Part 7

"Evil-doers think indeed that no one sees them; but the gods see them, and the old man within."

"Self is the witness of Self, Self is the refuge of Self. Do not despise thy own Self, the highest witness of men."[87]

"If, friend, thou thinkest thou art self-alone, remember there is the silent thinker (the Highest Self) always within thy heart, and _he_ sees what is good and what is evil."[88]

"O friend, whatever good thou mayest have done from thy very birth, all will go to the dogs, if thou speak an untruth."

Or in Vasish_th_a, XXX. 1:

"Practice righteousness, not unrighteousness; speak truth, not untruth; look far, not near; look up toward the highest, not toward anything low."

No doubt there is moral depravity in India, and where is there no moral depravity in this world? But to appeal to international statistics would be, I believe, a dangerous game. Nor must we forget that our standards of morality differ, and, on some points, differ considerably from those recognized in India; and we must not wonder if sons do not at once condemn as criminal what their fathers and grandfathers considered right. Let us hold by all means to _our_ sense of what is right and what is wrong; but in judging others, whether in public or in private life, whether as historians or politicians, let us not forget that a kindly spirit will never do any harm. Certainly I can imagine nothing more mischievous, more dangerous, more fatal to the permanence of English rule in India, than for the young civil servants to go to that country with the idea that it is a sink of moral depravity, an ants' nest of lies; for no one is so sure to go wrong, whether in public or in private life, as he who says in his haste: "All men are liars."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 17: Mill's "History of British India," ed. Wilson, vol. i., p. 375.]

[Footnote 18: Keshub Chunder Sen is the present spiritual director of the Brahmo Sama_g_, the theistic organization founded by the late Rammohun Roy.--A. W.]

[Footnote 19: Mill's "History," ed. Wilson, vol. i., p. 368.]

[Footnote 20: L. c. p. 325.]

[Footnote 21: L. c. p. 329.]

[Footnote 22: P. 217.]

[Footnote 23: Mill's "History," vol. i., p. 329.]

[Footnote 24: Manu, VIII. 43, says: "Neither a King himself nor his officers must ever promote litigation; nor ever neglect a lawsuit instituted by others."]

[Footnote 25: Mill's "History," vol. i., p. 327.]

[Footnote 26: L. c. p. 368.]

[Footnote 27: See Elphinstone, "History of India," ed. Cowell, p. 219, note. "Of the 232 sentences of death 64 only were carried out in England, while the 59 sentences of death in Bengal were all carried out."]

[Footnote 28: Sir Ch. Trevelyan, Christianity and Hinduism, 1882, p. 42.

This will be news to many. It has been quite common to include the Thugs with the worshippers of Bhavani, the consort of Siva. The word signifies a deceiver, which eliminates it from every religious association.--A. W.]

[Footnote 29: Manu VII. 115.]

[Footnote 30: H. M. Elliot, "Supplement to the Glossary of Indian Terms," p. 151.]

[Footnote 31: I see from Dr. Hunter's latest statistical tables that the whole number of towns and villages in British India amounts to 493,429. Out of this number 448,320 have less than 1000 inhabitants, and may be called villages. In Bengal, where the growth of towns has been most encouraged through Government establishments, the total number of homesteads is 117,042, and more than half of these contain less than 200 inhabitants. Only 10,077 towns in Bengal have more than 1000 inhabitants, that is, no more than about a seventeenth part of all the settlements are anything but what we should call substantial villages. In the North-Western Provinces the last census gives us 105,124 villages, against 297 towns. See London _Times_, 14th Aug. 1882.]

[Footnote 32: "Ancient India as described by Megasthenes and Arrian," by McCrindle, p. 42.]

[Footnote 33: "Perjury seems to be committed by the meanest and encouraged by some of the better sort among the Hindus and Mussulmans, with as little remorse as if it were a proof of ingenuity, or even a merit."--Sir W. Jones, Address to Grand Jury at Calcutta, in Mill's "History of India," vol. i., p. 324. "The longer we possess a province, the more common and grave does perjury become."--Sir G. Campbell, quoted by Rev. Samuel Johnson, "Oriental Religions, India," p. 288.]

[Footnote 34: Vasish_th_a, translated by Buehler, VIII. 8.]

