declares that this system of village-communities existed in India long
before the Aryan conquest. He attributes it to Cushite or AEthiopic
influence, and with great plausibility. Nevertheless, the same system
flourished in prehistoric Greece, even till the Roman conquests. Mr.
Palgrave observed it existing in Arabia. "Oman is less a kingdom than
an aggregation of municipalities," he remarks; "each town, each
village has its separate existence and corporation, while towns and
villages, in their turn, are subjected to one or other of the
ancestral chiefs." The Ionian and Phoenician cities existed by a
similar tenure, as did also the Free Cities of Europe. It appears,
indeed, to have been the earlier form of rule. Megasthenes noticed it
in India. "The village-communities," says Sir Charles Metcalf, "are
little republics, having everything they want within themselves, and
almost independent of any foreign relations. They seem to last where
nothing else lasts." These villages usually consist of the holders of
the land, those who farm and cultivate it, the established
village-servants, priest, blacksmith, carpenter, accountant,
washerman, potter, barber, watchman, shoemaker, etc. The tenure and
law of inheritance varies with the different native races, but
tenantship for a specific period seems to be the most common.--A. W.]
[Footnote 36: "Sleeman," vol. ii., p. 111.]
[Footnote 37: Sleeman, "Rambles," vol. ii., p. 116.]
[Footnote 38: Vasish_th_a XVI. 32.]
[Footnote 39: Ktesiae Fragmenta (ed. Didot), p. 81.]
[Footnote 40: See "Indian Antiquary," 1876, p. 333.]
[Footnote 41: Megasthenis Fragmenta (ed. Didot) in "Fragm. Histor.
Graec." vol. ii., p. 426 b: [Greek: _Aletheian te humoios kai areten
apodechontai_]]
[Footnote 42: Indica, cap. xii. 6.]
[Footnote 43: See McCrindle in. "Indian Antiquary," 1876, p. 92.]
[Footnote 44: See Stanislas Julien, _Journal Asiatique_, 1847, Aout,
pp. 98, 105.]
[Footnote 45: Vol. ii., p. 83.]
[Footnote 46: Elliot, "History of India," vol. i., p. 88.]
[Footnote 47: See Mehren: "Manuel de la Cosmographie du moyen age,
traduction de l'ouvrage de Shems-ed-din Abou Abdallah de Damas."
Paris: Leroux, 1874, p. 371.]
[Footnote 48: "Marco Polo," ed. H. Yule, vol. ii., p. 350.]
[Footnote 49: "Marco Polo," vol. ii., p. 354.]
[Footnote 50: "Notices des Manuscrits," tom. xiv., p. 436. He seems to
have been one of the first to state that the Persian text of the
Kalilah and Dimna was derived from the wise people of India.]
[Footnote 51: Samuel Johnson, "India," p. 294.]
[Footnote 52: Sleeman, "Rambles," vol. i., p. 63.]
[Footnote 53: Elphinstone's "History of India," ed. Cowell, p. 213.]
[Footnote 54: This statement may well be doubted. The missionary staff
in India is very large and has been for years past. There is no reason
to doubt that many of its members are well informed respecting Hindoo
character in all grades of society.--AM. PUBS.]
[Footnote 55: Samuel Johnson, "India," p. 293.]
[Footnote 56: See "History of India," pp. 375-381.]
[Footnote 57: L. c., p. 215.]
[Footnote 58: "History of India," p. 218.]
[Footnote 59: Mill's "History of India," ed. Wilson, vol. i., p. 370.]
[Footnote 60: L. c., p. 371.]
[Footnote 61: Sir Thomas Munro estimated the children educated at
public schools in the Madras presidency as less than one in three. But
low as it was, it was, as he justly remarked, a higher rate than
existed till very lately in most countries of Europe.--Elphinstone,
"Hist. of India," p. 205.
In Bengal there existed no less than 80,000 native schools, though,
doubtless, for the most part, of a poor quality. According to a
Government Report of 1835, there was a village-school for every 400
persons.--"Missionary Intelligencer," IX. 183-193.
Ludlow ("British India," I. 62) writes: "In every Hindu village which
has retained its old form I am assured that the children generally are
able to read, write, and cipher; but where we have swept away the
village-system, as in Bengal, there the village-school has also
disappeared."]
[Footnote 62: Rig-Veda I. 87, 4; 145, 5; 174, 1; V. 23, 2.]
[Footnote 63: Rig-Veda III. 32, 9; VI. 5, 1.]
[Footnote 64: Rig-Veda VI. 22, 2.]
[Footnote 65: Rig-Veda III. 14, 6.]
