill upbraids the Hindus for what he calls their
litigiousness. He writes:[21] "As often as courage fails them in
seeking more daring gratification to their hatred and revenge, their
malignity finds a vent in the channel of litigation." Without imputing
dishonorable motives, as Mill does, the same fact might be stated in a
different way, by saying, "As often as their conscience and respect of
law keep them from seeking more daring gratification to their hatred
and revenge, say by murder or poisoning, their trust in English
justice leads them to appeal to our courts of law." Dr. Robertson, in
his "Historical Disquisitions concerning India,"[22] seems to have
considered the litigious subtlety of the Hindus as a sign of high
civilization rather than of barbarism, but he is sharply corrected by
Mr. Mill, who tells him that "nowhere is this subtlety carried higher
than among the wildest of the Irish." That courts of justice, like the
English, in which a verdict was not to be obtained, as formerly in
Mohammedan courts, by bribes and corruption, should at first have
proved very attractive to the Hindus, need not surprise us. But is it
really true that the Hindus are more fond of litigation than other
nations? If we consult Sir Thomas Munro, the eminent Governor of
Madras, and the powerful advocate of the Ryotwar settlements, he tells
us in so many words:[23] "I have had ample opportunity of observing
the Hindus in every situation, and I can affirm, that they are not
litigious."[24]
But Mill goes further still, and in one place he actually assures his
readers[25] that a "Brahman may put a man to death when he lists." In
fact, he represents the Hindus as such a monstrous mass of all vices,
that, as Colonel Vans Kennedy[26] remarked, society could not have
held together if it had really consisted of such reprobates only. Nor
does he seem to see the full bearing of his remarks. Surely, if a
Brahman might, as he says, put a man to death whenever he lists, it
would be the strongest testimony in their favor that you hardly ever
hear of their availing themselves of such a privilege, to say nothing
of the fact--and a fact it is--that, according to statistics, the
number of capital sentences was one in every 10,000 in England, but
only one in every million in Bengal.[27]
Colonel Sleeman's "Rambles" are less known than they deserve to be. To
give you an idea of the man, I must read you some extracts from the
book.
His sketches being originally addressed to his sister, this is how he
writes to her:
"MY DEAR SISTER: Were any one to ask your countrymen in
India, what had been their greatest source of pleasure while
there, perhaps nine in ten would say the letters which they
receive from their sisters at home.... And while thus
contributing so much to our happiness, they no doubt tend to
make us better citizens of the world and servants of
government than we should otherwise be; for in our
'struggles through life' in India, we have all, more or
less, an eye to the approbation of those circles which our
kind sisters represent, who may therefore be considered in
the exalted light of a valuable species of _unpaid
magistracy_ to the government of India."
There is a touch of the old English chivalry even in these few words
addressed to a sister whose approbation he values, and with whom he
hoped to spend the winter of his days. Having been, as he confesses,
idle in answering letters, or rather, too busy to find time for long
letters, he made use of his enforced leisure, while on his way from
the Nerbuddah River to the Himmaleh Mountains, in search of health, to
give to his sister a full account of his impressions and experiences
in India.
Though what he wrote was intended at first "to interest and amuse his
sister only and the other members of his family at home," he adds, in
a more serious tone: "Of one thing I must beg you to be assured, that
I have nowhere indulged in fiction, either in the narrative, the
recollections, or the conversations. What I relate on the testimony of
others, I believe to be true; and what I relate on my own, you may
rely upon as being so."
When placing his volumes before the public at large in 1844, he
expresses a hope that they may "tend to make the people of India
better understood by those of our countrymen whose destinies are cast
among them, and inspire more kindly feelings toward them."
You may ask why I consider Colonel Sleeman so trustworthy an authority
on the Indian character, more trustworthy, for instance, than even so
accurate and unprejudiced an observer as Professor Wilson. My answer
is--because Wilson lived chiefly in Calcutta, while Colonel Sleeman
saw India, where alone the true India can be seen, namely, in the
village-communities. For many years he was employed as Commissioner
for the suppression of Thuggee. The Thugs were professional assassins,
who committed their murders under a kind of religious sanction. They
were originally "all Mohammedans, but for a long time past Mohammedans
and Hindus had been indiscriminately associated in the gangs, the
former class, however, still predominating."[28]
In order to hunt up these gangs, Colonel Sleeman had constantly to
live among the people in the country, to gain their confidence, and to
watch the good as well as the bad features in their character.
Now what Colonel Sleeman continually insists on is that no one knows
the Indians who does not know them in their village-communities--what
we should now call their _communes_. It is that village-life which in
India has given its peculiar impress to the Indian character, more so
than in any other country we know. When in Indian history we hear so
much of kings and emperors, of rajahs and maharajahs, we are apt to
think of India as an Eastern monarchy, ruled by a central power, and
without any trace of that self-government which forms the pride of
England. But those who have most carefully studied the political life
of India tell you the very opposite.