[Footnote 35: Mr. J. D. Baldwin, author of "Prehistoric Nations," declares that this system of village-communities existed in India long before the Aryan conquest. He attributes it to Cushite or AEthiopic influence, and with great plausibility. Nevertheless, the same system flourished in prehistoric Greece, even till the Roman conquests. Mr. Palgrave observed it existing in Arabia. "Oman is less a kingdom than an aggregation of municipalities," he remarks; "each town, each village has its separate existence and corporation, while towns and villages, in their turn, are subjected to one or other of the ancestral chiefs." The Ionian and Phoenician cities existed by a similar tenure, as did also the Free Cities of Europe. It appears, indeed, to have been the earlier form of rule. Megasthenes noticed it in India. "The village-communities," says Sir Charles Metcalf, "are little republics, having everything they want within themselves, and almost independent of any foreign relations. They seem to last where nothing else lasts." These villages usually consist of the holders of the land, those who farm and cultivate it, the established village-servants, priest, blacksmith, carpenter, accountant, washerman, potter, barber, watchman, shoemaker, etc. The tenure and law of inheritance varies with the different native races, but tenantship for a specific period seems to be the most common.--A. W.]

[Footnote 36: "Sleeman," vol. ii., p. 111.]

[Footnote 37: Sleeman, "Rambles," vol. ii., p. 116.]

[Footnote 38: Vasish_th_a XVI. 32.]

[Footnote 39: Ktesiae Fragmenta (ed. Didot), p. 81.]

[Footnote 40: See "Indian Antiquary," 1876, p. 333.]

[Footnote 41: Megasthenis Fragmenta (ed. Didot) in "Fragm. Histor. Graec." vol. ii., p. 426 b: [Greek: _Aletheian te humoios kai areten apodechontai_]]

[Footnote 42: Indica, cap. xii. 6.]

[Footnote 43: See McCrindle in. "Indian Antiquary," 1876, p. 92.]

[Footnote 44: See Stanislas Julien, _Journal Asiatique_, 1847, Aout, pp. 98, 105.]

[Footnote 45: Vol. ii., p. 83.]

[Footnote 46: Elliot, "History of India," vol. i., p. 88.]

[Footnote 47: See Mehren: "Manuel de la Cosmographie du moyen age, traduction de l'ouvrage de Shems-ed-din Abou Abdallah de Damas." Paris: Leroux, 1874, p. 371.]

[Footnote 48: "Marco Polo," ed. H. Yule, vol. ii., p. 350.]

[Footnote 49: "Marco Polo," vol. ii., p. 354.]

[Footnote 50: "Notices des Manuscrits," tom. xiv., p. 436. He seems to have been one of the first to state that the Persian text of the Kalilah and Dimna was derived from the wise people of India.]

[Footnote 51: Samuel Johnson, "India," p. 294.]

[Footnote 52: Sleeman, "Rambles," vol. i., p. 63.]

[Footnote 53: Elphinstone's "History of India," ed. Cowell, p. 213.]

[Footnote 54: This statement may well be doubted. The missionary staff in India is very large and has been for years past. There is no reason to doubt that many of its members are well informed respecting Hindoo character in all grades of society.--AM. PUBS.]

[Footnote 55: Samuel Johnson, "India," p. 293.]

[Footnote 56: See "History of India," pp. 375-381.]

[Footnote 57: L. c., p. 215.]

[Footnote 58: "History of India," p. 218.]

[Footnote 59: Mill's "History of India," ed. Wilson, vol. i., p. 370.]

[Footnote 60: L. c., p. 371.]

[Footnote 61: Sir Thomas Munro estimated the children educated at public schools in the Madras presidency as less than one in three. But low as it was, it was, as he justly remarked, a higher rate than existed till very lately in most countries of Europe.--Elphinstone, "Hist. of India," p. 205.

In Bengal there existed no less than 80,000 native schools, though, doubtless, for the most part, of a poor quality. According to a Government Report of 1835, there was a village-school for every 400 persons.--"Missionary Intelligencer," IX. 183-193.

Ludlow ("British India," I. 62) writes: "In every Hindu village which has retained its old form I am assured that the children generally are able to read, write, and cipher; but where we have swept away the village-system, as in Bengal, there the village-school has also disappeared."]