[Footnote 66: This is the favorite expression of Plato for the Divine,
which Cary, Davis, and others render "Real Being."--A. W.]
[Footnote 67: Sometimes they trace even this S a t y a or _R i_ t a, the
Real or Right, to a still higher cause, and say (Rig-Veda X. 190, 1):
"The Right and Real was born from the Lighted Heat; from thence was
born Night, and thence the billowy sea. From the sea was born
Sa_m_vatsara, the year, he who ordereth day and night, the Lord of all
that moves (winks). The Maker (dhat_ri_) shaped Sun and Moon in order;
he shaped the sky, the earth, the welkin, and the highest heaven."]
[Footnote 68: Rig-Veda I. 23, 22.]
[Footnote 69: Or it may mean, "Wherever I may have deceived, or sworn
false."]
[Footnote 70: _S_atapatha Brahma_n_a II. 2, 3, 19.]
[Footnote 71: Cf. Muir, "Metrical Translations," p. 268.]
[Footnote 72: _S_at. Br. III. 1, 2, 10.]
[Footnote 73: Taitt. Ara_n_yaka X. 9.]
[Footnote 74: Muir, "Metrical Translations," p. 218.]
[Footnote 75: Holtzmann, "Das alte indische Epos," p. 21, note 83.]
[Footnote 76: V. 24.]
[Footnote 77: This permission to prevaricate was still further
extended. The following five untruths are enumerated by various
writers as not constituting mortal sins--namely, at the time of
marriage, during dalliance, when life is in danger, when the loss of
property is threatened, and for the sake of a Brahma_n_a. Again,
another writer cites the declaration that an untruth is venial if it
is spoken at the time of marriage, during dalliance, in jest, or while
suffering great pain. It is evident that Venus laughed at lovers'
oaths in India as well as elsewhere; and that false testimony
extracted by torture was excused. Manu declared that in some cases the
giver of false evidence from a pious motive would not lose his seat in
heaven; indeed, that whenever the death of a man of any of the four
castes would be occasioned by true evidence, falsehood was even better
than truth. He gives as the primeval rule, to say what is true and
what is pleasant, but not what is true and unpleasant, or what is
pleasant and not true. The Vish_n_u-pura_n_a gives like counsel,
adding the following aphorism: "A considerate man will always
cultivate, in act, thought, and speech, that which is good for living
beings, both in this world and in the next." About the same license
appears to be used in this country and winked at.--A. W.]
[Footnote 78: I. 3412; III. 13844; VII. 8742; VIII. 3436, 3464.]
[Footnote 79: Mahabharata VIII. 3448.]
[Footnote 80: Muir, l. c. p. 268; Mahabharata I. 3095.]
[Footnote 81: Mahabharata I. 3015-16.]
[Footnote 82: This explains satisfactorily how the Hindoos became
liars, and of course admits that they did become so.--AM. PUBS.]
[Footnote 83: _S_atapatha Brahma_n_a, translated by Eggeling, "Sacred
Books of the East," vol. xii., p. 313, Sec. 20.]
[Footnote 84: Sir Charles Trevelyan, "Christianity and Hinduism," p.
81.]
[Footnote 85: IV. 65.]
[Footnote 86: VIII. 85.]
[Footnote 87: VIII. 90.]
[Footnote 88: VIII. 92.]
LECTURE III.
HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE.
My first lecture was intended to remove the prejudice that India is
and always must be a strange country to us, and that those who have to
live there will find themselves stranded, and far away from that
living stream of thoughts and interests which carries us along in
England and in other countries of Europe.
My second lecture was directed against another prejudice, namely, that
the people of India with whom the young civil servants will have to
pass the best years of their life are a race so depraved morally, and
more particularly so devoid of any regard for truth, that they _must_
always remain strangers to us, and that any real fellowship or
friendship with them is quite out of the question.
To-day I shall have to grapple with a third prejudice, namely, that
the literature of India, and more especially the classical Sanskrit
literature, whatever may be its interest to the scholar and the
antiquarian, has little to teach us which we cannot learn better from
other sources, and that at all events it is of little practical use to
young civilians. If only they learn to express themselves in
Hindustani or Tamil, that is considered quite enough; nay, as they
have to deal with men and with the ordinary affairs of life, and as,
before everything else, they are to be men of the world and men of
business, it is even supposed to be dangerous, if they allowed
themselves to become absorbed in questions of abstruse scholarship or
in researches on ancient religion, mythology, and philosophy.
I take the very opposite opinion, and I should advise every young man
who wishes to enjoy his life in India, and to spend his years there
with profit to himself and to others, to learn Sanskrit, and to learn
it well.
