MY INDIAN FRIENDS.
I.
My first Acquaintance with India.
How I fell in love with India is a very old, and a very long story. We have all read of young knights who in a dream had a vision of a beautiful princess, and who did not rest until they had found her, delivered her, and, after many hard fights with giants and monsters, carried her home in triumph. I had such a vision of India when I was not yet ten years old. It may seem passing strange that a little boy in a small town of Germany should as far back as 1833 have dreamt of India. Few people would know that small town in which he lived. However, if they will look on the map of Germany, somewhere between the 12th and 13th degrees of longitude and the 51st and 52nd degrees of latitude, they will find Dessau, the capital of the Duchy of Anhalt. It lies on the road from Leipzig to Magdeburg, and in these days of railways people often pass it on their way to Berlin. I have never been a very superstitious man, and have never believed in ghosts or spirits, in table-turnings or spirit-rappings, in visions or apparitions; in fact, in anything that can strike the material senses, and yet pretend to be immaterial, and has nothing to strike with. This is the whole problem of ghosts in a nutshell. If ghosts are immaterial, they cannot strike our eyes, or tickle our ears. They could not even have a sulphurous smell. If, on the contrary, they are material, they are not ghosts. But this by the way. But though an unbeliever in ghosts, I have not been able to withhold my belief from coincidences, strange coincidences, which we have to accept in the course of our life without any attempt to account for them. I well remember when I was at school, one of my copybooks had a large picture of Benares on the outside. It was a very rough picture, but I can still see the men, women, and children as they stepped down the ghats to bathe in the waters of the Ganges. That picture caught my fancy and set me dreaming. What did I know of India at that time? Nothing but that the people were black, that they burnt their widows, and that, in order to get into Paradise, they had first to be mangled under the wheels of the car of Juggernâth. On my picture, however, they were represented looking tall, and, as I thought, beautiful, certainly not like niggers; and the mosques and temples visible on the shores of the river impressed me as even more beautiful and majestic than the churches and palaces at Dessau. Boys will dream dreams, and as I was sitting idle at school dreaming and seeing visions of Benares, instead of doing my copy, I was suddenly taken by the ear by our writing-master, and told to copy several pages containing such names as Benares, Ganges, India, and all the rest, because I had been so idle and had made a very bad copy. This was my first and somewhat painful acquaintance with India, and it led to nothing else at the time. It simply left the memory of a kind of vision, and, if I had not later in life become devoted to the reality of that vision, I should probably never have thought of my copybook again.
Note.—In Sanskrit words an italic k should be pronounced like English “ch” in church, italic g like “j” in join. Thus, mlekkha, or, as some used to spell it, mlechchha, should be pronounced like mlêcha. Proper names, however, and Oriental words that have already a recognised spelling in English, have mostly been left unchanged.
It was when I had left school, and had gone to the University of Leipzig in 1841, that my vision, like a revenant, appeared again, and assumed then a more tangible and permanent form. I was getting a little tired of Greek and Latin, and the warmed-up cabbage, the crambe repetita, of Homer and Horace, when I heard of the foundation of a new Chair—a Chair of Sanskrit—and saw lectures on Indian literature advertised by Professor Brockhaus. Here my curiosity was roused at once; I had already had a slight flirtation with Arabic, but now I fell seriously in love with Sanskrit, and became more and more faithless to my first classical love. Professor Brockhaus was an excellent, kind-hearted, and helpful teacher. I began Sanskrit with a will, and, after I had attended his lectures for several semesters at Leipzig, and had read with him such ordinary books as Nala, Sakuntalâ, and even a little of the Rig-Veda, I went to Berlin to study under Bopp; and then proceeded to Paris, attracted by the fame of Eugène Burnouf.
At that time my desire to see India, as I had seen it in the visions of my schooldays, became very strong. As classical scholars yearn to see Rome or Athens, I yearned to see Benares, and to bathe in the sacred waters of the Ganges. But at that time such a thing was simply out of the question. At that time to go to India seemed to be the privilege of Englishmen only, and it took half a year to get there, and a great deal more money than I could command. The dream of my life to see India face to face has never been realised. When I was young enough, I had not the wherewithal to go there, and when, later in life, I was invited again and again by my Indian friends to go there, I was too old and too much tied down by duties from which there was no escape. Besides, unless I could have stayed in India at least two or three years, could have learned to speak the languages, and come to know the few native scholars still left, it was nothing to me. My India was not on the surface, but lay many centuries beneath it; and as to paying a globe-trotter’s visit to Calcutta and Bombay, I might as well walk through Oxford Street and Bond Street But, though I never stood on the ghats of Benares, and never saw the men, women, and children step down from them into the sacred waters of the Ganges, I have had the good fortune of knowing a number of Indians in Europe, and no doubt some of the best and most distinguished of the sons and daughters of India. I have often been told that I have been misled by these acquaintances, and have taken far too favourable a view of the Indian character; that I had seen the best of India only, but not the worst. But where is the harm? I have seen what the Indian character can be, I have learnt what it ought to be, and I hope what it will be, and though we cannot expect a whole nation of Rammohun Roys, of Debendranâth Tagores, of Keshub Chunder Sens, of Malabâris and Râmabâis, we ought not to neglect them in our estimate of the capabilities of a whole nation.
Dvârkanâth Tagore.