[Footnote 62: Rig-Veda I. 87, 4; 145, 5; 174, 1; V. 23, 2.]

[Footnote 63: Rig-Veda III. 32, 9; VI. 5, 1.]

[Footnote 64: Rig-Veda VI. 22, 2.]

[Footnote 65: Rig-Veda III. 14, 6.]

[Footnote 66: This is the favorite expression of Plato for the Divine, which Cary, Davis, and others render "Real Being."--A. W.]

[Footnote 67: Sometimes they trace even this S a t y a or _R i_ t a, the Real or Right, to a still higher cause, and say (Rig-Veda X. 190, 1):

"The Right and Real was born from the Lighted Heat; from thence was born Night, and thence the billowy sea. From the sea was born Sa_m_vatsara, the year, he who ordereth day and night, the Lord of all that moves (winks). The Maker (dhat_ri_) shaped Sun and Moon in order; he shaped the sky, the earth, the welkin, and the highest heaven."]

[Footnote 68: Rig-Veda I. 23, 22.]

[Footnote 69: Or it may mean, "Wherever I may have deceived, or sworn false."]

[Footnote 70: _S_atapatha Brahma_n_a II. 2, 3, 19.]

[Footnote 71: Cf. Muir, "Metrical Translations," p. 268.]

[Footnote 72: _S_at. Br. III. 1, 2, 10.]

[Footnote 73: Taitt. Ara_n_yaka X. 9.]

[Footnote 74: Muir, "Metrical Translations," p. 218.]

[Footnote 75: Holtzmann, "Das alte indische Epos," p. 21, note 83.]

[Footnote 76: V. 24.]

[Footnote 77: This permission to prevaricate was still further extended. The following five untruths are enumerated by various writers as not constituting mortal sins--namely, at the time of marriage, during dalliance, when life is in danger, when the loss of property is threatened, and for the sake of a Brahma_n_a. Again, another writer cites the declaration that an untruth is venial if it is spoken at the time of marriage, during dalliance, in jest, or while suffering great pain. It is evident that Venus laughed at lovers' oaths in India as well as elsewhere; and that false testimony extracted by torture was excused. Manu declared that in some cases the giver of false evidence from a pious motive would not lose his seat in heaven; indeed, that whenever the death of a man of any of the four castes would be occasioned by true evidence, falsehood was even better than truth. He gives as the primeval rule, to say what is true and what is pleasant, but not what is true and unpleasant, or what is pleasant and not true. The Vish_n_u-pura_n_a gives like counsel, adding the following aphorism: "A considerate man will always cultivate, in act, thought, and speech, that which is good for living beings, both in this world and in the next." About the same license appears to be used in this country and winked at.--A. W.]

[Footnote 78: I. 3412; III. 13844; VII. 8742; VIII. 3436, 3464.]

[Footnote 79: Mahabharata VIII. 3448.]

[Footnote 80: Muir, l. c. p. 268; Mahabharata I. 3095.]

[Footnote 81: Mahabharata I. 3015-16.]

[Footnote 82: This explains satisfactorily how the Hindoos became liars, and of course admits that they did become so.--AM. PUBS.]

[Footnote 83: _S_atapatha Brahma_n_a, translated by Eggeling, "Sacred Books of the East," vol. xii., p. 313, Sec. 20.]

[Footnote 84: Sir Charles Trevelyan, "Christianity and Hinduism," p. 81.]

[Footnote 85: IV. 65.]

[Footnote 86: VIII. 85.]

[Footnote 87: VIII. 90.]

[Footnote 88: VIII. 92.]

LECTURE III.

HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE.

My first lecture was intended to remove the prejudice that India is and always must be a strange country to us, and that those who have to live there will find themselves stranded, and far away from that living stream of thoughts and interests which carries us along in England and in other countries of Europe.

My second lecture was directed against another prejudice, namely, that the people of India with whom the young civil servants will have to pass the best years of their life are a race so depraved morally, and more particularly so devoid of any regard for truth, that they _must_ always remain strangers to us, and that any real fellowship or friendship with them is quite out of the question.