I know it will be said, What can be the use of Sanskrit at the present
day? Is not Sanskrit a dead language? And are not the Hindus
themselves ashamed of their ancient literature? Do they not learn
English, and do they not prefer Locke, and Hume, and Mill to their
ancient poets and philosophers?
No doubt Sanskrit, in one sense, is a dead language. It was, I
believe, a dead language more than two thousand years ago. Buddha,
about 500 B.C., commanded his disciples to preach in the dialects of
the people; and King A_s_oka, in the third century B.C., when he put
up his Edicts, which were intended to be read, or at least to be
understood by the people, had them engraved on rocks and pillars in
the various local dialects from Cabul[89] in the north to Ballabhi in
the south, from the sources of the Ganges and the Jumnah to Allahabad
and Patna, nay even down to Orissa. These various dialects are as
different from Sanskrit as Italian is from Latin, and we have
therefore good reason to suppose that, in the third century B.C., if
not earlier, Sanskrit had ceased to be the spoken language of the
people at large.
There is an interesting passage in the _K_ullavagga, where we are told
that, even during Buddha's lifetime, some of his pupils, who were
Brahmans by birth, complained that people spoiled the words of Buddha
by every one repeating them in his own dialect (nirutti). They
proposed to translate his words into Sanskrit; but he declined, and
commanded that each man should learn his doctrine in his own
language.[90]
And there is another passage, quoted by Hardy in his Manual of
Buddhism, p. 186, where we read that at the time of Buddha's first
preaching each of the countless listeners thought that the sage was
looking toward him, and was speaking to him in his own tongue, though
the language used was Magadhi.[91]
Sanskrit, therefore, as a language spoken by the people at large, had
ceased to exist in the third century B.C.
Yet such is the marvellous continuity between the past and the present
in India, that in spite of repeated social convulsions, religious
reforms, and foreign invasions, Sanskrit may be said to be still the
only language that is spoken over the whole extent of that vast
country.
Though the Buddhist sovereigns published their edicts in the
vernaculars, public inscriptions and private official documents
continued to be composed in Sanskrit during the last two thousand
years. And though the language of the sacred writings of Buddhists and
_G_ainas was borrowed from the vulgar dialects, the literature of
India never ceased to be written in Pa_n_inean Sanskrit, while the few
exceptions, as, for instance, the use of Prakrit by women and inferior
characters in the plays of Kalidasa and others, are themselves not
without an important historical significance.
Even at the present moment, after a century of English rule and
English teaching, I believe that Sanskrit is more widely understood in
India than Latin was in Europe at the time of Dante.
Whenever I receive a letter from a learned man in India, it is written
in Sanskrit. Whenever there is a controversy on questions of law and
religion, the pamphlets published in India are written in Sanskrit.
There are journals written in Sanskrit which must entirely depend for
their support on readers who prefer that classical language to the
vulgar dialects. There is _The Pandit_, published at Benares,
containing not only editions of ancient texts, but treatises on modern
subjects, reviews of books published in England, and controversial
articles, all in Sanskrit.
Another paper of the same kind is the _Pratna-Kamra-nandini_, "the
Delight of lovers of old things," published likewise at Benares, and
full of valuable materials.
There is also the _Vidyodaya_, "the Rise of Knowledge," a Sanskrit
journal published at Calcutta, which sometimes contains important
articles. There are probably others, which I do not know.
There is a monthly serial published at Bombay, by M. Moreshwar Kunte,
called the _Shad-darshana-Chintanika_, or "Studies in Indian
Philosophy," giving the text of the ancient systems of philosophy,
with commentaries and treatises, written in Sanskrit, though in this
case accompanied by a Marathi and an English translation.
Of the Rig-Veda, the most ancient of Sanskrit books, two editions are
now coming out in monthly numbers, the one published at Bombay, by
what may be called the liberal party, the other at Prayaga (Allahabad)
by Dayananda Sarasvati, the representative of Indian orthodoxy. The
former gives a paraphrase in Sanskrit, and a Marathi and an English
translation; the latter a full explanation in Sanskrit, followed by a
vernacular commentary. These books are published by subscription, and
the list of subscribers among the natives of India is very
considerable.
There are other journals, which are chiefly written in the spoken
dialects, such as Bengali, Marathi, or Hindi; but they contain occasional
articles in Sanskrit, as, for instance, the Hari_sk_andra_k_andrika,
published at Benares, the _Tattvabodhini_, published at Calcutta, and
several more.
