India: What can it teach us? Part 7

Ludlow ("British India," I. 62) writes: "In every Hindu village which has retained its old form I am a.s.sured 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 const.i.tuting 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, -- 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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.sical 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage, 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 doc.u.ments 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 cla.s.sical 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.