To-day I shall have to grapple with a third prejudice, namely, that the literature of India, and more especially the classical Sanskrit literature, whatever may be its interest to the scholar and the antiquarian, has little to teach us which we cannot learn better from other sources, and that at all events it is of little practical use to young civilians. If only they learn to express themselves in Hindustani or Tamil, that is considered quite enough; nay, as they have to deal with men and with the ordinary affairs of life, and as, before everything else, they are to be men of the world and men of business, it is even supposed to be dangerous, if they allowed themselves to become absorbed in questions of abstruse scholarship or in researches on ancient religion, mythology, and philosophy.

I take the very opposite opinion, and I should advise every young man who wishes to enjoy his life in India, and to spend his years there with profit to himself and to others, to learn Sanskrit, and to learn it well.

I know it will be said, What can be the use of Sanskrit at the present day? Is not Sanskrit a dead language? And are not the Hindus themselves ashamed of their ancient literature? Do they not learn English, and do they not prefer Locke, and Hume, and Mill to their ancient poets and philosophers?

No doubt Sanskrit, in one sense, is a dead language. It was, I believe, a dead language more than two thousand years ago. Buddha, about 500 B.C., commanded his disciples to preach in the dialects of the people; and King A_s_oka, in the third century B.C., when he put up his Edicts, which were intended to be read, or at least to be understood by the people, had them engraved on rocks and pillars in the various local dialects from Cabul[89] in the north to Ballabhi in the south, from the sources of the Ganges and the Jumnah to Allahabad and Patna, nay even down to Orissa. These various dialects are as different from Sanskrit as Italian is from Latin, and we have therefore good reason to suppose that, in the third century B.C., if not earlier, Sanskrit had ceased to be the spoken language of the people at large.

There is an interesting passage in the _K_ullavagga, where we are told that, even during Buddha's lifetime, some of his pupils, who were Brahmans by birth, complained that people spoiled the words of Buddha by every one repeating them in his own dialect (nirutti). They proposed to translate his words into Sanskrit; but he declined, and commanded that each man should learn his doctrine in his own language.[90]

And there is another passage, quoted by Hardy in his Manual of Buddhism, p. 186, where we read that at the time of Buddha's first preaching each of the countless listeners thought that the sage was looking toward him, and was speaking to him in his own tongue, though the language used was Magadhi.[91]

Sanskrit, therefore, as a language spoken by the people at large, had ceased to exist in the third century B.C.

Yet such is the marvellous continuity between the past and the present in India, that in spite of repeated social convulsions, religious reforms, and foreign invasions, Sanskrit may be said to be still the only language that is spoken over the whole extent of that vast country.

Though the Buddhist sovereigns published their edicts in the vernaculars, public inscriptions and private official documents continued to be composed in Sanskrit during the last two thousand years. And though the language of the sacred writings of Buddhists and _G_ainas was borrowed from the vulgar dialects, the literature of India never ceased to be written in Pa_n_inean Sanskrit, while the few exceptions, as, for instance, the use of Prakrit by women and inferior characters in the plays of Kalidasa and others, are themselves not without an important historical significance.

Even at the present moment, after a century of English rule and English teaching, I believe that Sanskrit is more widely understood in India than Latin was in Europe at the time of Dante.

Whenever I receive a letter from a learned man in India, it is written in Sanskrit. Whenever there is a controversy on questions of law and religion, the pamphlets published in India are written in Sanskrit. There are journals written in Sanskrit which must entirely depend for their support on readers who prefer that classical language to the vulgar dialects. There is _The Pandit_, published at Benares, containing not only editions of ancient texts, but treatises on modern subjects, reviews of books published in England, and controversial articles, all in Sanskrit.

Another paper of the same kind is the _Pratna-Kamra-nandini_, "the Delight of lovers of old things," published likewise at Benares, and full of valuable materials.

There is also the _Vidyodaya_, "the Rise of Knowledge," a Sanskrit journal published at Calcutta, which sometimes contains important articles. There are probably others, which I do not know.

There is a monthly serial published at Bombay, by M. Moreshwar Kunte, called the _Shad-darshana-Chintanika_, or "Studies in Indian Philosophy," giving the text of the ancient systems of philosophy, with commentaries and treatises, written in Sanskrit, though in this case accompanied by a Marathi and an English translation.