It was only the other day that I saw in the _Liberal_, the journal of
Keshub Chunder Sen's party,[92] an account of a meeting between
Brahmavrata Samadhyayi, a Vedic scholar of Nuddea, and Kashinath
Trimbak Telang, a M.A. of the University of Bombay. The one came from
the east, the other from the west, yet both could converse fluently in
Sanskrit.[93]
Still more extraordinary is the number of Sanskrit texts, issuing from
native presses, for which there seems to be a large demand, for if we
write for copies to be sent to England, we often find that, after a
year or two, all the copies have been bought up in India itself. That
would not be the case with Anglo-Saxon texts in England, or with Latin
texts in Italy!
But more than this, we are told that the ancient epic poems of the
Mahabharata and Ramaya_n_a are still recited in the temples for the
benefit of visitors, and that in the villages large crowds assemble
around the Kathaka, the reader of these ancient Sanskrit poems, often
interrupting his recitations with tears and sighs, when the hero of
the poem is sent into banishment, while when he returns to his
kingdom, the houses of the village are adorned with lamps and
garlands. Such a recitation of the whole of the Mahabharata is said to
occupy ninety days, or sometimes half a year.[94] The people at large
require, no doubt, that the Brahman narrator (Kathaka) should
interpret the old poem, but there must be some few people present who
understand, or imagine they understand, the old poetry of Vyasa and
Valmiki.
There are thousands of Brahmans[95] even now, when so little
inducement exists for Vedic studies, who know the whole of the
Rig-Veda by heart and can repeat it; and what applies to the Rig-Veda
applies to many other books.
But even if Sanskrit were more of a dead language than it really is,
all the living languages of India, both Aryan and Dravidian, draw
their very life and soul from Sanskrit.[96] On this point, and on the
great help that even a limited knowledge of Sanskrit would render in
the acquisition of the vernaculars, I, and others better qualified
than I am, have spoken so often, though without any practical effect,
that I need not speak again. Any candidate who knows but the elements
of Sanskrit grammar will well understand what I mean, whether his
special vernacular may be Bengali, Hindustani, or even Tamil. To a
classical scholar I can only say that between a civil servant who
knows Sanskrit and Hindustani, and another who knows Hindustani only,
there is about the same difference in their power of forming an
intelligent appreciation of India and its inhabitants, as there is
between a traveller who visits Italy with a knowledge of Latin, and a
party personally conducted to Rome by Messrs. Cook & Co.
Let us examine, however, the objection that Sanskrit literature is a
dead or an artificial literature, a little more carefully, in order to
see whether there is not some kind of truth in it. Some people hold
that the literary works which we possess in Sanskrit never had any
real life at all, that they were altogether scholastic productions,
and that therefore they can teach us nothing of what we really care
for, namely, the historical growth of the Hindu mind. Others maintain
that at the present moment, at all events, and after a century of
English rule, Sanskrit literature has ceased to be a motive power in
India, and that it can teach us nothing of what is passing now through
the Hindu mind and influencing it for good or for evil.
Let us look at the facts. Sanskrit literature is a wide and a vague
term. If the Vedas, such as we now have them, were composed about 1500
B.C., and if it is a fact that considerable works continue to be
written in Sanskrit even now, we have before us a stream of literary
activity extending over three thousand four hundred years. With the
exception of China there is nothing like this in the whole world.
It is difficult to give an idea of the enormous extent and variety of
that literature. We are only gradually becoming acquainted with the
untold treasures which still exist in manuscripts, and with the titles
of that still larger number of works which must have existed formerly,
some of them being still quoted by writers of the last three or four
centuries.[97]
The Indian Government has of late years ordered a kind of
bibliographical survey of India to be made, and has sent some learned
Sanskrit scholars, both European and native, to places where
collections of Sanskrit MSS. are known to exist, in order to examine
and catalogue them. Some of these catalogues have been published, and
we learn from them that the number of separate works in Sanskrit, of
which mss. are still in existence, amounts to about 10,000.[98] This
is more, I believe, than the whole classical literature of Greece and
Italy put together. Much of it, no doubt, will be called mere rubbish;
but then you know that even in our days the writings of a very eminent
philosopher have been called "mere rubbish." What I wish you to see is
this, that there runs through the whole history of India, through its
three or four thousand years, a high road, or, it is perhaps more
accurate to say, a high mountain-path of literature. It may be remote
from the turmoil of the plain, hardly visible perhaps to the millions
of human beings in their daily struggle of life. It may have been
trodden by a few solitary wanderers only. But to the historian of the
human race, to the student of the development of the human mind, those
few solitary wanderers are after all the true representatives of India
from age to age. Do not let us be deceived. The true history of the
world must always be the history of the few; and as we measure the
Himalaya by the height of Mount Everest, we must take the true measure
of India from the poets of the Veda, the sages of the Upanishads, the
founders of the Vedanta and Sankhya philosophies, and the authors of
the oldest law-books, and not from the millions who are born and die
in their villages, and who have never for one moment been roused out
of their drowsy dream of life.