Indians did not travel so freely fifty years ago as they do now. The crossing of the black water and all its consequences had not then lost its terrors. When, therefore, in the year 1844, a real Hindu made his appearance in Paris, his visit created a great sensation, and filled me with a strong desire to make his acquaintance. He was a handsome man, and, as he took the best suite of apartments in one of the best hotels in Paris, he naturally roused considerable curiosity. I was then attending Professor Burnouf’s lectures at the Collège de France, and, as the Indian visitor had brought letters of introduction to that great French savant, I too was introduced to the Indian stranger, and soon came to know him well. He was the representative of one of the greatest and richest families in India, Dvârkanâth Tagore, the father of the Maharshi Debendranâth Tagore, who is still alive, and the grandfather of Satyendranâth Tagore, the first successful native candidate for the Indian Civil Service, whom I knew as a young student in England, and who now, after serving his country and his Empress with great distinction for many years, has retired from the service.
Dvârkanâth Tagore was not a Sanskrit scholar, but he was not unacquainted with Sanskrit literature. The first time I saw him was at the Institut de France, when Burnouf presented him with a copy of his splendid edition of the Bhagavat-Purâna. On one side was the Sanskrit text, on the other the French translation, and it was curious to see the Indian placing his delicate brown fingers on the white page with the French translation, and saying with a sigh, “Oh, if I could read that!” One would have expected that his wish would have been to understand the ancient language of his own country; but no, he pined for a better knowledge of French.
He was not an antiquarian, nor a student of his own religion or of the language of his own sacred books. But when he was told by Burnouf what my plans were, and how I had actually copied and collated the MSS. of the Veda at Paris, he took a lively interest in me. He invited me, and I often spent the mornings with him, talking about India and Indian customs. Strange to say, he was devotedly fond of music, and had acquired a taste for Italian and French music. What he liked was to have me to accompany him on the pianoforte, and I soon found that he had not only a good voice, but had been taught fairly well. So we got on very well together. After complimenting him on his taste for Italian music, I asked him one morning to give me a specimen of real Indian music. He sang first of all what is called Indian, but is really Persian music, without any style or character. This was not what I wanted, and I asked whether he did not know some pieces of real Indian music. He smiled and turned away. “You would not appreciate it,” he said; but, as I asked him again and again, he sat down to the pianoforte, and, after striking a few notes, began to play and sing. I confess I was somewhat taken aback. I could discern neither melody, nor rhythm, nor harmony in what he sang; but, when I told him so, he shook his head and said: “You are all alike; if anything seems strange to you and does not please you at once, you turn away. When I first heard Italian music, it was no music to me at all; but I went on and on, till I began to like it, or what you call understand it. It is the same with everything else. You say our religion is no religion, our poetry no poetry, our philosophy no philosophy. We try to understand and appreciate whatever Europe has produced, but do not imagine that therefore we despise what India has produced. If you studied our music as we do yours, you would find that there is melody, rhythm, and harmony in it, quite as much as in yours. And if you would study our poetry, our religion, and our philosophy, you would find that we are not what you call heathens or miscreants, but know as much of the Unknowable as you do, and have seen perhaps even deeper into it than you have!” He was not far wrong.
He became quite eloquent and excited, and to pacify him I told him that I was quite aware that India possessed a science of music, founded, as far as I could see, on mathematics. I had examined some Sanskrit MSS. on music, but I confessed that I could not make head or tail of them. I once consulted Professor H. H. Wilson on the subject, who had spent many years in India and was himself a musician. But he did not encourage me. He told me that, while in India, he had been to a native teacher of music who professed to understand the old books. He had expressed himself willing to teach him, on condition that he would come to him two or three times a week. Then at the end of half a year he would be able to tell him whether he was fit to learn music, whether he was in fact an Adhikârin, a fit candidate, and in five years he promised him that he might master both the theory and the practice of music. That was too much for an Indian civilian who had his hands full of work, and though he learnt many things from Pandits, Professor H. H. Wilson, then, I believe, Master of the Mint and holding several other appointments besides, had to give up all idea of becoming apprenticed for five years to a teacher of music. Dvârkanâth Tagore was much amused, but he quite admitted that five years was the shortest time in which any man could hope thoroughly to master the intricacies of ancient Hindu music, and I too gave up in consequence all hope of ever mastering such texts as the Sangîta-ratnâkara, the Treasury of Symphony, and similar texts, though they have often tempted my curiosity in the library of the East India House.
There is another member of the Tagore family, Râjah Surindro Mohun Tagore, a very liberal patron of Indian music, who has published a great deal about it, but he too has kept aloof from touching on the old science of music that once existed in India, though we know as yet so little of its literature. If we could accept a tradition that has been repeated again and again by Sanskrit scholars, even by men of great learning, such as the late Professor Benfey, we should have to believe that Guido d’Arezzo (about 1000 A. D.) borrowed his gamut from the Arabs, and that they had adopted it from the Persians, who had been the pupils of the Hindus. In itself such a borrowing has nothing incredible in it, for we know that our figures, not excluding the nought, travelled on the same road, from the Indians to the Persians, the Arabs, the Spaniards, and the Italians. It is true also that one of the Indian gamuts consisted of seven notes, and that these notes went by the names sa, ri, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, which were the first syllables of their Sanskrit names. So far, therefore, there is some plausibility. But if it is maintained that these seven syllables were changed in Italian to the well-known do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, we require some more of real historical evidence of such a change before stating as a fact what is, as yet, a guess only. Gladly as I should claim any merit for the people of India, it seems to me that the differences between the names of the notes of the two gamuts are greater than their similarities. All we can say is that it is possible that we owe our gamut to India, but until more evidence is produced, we cannot say more. If we remember that we owe the nought to that country, mathematicians will be ready to confess that this was one of the greatest discoveries in the history of mathematics and of all the sciences that depend on mathematics, one of the greatest benefits, in fact, that the East has conferred on the West. Whether we owe to India Beethoven’s symphonies is another question, that has yet to wait for an answer.