Of the Rig-Veda, the most ancient of Sanskrit books, two editions are now coming out in monthly numbers, the one published at Bombay, by what may be called the liberal party, the other at Prayaga (Allahabad) by Dayananda Sarasvati, the representative of Indian orthodoxy. The former gives a paraphrase in Sanskrit, and a Marathi and an English translation; the latter a full explanation in Sanskrit, followed by a vernacular commentary. These books are published by subscription, and the list of subscribers among the natives of India is very considerable.

There are other journals, which are chiefly written in the spoken dialects, such as Bengali, Marathi, or Hindi; but they contain occasional articles in Sanskrit, as, for instance, the Hari_sk_andra_k_andrika, published at Benares, the _Tattvabodhini_, published at Calcutta, and several more.

It was only the other day that I saw in the _Liberal_, the journal of Keshub Chunder Sen's party,[92] an account of a meeting between Brahmavrata Samadhyayi, a Vedic scholar of Nuddea, and Kashinath Trimbak Telang, a M.A. of the University of Bombay. The one came from the east, the other from the west, yet both could converse fluently in Sanskrit.[93]

Still more extraordinary is the number of Sanskrit texts, issuing from native presses, for which there seems to be a large demand, for if we write for copies to be sent to England, we often find that, after a year or two, all the copies have been bought up in India itself. That would not be the case with Anglo-Saxon texts in England, or with Latin texts in Italy!

But more than this, we are told that the ancient epic poems of the Mahabharata and Ramaya_n_a are still recited in the temples for the benefit of visitors, and that in the villages large crowds assemble around the Kathaka, the reader of these ancient Sanskrit poems, often interrupting his recitations with tears and sighs, when the hero of the poem is sent into banishment, while when he returns to his kingdom, the houses of the village are adorned with lamps and garlands. Such a recitation of the whole of the Mahabharata is said to occupy ninety days, or sometimes half a year.[94] The people at large require, no doubt, that the Brahman narrator (Kathaka) should interpret the old poem, but there must be some few people present who understand, or imagine they understand, the old poetry of Vyasa and Valmiki.

There are thousands of Brahmans[95] even now, when so little inducement exists for Vedic studies, who know the whole of the Rig-Veda by heart and can repeat it; and what applies to the Rig-Veda applies to many other books.

But even if Sanskrit were more of a dead language than it really is, all the living languages of India, both Aryan and Dravidian, draw their very life and soul from Sanskrit.[96] On this point, and on the great help that even a limited knowledge of Sanskrit would render in the acquisition of the vernaculars, I, and others better qualified than I am, have spoken so often, though without any practical effect, that I need not speak again. Any candidate who knows but the elements of Sanskrit grammar will well understand what I mean, whether his special vernacular may be Bengali, Hindustani, or even Tamil. To a classical scholar I can only say that between a civil servant who knows Sanskrit and Hindustani, and another who knows Hindustani only, there is about the same difference in their power of forming an intelligent appreciation of India and its inhabitants, as there is between a traveller who visits Italy with a knowledge of Latin, and a party personally conducted to Rome by Messrs. Cook & Co.

Let us examine, however, the objection that Sanskrit literature is a dead or an artificial literature, a little more carefully, in order to see whether there is not some kind of truth in it. Some people hold that the literary works which we possess in Sanskrit never had any real life at all, that they were altogether scholastic productions, and that therefore they can teach us nothing of what we really care for, namely, the historical growth of the Hindu mind. Others maintain that at the present moment, at all events, and after a century of English rule, Sanskrit literature has ceased to be a motive power in India, and that it can teach us nothing of what is passing now through the Hindu mind and influencing it for good or for evil.

Let us look at the facts. Sanskrit literature is a wide and a vague term. If the Vedas, such as we now have them, were composed about 1500 B.C., and if it is a fact that considerable works continue to be written in Sanskrit even now, we have before us a stream of literary activity extending over three thousand four hundred years. With the exception of China there is nothing like this in the whole world.

It is difficult to give an idea of the enormous extent and variety of that literature. We are only gradually becoming acquainted with the untold treasures which still exist in manuscripts, and with the titles of that still larger number of works which must have existed formerly, some of them being still quoted by writers of the last three or four centuries.[97]