To large multitudes in India, no doubt, Sanskrit literature was not
merely a dead literature, it was simply non-existent; but the same
might be said of almost every literature, and more particularly of the
literatures of the ancient world.
Still, even beyond this, I am quite prepared to acknowledge to a
certain extent the truth of the statement, that a great portion of
Sanskrit literature has never been living and national, in the same
sense in which the Greek and Roman literatures reflected at times the
life of a whole nation; and it is quite true besides, that the
Sanskrit books which are best known to the public at large, belong to
what might correctly be called the Renaissance period of Indian
literature, when those who wrote Sanskrit had themselves to learn the
language, as we learn Latin, and were conscious that they were writing
for a learned and cultivated public only, and not for the people at
large.
This will require a fuller explanation.
We may divide the whole of Sanskrit literature, beginning with the
Rig-Veda and ending with Dayananda's Introduction to his edition of
the Rig-Veda, his by no means uninteresting Rig-Veda-bhumika, into two
great periods: that preceding the great Turanian invasion, and that
following it.
The former comprises the Vedic literature and the ancient literature
of Buddhism, the latter all the rest.
If I call the invasion which is generally called the invasion of the
_S_akas, or the Scythians, or Indo-Scythians, or Turushkas, the
_Turanian[99] invasion_, it is simply because I do not as yet wish to
commit myself more than I can help as to the nationality of the tribes
who took possession of India, or, at least, of the government of
India, from about the first century B.C. to the third century A.D.
They are best known by the name of _Yueh-chi_, this being the name by
which they are called in Chinese chronicles. These Chinese chronicles
form the principal source from which we derive our knowledge of these
tribes, both before and after their invasion of India. Many theories
have been started as to their relationship with other races. They are
described as of pink and white complexion and as shooting from
horseback; and as there was some similarity between their Chinese name
_Yueh-chi_ and the _Gothi_ or _Goths_, they were identified by
Remusat[100] with those German tribes, and by others with the _Getae_,
the neighbors of the Goths. Tod went even a step farther, and traced
the _G_ats in India and the Rajputs back to the _Yueh-chi_ and
_Getae_.[101] Some light may come in time out of all this darkness, but
for the present we must be satisfied with the fact that, between the
first century before and the third century after our era, the greatest
political revolution took place in India owing to the repeated inroads
of Turanian, or, to use a still less objectionable term, of Northern
tribes. Their presence in India, recorded by Chinese historians, is
fully confirmed by coins, by inscriptions, and by the traditional
history of the country, such as it is; but to my mind nothing attests
the presence of these foreign invaders more clearly than the break,
or, I could almost say, the blank in the Brahmanical literature of
India from the first century before to the third century after our
era.[102]
If we consider the political and social state of that country, we can
easily understand what would happen in a case of invasion and conquest
by a warlike race. The invaders would take possession of the
strongholds or castles, and either remove the old Rajahs, or make them
their vassals and agents. Everything else would then go on exactly as
before. The rents would be paid, the taxes collected, and the life of
the villagers, that is, of the great majority of the people of India,
would go on almost undisturbed by the change of government. The only
people who might suffer would be, or, at all events, might be the
priestly caste, unless they should come to terms with the new
conquerors. The priestly caste, however, was also to a great extent
the literary caste, and the absence of their old patrons, the native
Rajahs, might well produce for a time a complete cessation of literary
activity. The rise of Buddhism and its formal adoption by King Asoka
had already considerably shaken the power and influence of the old
Brahmanic hierarchy. The Northern conquerors, whatever their religion
may have been, were certainly not believers in the Veda. They seem to
have made a kind of compromise with Buddhism, and it is probably due
to that compromise, or to an amalgamation of _S_aka legends with
Buddhist doctrines, that we owe the so-called Mahayana form of
Buddhism--and more particularly the Amitabha worship--which was
finally settled at the Council under Kanishka, one of the Turanian
rulers of India in the first century A.D.
If then we divide the whole of Sanskrit literature into these two
periods, the one anterior to the great Turanian invasion, the other
posterior to it, we may call the literature of the former period
_ancient_ and _natural_, that of the latter _modern_ and _artificial_.