My Indian friend Dvârkanâth Tagore, though not learned, was very intelligent, and a man of the world. He rather looked down on the Brâhmans, and when I asked him whether he would have to perform penance, or Prâyaskitta, after his return to India, he laughed and said, “No. I am all this time feeding a large number of Brâhmans at home, and that is quite penance enough!” The real penance was, of course, the Pañkagavya, the five products of the cow which the penitent had to swallow before he could be readmitted to his caste; and these products were not only milk, sour milk, and clarified butter, but likewise other products, such as Mûtra and Gomaya. That penance still exists, and many of our Indian visitors have had to undergo it after their return, though at present the five products of the cow are reduced to infinitesimal proportions and swallowed in the shape of a gilded pill.
But if he took a low view of his Brâhmans, he did not show much more respect for what he called the black-coated English Brâhmans. Much as he admired everything English, he had a mischievous delight in finding out the weak points of English society, and particularly of the English clergy. He read a number of English newspapers, political and ecclesiastic, and he kept a kind of black book in which he carefully noted whatever did not redound very much to the honour of any bishops, priests, or deacons. It certainly was a curious collection of every kind of ecclesiastical scandal, and I have often wondered what could have become of it. His son, the saint-like Debendranâth Tagore, the head of the Ârya-Samâj, would hardly make use of such weapons; but his father delighted in the book, and brought it out whenever the question turned on the respective merits of the Indian and the Christian religions. All I could say was that no religion should be judged by its clergy only, whether in Italy, in England, or in India.
Dvârkanâth Tagore lived in a truly magnificent Oriental style while at Paris. The king, Louis Philippe, received him, nay, he honoured him, if I remember right, by his presence and that of his Court at a grand evening party. The room was hung with Indian shawls, then the height of ambition of every French lady. And what was their delight when the Indian Prince placed a shawl on the shoulders of each lady as she left the room!
When in England, Dvârkanâth fulfilled a sacred duty to the memory of Rammohun Roy, the great religious reformer of India, by erecting a tomb over his ashes in the cemetery at Bristol, little thinking that he would soon share his fate, and die like him in a foreign land.
I believe it was his doing also that a new interest was roused in India for the study of the Veda. It was certainly a curious and anomalous state of things that in a country where the Veda was recognised as the highest authority in religion, invested with all the authority of a divine revelation to a greater degree even than the New Testament is in England, this Bible of theirs should never have been printed, and should have been accessible to a small class of priests only, who knew it by heart and possessed a few MSS. of it. Still, so it was; nay, so much had the study of the Veda become neglected that when a prize was offered by the late J. Muir to any one who would undertake an edition of it, not a single native scholar was willing or able to undertake the task. When, therefore, Dvârkanâth saw that I was quietly preparing an edition of the most important, in fact, the only true Veda, the Rig-Veda, and that I had copied and collated the MSS. which existed in the Royal Libraries at Paris, at Berlin, and elsewhere, and was going to finish my collection in London, he seems to have informed his son, Debendranâth Tagore, of what I was doing at Paris, who, full of interest for religion and religious reform, dispatched about the same time four young native students to Benares, in order to enable them to study the Veda under the guidance of the Pandits of that sacred city. One was to learn the Rig-Veda, another the Sâma-Veda, a third the Yagur-Veda, a fourth the Atharva-Veda. To judge, however, from a letter of Debendranâth Tagore himself, this may have been a mere coincidence. Unfortunately not one of these young Pandits seems ever to have done any independent work in the direction suggested by Debendranâth Tagore.
I may as well state here that I never claimed nor received the very substantial prize offered by J. Muir. Such vague and exaggerated accounts have been spread and even published as to the magnificent honorarium paid to me by the late East India Company that I may as well state that, even if I could have carried through the press one sheet per week, after copying, collating, and adding all the references to Sâyana’s commentary, I should never have earned more than £200 a year for a work which during more than twenty years of my life occupied nearly all my time. I do not grudge that time, and I shall always feel deeply grateful to some of the Directors of the old Company for having taken so active an interest in what seemed at the time a very useless undertaking. I do not think that the financial position of India has greatly suffered on account of the printing of the Rig-Veda, nay, the expense incurred for it must have been amply recovered, considering how largely the six large quartos have been used for presents to the Râjahs in India and to the Universities and Museums in Europe. Of course it is impossible to make presents without having to pay for them. If people will invent and exaggerate, I may as well tell them that I believe the youngest clerk in the India Office would have declined to work for twenty years at such a salary as I did. And yet I was as happy as a king all the time.
Debendranâth Tagore.
Though I have never seen the son of Dvârkanâth, Debendranâth Tagore, I have had several most interesting letters from him, and I have always felt the deepest sympathy for his noble and unselfish efforts to purify the religion of his countrymen. He was the patron and friend of Keshub Chunder Sen, and, though he was too conservative to be able to follow his young friend in all his reforms, his love for his enthusiastic pupil never ceased. When Keshub Chunder Sen had been forsaken by nearly all his friends, because he allowed the marriage of his daughter with the Mahârâjah of Kuch Behar, when she was a few months under age, the old man remained true to him to the last, and mourned over him at his deathbed as a father would mourn over his only son.
Here is at least one of Debendranâth Tagore’s letters to me. I am always ashamed when I print any letters from my Indian friends. They are far too kind, far too complimentary. I know how to make allowance for their warm heart and for their exuberant language, but I am afraid that to people unacquainted with Eastern skies and Eastern hearts, it will naturally seem that such letters ought never to have been published. But what gives so true a picture of a man as a confidential letter?
I was very glad to receive your letter. It will always give me pleasure to hear from the Pandit of the Far West who has done so much for the language and literature of my country. There are branches of knowledge and art in which the East is deficient, and which she must learn from foreign sources. But there are other things all her own, and even your enlightened countrymen may turn with pleasure and profit to a leaf or two out of the books of the East to learn something new, to get a glimpse of vistas of thought with which they are not familiar. And you, Sir, have done not a little to open out before the world treasures of Oriental wisdom which only the diligence of scholars like you could unfold. By the publication of the Rig-Veda and the Upanishads you have brought within the reach of European scholars the thoughts and aspirations of our ancient Rishis, hitherto hidden in inaccessible manuscripts. And it is to be hoped that the dissemination of the knowledge of our ancient literature will help to cement the bonds of union between the two peoples who, brought up under a common roof, parted from each other and scattered over distant quarters of the globe, again to be brought together under the mysterious decree of Almighty Providence.
“You are perhaps not quite right in taking me for a Sannyâsin in the sense of one who has wholly renounced the world. To be in the world, but not of it, is my beau idéal of a Sannyâsin, and in that sense I am one. My sons are settled in life and working before my eyes. I take a keen interest in all that goes on far and near, in my domestic circle and outside. My infirm health, however, does not permit me to take an active part in the affairs of the world. So I have settled down for the present in a country house by the banks of the Ganges, far from the din and bustle of the town, and yet not too far to be out of its reach, and my life glides smoothly along like the waves in winter, resigned to His will and ready to quit its mortal coils at His call.
“The schism in the Brahmo Samâj is a thing to be regretted, perhaps it may do present harm to the cause. We should have been stronger, if united, but there is no cause for despondency. The seeds have been sown, and they will bear fruit in God’s own time. We are but humble seekers of the Truth and humble workers in her cause. We must work and labour each in his own sphere and according to his own light, regardless of consequences. The crowning and fruition of our work rests with God alone, and we may repose our trust in Him for success. Truth will triumph in the end. Satyam eva gayati.
“Accept my best thanks for the copy of your Biographical Essays you have so kindly presented to me. It is a very interesting book, and I have read it with the greatest delight. The charitable feeling which you have shown in judging of Keshub Chunder Sen is worthy of your liberality of thought. I received no intimation from my father regarding the publication of the Rig-Veda. It was my own idea to send Pandits to Benares to study the Vedas. The project entirely originated with me, and had no connection with the work you had taken in hand.
Whatever may be thought by others of such a letter, to me it seems a most instructive and characteristic page in the recent history of India. Let us think, first of all, whether there is a single man living in Europe, a man of wealth and high position in his own country, who could have penned such a letter in a foreign language, whether German or Sanskrit. There is hardly a word in it that would have to be altered, and as to the spirit pervading it, no bishop need be ashamed of it. And yet how many people are there even among members of the Indian Civil Service, who would look upon this man as their equal, not to say, as their better? What he says about the new lessons which even we in England might learn from India, more particularly from the Rig-Veda and the Upanishads, is by no means a mere phrase. He knew quite well what he meant. He was quite sufficiently acquainted with our language, our literature, our philosophy and religion to have a right to say that there are things in those books which are new to us, and might be truly helpful to everybody who strives to solve for himself the many riddles of this world. Let us remember, first of all, that the Rig-Veda is the oldest book of the world. It is older than anything in Greece and Rome, older, as a book, than any book in China, older than the old Persian Avesta, older than Buddhism and its sacred canon, older also than the Old Testament. I know that this last statement will make many people shake their heads, as if the truth and value of a book depended on its age. Is the Old Testament truer than the New, because it is older? Truth is neither young nor old, it is eternal, and history teaches us that the older a religion, the more has it been exposed to deterioration in the hands of priests and no-priests. Ancient ruins are, no doubt, venerable and impressive, but for dwelling in them and for the daily work of life new buildings are better.
No one would say that because the Rig-Veda is the oldest book of the human race—we cannot call cuneiform or hieroglyphic inscriptions, however large they are, books in the ordinary sense of the word—it is therefore the best or the truest. It is on the contrary a record of the childhood of our race, full of childish things, but full also of such unexpected sparks of thought as occasionally startle us from the minds and mouths of babes. The more childish the words of the Rig-Veda are, the more instructive they should prove to us. Where are we to study the origin of religion of the Aryan race to which we ourselves belong by language and thought, if not in the Rig-Veda? Nor does it require much study. Whoever runs may read it on every page. No one doubts now that the gods of the ancient Âryas were representatives of the great phenomena of nature, conceived in the only way in which, in the then state of language and thought, they could be conceived, that is as active and personified. What we should have anticipated, and what in fact was anticipated by philosophers, was fully confirmed by the hymns of the Rig-Veda, which were found to be addressed to the Dawn, the first miracle and the greatest revelation the world has ever seen, though we have learnt to look upon the light of the morning as a matter of course. They were addressed to the morning Sun, the bringer of light and life, to the blue Sky, the gatherer of clouds, the giver of rain and fertility, to the Earth, the Rivers, the Fire, the Storms, and many more.
During the period reflected in the songs of the Rig-Veda, the poets had already made the step from the worship of many gods, the Devas, or the Bright Ones, as they called them, to the recognition of one, but still personal God above all gods, nay, they had purified the concept of that Supreme Being from all that was implied in a male or female personality, and had acknowledged it as neither of the one nor of the other sex, as untrammelled by what personality means with us, as the true, free, and eternal Godhead of which the other gods were but human renderings more or less perfect. We can watch in the Rig-Veda how all these thoughts and conceptions of the Deity arose naturally in the human heart, and there is no other literature in which the genesis of the Divine in the human mind can be so fully and so clearly watched and studied. A record of this theogonic process is surely worth having, and though it naturally holds true of the Aryan race only, it is after all the race to which we ourselves belong, not merely by blood and bones, but, by what is far more important, by language and thought. If we can observe this theogonic process among other races also, whether civilised or uncivilised, a comparison of the different roads that led to God may become most important. Care, however, must be taken not to mix what is heterogeneous. The religions of uncivilised races, whether ancient or modern, but mostly modern, should be studied by themselves, and of course by scholars only, or by those who have at least a knowledge of the grammar of the language in which the religious ideas of such races lie embedded. A beginning in this direction has been made, and much may be expected from ethnological studies in the future. Hitherto they have mostly proved amusing only, and without much scientific value, for which the scarcity of materials is answerable far more than the credulity of some of our ethnological students. What is the true value of the theogony of the Aryan race is its historical character, and its continuity which enables us to watch the growth of the concepts of the gods and of God in an unbroken chain till we arrive, chiefly in the Upanishads, at that true conception of the Godhead, free from all limitations, even from that of personality, in the human sense of that word, a stage that had been reached by Greek and Jewish thinkers at Alexandria in the first centuries of Christianity, but was soon afterwards hidden again in the clouds of theological anthropomorphism.
It makes no difference whether we ourselves consider this religious development of Aryan thought of the Godhead as true or mistaken. Its real interest is that it has historical reality, and that at all events we can learn lessons from it which we can learn nowhere else. It was my desire to gain a direct knowledge of what is preserved in the Rig-Veda of the earliest religious development of our race, and thus to fill a gap which had been felt for many years and deplored by all true scholars, that made me conceive the idea of publishing the text and native commentary of the Rig-Veda; a task not without its difficulties, both scientific and material, for it would otherwise have been undertaken long before.
I have a letter dated August, 1845, now before me from the late Professor Roth, the editor with Professor Boehtlingk of our great Sanskrit Dictionary, where he says, “It is a truly youthful boldness to undertake an edition of the whole of Sâyana’s commentary by yourself alone,” and he proposes that I should allow him, Dr. Trithen, Dr. Rieu and others to take each a part of the work. In some respects I am sorry now that I did not accept this offer, for the Veda would have appeared sooner. But there were difficulties in this combination, as in most combinations, and being then very youthful and bold, I took the whole work on my own shoulders.
But if my edition of the Rig-Veda helped to usher in quite a new period in Sanskrit scholarship in Europe, it naturally produced an even greater commotion all over India. After all, it was their Bible, and had never been published before during the three or four thousand years of its existence. Attempts were made in various quarters to taboo it, as having been printed by a Mlekkha and with cow’s blood; but the book proved itself too strong, it was indispensable, and was soon accepted even by those who at first had placed it under their interdict. The late Dr. Haug sent me a full account of a meeting held by the Brâhmans at Poonah, who, though unwilling at first to touch the book, called an assembly in which a man, not a Brâhman, read out my edition, and all the Brâhmans corrected whatever MSS. they possessed, according to the text as settled in the distant University of Oxford.
Râjah Râdhâkânta Deva.
This brought me into correspondence with many of the leading men both among the conservative and orthodox, and among the progressive and enlightened party in India. At the head of the conservative party stood then a well-known man, Râjah Râdhâkânta Deva, a kind of Indian Lord Shaftesbury. He had distinguished himself by publishing a large thesaurus of the Sanskrit language in seven large quarto volumes, called the Sabdakalpa-druma, the paradise-tree of words. I was highly pleased when I received so valuable a present from the Râjah, and deeply interested in a letter which accompanied it. People in India, even intelligent people, were evidently very much puzzled, how a Mlekkha, as they called all barbarians, or all not twice-born men, could have got hold in the libraries of Germany, France, and England of the disjecta membra of their sacred book, how he could have made it out, and actually corrected it. The reforming party naturally rejoiced in the publication of the Veda. But some even of the old orthodox believers in the Veda were highly pleased when I presented to them their venerable Bible. Strange as it may seem to us, such is the power of a long-continued tradition that even the more enlightened among the Hindus, at least at the time of which I am writing, had no kind of doubt as to the divine origin of the Veda. They looked upon it not only as a revelation granted to mankind thousands of years ago, but they believed that it was premundane, that it had existed in the mind of the Supreme Being from all eternity, and had been breathed forth before the beginning of the world. They thought of it, not as a book, but as a revelation handed down from teacher to pupil in an uninterrupted succession. There existed manuscripts of it, but not very many, and the only way recognised in India of learning the Veda, without destroying its sanctity and efficacy, was to learn it by heart from the mouth of a qualified teacher. Every word, every letter, every accent of the Veda had been settled by authority as far back as about the fifth century B.C., and from that point of view the authority of oral tradition was, and is still considered much higher than that of a mere manuscript. Formerly, as in the time of the Laws of Manu, it was even forbidden to write the Veda or to sell copies of it. That so sacred and more than sacred a work should have been published for the first time by a barbarian, and that hundreds of copies of it should suddenly be for sale in the streets of Benares, Bombay, and Poonah, was at first a very great shock to the orthodox. Still, though there were protests, and though all sorts of doubts were thrown on the genuineness of the printed text, even the most bigoted opponents of everything European had at last to give in, and to confess that the printed text was really their true Veda, and that it was more complete and more correct than any manuscript then in existence.
We must never forget that the ancient literature of India was entirely mnemonic. This may sound almost incredible, yet there are few Sanskrit scholars who would any longer doubt it. In their recognised system of education the imprinting of the ancient books on the memory of the young was the most essential feature. Boys, not girls, had to spend years and years of their youth, while staying in the house of a Guru, in learning by heart line after line of certain books, and nothing else. Thus only can we account for the wonderful capacity and tenacity of their memory. They at first learnt their sacred books, as I have known children to learn poems in a foreign language, without even attempting to understand a single word. Children of good Brâhman families were simply treated like sheets of paper, on which the teacher impressed letters, syllables, words, and sentences by sound only. Later only came the time for going over (Adhyayana) what stood thus imprinted on their memory, and for understanding, under the guidance of qualified teachers, its real purport. This, too, may seem almost incredible to us, but in the absence of writing and printing, what else could have been done? Every boy who passed through the orthodox system of education (Brahmakaryâ) became a copy of whatever text he was made to learn, and this copy had to be kept in good condition by constant repetition. Unless we keep this clearly before our mind, we shall never understand the state of ancient literature in India, with all its changes and chances, before the introduction of writing. When we consider, for instance, the enormous bulk of the ancient Sanskrit epic, the Mahâbhârata, a poem of more than 90,000 couplets, four volumes quarto, we hesitate before accepting it as a mnemonic poem. And yet we have what amounts to almost positive evidence of the poem having existed before the introduction of writing into India, in the fact that there is an episode, added at the beginning of the poem, in which we are told how the whole poem was reduced to writing by the god Ganesa, and that this episode is absent in many MSS., particularly those of the South of India. And even after the introduction of writing every precaution was taken to keep certain sacred texts from being written down, so as to force each rising generation to learn their literature, sacred and profane, from the mouth of a teacher, and not from a manuscript. Even to the present day this old system of imprinting whole books on the brain has not been allowed to become entirely obsolete, and the mnemonic achievements which in several cases I have witnessed myself in young men when they come to Oxford are almost unbelievable.
A printed edition of their sacred Rig-Veda was therefore, even under the changed circumstances of the nineteenth century, a kind of monstrosity. Among the first to recognise my edition of the Rig-Veda was the Râjah Râdhâkânta Deva, and his recognition was all the more important to me as he stood at the head of the strictly orthodox and conservative party in Bengal. He himself had no doubt that the whole Veda was really the eternal word of God, and that an unswerving faith in it was the sine quâ non of a religious and pious life. Even such highly esteemed books as the Laws of Manu, the Mahâbhârata and the Purânas had to give way before it, if there should ever be any difference between them and the Veda. We can hardly imagine how people in India could live in such an atmosphere, but it evidently agreed both with those who thought for themselves and with those who thought as they were bid.
My friend, Râdhâdkânta, however, made some reservations. The Rig-Veda, he said, though far the most important, is only one out of four Vedas which, though all founded on the Rig-Veda, have each certain portions peculiar to themselves. This no one would have denied, but what are the hymns of all other so-called Vedas put together, if compared with the Rig-Veda? They are mere sacrificial prayer-books, most of their hymns being taken from the Rig-Veda, and the Atharva-Veda being confessedly a later collection, though it contains curious remnants of Indian popular poetry, incantations, medical formulas, and the like. If all had been lost, except the Rig-Veda, the loss would not have been very great, at least so far as the study of ancient mythology and religion was concerned. Of course I had studied the Yagur-Veda, and had actually copied the whole of it with Mahîdhara’s commentary at Paris. This was published afterwards by Professor Weber from my own copy which I had presented to him. I could also tell my Indian friend that we possessed in Germany an edition of the Sâma-Veda by Benfey, and were expecting an edition of the Atharva-Veda by Roth. These were editions of the hymns of the four Vedas, but I could assure him that even the Brâhmanas, on which he laid great stress as being the highest authorities for sacrificial rules, for traditions, and ancient customs, were no longer hidden from us, but ready to be published by scholars such as Haug, Weber, Aufrecht, and others. But even then he would still make his reservations. We might know one Sâkhâ, or text, he said, of each of their sacred books; but, in conformity with the highest theological authorities, he maintained that there existed formerly many more of such texts which had become extinct; but which nevertheless must be admitted as the original authority for any doctrines or customs not sanctioned by the Vedas, such as we possess them now. The first part of this argument I readily granted, but I had to demur to the second, because anything, even the most degrading customs, might thus have been invested with a divine sanction.
And so it was, as is well known by this time, in the case of Sutti, or the burning of widows, a custom which, though it had long ago been abolished by law, gave rise to a long and animated controversy between the old Râjah, Professor Wilson, and myself.
To show what kind of man the Râjah was, I shall here give some specimens of his letters. It is difficult to do this, because, as I stated before, the style adopted by Hindus in writing letters, whether in Sanskrit or in English, is so flowery and ornate that, particularly when it is addressed to oneself, it seems very conceited and egotistical to publish any of their laudatory remarks. Allowance must be made for Oriental phraseology, and all superlative expressions have to be considerably reduced in English before they reach the level of reality.
In November, 1851, the Râjah, when sending me his Thesaurus, wrote:—
“When I ventured to assume the character of a lexicographer, my most ambitious wish was but to revive the study of Sanskrit in my own country, where it has been on the decline; but I should not dissemble that love of fame stimulated my exertions through worldly tribulations, where patience must have failed and perseverance wearied. I devoted the greatest portion of my life and no inconsiderable amount of labour and expense to the execution of the work; and though as an encyclopaedist I have no claim to originality, or to the merits of genius, yet, I trust, my industry and application will, at least, be applauded when I may be considered as a humble pioneer of Sanskrit learning. I have endeavoured to obtain the approbation of those whose good opinion one cannot but be proud of and solicitous to secure; nor is it an inconsiderable reward of my labour that it has deserved the commendation of a Müller and a Wilson, who have won golden opinions by their profound scholarship in Sanskrit.”
To be named by the side of Wilson was a compliment highly appreciated by a young man of twenty-eight, as I then was, and I may be pardoned for having felt flattered at the time more than was perhaps quite right, by the old Râjah’s well-turned phrases.
Then, turning to my edition of the Rig-Veda, my correspondent continued:—
“I have lately been honoured by the Honourable the Court of Directors with the present of the first volume of your noble and excellent edition of the Rig-Veda, published under their patronage. Some time ago when I received your specimen copy of it, which you had so politely desired Dr. Roer to send me, I read it with eagerness, and, although I was obliged to return it sooner than I could have wished, I saw enough to convince me that you would go far beyond all expectation, and your present publication has confirmed this opinion.
“Arduous and novel as is the undertaking you have entered on amidst a variety of disadvantages, the able and masterly manner in which you have begun to execute it displays your profound erudition, critical acumen, and unparalleled industry of research; you stand forth a very illustrious example of uncommon ardour and undaunted perseverance, such as is not to be cooled by discouragement, nor obstructed by difficulty; your labours will furnish the Vaidik Pandits with a complete collection of the Holy Sanhitâs of the first Veda, only detached portions of which are to be found in the possession of a few of them, and enable the student of antiquity ‘to snatch the veil that hung her face before,’ supply materials for the history of the ancient East—nay, ancient world, and rear up for you a monument more durable than brass.”
I confess I feel somewhat ashamed of copying this panegyric, but no one will suspect me of having believed a word of it. It seemed to me, however, that a letter so well conceived and so well expressed was worthy of being preserved as showing a phase through which the Indian mind had to pass, and which by this time it has left behind. If we consider how different the trend of native thought really is from our own, we shall have to confess that few, if any, European scholars have ever mastered any Oriental language to the same extent as the writer of this letter has mastered English, or have adapted their thoughts so cleverly to English models as this old Râjah.
Let us see now how he arranged the facts of the case, so as to satisfy his own mind:—
“It is surely,” he continues, “a very curious reflection on the vicissitudes of human affairs that the descendants of the divine Rishis (prophets) should be studying on the banks of the Bhâgîrathî (Ganges), the Yamunâ (Jumna), and the Sindhu their Holy Scriptures as published on the banks of the Thames by one whom they regard as a distant Mlechchha, and this Mlechchha, the descendant of the degraded Kshattriyas (noblemen), according to our Sâstras, and claiming a cognate origin with the Hindus, according to the investigations of the modern philologists, who will ere long rise to the rank of a Veda-Vyâsa (arranger and revealer of the Veda) of the Kaliyuga.
“Though our Sâstra is deemed the grand and primeval fountain from which the present streams of knowledge that run through the civilised countries of the globe have taken their rise, yet it has not been considered as defiled by receiving into it a foreign tributary. As Yavanâchârya (a Greek teacher) gave to the Hindus his system of astronomy many centuries ago, so the German Bhatta (Doctor) is now giving them his edition of the Rig-Veda, and will, as he promises, furnish them with his commentaries upon them.”
If we wish to understand and to appreciate the effort made by this highly educated Indian nobleman, to digest what must have been a hard morsel to his orthodox mind, the edition of his own sacred book by a German or an Englishman, let us try to imagine what it would have been to us if the New Testament, never printed before, had been published for the first time, not by a Dutch scholar, such as Erasmus, but by a Hindu at Benares. We know how great was the commotion when, after the invention of printing, Erasmus published the first critical edition of the New Testament. We must not imagine that the feelings of awe and reverence for their Veda were different from our own for the Bible. To have this book, which few only had ever seen before in India, sent to them from London and offered for sale, proved indeed a great shock to the Hindu conscience, nor was it easy for many of their priests to take the same dispassionate view as this enlightened Râjah. He had by no means broken with his religious convictions or national prejudices, and in his eyes, in spite of all his kindness and politeness, I was and could be no more than a Mlekkha, that is a barbarian. As I had never been in India and could never, like so many other scholars, have availed myself of the valuable assistance of native Pandits, it seemed to him impossible to account for my knowledge of Sanskrit, particularly of the obscure and difficult Vedic Sanskrit, unless he made me a descendant of certain noble or Kshattriya families who, according to the Purânas, had been exiled from India many centuries ago. And, as if to quiet his own conscience in accepting my edition of his sacred book as undefiled by the foreign hands through which it had passed, he reminded himself that after Alexander’s conquests in India certain Greeks or Yavanas had acted as teachers to the astronomers of India, and had even been accepted as inspired, so long as they taught what was true. All this shows a most interesting crisis through which the Hindu mind had passed in former times, and had to pass once more, a crisis which, though it has not yet finished, is at all events preparing a religious reformation in India, by assigning to the Veda its true historical position, as the best that the Hindu mind could have produced four thousand years ago, and that to the present day has retained a certain vitality among the true leaders of the people of India.
I have always been a bad correspondent, finding it quite impossible even at that early time to answer all the letters of my many unknown friends. India, from a very early day in my career, has been smothering me with letters, many of them in Sanskrit or in local dialects which I do not even understand. Now it seems that in this case also I waited for some time before acknowledging so interesting a letter as that of the Mahârâjah. However, I find the draft of a letter to him among my papers, and I may as well give an extract from it here:—
“The letter which you addressed to me in 1851 on receiving the first volume of my edition of the Rig-Veda reached me so late that I had nearly finished the second volume of my Rig-Veda, and I therefore postponed writing to you, because I wished at the same time to send this my second volume, if only to show you that I meant what I said, and was determined to carry out my undertaking—namely, to publish in time the whole collection of the sacred hymns of your Rishis, together with the commentary composed in the fourteenth century by the learned Sâyanâkârya. I have stated in my Preface how much I owe to your valuable Thesaurus, a work which will make your name not only revered by your own countrymen, but respected among all the scholars of Europe. Tathâ ka srutih, Yâvad asmin loke purushah punyena karmanâ srûyate, tâvad ayam svarge loke vasatîti. And thus says your Scripture: ‘So long as a man is known in this world by a good work, so long does he dwell in heaven.’... How happy I should be if I could spend some time at Calcutta or Benares, and discuss with you and your learned Pandits your ancient religion, your sacred writings, your traditions, and the future of religion in India. It was not mere idle curiosity that led me to a study of the Veda, but a wish to know a work which has been for so many centuries the foundation on which millions and millions of human beings have built up their religious convictions. However much we may differ from the old forms of faith and worship, it is our duty, it seems to me, to approach every religion with respect, nay, with reverence. The vital principle, the original source of religion, is the same everywhere; it is faith in a Higher Power, and a belief that our moral life should be such as to please Him to whom we owe our being and to whom we feel bound to ascribe the highest perfection which our limited human faculties can conceive. Nor have I been disappointed by the Rig-Veda, though it is different from what I and others expected. There are large portions in it which have hardly any connection with religion at all, but they are interesting all the same as relics of antiquity, such as the song of the gambler, the dialogue between Lopamudrâ and Agastya, between Yama and Yamî, between Purûravas and Urvasî. Other prayers for health and wealth are appropriate in their simplicity to a very primitive state of society. But there are passages which show a truly religious spirit, such as ‘Ekam sad viprâ bahudhâ vadanti’—‘The sages speak in many ways of the One that exists’; ‘Yo deveshu adhi deva eka âsît’—‘He who alone is God above gods.’ Simple moral sentiments also occur in it which deserve to be treasured; such is ‘Vi mak khrathâya rasanâm ivâgah’—‘Loose from me sin like a rope’; ‘Dâmeva vatsâd vi mumugdhy amho, na hi tvadâre nimishas ka nese’—‘Loose from me sin like a rope from a calf, for away from Thee I am not master of a twinkling of the eye.’ Though their number is small in the Sanhitâ, yet there is so much more simplicity and purity in most of these old hymns that I cannot understand how they could ever have been superseded by the Purânas, works which from a moral, religious, and intellectual point of view do not seem to me worthy to rank as the Bibles of a nation so highly gifted as the inhabitants of Âryâvarta.
“If my edition of the Rig-Veda could help towards bringing the people of India back to the study of what their ancient writers unanimously considered as the highest authority of their religion, it would, I think, be an important step forward, not backward, though I hope that the future has even greater things in store for them than a mere return to their ancient form of belief and worship. We must not forget that, like everything else, religions also grow old and can seldom defy four thousand years. The antiquity of a religion which is often appealed to as a proof of its truth, seems to me to tell in the very opposite direction. The older it is, the more likely it is to have become effete in human hands, and unfit for new times, and to require either reformation or entire abolition, to make room for a new and better form of faith.
“I know you are bound to consider me as a Mlekkha, but allow me to say that I do not entertain the same exclusive feelings towards you and your countrymen. And remember that one of your Vedic Rishis says that all the castes, the Sûdra as well as the Brâhmana, came from Brahman, and participate, therefore, in the same nature and substance, the Divine in man. We believe that all men are equal before God, and with that feeling and in that spirit I remain, with great respect,